Climate Depot
ClimateDepot.com is the website of
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow employee
Marc Morano, a conservative global warming
denier who previously served as environmental communications director for a vocal political denier of
climate change,
Republican Sen.
James Inhofe. Launched in spring 2009,
Climate Depot claimed it would be "the Senate EPW website on steroids," and "the most comprehensive information center on climate news and the related issues of environment and energy."
[1]
Contents
Launch Hype
"ClimateDepot.com, spearheaded by Morano, will serve as an information clearinghouse and one stop shopping for reporters, policymakers, students, scientists and concerned citizens to get the latest information on global warming and other key environmental and energy issues. The news center will offer a balanced perspective and serve as an ombudsman of the 4th Estateās Eco-Reporting. The news center is a special project of CFACT, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization that has been working since 1985 to infuse the environmental debate with a balanced perspective, and to promote market-based and safe technological solutions to various public-interest concerns," Morano stated in the media release announcing the project.
[1]
According to Web site traffic site
Compete.com, Climate Depot had as many as
168,000 unique visitors in a month.
Morano has also established a presence on Twitter as "climatedepot"
twitter.com/climatedepot.
Funding
ClimateDepot.com is being financed by the
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues. Public tax filings for 2003-7 (the last five years for which documents are available) show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the
ExxonMobil Foundation and foundations associated with the billionaire
Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financier of conservative causes, including being the primary source of money used to fund attacks against
Bill Clinton during the
Whitewater and
Monica Lewinsky eras of his presidency
[1]. According to a
report issued by the
Union of Concerned Scientists, from 1998-2005, approximately 23% of the total ExxonMobil funding for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow was directed by ExxonMobil for climate change activities [p. 32].
Craig Rucker, a co-founder of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, said the committee got a third of its money from other foundations. However, Rucker would not identify them or say how much his foundation would pay Marc Morano. Rucker did say that ExxonMobil did not contribute anything to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow in 2008
[2].
Articles and resources
Related SourceWatch articles
References
- ā Jump up to:1.0 1.1 Marc Morano, ClimateDepot.com Launch Aims To Redefine Global Warming Reporting: Climate Clearinghouse to Challenge Mainstream Mediaās Eco-Reporting", ClimateDepot.com, April 6, 2009.
External resources
External articles