Climate Change Denial News

On a semi-regular basis I will share developments in the climate change denial space, notable stories of competing theories and who supports alternative explanations for the warming trend.  This week I am sharing a recent report on the hidden elephant, the $60 million campaign Koch Industries have spent on supporting climate change denial groups since 2002.

Mother Jones - Inside Kochs's Climate Denial Machine

Excerpt :

The Kansas-based company and its affiliates and foundations spent almost $25 million on "organizations of the 'climate denial machine'" between 2005 and 2008, according to the report. Koch Industries and the Koch family also spent $37.9 million between 2006 and 2009. "Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming," the report concludes.


The company is led by brothers Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, and is the second largest privately-held company in America. As I've reported previously, their estranged brother, William, is behind the efforts to block the Cape Wind offshore wind project in Massachusetts. Koch money comes through a lot of business interests – ranching, mining, oil refining, and producing paper products, fertilizer, and chemicals.


The report lists 35 organizations who have directly or indirectly received money from Koch Industries, affiliates, or Koch family foundations. They include the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute, which received a $1 million grant from the Kochs. Cato runs the climate-change-denial site GlobalWarming.org, and is suing the Environmental Protection Agency to block its finding that climate change threatens human health. The Koch family has also directed more than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity, which has campaigned against efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They have also supported Citizens for a Sound Economy (which later merged with another group to form FreedomWorks).