Links to Global Warming Deniers and Some Revealing Facts About Them

[The following links were sent to me by someone who believes the issue of Global Warming is still up for debate -- these are links she sent to prove, as she says, "In all fairness, 10s of 1,000s of climatologists and other scientists reject the concept of global warming as presented in Al Gore's movie." I've followed her links by my research into who they are, who's funding them, etc.]

I repeat here a small list of Exxon-Mobil funded 'scientists' that appear over and over again in the 'literature' that is supposed to prove Global Warming is either not happening or is not caused by human activity, as reported by Mother Jones News. Every denier I've researched has been shown to be on the payroll of corporate interests (mostly oil and gas), is not an expert in the appropriate field, has done questionable to downright dishonest 'science,' if any, or has in some other way disqualified themselves from being taken seriously. According to Wikipeda, there seem to be far less than 10's of thousands of scientists who deny global warming -- they list anywhere from eleven-a couple of dozen ("Only scientists with a record of scholarship are included, and they must have been making specific statements, not merely participating in a poll or survey of opinion. This list is intended to be comprehensive, but is likely to be incomplete."). Here is a partial list:

SALLIE BALIUNAS, a Harvard-Smithsonian Institute astrophysicist, has, along with colleague
WILLIE SOON, been giving deniers scientific cover since the mid-1990s. They began by claiming solar effects could account for the rise of the global thermostat. After that theory was debunked, Baliunas and Soon wrote a paper-partially funded by the American Petroleum Institute-for Climate Research that claimed that the 20th century hasn’t been all that warm. Their conclusions have been praised as the epitome of “sound science” by deniers, including Sen. James Inhofe. The journal’s editor, meanwhile, said the paper should never have been published. Baliunas and Soon are each connected to at least four ExxonMobil-funded groups.
PAUL DRIESSEN: ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least five.
PATRICK MICHAELS: Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least seven.
STEVEN MILLOY [of JunkScience.com]: Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least five."
S. FRED SINGER: A godfather of global warming denial, Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least seven.

http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p686.htm --
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) ... is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research.
[more on them below]
from: SourceWatch.org

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052406F --
Tech Central Station.com is a news site associated with the Tech Central Science Foundation, which received $95,000 funding from Exxon-Mobil; Baliunas is a commentator; Soon is the science director; and Milloy is a contributing writer. Run by former FoxNews.com editor and hosted by an AEI fellow.

TCS is published by the DCI Group, "a prominent Washington public affairs firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called 'Astroturf' organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot." Corporate funders of Tech Central Station include AT&T, Avue Technologies, The Coca-Cola Company, General Motors Corporation, Intel, McDonalds, Merck, Microsoft, Nasdaq, PhRMA, and Qualcomm (Tech Central Station website).
from: ExxonSecrets.org

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm --
The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, [the petition was designed to give] some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the [National Academy of Sciences]' peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers, [and had nothing] to do with the National Academy of Sciences. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.) The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."

Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO2 increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally." As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet. [excuse me while my head explodes - Marilyn]
from: SourceWatch.org

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st285/ --
National Center for Policy Analysis has received $390,900 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Adjunct Scholar, S. FRED SINGER: Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least seven. Founded in 1983, NCPA acts as an organizer for other conservative groups as well as conducting its own free-market oriented public policy analysis on issues such as health care, social security, fiscal policy, and the environment.

NCPA has an "E-Team" that analyzes environmental policy. The global warming "experts" on the team are climate skeptics who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and continue to oppose any regulation of greenhouse gasses.
from: ExxonSecrets.org

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2006/20060623155710.aspx --
a branch of the right-wing Media Research Center. "...it is [Brent] Bozell's Media Research Center that stands out as the right's preeminent media cop. Bozell is a Republican operative with credentials earned in George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. The nephew of William F. Buckley, he headed the Conservative Victory Committee that year. He is also connected to the Political Club for Growth, a network of conservative and libertarian activists and groups sympathetic to cutting taxes and shrinking government.

What Bozell and others perceive as liberal bias often means presenting information about government help for the poor, the homeless, the weak, and so on -- information that conflicts with the objectives of the right."
from: MediaTransparency.org

http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=357 --
Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program. ... Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the "scaremongers" who raise warnings about global warming.
from: SourceWatch.org

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/cause.htm --
I could spend a lot of time debunking this 'article' point-by-point. I'd rather not waste my time, but really, apply your critical thinking skills and question each statement as you read it -- I think you'll see what I mean. Or see below for more info on them.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200409%5CNAT20040915c.html --
"The Cybercast News Service (also CNSNews.com) is a conservative news website founded on June 16, 1998 by the Media Research Center, a media watchdog group. Originally calling itself the "Conservative News Service," CNS changed its name to Cybercast in 2000. CNS sees its role as serving an audience which puts a "higher premium on balance than spin" by covering stories that mainstream news organizations ignore.

...Unsurprisingly, CNS itself has been accused of having its own bias. ConWebWatch, a website set up to challenge possible biases in politically conservative news sources, accuses CNS, among others, of engaging in the same tactics as the "liberal media" they criticize:
In reality, these sites are no less slanted or arrogant than they accuse the "mainstream" media of being. They demonstrate time and again that, despite promoting themselves with words like "fairness," "responsibility," "accuracy" and "balance," their real goal is to attack and discredit anyone who doesn’t agree with them, as well as to promote their own political views -- the same exact thing they accuse the "liberal" media of doing
from: Wikipedia.org

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ --
"The Junk Science Page is not about junk science so much as it is about anything which does not support a conservative or libertarian political agenda for businesses and industries that do not like regulations that limit their ability to pollute or poison us or our environment. Milloy uses the term 'junk science' mainly as a political and polemical term. What the majority of scientists call sound science, Milloy usually calls junk science. And what he calls 'sound science', the majority of scientists usually call junk science.
...
In short, the Junk Science page has some valid analyses sprinkled amongst its propaganda, but overall the page is deceptive. There's nothing wrong with having a political agenda, and there is certainly nothing wrong with being concerned that the government is spending its resources on the wrong projects, and there is nothing wrong with being critical of the work of scientists, but there is something wrong with pretending to care about science and truth, while labeling scientists who produce work contrary to your agenda as doing junk science. But don't take my word for it. Just look at the list of scientists that Mr. Milloy considers to be junk scientists: nearly every person on his hit list has done a study with potential political implications that offend his political agenda."
from: http://skepdic.com/refuge/junkscience.html