I saw
An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday night. This weekend was awash with various Global Warming news features and specials it seemed. I thought that maybe after Al Gore's recent appearances on MSM shows together with the obvious impact of the movie's message, the argument was done.
But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Today's Wall Street Journal puts up another in a series of articles written by professional Global Warming skeptic Richard Linzen, who has major creds- he's the "Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT" Oh by the way, in case you don't remember the Name, Alfred P. Sloan was a gazillionaire in 1934 and President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation.
Well, then. This very credible sounding Richard Linzer guy gets his MIT funding from GM. I wondered this morning who else might be sending dollars his way.
Or should I say, "petrodollars"
Because it turns out that Exxon-Mobil pays this guy $2500/day for his consulting services. According to Exxon Secrets, Ross Gelbspan reported in 1995 that Lindzen "charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC." ("The Heat is On: The warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial," Harper's magazine, December 1995.) Lindzen signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration, which was signed by weather and climate scientists almost exclusively on the payroll of Big Oil in one way or another.
According to Exxon Secrets, other affiliations of Linzer include:
The Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy
Source: Annapolis Center website 3/04
Cato Institute
Source: Cato Institute website 4/04
Tech Central Science Foundation or Tech Central Station
Source: Tech Central Bio Lindzen
George C. Marshall Institute
Source: Marshall Institute Website (2006)
Last I checked, all of these organizations had prety serious right wing funding.
So, finally, here it is: to any reasonable person, Al Gore, love him or hate him, is attempting to present, in the most apolitical way possible, a serious alarm over the fate of our planet.
The resistance, it turns out, is funded by the Oil Companies, whose dedication to profit exceeds any other human endeavor in the history of the planet. Rather than get on board with this, because they percieve it will cost them money, Oil Companies and their toadies like the editorial staffs of the Wall Stret Journal, Washington Times, and Fox news, plus hundreds of minions of both parties on Capitol Hill, prefer to delay as long as possible any attempts at solving this gigantic problem.
Oil companies are unconcerned with anything that might deter a penny of profit from their coffers, even at the expense of their own grandchildren's lives.
So, we must still wage a senseless and time-wasting political battle over this issue when we could be solving it. It's this sort of activity that makes me wish for neocons a separate hell of global warming consequences, except we are all in this together.
