Our post yesterday criticizing Bonner Cohen for spreading misinformation on global warming on C-SPAN has rubbed some folks the wrong way.
First, the National Center for Public Policy Research accuses us of “libel” for suggesting that Cohen receives funding from the fossil fuel industry.
That’s interesting. Cohen was asked yesterday who funds the National Center for Public Policy Research and, after some prodding, he acknowledged that it receives funding from the fossil fuel industry. Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/08/bonnerfunding.320.240.flv]
NCPPR and Cohen emphasize that most of their money comes from “individual donations.” They don’t mention how many of those individuals are also connected to the fossil fuel industry.
Another group that employs Cohen, the Capital Research Center, is mad that we didn’t attack them instead:
So, Think Progress, if you’re reading this, please direct your venom regarding Cohen’s masterful, exhaustively documented expose of the environmentalist movement to the Capital Research Center in the future. We have more than enough intellectual firepower to cut through your irrational emotion-driven temper tantrums.
We accept your offer. Please use your “intellectual firepower” to substantiate Bonner’s claim that the “vast majority” of climatologists are “agnostic” on the existence of global warming. According to Bonner, that would mean they are undecided on the question of whether “there is a causal relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and the climate.”
Hundreds of climatologists have agreed that global warming is real through the IPCC process — so it better be a pretty long list. We’re waiting.
Transcript:
HOST: How is it funded?
BONNER: How is it funded? Mostly through individual donations. Vast majority. Over something like 95% come from individual donations. The rest comes from foundations and some minor corporate.
HOST: Energy industry at all?
BONNER: Yes, some.
HOST: Which forms?
BONNER: It would be, it would be — they they they come from from the fossil fuel industry.