Hired guns
The global warming alarmists have been hyperventilating as of late over the news that oil companies are shelling out ten large for scientists to refute global warming. The great Thomas Sowell has just finished putting together a trilogy of columns in which he runs a sword through global warming alarmists (I | II | III). In part two of his series, Dr. Sowell describes what that insidious conspiracy is really about.
The headline of the “news” story said it all: “Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study.” According to “The Guardian,” scientists and economists “have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report.”
It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest. Here they dispose of scientists who are skeptical of the global warming hysteria by depicting them as being bribed by lobbyists for the oil companies.
While such charges may be enough for crusading zealots to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the mantle of virtue, some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to know the actual facts.
In this case, the fact is that the American Enterprise Institute — a think tank, not a lobbyist — did what all kinds of think tanks do, all across the political spectrum, all across the country, and all around the world.
AEI has planned a roundtable discussion of global warming, attended by people with differing views on the subject. That was their fundamental sin, in the eyes of the global warming crowd. They treated this as an issue, rather than a dogma.
Like liberal, conservative, and other think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute pays people who do the work of preparing scholarly papers for presentation at its roundtables. Ten thousand dollars is not an unusual amount and many have received more from other think tanks for similar work.
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If it is a bribe to pay people for doing work, then we are all bribed every day, except for those who inherited enough money not to have to work at all. Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists who produced the recent report that politicians, environmentalists, and the media tout as the last word on global warming.
The trump card of the left is that one of the big oil companies contributed money to the American Enterprise Institute — not as much as one percent of its budget, but enough for a smear.
While the left hyperventilates over $10,000 payouts to those who offend the liberal dogma, Richard Branson and Al Gore are offering a $25 million prize to the first scientist who comes up with a way of extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Of course, Branson owns an airline company. Airplanes, as we know, pump a tremendous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. So once again, we have a global warming alarmist who, in real life, happens to be a significant contributor to global warming. Hypocrite.
