Who Is Bankrolling the "Friends of Science"? (Part II)

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The Calgary Foundation is at it again.

This prominent Alberta charity is once more shoveling money through their “Science Education Fund” to organizations and projects that seem specifically unfriendly to real science, but helpful to the Friends of Science.

The Foundation’s latest relevant gift was in the amount of $142,685 paid to the Frontier Center for Public Policy.

The last time we heard of this fund was in 2006, when the Calgary Foundation was using it to channel petro dollars through the University of Calgary to the Friends of Science, with the assistance of Dr. Barry Cooper – long-time friend and mentor of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Friends of Science were at the time running a public campaigning against climate action while denying that their funding was coming from the oil and gas industry.

When this scandal broke, the University of Calgary investigated accounting anomalies, The Calgary Foundation issued a public statement and was forced to take back un-spent funding. Elections Canada launched their own investigation, and that particular oily conduit of cash to the Friends of Science seemed closed off.

What to do?

Last year, the Calgary Foundation awarded their largest grant ever from the Science Education Fund to the Frontier Center for Public Policy. Who are they and what do they have to do with the Friends of Science?

It seems that Tim Ball is both a “Research Fellow” at the Frontier Center for Public Policy (FCPP) and member of the “Scientific Advisory Body” of the Friends of Science, along with notable climate change deniers such as Sallie Baliunas.

Ball also posts regular opinion pieces on the FCPP website, this month, claiming that “the Earth is cooling with record low temperatures everywhere, a contradiction with the IPCC hypothesis anyone can grasp without scientific understanding.”

(Thank God we don’t need to bother with scientific understanding…)

Tim Ball posted 15 such polemics for the Frontier Center for Public Policy since last March, with titles such as:

Climate Terrorism? World Held to Ransom with Contrived Climate Science.

Sea Level Rise – A Major Non-Existent Threat

Analysis of Alarmism: Ocean Acidification

C02 – Global Warming’s IPCC-Created Hobglobin

Bogeymen Of The C02 Hoax Losing Ground

Is this what the Calgary Foundation considers “science education”?

The FCPP also “co-sponsored” with the Friends of Science the recent speaking tour of Christopher Monckton, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (who is interestingly not a member of the House the Lords).

The Friends of Science and the FCPP appear on their websites to be sharing senior staff and co-funding high profile public events.

I am in the process of communicating directly with the FCPP and the Friends of Science to clarify the specific financial relationship between the two groups. I am also digging to find the source of money flowing into the “Science Education Fund”. Stay tuned…

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