Exxon Just Can't Quit the Climate Skeptics [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
According to ExxonMobil [3]'s 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report [4] and Worldwide Giving Report [5], the oil giant is still funding global warming skeptics [6]. Following an unprecedented rebuke from Britain's Royal Society [7] in 2006, Exxon said it would stop funding [8] -- in the Society's words -- groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change [9]." However, Exxon funding is still flowing to the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, the home of skeptics Willie Soon [10] and Sallie Baliunas [11]. Baliunas "built her denial career downplaying the significance of the destruction of the ozone layer," at the George C. Marshall Institute [12], an Exxon-funded think tank [13]. Soon has "become one of the go-to skeptics, appearing as a key speaker" at the Heartland Institute [14]'s conferences questioning climate change [15]. Though the "Observatory is the research arm of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics," writes Greenpeace's Kert Davies, it "has little to do with either the Smithsonian or Harvard," while "Smithsonian has distanced itself from Baliunas, who discredits their name."