Topic: Media Research Center
As he did on Aug. 8, the Media Research Center's Brent Baker again responded to a news report that dares tro be critical of global warming deniers by citing false and unsupported statistics by Marc Morano. In an Aug. 16 NewsBusters post and CyberAlert item, Baker writes in response to an NBC report:
Citing the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, [NBC reporter Anne Thompson] highlighted their claim that “ExxonMobil gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.” But as Marc Morano, of the minority staff of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, disclosed in a posting, “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so,” not even counting the impact of one-sided media reporting, “while skeptics have received a paltry $19 MILLION.”
Baker overlooks the absurdity of the numbers he cites. If Baker accepts Thompson's claim that "ExxonMobil gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups" -- a number he makes no effort to correct -- that would mean that all other "denier group" activity totals a mere $3 million, an assertion that's absurd on its face.
Indeed, as we've detailed, Morano's $19 million is a single statistic, funding by ExxonMobil to "denier groups," and Morano makes no attempt to include all money spent by such groups. Further, there is no substantiation of the $50 billion figure, and he appears to be blindly throwing in tangental issues such as alternative-fuel development in his accounting of funding for "proponents of man-made global warming" to artificially inflate the figure.
Is Baker (not to mention the other conservatives who have swallowed these numbers) so desperate to attack global warming that they will peddle any number that discredits it, no matter how clearly absurd?
