[Skybird]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Nice try subman, just did some research on the Oregon Petition using OMG Wikipedia to get some quick info and some links (which of course discredits everything I'm going to write here in your view) and basically it is old news and although maybe not discredited fullstop are inconsitencies ie duplicate names etc, business as signatories. Also following on the on the author and what he is affilitated with ie the discovery Institute leads me to take the petition with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Seems to be a case of having a theory and fitting the facts to prove it instead of looking at the facts and coming up with a theory to explain the facts.

I can already imagine what nonsens is being repeated here by just seeing the headline. i can also assume that once again it is "Accuray in Media" being the centre to which is being referred, and from where it originally has been started back then. however, that site has a wellknown bad reputation.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...uracy_In_Media

Accuracy in Media (AIM) has grown from a one-person crusade to a million-dollar-a-year operation by attacking the mainstream media for abandoning the principles of "fairness, balance and accuracy" in its reporting. New Right philanthropies, think tanks and media support its work, and many members of its advisory board are former diplomats, intelligence agents and corporate directors.

AIM was founded by Reed Irvine in 1969, when Irvine called for sedition charges to be brought against Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the Progressive Labor Party, arguing, "If you're going to halt treason, you've got to do it while it's small." [Village Voice, January 21, 1986]

In the 1970s, Irvine endeared himself to the New Right by alleging that the corporate media were a propaganda tool for the Soviet KGB and Fidel Castro. In 1982, AIM attacked New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner for his reports (later proven accurate--see Extra!, January/February 1993) about the El Mozote massacre. Along with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, AIM succeeded in pressing the Times to pull Bonner from his Salvadoran beat.

Irvine later called for napalm to be used against FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador. (AIM Report, March 1990). During the Gulf War, he encouraged a nuclear strike against Iraq. [Seattle Times, January 16, 1991]

With the end of the Cold War, AIM now assails environmentalists as the "infiltrators" of the media establishment. Critical reports about industries that fund AIM--such as chemical and oil interests--ara a frequent target of AIM critiques.

During the Clinton era, alleged conspiracies related to the Democratic president were a frequent topic in AIM's work--particularly the notion that Vince Foster was not a suicide but a victim of foul play. AIM charged that Republicans, including independent counsel Kenneth Starr, were somehow complicit in covering up Clinton's plots; discussing Hillary Rodham Clinton's notion of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Irvine retorted that "the only conspiracy I knew of was the conspiracy of the Republican leadership to protect Bill Clinton." [AIM Report, February 1998]

AIM has been criticized as a censorious group eager to silence voices it disagrees with and disdainful of the First Amendment. The group for a time offered as a donation premium Target America, written by AIM board member James L. Tyson, a book advocating that government "ombudsmen" police major-network newscasts for "accuracy" and "fairness".


Funders
Bethlehem Steel
Carthage Foundation; see Scaife Foundations
Chevron
Ciba-Geigy
Coors Foundation
Dressor Industries
Exxon
Lawrence Fertig Foundation
Getty Oil
Horizon Oil and Gas
IBM
Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical
F.M. Kirby Foundation
Mobil Foundation
Pepsico
Phillips Petroleum Company
Smith Richardson Charitable Trust; also see Smith Richardson Foundation
Texaco Philanthropic Foundation
Union Carbide

And some info they have on the Scaife Foundation, which may not be known by many people, while the other names pretty much speak for themselves.

Scaife Foundations
The Scaife Foundations consist of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation. All four have been heavily involved in financing conservative causes under the direction of reclusive billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, whose wealth was inherited from the Mellon industrial, oil, uranium and banking fortune.

The Mellon fortune is built on at least 5 pillars; the family's ownership of Gulf Oil Corporation, the family's monopoly ownership of Alcoa and Alcan going back to 1891, ownership of Koppers and Carborundum corporations, and their participation in the uranium cartel.

The Foundation commenced funding conservative "causes" in 1973 when Richard Mellon Scaife became the foundation's chairman. During the 1960s, Richard inherited an estimated $200 million from his mother, Sarah. His net personal worth was estimated at $800 million by Forbes magazine, which would make Richard the 38th richest person in the United States. Richard controls the Scaife, Carthage, and Alleghany foundations. In 1993 alone, the Scaife and Carthage foundations donated more than $17.6 million to conservative think tanks.

Some years ago, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation was estimated to be worth $200 million. Since Richard took charge of the foundation in 1973, it began to finance "New Right" causes.

Although Scaife has dedicated vast sums of money to influencing the way the public thinks, he prefers to operate behind the scenes, granting few interviews. When former Wall Street Journal reporter Karen Rothmyer attempted to interview him in 1981, he responded by calling her a "****ing Communist ****" and telling her to "get out of here."

Between 1985 and 2001, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation donated $15,860,000 to the Heritage Foundation; $7,333,000 to the Institute for Policy Analysis; $6,995,500 to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace; $6,693,000 to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); $4,411,000 to the American Enterprise Institute; $2,575,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; $1,855,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute; $1,808,000 to the Hudson Institute; and $1,697,000 to the Cato Institute.

For the years 1985-2001, the Scaife Family Foundation donated $702,640 to the Heritage Foundation; $590,000 to the American Enterprise Institute; $275,000 to the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University; $200,000 to the CSIS; and $175,000 to the New Citizenship Project, Inc., alone.

Recently, however, the Scaife Family Foundation came under the control of Scaife's daughter Jennie and has changed focus. It continues to give some money to conservative causes, but most of its funding now goes to nonpolitical projects such as medical programs, treatment for substance abuse (a problem for several family members) and animal welfare. Jennie Scaife said that her father doesn't support her spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Planned Parenthood, which supports abortion rights. However, the Charlotte Observer reported in July 2003 that Scaife donated money to Children Requiring A Caring Community, which pays poor women, especially those addicted to drugs, either to be sterilized or to undergo long-term birth control

As I often said, the war against a consenus on global warming, and against the process being taken as a reason to take action against economical interests that does not want to change but continue to do business as usual and to hell with all envrionmental concerns, is being waged by propaganda campaign supported with several hundreds of millions of dollar. The only purpose is to discredit all and everything that defends that global wamring is taking place, is threatening and damaging, and is caused by man, and to raise doubt on scientific results showing this - at all cost, no matter how absurd or scientifically distorted the counter-"arguments" are. Behind that stands the knowledge that if you repeat untruths just often enough and yell loud enough, people will start to believe it.

Just today's news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7418041.stm

You cannot truly depict climate if you only look at the imminent future of the next ten years or so. Climate and atmosphere simply do not work that way, and so simplistic. they even create paradoxical short-termed effects that in the short run seem to support denial of warming, but by their mere existence in fact prove that warming is taking place. the growing of ice in one half (only one half) of the antarctic (while the other half is decreasing!), or the reversing of greening at the end of the green phase of the "carbondioxide is helping to help the planet' plants"-fairy-tale when the produced carbondioxide from the additonal biomass starts to nullify and then to kill the shortly won additional green, are just two examples.

In other words: climate sceptics just look as many days into the furture as is opportunistic for them, and leaves them the freedom to ingore all medium and longterm consequences. they compare to pedestrians who look at the ground immediartely before their feet while walking, so they cannot sumble, and for exactly that reason run into every wall and against all telephone poles they meet.