Follow the Money on Climate Change “Research”

The Wall Street Journal today features a important read on what lies behind climate research, in the wake of the email scandal. Noting that climate change alarmists decry anyone dissenting as being a “denier” funded by special interests, Bret Stephens notes that Exxon’s contributions to free-market organizations has been dwarfed (several thousand-fold) by funding of climategate scientists and their ilk.

Thus, the European Commission’s most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that’s not counting funds from the EU’s member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA’s climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA’s, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls “green stimulus”—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Indeed a recent analysis from the Science & Public Policy Institute found that US taxpayers spent $79 billion since 1989 on climate change research and policies.