More media and think tank-related fallout this week from recent climate change denial discourse...
Good magazine online posted this, linking to this original piece in the Guardian.
The much-Digged Guardian story, by David Adam, begins:
The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
Note that both the U.K.-based newspaper and U.S.-based website refer to Heritage, in particular, as a "lobby group" and not a "think tank." This gets back to the ongoing TTLA discussion about "what is a think tank?" Here's what Prof. James McGann and his team have to say.
And on a climate change- and tanks-related note, here's another archival TTLA variation on today's post -- this one regarding the Cato Institute, not Heritage, and featuring the comments of a Cato spokesperson, a top JPL climatologist, and the editor and founder of ScienceBlog.com.
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Prof. James McGann link is 404
Here is the link http://kcet.org/local/blogs/think_tank_la/2009/05/interview-with-james-mcgann----international-think-tanks.html
This is incredibly embarrassing for the Heritage foundation, a think tank with a favorable, albeit famously partisan reputation. For all the talk of ExxonMobil integrating a greater sense of corporate social responsibility into its overall business model, it seems the company cannot rationalize support for the environment when it must come at the expense of their success on the futures market.
Thank you, Mike. -- TTLA