Organizations that received funding from ExxonMobil between 1998-2005 and worked to spread doubt about global warming
Competitive Enterprise Institute: $2,005,000
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: $1,625,000
The Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy: $763,500
American Legislative Exchange Council: $1,189,700
Frontiers of Freedom Institute and Foundation: $857,000
Atlas Economic Research Foundation: $680,000
George C. Marshall Institute: $630,000
The Heritage Foundation: $555,000
The Cato Institute: $90,000
(Source: ExxonSecrets.org website, maintained by Greenpeace)
ExxonMobil's financial records -- available from the company's own reports and collected by ExxonSecrets.org (Greenpeace) -- show how the oil industry giant has funded organizations to spread doubt about the science behind climate change.
A wide range of organizations -- including public relations firms, corporate front groups, think tanks, legal foundations, endowments and charities, and citizen activist groups -- have been involved in the effort to discredit and undermine global warming science. (See "Money Trail" sidebar.) Many of these groups are set up as nonprofit organizations, which allows them, legally, to keep their donor lists confidential. This provides a buffer for their corporate funders, who also often fail to disclose details about their charitable giving and lobbying efforts.
These organizations use a sophisticated approach to get their message out to the mainstream media through polished advertising campaigns, humorous and satirical web material, documentary films, video news releases (VNRs) that are distributed to local news stations, and through funding of climate science skeptics who appear on talk shows and in news stories. See examples below of the media these organizations have created and distributed.
 |  The Competitive Enterprise Institute is one of the organizations most heavily funded by ExxonMobil and other industry leaders as part of a campaign to spread doubt about global warming. Watch two TV ads CEI has produced.  |
 | Media companies funded by ExxonMobil have produced low-budget web videos satirizing Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. |
 | These documentaries that spread doubt about global warming were funded by energy companies or feature their paid global warming skeptics. |
 | The controversial practice of releasing “fake” news stories and sending them for free to content-starved small local news stations is common in many industries. This tactic is also used by climate change skeptics. |
 | Even though a large majority of the peer-reviewed scientific community agree that climate change is real and is caused by human forces, some scientists -- many paid by oil, coal, and gas companies -- continue to argue that climate change is a hoax. |