Larry Sarner has many unorthodox scientific beliefs, including fundamental disagreements with the tenets and conduct of the scientific method.
Sarner is a close associate of Monica Pignotti. Pignotti is in league, ideologically, and apparently in other ways as well, with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Institute for Liberty.
Is it possible they are also global warming deniers, in league with the remnants of the Bush Administration?
Let’s connect some dots…
Myron Ebell is the “director of energy and global warming policy” for the the DC-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).
The CEI is well-known for its public efforts to aggressively counter the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change, including an infamous set of television ads with the tag line “C02, We Call it Life.”
Since 1998, the CEI has received over $2 million in funding from oil-giant ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil is not without its own problems, possibly chief among them having to address the rapid decline of the importance of Arab nations as energy producers and the emergece of at least two anti-Arab nations, Russia and Iran, as leaders in the field.
In January 2007, ExxonMobil announced that it would no longer be funding the CEI.
Other organizations that have contributed to the CEI include tobacco giant Philip Morris, which has provided $370,000 since 1991 to the CEI for assistance in “regulatory issues.”
A 1996 Brown and Williamson memo lists the CEI as a funded organization providing research and developing public policy positions.
The Institute for Liberty is run by Andrew Langer. Langer is a frequent defender of John Berlau, who is with CEI. Berlau, like Ebell, has no scientific training. He has suggested that cars pollute more than trees. At a press conference, when asked basic scientific questions, he was insistent that a gas, when heated, “gets heavier” (whatever that was supposed to mean).
Myron Ebell and the Cooler Heads Coalition
According to Ebell’s bio, he currently serves as the chair of the “Cooler Heads Coalition.”
Cooler Heads is a project of the National Consumers Coalition, a coalition of 23 freemarket think tanks, many of them with ties to the oil-industry, including the Heartland Institute, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, the Pacific Research Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.
According to their website, the mission of Cooler Heads is to “[dispel] the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.
The Cooler Heads project is headed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Myron Ebell on ExxonMobil Funding
In an October 2006 BBC interview, Ebell points out that ExxonMobil would probably not fund the CEI if it changed its stance on global warming.
Transcript:
BBC: Myron Ebell why do you imagine that Exxon gives you money?
Ebell: You know, I think that the attempt here to claim that only the purest of the pure can engage in the public policy debate…
BBC: Please answer the question Mr. Ebell, why do you imagine they give you money?
Ebell: Because we send them letters asking them to support our general programs which… our general program is simply this: we believe in free markets and we support policies that promote less regulation of people’s daily lives.
BBC: And they would presumably not be giving you that money if they felt you for taking a different view on, say for example climate change.
Ebell: I suppose that’s right. We develop our policies and then we try to find funding.