Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change

BrainGlutton · December 23, 2013, 7:32pm

Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.

“I call it the climate-change counter movement,” said the author of the study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle. “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”

Brulle’s study, published on Friday in the journal Climatic Change, offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change. Still, there are big gaps.

It was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said. “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”

Some of the think tanks on Brulle’s list – such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – said they had no institutional position on climate change and did not control the output of their scholars. In addition, Brulle acknowledged that he was unable to uncover the full extent of funding sources to the effort to oppose action on climate change. About three-quarters of the funds were routed through trusts or other mechanisms that assure anonymity to donors – a trend Brulle described as disturbing and a threat to democracy.

“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don’t have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.

“That is the bottom line here. These are unaccountable organisations deciding what our politics should be. They put their thumbs on the scale … It is more one dollar one vote than one person one vote.”

Brulle’s study. Abstract only – the article is behind a paywall.

Abstract

This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over 900million, with an annual average of 64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.

I venture to suggest that no corporation would spend that kind of money to get the truth out.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 8:05pm

There are many reasons why I call those ***Stink ***Thanks.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545

American Enterprise Institute

In 2007, The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each to write articles critical of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on climate change. The Guardian noted that AEI has received substantial funding from ExxonMobil and that former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond – a vocal climate change skeptic – served as AEI’s Vice Chair. AEI criticized the story, saying they merely sought to subject the IPCC report to “serious scrutiny and criticism” but were not doubting the “existence of global warming.”

Nevertheless, AEI scholars have repeatedly downplayed the threat of climate change. Steven Hayward, who writes for National Review, has said that climate concerns are based on “propaganda” and that efforts to reduce emissions are “based on exaggerations and conjecture rather than science.” Former AEI president Christopher DeMuth acknowledged in 2001 that the earth has warmed but claimed “it’s not clear why this happened.” But some other AEI scholars have endorsed a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Heartland Institute And James Taylor

The Economist has called the libertarian Heartland Institute “the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.” Every year, Heartland hosts an “International Conference on Climate Change,” bringing together a small group of contrarians (mostly non-scientists) who deny that manmade climate change is a serious problem. To promote its most recent conference, Heartland launched a short-lived billboard campaign associating acceptance of climate science with “murderers, tyrants, and madmen” including Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson and Fidel Castro. Facing backlash from corporate donors and even some of its own staff, Heartland removed the billboard, but refused to apologize for the “experiment.”

Heartland does not disclose its donors, but internal documents obtained in February reveal that Heartland received $25,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2011 and anticipated $200,000 in additional funding in 2012. Charles Koch is CEO and co-owner of Koch Industries, a corporation with major oil interests. Along with his brother David Koch, he has donated millions to groups that spread climate misinformation. Heartland also receives funding from some corporations with a financial interest in confusing the public on climate science. ExxonMobil contributed over $600,000 to Heartland between 1998 and 2006, but has since pledged to stop funding groups that cast doubt on climate change.

Despite their industry ties and lack of scientific expertise, Heartland Institute fellows are often given a media platform to promote their marginal views on climate change. Most visible is James Taylor, a lawyer with no climate science background who heads Heartland’s environmental initiative. Taylor dismisses “alarmist propaganda that global warming is a human-caused problem that needs to be addressed,” and suggests that taking action to reduce emissions could cause a return to the “the Little Ice Age and the Black Death.” But that hasn’t stopped Forbes from publishing his weekly column, which he uses to spout climate misinformation and accuse scientists of “doctoring” temperature data to fabricate a warming trend. It also hasn’t stopped Fox News from promoting his misinformation.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 8:07pm

Scholars? Maybe scholars of the methods for deceptive messages.

Bricker · December 23, 2013, 9:14pm

I suggest that study is flawed:

Jonathan Adler on volokh.com:

The study, “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations” by Robert Brulle, was published last Friday in Climatic Change. For this study, Brulle identified 91 organizations that oppose the imposition of emission controls on greenhouse gases (the “Climate Change Counter Movement” or CCCM), and totaled up their entire annual operating budgets, without regard to whether climate or environmental matters generally represent a significant portion of each organization’s work. The study then trumpets the resulting number — $900 million per year from 2003 to 2010 — as if this represents the size and extent of think tank and advocacy group opposition to climate change policies. This is ridiculous, as many of the organizations listed, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, and Heritage Foundation, spend only a tiny fraction of their budget on climate policy. AEI’s revenue in 2009, for instance, was $28.8 million. Yet AEI does relatively little on environmental issues, let alone on climate change. Moreover, during the period examined in Brulle’s study, AEI published work supporting action on climate change (see, e.g., here). The Brulle study also details foundation funding for these organizations, again as if every dollar given by conservative foundations to these groups has something to do with climate policy, when it is easy to show this is not the case.

He then predicts:

I’m especially interested in GIGOBuster’s reaction to this criticism. Is it valid?

mhendo · December 23, 2013, 9:41pm

You can see the problematic rhetorical slide right there in the abstract provided by the OP. He concedes himself that the $900 million figure is total income, not the amount specifically spent on climate change.

I have institutional access to Springer journals, so i downloaded a copy of the full study.

The author notes the existence of a significant number of organizations, mainly conservative or libertarian in their political priorities, that he believes constitute a climate change counter-movement (CCCM). He discusses the CCCM’s attempts to push back against the scientific consensus about climate change, and says:

In order for these ongoing efforts to continue, it is imperative that the CCCM organizations mobilize sufficient financial resources. Thus an examination of the funding sources of the CCCM can provide a deeper understanding of the institutional dimensions of this effort. To the extent that CCCM funding has been studied, the analyses have focused on the giving patterns of a few major corporate funders, primarily ExxonMobil and Koch Enterprises, and their relationships with a few highly visible CCCM organizations. The existing studies provide a provocative but limited analysis of the organizational dynamics of the denial campaign. Thus, despite the importance of the organized effort to deny climate change and thus the need to deal with it, there has yet to be a comprehensive analysis of the funding flows that maintain this campaign.

He defines his three main questions, and his focus in answering those questions, as:

What is the climate change counter-movement? Here I argue that an efficacious approach to defining this movement is to view it as a cultural contestation between a social movement advocating restrictions on carbon emissions and a countermovement opposed to such action. Using this perspective, the key organizations of the U.S. CCCM are identified.

This allows for an assessment of a second question, How are these organizations financially maintained? Utilizing the perspective of resource mobilization, this paper examines the financial structure of these organizations and identifies their sources of monetary support.

Establishing these funding sources then allows for an assessment of the third question: How do these organizations and their funders interact to form a social movement? Utilizing network analysis, this paper traces the links between philanthropic foundations and the organizations they fund. This analysis shows the overall pattern of resource mobilization of CCCM organizations, and allows for a series of observations about the nature of the interactions between CCCM organizations and foundations.

And this is pretty much what he does over the course of the 14-page study. He discusses the organizations involved in opposition to the climate change science; he examines where they get their money and the financial connections between them; and he talks about the ways in which these organizations interact with one another.

Each one of these analyses is reasonably straightforward and unproblematic, and i don’t think anyone needs much convincing that conservative and libertarian groups often share information and resources and strategies, or that the Koch brothers give money to conservative thinktanks and policy organizations.

But, while climate change is the ostensible reason for the study, nowhere in the paper does he make any effort to disaggregate what percentage of that $900 million a year is spent on this issue. He doesn’t do this for the group as a whole, nor for individual organizations within the CCCM. And nor does he even offer any sort of subjective or sociological analysis of how important the climate change issue is to these organizations, or whether other issues are more important to them.

I think that the study itself, while having some limited use, is misleading and draws a very tenuous connection between the overall argument about a nexus of conservative organizations, on the one hand, and the specific issue of there organizations’ focus on climate change, on the other. And interpreting the study as the OP did, and as some liberal media outlets are doing, is even more disingenuous.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 9:46pm

Don’t think so when right away they ignore that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each to write articles critical of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on climate change.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 9:52pm

BTW, the Media Matters report was made before the paper from the OP, I do agree with **mhendo **that the amount of money used is an exaggeration, but what remains is a very important reason why we have a Republican party that invites misleading sources even to hearings on the issue in Washington.

sleestak · December 23, 2013, 10:37pm

Ah, so this “study” is just about as valid as climate models.

Slee

74westy · December 23, 2013, 10:42pm

Obviously money well spent.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 10:50pm

More claptrap from you as usual.

"I have to wonder if Freeman Dyson will get on an airplane or if he’ll drive a car because a lot of the modern day conveniences of life and a lot of our technological innovations of modern life are based on phenomena so complicated that we need to be able to construct models of them before we deploy that technology.

“In the case of the climate, of course, there is only one Earth, so we can’t do experiments with multiple Earths and formulate the science of climate change as if it’s an entirely observationally based, controlled experiment. We need to rely on conceptual models of the system we’re studying and it’s no different in any other field of science. In fact, the way science progresses is by conceptual models being put forward and then testing them against observations. One of the most, I think, striking examples of that was just within the last month, this announcement, the Higgs Boson.

“Its existence was predicted by the standard model of particle physics and the fact that there’s—we got a glimpse of it, it looks like it may very well be there—is a real victory for that model of science where you test, you put forward conceptual models of the way the world or the universe works and test those models against the observations and see the extent to which they can predict new observations and when they do, it gives you increased confidence in the models.

“It’s no different in the case of climate change. The models are simply at some level a formulation of our conceptual understanding and when someone says they don’t like models then I’m wondering what alternative they have in mind.

“How do they formalize their conceptual understanding? Through back-of-the-envelope, poorly conceived thought experiments? It’s somewhat bewildering when I hear something like that from a premier scientist, and I think it belies a misunderstanding of the way models are used. In climate science, for example, where we don’t need an elaborate climate model to understand the basic physics and chemistry of greenhouse gases, so at some level the fact that increased CO2 warms the planet is a consequence of very basic physics and chemistry.

To me what many conservatives are missing is the opportunity that that flow of money allows to the ones that are making an effort to mislead the American people. As usual there will be always priorities, and the denial efforts are more possible and far reaching thanks to the money that is used on other matters, like their overhead and influence gained in the past on more supported issues.

GIGObuster · December 23, 2013, 11:54pm

Indeed, somehow many of the fake skeptics are nowadays acting like if their contradictions are a smart thing to follow.

It does not matter that many of the models that the “luminaries” of the contrarian movement (many who are part of those think thanks) continue to fail to get it right **and even conservative scientists have lost patience with those “scholars” **

marshmallow · December 24, 2013, 2:06am

I don’t really see the relevance of haggling over whether they spend 10 bucks or 10 billion, unless you want to compare it to pro-warming groups. Point is, industries will spend money to prevent regulations that they think will cut into their profits, or to maintain already existing favorable laws. Not really news.

“Distorting democracy,” yeah right. That is democracy. Marketing. Bribery. Propaganda. Keep up or get left behind.

Doctor_Why_Bother · December 24, 2013, 3:11am

But their budget is $28,000,000.00. Ten grand an article, even if they paid out a hundred times over, is still a drop in the bucket compared to $28,000,00.00.

As I understand it, this Brulle guy has basically made a list of all the groups that oppose climate science, taken their entire budgets, added them together and said “That’s how much is spent on climate denialism”.

So if a right wing think tank has a budget of $100 million, and they spend $10.00 a year on anti-climate change buttons and $99,999,990.00 on trying to get Breaking Bad back on the air for a sixth season, this Brulle guy would count the entire $100 million as ‘Anti climate change’ money. Have I got that right? Because if I have, that seems insanely dishonest.

BrainGlutton · December 24, 2013, 3:17am

Has anyone done a comparison-study?

RickJay · December 24, 2013, 3:25am

What is an “anti-climate effort”? Advocacy for living on the Moon?

Der_Trihs · December 24, 2013, 3:45am

Taking the question seriously: The attempt to either deny the reality of global climate change; or in the case of some pro-apocalypse Christians, the desire to do as much damage to the climate as possible in the belief it will bring about the end of the world and their ascension into heaven. The same sort who were pro-nuclear war back in the Reagan era, and who interpret God giving stewardship of nature to humans to mean that humanity should destroy nature so that Jesus will come back.

GIGObuster · December 24, 2013, 5:50am

And that is what I said when I made the point that it is an exaggeration, however the opposite of that is what you are doing, it is dishonest too. One can look at charities and realize that many do spend most of the money on overhead and related functions, the point I make is that groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute are not only propping up fake experts, they use a lot of money to send deniers to congress.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/transcript-31/

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: [voice-over] I visited one of the key Democrats on this issue, Massachusetts senator John Kerry. What had happened to all the momentum of four years ago?

Sen. JOHN KERRY (D), Massachusetts: Well, American politics is being completely defined by huge sums of money. We had really a very broad coalition of people who believed that we ought to move forward and do something. But as the campaign and the fear built up, people began to retreat.

They spent huge sums of money in a campaign of major disinformation that had an impact, had a profound impact. And it has now made many people in public life very gunshy because they’re afraid of having those amounts of money spent against them.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: [voice-over] This is what they fear, what happened in 2010 to six-term South Carolina congressman Bob Inglis, a Republican who once thought he was a safe incumbent in his solidly red state.

BOB INGLIS (R), Fmr. Congressman, South Carolina: You know, I’m pretty conservative fellow. I got a 93 American Conservative Union rating, 100 percent Christian Coalition, 100 percent National Right to Life, A with the NRA, zero with the ADA, Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal group, and 23 by some mistake with the AFL-CIO. I demand a recount. I wanted a zero.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: But Inglis does accept the scientific consensus on global warming and favors legislation to curb the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. He faced a tea party rebellion in his primary.

BOB INGLIS: I had a big tent gathering in Spartanberg County, a bunch of Republicans underneath a great big tent. Comes a question to me, “Yes or no, do you believe in human causation on climate change?” Well, I had a bad habit of answering questions, so I said yes. Boo, hiss, comes the crowd. I was blasted out from underneath the tent. And so— I mean, there were a couple of hundred, 300 people there. I mean, it was intense.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: He was pounded in commercials and on talk radio.

BOB INGLIS: It became an oft-repeated theme on talk radio, and that is a major source of information, of course, for Republican primary voters. They were hearing, “Inglis has left the reservation. He’s over there somewhere with Al Gore.”

So how are things around here?

STORE OWNER: Slow. The economy’s way off and—

BOB INGLIS: When you get the financial collapse going, that’s what made it possible for some well-spent money to blow doubt into the science because, you know, the bankers failed us, the federal government is failing us, it’s spending too much money, and these scientists who are funded by that federal government, they’re probably in it, too. And besides, they’re godless liberals.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Inglis was defeated.

MYRON EBELL, Competitive Enterprise Institute: Bob Inglis was defeated in a Republican primary 79 to 21 percent. Now, how many times has an incumbent who isn’t in prison or facing a prison sentence lost his own primary by 79 to 21 percent? This was overwhelming. But what’s happened is—

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: [on camera] The smile on your face suggests, “Man, we won one.”

MYRON EBELL: Of course we won one!

Rep. BOB INGLIS: We’re on the record. And our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren are going to read—

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: This climate hearing in the lame duck Congress was Inglis’s last.

Rep. BOB INGLIS: Your child is sick, 98 doctors say treat him this way, two say, “No, this other is the way to go.” I’ll go with the two. You’re taking a big risk with those kids.

Rep. JAMES SENSENBRENNER: That was a very key factor in 10 to 15 congressional districts in the 2010 election, where strong supporters of climate change legislation ended up being defeated.

Sen. JOHN KERRY: And there’s nothing like a loss in an election to promote fear in the survivors. And that’s exactly what happened in the United States Congress.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Beyond Washington, in wave after wave, the skeptic tactic of fighting scientific warnings with doubt and delay was finding success. Tennessee passed a law allowing the views of climate change skeptics to be taught in schools. A Virginia state legislator cut the words “sea level rise” from an official request to study coastal communities, calling it a left-wing term.

njtt · December 24, 2013, 7:22am

Frankly, who cares if it is a billion or a million. Quibbling about the amount is just throwing dust in people’s eyes. The important point is that a fuckton of money is being spent by right wingers and business interests to obfuscate the facts and persuade voters and politicians that the (very firm) scientific consensus is wrong. (And no, before anyone suggests it, there is no equivalent fuckton of money pushing the view that anthropogenic climate change is real. Although climate science certainly needs and get financial support, largely from governments, the suppliers of that support have no particular interest in having the scientists validate the reality of climate change.)

Bryan_Ekers · December 24, 2013, 8:46am

Well, there’s fucktons and then there’s fucktons.

BrainGlutton · December 24, 2013, 2:42pm

Agreed, but I think you’ll find some people who will dispute even that. They see climate change hype as a conspiracy by socialists to justify expansion of government power, and I’m not making that up.