Over at Planet Gore, we see free minds and free markets at work in an entry entitled
Outspent but Unbowed [Iain Murray]
One of the ways environmental alarmists avoid debate about the science and economics of global warming is to suggest that their opponents only say what they say because they are in the pay of big oil, and in particular ExxonMobil. Not only is this a fallacious ad hominem argument, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For instance, my organization CEI has not received a penny from ExxonMobil since 2005, but we are no less vocal on the issue now than we were then.
We need to put the funding issue into perspective, Greenpeace, for example, is indignant that ExxonMobil paid out $2 million in grants to organizations that oppose global warming alarmism last year. Yet, according to Gristmill,
U.S. environmentalists are spending between $100 and $150 million on climate, according to an unpublished foundation report...
Yes, the environmentalists' budgets dwarf those of the anti-alarmists."
If money is not what motivates CEI , why is the hundredfold disparity of funding so stunningly reflected in terms of scientific credibility and media product impact on culture high and low ? As to Iain's deeply shocking discovery that :
Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando's compensation is three times - perhaps more - the total amount of corporate contributions The National Center for Public Policy Research received in 2006.
One might expect CEI to celebrate the free market functioning to such good competitive effect in executive compensation. How long before the invisible hand extends itself to the spigot watering K Street's plantings of switchgrass and corn , or the weedy biotreme of Planet Gore ?
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