Exxon Watch: funding cuts for CEI and other global warming skeptics

Following a series of posts on this blog about the behaviour of Exxon and its widescale funding of "think tanks", that are invariably global warming skeptics and pro-big oil, comes the news that such funding is to be cut.

For posts on this blog related to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Exxon see below:

Exxon going green? Not exactly, in fact, not at all.

A new year - time for an "energy diet"?

Inconvenient truth released: full truth, half truth or pure hollywood excess?

and my favourite:

Love Global Warming, Hate "Kooky English blogs"

Now we hear from the post-gazette that:

Exxon has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that last year ran television ads saying that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is helpful. After funding them previously, Exxon decided in late 2005 not to fund for 2006 CEI and "five or six" other groups active in the global-warming debate, Kenneth Cohen, Exxon's vice president for public affairs, confirmed this week in an interview at Exxon's headquarters in Irving, Texas. He declined to identify the groups beyond CEI; their names are expected to become public in the spring, when Exxon releases its annual list of donations to nonprofit groups.

Myron Ebell, director of CEI's energy and global-warming program, declined to comment about why Exxon didn't fund CEI last year. But he added: "Like any company, they are concerned about both policies and image.

"We're not at the mercy of our funders for what we believe. But we are dependent on them for funding to help promote our programs," he said. "Obviously, we would like to find a lot more funding on energy and global warming than we've had."

With such reduced funding it will interesting to see whether they continue to plough the same lonely furrow.

It would be good to think that the large number of well read (and not so well read) blogs that have questioned/ridiculed Exxon for the support of such groups (notably Treehugger and Gristmill) have made a difference.

If any Exxon executive is reading and would like to support a non-partisan academic blog that searches out the truth through scientific endeavor then look no further than the "Globalisation and the Environment" blog ;-)

Hat-tip: Treehugger