From 2005 to 2008 Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of climate change skeptics. Efforts include:
More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign opposing clean energy and climate legislation.
More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, which writes about climate and environmental policy issues.
Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.
$800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years, a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.
$365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.
$360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction, a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (PRIPP also threatened to sue the U.S. Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.)
$325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.
The reports says such contributions are only part of the picture, because the full scope of direct contributions to organizations is not disclosed by individual Koch family members, executives, or from the company itself.
Organizations' messaging on "ClimateGate"
ClimateGate Echo Chamber—At least twenty Koch-funded organizations have repeatedly rebroadcast, referenced and appeared as media spokespeople in the story, dubbed “ClimateGate,” regarding stolen emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009. These organizations claim the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and "proves" climate change is a hoax.
