Who on earth might have, say, half a million dollars to drop on an advertising campaign aimed at getting Americans to doubt the well-established science of climate change?

Well, if you answered "the oil industry," you might be on a good track. The Cato Institute, which sponsored a series of full-page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, is famously a paid apologist for organizations like the American Petroleum Institute (API).

We know, for example, that the API has been conspiring since the late 1990s, to sow doubt and confusion about climate science. And the signatories to this new ad - these "100 scientists" - also include a large group that has added handsomely to their livelihood in the last 10 years by taking money from think tanks and coal companies to deny climate change.

"NASA's top administrator, Michael Griffin, speaking on NPR radio made some refreshingly sensible comments about the present global warming scare," said Robert Ferguson, Director of the Science and Public Policy Institute. "Many rationalist scientists agree with him, clearly demonstrating there is no scientific consensus on man-made, catastrophic global warming," said Ferguson.

aThe article, which also quotes Pat Michaels, Tim Ball, Robert Carter and other longtime skeptics, omits Ferguson's e-address: bferguson@ff.org. The "FF" in this case stands for Frontiers of Freedom, a longtime ExxonMobil-funded haven for footsoldiers in the disinformation war.