Most-Cited Climate Skeptics Linked to ExxonMobil

Nine of the ten scientists, who have written the most papers skeptical of man-made global warming, are linked to oil giant ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), according to the blog The Carbon Brief.

Furthermore, those 10 authors account for 186 of the 900+ peer-reviewed papers, which climate skeptic group, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, compiled as proof that there is widespread dissent on climate change science. 

The Carbon Brief’s analysis shows that the pool of skeptical scientists is, in fact, much smaller than this list suggests, and it is heavily influenced by funding from Big Oil. 

Sherwood Idso is the most prolific scientist on the list. He is the author or co-author of 67 of the 938 papers (7%). He is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a thinktank funded by ExxonMobil

Patrick Michaels is the second most cited author, with 28 papers. He is a well known climate skeptic who  receives around 40% of his funding from the oil industry.

Agricultural scientist Dr. Bruce Kimball is third on the list, and all of his cited papers were co-authored with Idso.

The Carbon Brief explains the significance of this analysis:

"Once you crunch the numbers, you find a good proportion of this new list is made up of a small network of individuals who co-author papers and share funding ties to the oil industry. There are numerous other names on the list with links to oil-industry funded climate sceptic think-tanks, including more from the International Policy Network (IPN) and the Marshall Institute.

"Compiling these lists is dramatically different to the process of producing UN IPCC reports, which reference thousands of scientific papers. The reports are thoroughly reviewed to make sure that the scientific work included is relevant and diverse."

The Carbon Brief is headed by Tom Brookes, director of the Energy Strategy Centre, which is funded by the non-profit European Climate Foundation. 

Read the blog:

Website: [sorry this link is no longer available]     
(Visited 7,304 times, 28 visits today)

Comments on “Most-Cited Climate Skeptics Linked to ExxonMobil”

  1. johnny memonic

    the funny part is that where those people think they are going to live after Earth rejects us? Do you think the remaining people of the earth will allow them to survive? Their money won’t be able to give them shelter. And we just let them destroy our home, we SUCK!!!!

    Reply
  2. mememine69

    It was the trusted and saintly scientists themselves that originally polluted the planet with their pesticides and cancer causing chemicals they created, making environmentalism necessary in the first place. Scientists were the enemy of environmentalism until the goose stepping neocons of CO2 environMENTALism started bowing to them like trained seals.
    The mindless grunt of “all the scientists agree.” after 25 years of condemning our children to death was nothing more than political correctness on steroids, considering that all American IPCC funding was pulled and Obama never even mentioned the “crisis” in his state of the union speech. So the “scientists” can study the effects of something that never happened till the cows come home but it won’t make the “crisis” real and it won’t make the “former believer” majority of voters reverse course and vote yes to personal sacrifice and taxing the air to make the weather colder. What the remaining glossy eyed climate blamers don’t know is that the CO2 theory promised that yes, there “will” be effects and they will range from either negligible to nothing, to out of control and unstoppable and runaway warming. So what’s not to agree with? Thousands of consensus scientists also produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemical cocktails, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate control.
    If the myth of “all the scientists agree” and scientific consensus were real and factual, wouldn’t we see these trusted leaders of science marching in the streets after Obama snubbed them in his state of the union speech and when IPCC funding for climate change research was pulled? There were two criminal exaggerations done, one was the media’s obvious lie about consensus and also the criminal exaggerations of doom from the lab coat consultants the fear mongers called “scientists”.
    REAL planet lovers, REAL liberals and REAL civilized people are happy and relieved the crisis was avoided. The rest are spineless car accident rubber neckers who take glee in condemning billions of children to a death by CO2.
    History is watching.

    Reply
  3. Ron B

    Mememine is a widely known sock-puppet who travels around to sites who have written about climate change and cuts and pastes the same pre-fab vitriol over and over. I wonder who pays him?
    When one lists the many organization ranging from the NASA Space Center to, most recently, a huge panel of renown scientist commissioned by the Vatican, who have confirmed that Climate Change is real and action is urgent…You wonder why we must tolerate the misinformation forced on us by a propoganda machine of talking heads reading and writing from scripts provided to them by oil interests. America stands alone in a world as the only country still denying the reality of Climate Change.

    Reply
  4. Poptech

    Are Skeptical Scientists funded by ExxonMobil?

    In an article titled, “Analysing the ‘900 papers supporting climate scepticism’: 9 out of top 10 authors linked to ExxonMobil” from the environmental activist website The Carbon Brief, former Greenpeace “researcher” Christian Hunt failed to do basic research. He made no attempt to contact the scientists he unjustly attacked and instead used biased and corrupt websites like DeSmogBlog to smear them as “linked to” [funded by] ExxonMobil.

    To get to the truth, I emailed the scientists mentioned in the article the following questions;

    1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

    2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

    3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

    4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

    Their responses follow,

    http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/are-skeptical-scientists-funded-by.html

    Reply
  5. Ryan Putman

    The only thing I’m curious about is whether their findings are accurate or not. I don’t really care who funds what. At no point in this article does it address that issue itself so this all seems like cross-politicking more politicking. Who cares? Does the science hold up? Isn’t that what we should be discussing?

    I’d genuinely like to hear the response to those questions. If there’s a link to non-biased cross analysis on the topic then I’d love to see that.

    In the end, it only makes sense that the only people who would fund a study like this (that goes well against the popular trends of the scientific community) are companies that have something to gain from it. Everything that comes from any person that is founded by some company, grant, foundation, community or government is going to be biased. You have to look past the bias, investigate the facts and identify if any are or could be true.

    Reply
  6. Rona Fried

    The problem, Ryan, is that companies are funding research to misinform the public, and it’s working. While a strong majority of the public accepted the science of climate change, now they don’t because of this misinformation. There are literally thousands of studies that provide non-biased information, just look it up in Google.

    Reply

Post Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *