Koch Brothers/Climate Change/Allegations
Offline To be perfectly honest, this happens all the time when it comes to corporations funding research to support what is valid for them or in their own interests. (Take the fact that one of the main-anti-marijuana lobbyists is Anheuser Busch)
What did the Senate want ? For them to donate money to research AGAINST their company ?
I must be missing something here ?
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/11/koch-brothers-fight-climate-funding-probe.html
Koch brothers refuse to cooperate with climate research funding probe
Billionaire libertarians say they won't cooperate with Senate investigation into corporate funding of climate skeptics
March 11, 2015 11:28AM ETThe multinational corporation run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch has said it will not cooperate with a Senate investigation into whether the corporation has paid for research skeptical of climate change.
Koch Industries Inc., which operates refining, chemical and pipeline companies, was among 100 fossil fuel businesses and organizations that were sent letters by three Democratic senators seeking information on whether they had backed research into global warming.
Koch general counsel Mark V. Holden replied in a March 5 letter to Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Holden said that disclosing the information would impinge on the Koch corporation’s First Amendment right to participate in public policy debates.
"In reviewing your letter, I did not see any explanation or justification for an official Senate Committee inquiry into activities protected by the First Amendment," Holden wrote.
The Koch brothers are well known for supporting conservative and libertarian think tanks and campaigns through various organizations they fund, including Americans for Prosperity and the Cato Institute. However, it is unclear to what degree they fund scientists who deny climate change.
Last month, documents obtained by Greenpeace through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds research and educational programs, had donated money to Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon has long maintained that climate change was a natural phenomenon, not caused by human activities.
Soon told the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in 2003 that the sun, not carbon dioxide, causes global warming — a view that has been widely discredited.
Soon received more than $1.2 million from Exxon Mobile, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation to finance his research, Greenpeace said.
“For years, we at Greenpeace have been working to make public the secret paper trails that show what everyone already knows: Climate science deniers — #fakexperts — are few and far between, and most of them are paid by companies most responsible for global warming to downplay the problem,” Greenpeace wrote in a blog post in February.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
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I am not saying that I deny climate change, I am just saying that it should come as no surprise they would not want to donate to research information that could prove counter-productive for them. I am unaware of any business that would participate in that ?
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
Yeah, I agree.
On a different note, I suppose if identifying where the money comes from promotes objectivity, which it should, then it's a good thing...
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Well you have got a point there
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
It's so ironic that climate deniers all claim its big business pushing some climate change agenda to get rich, and the people who claim this have bought into a promotion from big business pushing an agenda against climate change. Really makes your head spin how gullible some people are.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
LOL. The irony of the situation indeed.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno