The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal sought funds from Shell Oil in the year 2000.

Other e-mail messages obtained from the University of East Anglia's computers also showed officials at the school's CRU solicited support from ExxonMobil and BP Amoco, although the nature of this support was not identified.

As climate alarmists and their media minions love to claim that global warming skeptics are all paid shills of Big Oil, it makes one wonder how the press will report these startling revelations discovered by Anthony Watts Friday:

From: "Mick Kelly" <m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: t.oriordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.o'riordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell's name came up at the TC meeting. I'm ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I'm talking to Shell International's climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it's only one step or so off
Shell's equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it's
within the remit.
Regards
Mick
______________________________________________

Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44-1603-592091 Fax: 44-1603-507784
Email: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________

Earlier that same year, the recipient of this e-mail message, Mike Hulme, sent a message of his own concerning getting "support" from a number of entities (emphasis added):

From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Simon.Shackley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: industrial and commercial contacts
Date: Mon Jan 10 17:01:32 2000

Simon,

I have talked with Tim O'Riordan and others here today and Tim has a wealth of contacts he is prepared to help with. Four specific ones from Tim are:

- Charlotte Grezo, BP Fuel Options (possibly on the Assessment Panel. She is also on the ESRC Research Priorities Board), but someone Tim can easily talk with. There are others in BP Tim knows too.
- Richard Sykes, Head of Environment Division at Shell International
- Chris Laing, Managing Director, Laing Construction (also maybe someone at Bovis)
- ??, someone high-up in Unilever whose name escapes me.

And then Simon Gerrard here in our Risk Unit suggested the following personal contacts:

- ??, someone senior at AMEC Engineering in Yarmouth (involved with North Sea industry and wind energy)
- Richard Powell, Director of the East of England Development Board

You can add these to your list and I can ensure that Tim and Simon feed the right material through once finalised.

I will phone tomorrow re. the texts.

Cheers,

Mike

At 20:30 07/01/00 BST, you wrote:
>dear colleagues
>
>re: List of Industrial and Commercial Contacts to Elicit Support
>from for the Tyndall Centre
>
>This is the list so far. Our contact person is given in brackets
>afterwards. There is some discussion on whether we
>should restict ourselves to board level contacts - hence Dlugolecki
>is not board level but highly knowledgeable about climate change.
>I think people such as that, who are well known for their climate
>change interests, are worth writing to for support. There may be
>less value in writing to lesser known personnel at a non-board level.
>
>SPRU has offered to elicit support from their energy programme
>sponsors which will help beef things up. (Frans: is the Alsthom
>contact the same as Nick Jenkin's below? Also, do you have a BP
>Amoco contact? The name I've come up with is Paul Rutter, chief
>engineer, but he is not a personal contact]
>
>We could probably do with some more names from the financial sector.
>Does anyone know any investment bankers?
>
>Please send additional names as quickly as possible so we can
>finalise the list.
>
>I am sending a draft of the generic version of the letter eliciting
>support and the 2 page summary to Mike to look over. Then this can be
>used as a basis for letter writing by the Tyndall contact (the person
>in brackets).
>
>Mr Alan Wood CEO Siemens plc [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Mike Hughes CE Midlands Electricity (Visiting Prof at UMIST) [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Mr Keith Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Esso UK (John
>Shepherd]
>Mr Brian Duckworth, Managing Director, Severn-Trent Water
>[Mike Hulme]
>Dr Jeremy Leggett, Director, Solar Century [Mike Hulme]
>Mr Brian Ford, Director of Quality, United Utilities plc [Simon
>Shackley]
>Dr Andrew Dlugolecki, CGU [Jean Palutikof]
>Dr Ted Ellis, VP Building Products, Pilkington plc [Simon Shackley]
>Mr Mervyn Pedalty, CEO, Cooperative Bank plc [Simon Shackley]
>
>
>Possibles:
>Mr John Loughhead, Technology Director ALSTOM [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Edward Hyams, Managing Director Eastern Generation [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Dr David Parry, Director Power Technology Centre, Powergen
>[Nick Jenkins]
>Mike Townsend, Director, The Woodland Trust [Melvin
>Cannell]
>Mr Paul Rutter, BP Amoco [via Terry Lazenby, UMIST]
>
>With kind regards
>
>Simon Shackley 

Taking this a step further, Hulme has not been quiet about this growing scandal. On Wednesday, he published an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal:

I am a climate scientist who worked in the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the 1990s. I have been reflecting on the bigger lessons to be learned from the stolen emails, some of which were mine. One thing the episode has made clear is that it has become difficult to disentangle political arguments about climate policies from scientific arguments about the evidence for man-made climate change and the confidence placed in predictions of future change. The quality of both political debate and scientific practice suffers as a consequence. [...]

If we build the foundations of our climate-change policies so confidently and so single-mindedly on scientific claims about what the future holds and what therefore "has to be done," then science will inevitably become the field on which political battles are waged. The mantra becomes: Get the science right, reduce the scientific uncertainties, compel everyone to believe it. . . and we will have won. Not only is this an unrealistic view about how policy gets made, it also places much too great a burden on science, certainly on climate science with all of its struggles with complexity, contingency and uncertainty.

The events of the last few of weeks, involving stolen professional correspondence between a small number of leading climate scientists—so-called climategate—demonstrate my point. Both the theft itself and the alleged contents of some of the stolen emails reveal the strong polarization and intense antagonism now found in some areas of climate science.

Climate scientists, knowingly or not, become proxies for political battles. The consequence is that science, as a form of open and critical enquiry, deteriorates while the more appropriate forums for ideological battles are ignored. [...]

If climategate leads to greater openness and transparency in climate science, and makes it less partisan, it will have done a good thing. It will enable science to function in the effective way it must do in public policy deliberations: Not as the place where we import all of our legitimate disagreements, but one powerful way of offering insight about how the world works and the potential consequences of different policy choices. The important arguments about political beliefs and ethical values can then take place in open and free democracies, in those public spaces we have created for political argumentation.

Yes, but this can only happen if media will allow it. If the press only reports what buttresses their view of global warming, there can't really be "important arguments about political beliefs and ethical values" concerning any of this.

Fortunately, Hulme wasn't through unburdening his conscience, for on Friday he published an op-ed at Britain's Guardian:

In 1997, in the lead-up to Kyoto, I helped organise a statement by European climate scientists. We proclaimed "our belief that nations should agree to substantial control in the growth of emissions", endorsing the then EU position of a 15% cut by 2010. What we didn't do was explain the personal values and ethical judgments we each made in reaching this conclusion. By signing it "European climate scientists", the impression could easily be gained that our belief was a non-negotiable conclusion of our scientific work.

As we prepare for the Copenhagen summit, I am rather critical of my naivety 12 years ago. I would still like a world in which greenhouse gas emissions were falling, but it is important when making this argument in public to identify the various lines of reasoning I use to reach this position: scientific evidence, my political philosophy, my ideology of nature and my personal values.

The relationship between climate science, political and ethical judgments and advocacy has been a turbulent one ever since man-made climate change became a public policy issue. The intense political posturing over the last two weeks surrounding the theft from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia of emails between a few of the world's more prominent climate scientists has further demonstrated this turbulence.

Yes it has, Mr. Hulme, and maybe you'll do the world a favor by contacting more representatives in the American press who are doing everything in their power to prevent our citizens from understanding how politicized this science is while also telling them how wrong they are to hide ClimateGate from the public. 

And maybe you'll also tell the world how much money you and your colleagues at UEA and CRU ended up obtaining from various oil companies.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.

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