Did ExxonMobil Fund Anti-Global Warming Payout?

February 19th, 2007 | by Brian Carr |

Was ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest corporations, indirectly (or directly) involved in the recent scandal where scientists were offered up to $10,000 to refute findings that stated global warming is a real issue and caused by humans burning large amounts fossil fuels?

According to CNN, the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank partially funded by the ExxonMobil Corporation, “sent letters to scientists offering them $10,000, plus travel and other expenses, to highlight the shortcomings in a report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group widely considered to be the authority on climate change science.”

This seems to be a bit conflicting with recent ExxonMobil press releases, where the company has come out and stated that it believes global warming is happening, is being caused by humans and is a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately. According to the CNN article though, ExxonMobil is one of several companies that donate money to the American Enterprise Institute, and in no way does ExxonMobil control what AEI does.

In reading this article it made me think of the movie Thank You For Smoking where a lobbyist talks about how he spins arguments so that “big tobacco” companies don’t look like their product is harmful to people. It certainly seems like there’s not much of a difference between “big oil” and “big tobacco” considering both groups are probably willing to invest millions (if not billions) of dollars into finding ways to poke holes in arguments against their products.

Sometimes all you need is a little bit of doubt.

Thankfully, this argument for the burning of fossil fuels being the major factor behind global warming is almost so painfully obvious (much like the connection between tobacco and cancer) that even trying to poke holes in the argument won’t be enough to hide the truth.

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