Oil Companies Funding Friends of Science, Tim Ball takes the brunt
Tags: barry cooper, calgary foundation, Friends of Science, General, jim hoggan, Skeptic Generated News, Smogger, tim ball
A Globe and Mail feature article by Charles Montgomery today has delivered what should be a death blow for the climate change denial and anti-Kyoto attack group, the Friends of Science.
The G&M says that FOS has taken undisclosed sums from Alberta oil and gas interests. The money was funneled through the Calgary Foundation, to the University of Calgary and on to the FOS though something called the “Science Education Fund.”
All this appears to be orchestrated by Stephen Harper’s long-time political confidante and fishing buddy, U. Calgary Prof Dr. Barry Cooper. It seems the FOS has taken a page right out of the US climate change attack group’s playbook: funnel money through foundations and third party groups to “wipe the oil” off the dollars they receive.
This comes as no surprise considering the FOS has been linked to some of the most notorious oil money-backed scientists in the US, including Drs. S. Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood Idso, Willie Soon, Robert C. Balling and Pat Michaels.
The G&M says that FOS has taken undisclosed sums from Alberta oil and gas interests. The money was funneled through the Calgary Foundation, to the University of Calgary and on to the FOS though something called the “Science Education Fund.”
All this appears to be orchestrated by Stephen Harper’s long-time political confidante and fishing buddy, U. Calgary Prof Dr. Barry Cooper. It seems the FOS has taken a page right out of the US climate change attack group’s playbook: funnel money through foundations and third party groups to “wipe the oil” off the dollars they receive.
This comes as no surprise considering the FOS has been linked to some of the most notorious oil money-backed scientists in the US, including Drs. S. Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood Idso, Willie Soon, Robert C. Balling and Pat Michaels.
The David Suzuki Foundation also received donations from EnCana Corporation, a world leader in natural gas production and oil sands development, ATCO Gas, Alberta's principle distributor of natural gas, and a number of pension funds including the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) Employees' and Pensioners ' Charity Trust. OPG is one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the world operating 5 fossil fuel-burning generation plants and 3 nuclear plants.
Mr. Hoggan serves as chair of the David Suzuki Foundation.
If it is wrong for FOS it should be wrong for the DSF.
With all the attacks on oil companies;
If you were in charge of an oil company, would you not donate some money to help guys that are proving with their genuine scientific work that climate changes are not man-made?
Would that mean that from then on they would be working for you?
thank you for useful information. Stop Dreaming Start Action
To suggest that scientific research is a predertimined outcome based on funding is a dangerous canard. I suppose when you gear the scientific process towards a simple popularity contest amongst scientists this is the result.
The real question to ask is if scientists are willing to tarnish their ethics and credibility in exchange for funding is their any profession that can claim any credibility? Accountants, Doctors, Dentists, lawyers, judges etc... all take an oath to act in the interest of the public, that is the reason we have professions.
If scientists are swayed simple by who gives them funding it begs the question. Can we rely on Climate scientists? After all they derive 100% of their funding in way or another from Big government and have a strong vested interest to promote the global warming theory.
Quite dangerous allegations to make that hurt no one except the scientific profession itself.
From: "Mick Kelly"
To: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: m.kelly@uea.ac.uk
Cc: t.oriordan@uea.ac.uk, t.o'riordan@uea.ac.uk
Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc, etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell's name came up at the TC meeting. I'm ccing this to Tim who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me! I'm talking to Shell International's climate change team but this approach will do equally for the new foundation as it's only one step or so off Shell's equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it's within the remit.
Regards
Mick
______________________________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44-1603-592091 Fax: 44-1603-507784
Email: m.kelly@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________
To use the words of the leftist, I am shocked and appalled, like those words have any worth left. I read several other emails which mentioned quite a number of large commercial companies and their support of alternate fuel efforts. How deep are the lies going to go? How deep are the pockets of the activists in thier search of AGW climate riches.
The G&M says that FOS has taken undisclosed sums from Alberta oil and gas interests. The money was funneled through the Calgary Foundation, to the University of Calgary and on to the FOS though something called the “Science Education Fund.”
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Love it
Mann's Hockey Stick graph is a farce. It's not just Tim Ball that has been critical of cruddy science behind this famous IPCC temperature graph. In fact the IPCC have now removed it from their 2007 Report too as it's been shown to be so flawed.
Sure the hockey stick may be flawed.
In addition to the the Mountain Pine Beetle computer models being too conservative, IPCC computer models released last year are too conservative with regards to soot: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jObvKCK9ZDHzMqfZ9wnE73NBwq5g
Yet the scientific community isn't loudly denouncing naysayers about how these flawed computer models discredit oil/coal lobbyist and neoconservative arguments. This is because the science has already done so. The only problem is, leaders of Canada and the USA adhere to flawed rhetoric and are taking actions to make the world of the future a more dangerous (uncontrolled migration flows unmatched in human history) and much poorer place.
It seems clear the world's scientific, foreign aid, environment, etc., communities should spent the next few months focussing upon distributing clean burning stoves to the developing world. Soot is recycled from the atmosphere within weeks, whereas CO2 takes centuries to dissipate. 60% of soot comes from dung and wood stoves. Clean burning stoves would also have the ancillary benefit of increasing longevity in the developing world. This is easy enough to accomplish and would have immediate effect: manufacture and ship clean burning stoves to Africa and Asia.
Phillip, I also believe the assumption "CO2 takes centuries to dissipate" is not accurate. I think the Glassman analysis I provide a link to states CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere as the IPCC also assumes but cycles, in approx 4 years or no longer than in the atmosphere.
PLz provide the link. I'd like to read this for my own amusement. Usually these arguments aren't eloborate enough to include chemistry. I'll be disappointed if the un-peer-reviewed paper uses the argument that Earth is only 4000 years old.
The AGW argument depends upon computer modelling. The important thing in any modelling is to be clear about the assumptions and hence limitations one needs to place on claims derived from the model. Glassman, who knows a thing or two about modelling, documents "eight major modelling faults" here. I'd be interested to read either here or on Glassman's site a rebuttal to any/all of these.
Gotta link to the article?
I opened up the html source of this page and cntrl-f'd "globeandmail".
No hits.
For some reason (maybe FOS are threatening to sue) the article is not on or has been removed from, the Gobe and Mail's online edition.
Ian Forrester
... but we'll try to get to Montgomery or the Globe and post a version as soon as possible.
Wow, what an article. I always knew that this thing ran deep, but until today, I had no idea. The sky's the limit now how far this goes. Right to the top I bet. Accountable government my ass.
The G&M story can be found on the author's website:
http://www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html
Good find, thanks Stephen.
Was just wondering whether this article is old or recent news? It seems to me that this information needs to get to the public and I have yet to see anything about it anywhere. Its quite shocking, controversial, and demonstrates the amount of corruption that is going with the oil industry. It frustrating, especially living in Calgary, that this information is virtually unknown to others. All I can do is forward the website to people I know and promote it on other sites I blog and others to which I contribute editorials. I can only imagine the frustration you guys are going through. Let me know if there's anything I can do.
Cheers. Kelly Zak
Arno,
Are you the Arno Lukas who was/is a bronze sculptor and worked in Kingston, Ontario in the 80's?
Helen Eng
Could not agree more. I've seen a similar situation where DVDs were given to history teachers on how 9/11 was a conspiracy setup by the government. I didn't know which was worse, the poor evidence provided to prove his point or the assumption that the government is organized and dillusional enough to pull something like that off. It's a good idea for students to see many sides of an arguement but scary when the teachers try to pass off obviously false ideas as fact.
Kelly, this is old news in that it has been going on for a long time now, but I agree it will be news to a lot of people. Here at DeSmog we will just keep spreading the word every which way we can. By keeping on top of these "skeptics" we are confident that we will win the day.
As far as help, please keep reading our blog and sending the information out to anyone and everyone and if you have any tips or leads on these guys, please send them to us and we will track them down.
- Kevin