Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other (at "International Conference on Climate Change")

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html?ref=science

Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: March 8, 2009

More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.

The three-day http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.html">International Conference on Climate Change — organized by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets — brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

Organizers say the discussions, which began Sunday, are intended to counter the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers, who have vowed to tackle global warming with legislation requiring cuts in the greenhouse gases that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.

But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/index.htm">concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

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[drm604]

1. Heartland Institute

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute

Foundation funders

Media Transparency lists Heartland as having received $2,960,555 (unadjusted for inflation) in grants between 1986 and 2006 from a range of foundations including<33>:

* Armstrong Foundation
* Barre Seid Foundation
* Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
* Jaquelin Hume Foundation
* Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust
* Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
* Hickory Foundation
* JM Foundation
* John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
* Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
* Rodney Fund
* Roe Foundation
* Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
* Walton Family Foundation

Exxon funding

Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets website lists Heartland as having received $676,500 (unadjusted for inflation) from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006.<34> (As mentioned above, Heartland insist that Exxon has not contributed to the group since 2006.)<27>

Contributions include:

* $30,000 in 1998;
* $115,000 in 2000;
* $90,000 in 2001;
* $15,000 in 2002;
* $85,000 for General Operating Support and $7,500 for their 19th Anniversary Benefit Dinner in 2003;
* $85,000 for General Operating Support and $15,000 for Climate Change Efforts in 2004; and
* $119,000 in 2005; and
* $115,000 in 2006.