The thrust of the study, done by Dr. Robert J. Brulle, is that climate-denial money has largely been driven underground to dark-money sources. About 75 percent of the money backing climate-denial efforts is untraceable, primarily via conservative foundations and shadowy tax-exempt groups that obscure their funding sources.

AD

AD

What’s notable is that many of the big industrial funders — ExxonMobil and Koch Industries chief among them — have withdrawn their publicly traceable funding in recent years, and that withdrawal tracked closely with an increase in untraceable funding. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what’s happening there.

So why is industry money going underground? In part, it’s just part of a much broader trend in the post-Citizen’s United world in which corporations prefer to make their political giving anonymous. But the somewhat drastic nature of that change in the climate-denial movement also indicates a couple vulnerabilities for the denialists.

Among the things environmentalists have been able to achieve in the past decade or so is making climate denialism (1) seem increasingly kooky and unfounded, and (2) seem like the efforts of an industry that is protecting itself rather than one that wants an honest debate about the science. If you reread Obama’s Georgetown speech, it’s clear the White House believes both areas contain much fertile ground. Recall the president’s invocation of the “Flat Earth society” and repeated references to the high percentage of scientists who agree climate change is happening.

AD

AD

The rush by ExxonMobil and other industry funders to obscure their funding of climate denialism could be a confirmation of those vulnerabilities. In turn, it presents an opportunity for environmentalists: keep pressing on those fronts. Climate denialism is wrong, and it is largely funded by CEOs trying to protect profits. Our present campaign finance system makes that harder to demonstrate, but far from impossible.