David versus Goliath, or vice versa

A very basic message concerning climate funding has been lost in the furore over Peter Gleick and the Heartland Institute documents. (If you’ve found this page you almost certainly know the details but, just in case, they are these. The Heartland Institute (HI) is a USA based think-tank which promotes free-market policies and, among other things, actively campaigns against investment based on the belief in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Peter Gleick is water scientist who campaigned for AGW related investment. By impersonating an employee of the Heartland Institute, Peter Gleick obtained some confidential papers which he passed on to sympathetic journalists and bloggers.)

One of the documents released was the HI budget which showed the expenditure for 2011 ( $US 5.05 million) and the projected expenditure for 2012 ($US 6.53 million). Not all of this was spent on climate change issues. Identified specific activities account for $US 2.91 million of the 2012 budget. Of these $US 488,000 were for climate related activities. In addition they have earmarked $US 388,000 for HI staff work related to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and $US 305,000 for disbursement to professional contributors to the NIPCC.  Adding the NIPCC items to the $US 2.91 million gives a total identified spend of $US 3.60 million, of which $US 1.18 (33%) million is climate change related. The balance of the 2012 budget is therefore $US 2.93 million (6.53-3.60). This covers general staff and office costs so if we apportion that in the same ratio as the identified cost this gives $US 0.97 million (33% of 2.93 million). The total projected HI spend on climate is therefore $US 2.15 million.

$US 2.15 million is not a trivial sum but how does it compare with other organisations on the other side of the debate. The Pacific Institute of which Peter Gleick is, as of the time of writing, the President has a budget of $2.29 million; very similar to the proportion of the HI budget estimated to be on climate change issues. The figures are however not directly comparable. Whilst it is likely that most of the employees of the Pacific Institute would be AGW protagonists their work covers a wide range of water related areas of which climate change is but one aspect. 

At a wider level US government funding for climate change is several orders of magnitude larger. The following summarises projected spending for 2011. The figures come from a report by the AAAS, Chapter 15, attributed to Paul A.T. Higgins. (http://climatequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cc-funding2011.pdf)

Climate Change in the Federal R&D Budget  (budget authority in millions of dollars)
US Global Change Res Prog,	2,561
Natl Oceanic & Atmos Admin
USGCRP	437
National Science Foundation
USGCRP	370
Geosciences	955
Atmospheric Sciences	281
Earth Sciences	199
Sci, Eng and Edu for Sustain	766
Natl Aero and Space Admin
Earth Science	1,802
Department of Energy
Office of Science	5,121
Bio and Environ Research	627
Energy R&D	2,430
Department of Interior
Climate Change Adaptation	171
Renewable Energy	73
Environ Prot Agency R&D	606
US Dept of Agriculture
Climate Change	159
Renewable Energy	179

The total is over $US 16 billion. Thisofs course includes a range of big budget items which would be necessary without climate change such as environmental satellites.

In the UK there is no exact equivalent to the HI or equivalent government figures. An approximate equivalent to HI is the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) which is concerned as much with financial aspects of climate change mitigation/adaptation as with climate change itself. Its budget is £GB 503,000 ($US 785,000).

A table produced as result of FOI request by the ‘notalotofpeopleknowthat’ blog shows UK climate change research funding as follows:

Recipient	£GB million	$US million
Universities	7.23	11.28
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	234.57	365.93
Met Office	12.00	18.72
Hadley Centre	1.75	2.73
Tyndall Centre	2.99	4.66

We have not totalled the columns as some of the money received by the Universities may have been provided by the EPSRC.

At a wider international level a report by Ernst & Young (Durban dynamics: navigating for progress on climate change) shows “Government spending on climate change in 2010” for 10 major economies.

Country	$US million
Germany	23,498
USA	15,936
Japan	14,201
France	10,343
Italy	6,734
UK	5,983
Spain	4,321
South Korea	2,207
Australia	2,050
South Africa	463

It is clear that the figures for climate change related government spending  for different countries are measuring different things but they do start to make the Heartland Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation look like very small Davids facing up to very large Goliaths

.

So far we have only expanded one side of the equation, that of the protagonists of AGW so let’s now consider the antagonists. The following list is taken from a Wikipedia page listing companies with a world-wide revenue in excess of $US 40 billion, selecting only those referred to as ‘Oil and Gas’.

Company	Revenue $US billion
ExxonMobil	$370.125
Royal Dutch Shell	$368.056
BP	$297.107
Sinopec	$289.774
PetroChina	$221.955
Total S.A.	$212.815
Chevron	$204.928
ConocoPhillips	$198.655
Saudi Aramco	$182.396
Eni	$131.292
Petrobras	$120.052
Gazprom	$111.808
LUKoil	$104.956
Pemex	$103.538
Petróleos de Venezuela	$94.929
Rosneft	$91.975
Statoil	$90.733
Petronas	$76.822
Marathon Oil	$73.621

It can be seen that the revenues of these companies dwarf that of government spending on climate change. Of course we again are not comparing like with like. Most of the revenue comes from the expense of extraction, refining and distributing carbon based energy and is not directly related to climate change issues.  Such companies have other ways of exerting influence on governments rather than supporting comparatively small think tanks. Indeed their very size gives them a certain guaranteed level of support – it would be a brave government to throw hundreds of thousands of energy workers out of a job. Often it is not the energy companies themselves who get their message across. Every advertisement for a 4x4 vehicle or a holiday in an exotic location implicitly includes the message - status and happiness depend on burning fossil fuels.

In the end I think the only conclusion is that both the protagonist and antagonists of AGW have adequate sources of funding; that the climate wars are being fought on a level battlefield. There is no David, only two Goliaths.

[Minor editorial corrections and the last two sentences added to the penultimate paragraph on 28 February 2012.]