Oil Company covertly funds organisation to rubbish future rivals

Do you know that Climate change targets 'will add £500 to family's fuel bill within four years'. It came as news to me because I have already posted on a report in the Telegraph claiming it would add only £300 by 2020, and they clearly didn't get their sums right.

But it must be true because it said it here in the Daily Mangle and it also had a photograph of a poor impoverished family posed by models to emphasise the point. Apparently these outrageous costs are due to ' building thousands of wind turbines and connecting them to the National Grid'. And from the comments many of their readers, especially the so called 'skeptics' were outraged. Such a shame that they couldn't be the least sceptical about these claims.

Impoverished Family (picture posed by models)

The article was based on a report by Dr Richard Wellings, of the the very official sounding 'Institute for Economic Affairs'. But what worried me is that Dr Wellings is an economist also said that there was a  ‘high level of scientific uncertainty that still surrounds the issue of climate change’. Well not among the scientists there isn't, so if he is basing his economic forecasts on uncertainties that do not exist in the scientific debate then is calculations must be off. 

But it makes a good scary story (and skeptics call climatologists scare mongers!), but would it be a tactic to promote his new book  on centre-Right thinking, 'The Future of Conservatism'? This certainly sounds like a political book free from balance and bias so I doubt that the real science or evidence in general would be required for it's conclusions.


But who is the 'Institute for Economic Affairs'? It sounds official, credible and even that it might be knowledgeable on such matters. But no... The Institute for Economic Affairs is a 'free-market think-tank. Its mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems'. In other words it is a conservative organisation against any regulation that might affect companies to do business unrestricted, this would include keeping as much freedom to pollute as possible and of course avoid any regulation that might involve emissions.

 

As a real sceptic I wondered how such an organisation gets funds and found it is 'entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals, companies and foundations who want to support its work, plus income from book sales and conferences. It does no contract work, accepts no money from government and is entirely independent of any political party or group'. Well it might not directly accept funding from any political party or group but it's publications are entirly biased to the political right. 

 

And who might these funding individuals and companies be? It was hardly any surprise when I found out that one of the was  ExxonMobil who has given them at least $50,000.

 

It should be no surprise that the shoddy and biased journalism at the Daily Mangle did not either find or reveal this connection.

 

So what is the real story here? Simply;

Oil Company covertly funds organisation to rubbish future rivals.