The Origins of Denial - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 44

surfaced about a prominent GCC member, the American Petroleum Institute (API). Internal documents
leaked to the New York Times showed it was hatching a plan to “recruit a cadre of scientists who
share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help
convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to
justify controls on greenhouse gases.” 14 The GCC itself was disbanded in 2001 following the
defection of prominent members such as British Petroleum that—with some irony, in retrospect—
were concerned about the negative public relations of being associated with an anti-environmental
agenda. 15 While the GCC no longer itself exists, the denialist campaigns continued unabated. Other
fossil fuel interests—oil giant ExxonMobil being a big player among them—have continued to fund
groups spreading climate change disinformation for years.
Wealthy privately held corporations and foundations with close interests in, or ties to, the fossil
fuel industry, such as Koch Industries 16 and the Scaife Foundations, 17 have become increasingly
active funders of the climate change denial campaign in recent years. Unlike publicly traded
companies such as ExxonMobil, these private outfits can hide their finances from public view, and
they remain largely invulnerable to outside pressure. In recent years, as ExxonMobil has been
pressured by politicians on both sides of the aisle to withdraw from funding the climate change denial
movement, 18 Koch and Scaife have stepped up, contributing millions of dollars to the effort.
Many organizations have settled in the Potemkin village of climate change denial. Among them
are the American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Advancement of Sound Science
Center, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Hudson Institute, George C. Marshall Institute,
Fraser Institute, Heartland Institute, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Media Research Center,
National Center for Policy Analysis, and Citizens for a Sound Economy (better known now as
Freedomworks). There are literally dozens of others. 19
Among the willing accomplices in the campaign of deceit are the various media outlets that often
propagate climate change disinformation in their editorial and opinion pages. These venues include
newspapers such as the National Post and Financial Post in Canada; the Daily Telegraph, Times ,
and Spectator in the United Kingdom; and U.S. newspapers such as the Washington Times and the
various outlets of the Murdoch, Scaife, and Anschutz conservative media empires, which include not
only prominent outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal , but syndicates such as the
regional Examiner.com network and Web sites like Newsbusters.
Agents of Denial
Not only are there connections between the current campaign to attack the science of climate change
and past industry-funded campaigns to deny other industrial health and environmental threats such as
the dangers of smoking tobacco and of acid rain, environmental mercury contamination, and ozone
depletion. Some of the very same scientists have been employed as advocates for not just one or two,
but many of these issues. Think of them as all-purpose deniers.
The grandfather of all-purpose denial was Frederick Seitz, a solid-state physicist possessing
impressive scientific credentials. Seitz was a former head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
and in 1973 was awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Science. Seitz found common cause
with two other similarly minded physicists—Robert Jastrow, founder of the NASA Goddard Institute