Last week we briefly mentioned one Dr. Tom Borelli who used to run the Phillip Morris 'science department' back in the day when tobacco company executives were testifying that nicotine wasn't addictive and smoking didn't cause cadiopulmonary disease. These days Borelli works for the National Center for Public Policy Research. The NCPPR is an ultra conservative think tank whose board of directors included Jack Abramoff, and its an active member of the Cooler Heads Coalition dedicated to 'dispelling the myth of global warming.' Borelli, along with fellow climate change skeptic and paid Exxon mouthpiece Steve Milloy, also runs a mutual fund that seeks to profit from changes in energy and environmental policy, and other 'actions and deliberations' of Congress.
Despite those almost comical conflicts of interest, on January 14, 2010 Borelli wrote that a US climate researcher received 'half a million dollars in stimulus money" and then turned the spin cycle to high:
"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he’s under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury."
Borreli's wife, also employed by the NCPPR, chimed in with, "This misuse of stimulus money illustrates why tax cuts are a better way to stimulate the economy." Everyone get the picture?
What's instructive here is to note how Borelli's quip spread and evolved after being introduced. Within hours scads of right wing bloggers eagerly repeated it as Gospel. It quickly jumped the firewall and began appearing in traditional media. Along the way it was heartily embellished. The half-million dollar figure Borelli quoted magically grew to a million, then two million. Mann and Penn State University were accused of 'hiding' his government funding and comments popped up demanding they be 'forced to disclose' it.
Michael Mann has long been a favorite target for climate change deniers due to his important research, for having the bad luck to be a participant on the stolen email list dubbed climategate, and he's a scientific celebrity of sorts in climatology. He's published over 80 peer reviewed papers, including some of the most significant recent work in his field, and received numerous awards and fellowships. It's no surprise he's listed with dozens of other scientists and staff on a number of research grants. But he personally only receives a few weeks salary in the summer from the National Science Foundation, the agency that was awarded some stimulus money. There's nothing unusual in that, this is part of how thousands of university science professors have been paid since well before the stimulus was enacted. And not only is NSF funding publicly disclosed down to the penny by law, it's easily found by anyone who can navigate the NSF's public database.
We must safely presume Tom Borelli, who holds a PhD in biochemistry and has worked for orgs supported by public and private funding for years, is able to locate and comprehend that info. For the sake of the millions of dollars investors have put in his mutual fund, we sure as hell hope he's capable of reading an expense sheet and calculating simple percentages and sums involving money.
The point here is that regardless of one's view on climate change -- assuming one is honestly interested in the facts -- it's prudent to double check anything these industry front groups say before giving it credence. Tom Borreli is just one perfect example of why. He is essentially an actor who, like any other, feigns emotion and reads lines friendly to his sponsors. In that light, Borelli is no worse than a talking M&M in a candy commercial, and no better.