http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism
A major kerfuffle has emerged as a document dump revealed that the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank with a name right out of central casting, took money from various fossil fuel companies to pump anti-global warming information. That is not all that surprising or scandalous. However, it turns out that the Heartland Institute was then using that money to fund anti-global warming scientists and writers to "undermine" rather than disprove the actual science. Note that these individuals had previously denied being on the payroll of oil companies. While technically they were right, I'm not sure that revealing that your actual paymaster was a shell company for the oil giants really brings you much credibility. In fact some of them were simply paid to produce models that showed the earth was not warming, regardless of what their evidence showed.
The roster of names covers pretty much the entire constellation of anti-global warming science, meaning that the whole philosophy is more or less bought and paid for by oil. Not that this is shocking, but now it's been proven.
Another familiar name singled out for special funding by Heartland's anonymous donor is Anthony Watts of the high-profile climate sceptic online clearinghouse, Watts Up With That? The documents state (pdf) that in January his company ItWorks/IntelliWeather was paid $44,000 to "create a new website devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA's web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public". A total of $88,000 (pdf) is expected to be handed to Watts for the project by the end of 2012.
This revelation is potentially damaging to Watts as he has previously laughed off the notion that he is being funded by any corporate- and/or vested-interest group. "AGW proponents seem hell bent on trying to repeat this 'linked to' nonsense at any cost," he wrote last May. "Heh, I've yet to see that check or any from Exxon-Mobil or any other energy or development company. Somebody must be stealing checks out of my mailbox. /sarc – Anthony."
Remarkable.
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