Thursday, June 14, 2012

Union of Concerned Scientists Admits It Was Wrong

Last week, my column, Union of Concerned Scientists Cooks the Books, Media Swallow It, dissected the artful way in which UCS analysts had used corporate giving data to imply that General Electric executives were climate change hypocrites, by allegedly supporting think tanks that endorse the scientific consensus on man-made global warming and others that are skeptical. In the UCS study the Reason Foundation, the non-profit that publishes this website, was specifically cited as garnering GE corporate support and was also accused of "misrepresenting" climate change science 
Setting that accusation aside, going through the figures it turns out that the Union analysts were counting $325 in corporate matching funds for employee donations to Reason as damning evidence of corporate climate change hypocrisy. I called up Francesca Grifo, the UCS' scientific intergrity officer, to ask her if the report was seriously counting those donations? She replied yes. By the way, it turns out that GE executives and employees had contributed $497,744 to the non-skeptical think tanks. To get the rest of the story read my column.

Read more: http://reason.com/blog#article_159671

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