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It’s no secret that many of the people and organizations funded by cigarette companies to defend “smoker’s rights” and downplay the harmful effect of tobacco smoke have been involved in the energy industry-funded campaign to downplay the serious effects of climate change.

No group typifies this more than the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based “think” tank that simultaneously operates the “smoker’s lounge” and “global warming facts” sections on their website. The former arguing for “smoker’s rights” and railing on about the need for “sound science” on tobacco issues and the latter arguing that “global warming is not a crisis.”

It’s no coincidence that the Heartland Institute has also received funding over the years from companies that stand to benefit from delaying government regulation in the areas of tobacco and greenhouse gas emissions.

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Feeling bored?

Here’s a fun activity for the afternoon. Have a look at this list of 129 supposed “experts” on climate change on the website of the notorious Heartland Institute.

Now go to our global warming denier research database the Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets and see how many of the names affiliations follow all the way back to the fossil fuel industry.

It doesn’t work for everyone, but it seems about half of the names on the list are entwined in some way with the giant network of groups like the Heartland Institute that receive funding from ExxonMobil and their ilk to downplay the dangers of climate change. 

Now why would the oil industry do that?

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UPDATE: I’ve started a List of Global Warming and Climate Change Experts for Media on DeSmogBlog, this one includes a lot of well-known scientists actively publishing in the scientific fields related to global warming and climate change.

Please drop me a line at: desmogblog@gmail.com with any additional names you would suggest.

Given the economic crisis we’re in that’s due in large part to the unrestricted abuse of the “free market” even the most jaded of sorts must now be more than a little wary about the expertise of the so-called “free market” think tanks that abound in the United States.

One such free-market champion, the Heartland Institute has sent out a “Journalist’s Guide to Global Warming Experts” in the hopes that somehow journalists will be fooled into thinking that the list they have been provided is “the nation’s leading experts on climate change and related topics.”

Nation’s leading experts in global warming?

It’s amazing what will pass for an expert these days. Well, at least by the Heartland Institute’s standards, which include:

Calvin E. Beisner, the evangelical organizer who once posed the question regarding AIDS funding:

[but] is it rational to allocate $3.5 billion dollars to fight a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior?”