Pete Kuntz, an activist with Citizens Climate Lobby, the group he promotes in his letter [“Climate-change Deniers Lack Scientific Authority,” Aug. 19, Xpress], writes that the “NIPCC [Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change] gets its funding clandestinely from ExxonMobil and the fossil-fuel billionaire Koch brothers. So does Tom Harris’ impressive-sounding International Climate Science Coalition.”
The NIPCC Web site says, “None of the NIPCC reports — ZERO — have been funded with corporate money. They are funded by family foundations that have no interest in the energy sector.“
Similarly, ICSC has never had funding from the oil sector, let alone ExxonMobil or the Kochs. Since I started with ICSC in 2008, we have kept donors’ identities confidential to protect them from attacks from groups such as CCL.
Kuntz cites British Columbia as an example of successful implementation of the sort of policies promoted by CCL. On June 11 at the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change in Washington D.C., economics professor Cornelis van Kooten, University of Victoria, British Columbia, explained that this makes no sense since British Columbia generates 97 percent of its electricity from hydro, which emits no carbon dioxide. Van Kooten described how the government’s Pacific Carbon Trust was closed by the auditor general because of corruption.
“British Columbia is expanding its production of coal and selling overseas. Why? Well, we need money. So, if that’s success, yah, we’re very successful,” said van Kooten.
Aid agencies can’t properly help people affected by climate change because, of the $1 billion spent globally every day on climate finance, only 6 percent of it goes to adaptation support. Because of the success of groups like CCL, the rest is spent vainly trying to stop climate change that might someday happen. This is immoral, valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those in need today.
— Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
The NIPCC Web site says, “None of the NIPCC reports — ZERO — have been funded with corporate money. They are funded by family foundations that have no interest in the energy sector.“
I’ve searched ‘www.nipccreport.org’. and cannot find anything like this statement anywhere on their website. If you google it, the only places that I can find that it appears is in letters from Tom Harris, and the original, on a blog on the Heartland Institute website.
http://blog.heartland.org/2014/04/response-to-a-critic-of-climate-realists-and-the-nipcc-reports/
In any case, since you insist on keeping your funding sources secret, I find no reason to believe any of it.
“In any case, since you insist on keeping your funding sources secret, I find no reason to believe any of it.>
^^^This!!!^^^
The up to date Web site for the NIPCC is http://www.climatechangereconsidered.org. If you do not believe what Heartland says about the funding of the project the reports of which they publish, then why don’t you contact the other sponsors of the NIPCC, SEPP or the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Arizona. They will tell you the same. Their contacts are further down the page at http://climatechangereconsidered.org/.
I can’t find the “ZERO” quote on the link you gave. Under which of the website headings does it appear?
It was given above at http://blog.heartland.org/2014/04/response-to-a-critic-of-climate-realists-and-the-nipcc-reports/
Again, that’s not the NIPCC website http://www.nipccreport.org, nor is it the ‘up to date’ NIPCC website you directed us to in the comments above. That’s a blog on the Heartland Institute website, who we all know has taken lots of oil money & has extensive ties to the Kochs and to ALEC.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute
That’s not where your letter says the quote appears. Why did you give the link to the NIPCC website if the quote does not appear there? This is very strange behavior from someone who is purporting to set the record straight.
It is also linked to on the first item on the list on http://climatechangereconsidered.org/nipcc-replies-to-critics/.
Also, on http://climatechangereconsidered.org/reply-to-graham-wayne-us-school-infiltration-attempt-by-heartlands-ipcc-parody-october-30-2013/, we see the comment, “NIPCC receives no corporate funding at all.”
You didn’t answer my question. Why did you say that the ZERO quote appears on a website where it does not appear?
Oh, wait. Maybe you didn’t want to mention that the ZERO quote came from the Heartland Institute website. Maybe you wanted to obscure that connection for some reason, and you had to have it dragged out of you by the Eye That Watches Us All. Is that it? Has the International Climate Science Coalition ever received money from the Heartland Institute? You can tell us because the Heartland Institute is not a person who can be threatened by enemies.
why don’t you contact the other sponsors of the NIPCC, SEPP or the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Arizona.
You mean, these guys whose founder admitted taking funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, and Arco, and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Science_and_Environmental_Policy_Project
Or these guys, who also took money from Exxon and other oil interests?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change
Or heck, these guys, who also took Exxon funding?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute
why don’t you contact the other sponsors of the NIPCC, SEPP or the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Arizona.
You mean, these guys whose founder admitted taking funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, and Arco, and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Science_and_Environmental_Policy_Project
Or these guys, who also took money from Exxon and other oil interests?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change
If you will not believe the only people who know where the funding for NIPCC comes from, then what is the point in asking about it?
Simply to expose the fact that they were founded with oil money until it got inconvenient, and now hide their donors identity. Reasonable people will draw their own conclusions.
I see you’ve switched back to ‘blue background Tom Harris’, after leading us to believe that ‘brown background Tom Harris’ was the only true Tom Harris.
http://mountainx.com/opinion/letter-writer-climate-change-deniers-lack-scientific-authority/
XPress, why do you continue to allow this obvious sockpuppetry to go on?
When bsummers says the NIPCC “they were founded with oil money,” he is obviously just making that up since there is no way for him to know this. Who cares what background I use on my pics or which immediate ID I use. It is obviously the same person and I always identify myself openly, unlike my attackers.
You’re sitting in a trailer in the Nevada desert, aren’t you? What did they do with the real Tom Harris’s body?
As I read the thread, bsummers did not say that the NIPCC got its money directly from oil and energy interests. He said that sponsors of the NIPCC “report” have gotten money in the past from oil and other interests. And he certainly did not make that information up. He got it from the Source Watch website, the accuracy of which you do not dispute. Why do you find it necessary, Tom Harris (or whoever may be playing that role at the moment), to constantly dissemble?
It’s hard to know where to start in the layers of deceit and misinformation in this letter. Obviously, the pathetic bob & weave over where the ‘ZERO’ statement actually resides is the biggest giveaway.
But if you want to see how brutally insane these climate-change deniers are, don’t ignore the last paragraph:
Aid agencies can’t properly help people affected by climate change because, of the $1 billion spent globally every day on climate finance, only 6 percent of it goes to adaptation support. Because of the success of groups like CCL, the rest is spent vainly trying to stop climate change that might someday happen. This is immoral, valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those in need today.
The “$1 billion” figure comes from tallying up all the money that is being spent on “climate finance”, the vast majority of which is spent on developing solar, wind, and other renewables, which will hopefully “mitigate” the harmful climate change that fossil fuel use is bringing down on us. This is truly insane – attacking individuals, governments, NGO’s and private corporate interests that are trying to mitigate climate change through renewable fuels, etc. by suggesting that they are immoral, harming people by selfishly diverting those funds that could otherwise be used for “adaptation”, ie. giving up and letting climate change sweep over us. As if: the immoral renewable-energy zealots would surrender and stop trying to wean us off coal, gas, and oil, that entire $1 billion per year would be available as free money to save lives that are currently being lost to naturally-caused climate change.
Tom Harris, Faux Tom Harris, whoever wrote this abomination, this is a genuine, sociopathic argument, and now I understand why people like Pete Kuntz are dead-set on exposing you.
http://climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/The-Global-Landscape-of-Climate-Finance-2013.pdf
Hands. Slowly. Clapping.
Speaking of hypocritical, “environmental activist” Julie Mayfield took campaign contributions from BILTMORE OIL:
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2015/08/18/asheville-candidates-rake-early-money/31948073/
Not that this diversion matters, but the story says Julie Mayfield received a $250 personal contribution from the vice president of Biltmore Oil, the local company that runs the Eblen Short Stops. But full disclosure: In a moment of weakness, I myself once bought a bag of potato chips at an Eblen Short Stop. And I make no apologies — it was delicious!
Was it Kosher?
Did you put the trash in the appropriate trash bin?
Better yet, did you RECYCLE it?
Hmm? Hmm?
Does this answer your question? http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/products/woven-wrapper-market-bag.html.
I wonder if the reason that “Tom Harris” can’t really point to a verifiable denial of oil interest money, is because these groups are registered non-profits, and may come under some sort of sanction if they openly lie about where their funding comes from. So they leave it to a paid dissembler to throw chaff into the discussion, which never constitutes a real denial, but which he and they can claim constitutes a real denial.
In fact, thanks “Tom Harris”, for the helpful clues verifying that the funders of these “reports” are affiliated with Koch/oil interest monies. The “Science and Environmental Policy Project” that you point to, according to Sourcewatch, along with starting out with funding from various oil companies, once worked out of the very same offices as the Koch Charitable Foundation.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Science_and_Environmental_Policy_Project#Contact_information
But as we all know, only a handful of us are reading this far into this deception. The vast majority of people who hear anything about it will be the readers of the XPress print edition, and they’ll go: “Huh. So he’s proved that there’s no oil money behind these climate-change deniers.”
XPress: how many times will you let this paid “dissembler” mislead your readers?
Actually, this letter is running online only, since the discussion has veered so far afield of any local connections. (The original letter that prompted the climate discussion a few weeks back was about the local chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.)
Thanks, Tracy. Good to know.
Do you have any info on why there are two active, alternating “Tom Harris” XPress accounts? Sockpuppetry, or corporate “astroturfing” is deliberate poison thrown into discussion forums. This guy really appears to be at least two different people.
I’m not sure how the two accounts got started, but as of a couple of weeks ago, there should only be one active account.
Thanks, Barry, for taking the time to expose the facts behind this well-funded, clandestine movement to deceive the public.
Ditto. Mark Twain would have been impressed with the speed of your boot lacing.