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Big-Oil money fund warmists, confusing attack machine

Pew Charitable Trusts is an influential “progressive” think-tank with $5 billion in assets. What was the The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has lost the Pew name and funds, and become the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).

Pew used to supply $3.5 million of the center’s current $4.4 million annual budget. Instead, in complete green purity, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Entergy Corp. will be the principal founding sponsors for the new C2ES.

DeSmog immediately denounced them and declared that all of their pronouncements are automatically biased since they are now oil-funded deniers:
Desmog: page not found

Or maybe not. If Shell had sponsored a skeptic, Desmog would have turned it into a high rotation ritual chant.

But apparently if the evil oil money funds unskeptical groups that’s quite legit. Why, because they say they are independent:

Industry sponsors must agree that the center maintains independent judgment, Claussen said.

“Every one of these companies does some things that we don’t like,” Claussen said in an interview. “They’ve got trade associations to do their bidding and they’ve got lobbyists. They view their association with us as different because we are in fact independent.” [Bloomberg]

Naturally Heartland says it’s independent too, and none of their donors provides more than 5% of their income, and they are one of the only NGO’s who did declare their income transparently, until it became clear few of the others would follow.

As usual, the ad hominem argument shows itself to be a singularly pathetic tool to sort out reality — like sifting sand with a hammer, or chopping wood with a fork, it’s the true choice of the confused.

As Steve Milloy says: Enviro double standard on funding, Exxon bad, Shell Good.

Pew got a mention under “Green Groups” in the Climate Change Scare Machine Chart:

Climate Scare Machine

Click for the Climate Change Scare Machine post.

H/t Willie Soon and Joe Bast

UPDATE: Just for clarification — The Desmog “page not found” is a satirical poke at them. If they complain about this big oil funding, do let me know 🙂

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