Ian Forrester has an interesting question.....

which I asked his permission to push up from comments. Having dredged a bit in the tobacco archives and the Exxon secrets sites, I thought it worth persuing:

There are a number of webs of interconnected anti-science groups out there. These include the Discovery Institute (anti-science of evolution), the Exxon secrets group (anti AGW), the Tobacco Industry (anti-health effects of tobacco smoke) and many others. I have spent a lot of time following the efforts of most of those groups and trying to connect them together. It has now been shown that a number of anti-environmental groups trying to show that there are no bad effects from a number of well known pollutants (asbestos, mercury, chromium, carbon dioxide, CFC’s etc) are connected through a number of right wing “think tanks” and anti-science web sites.

The Discovery Institute so far remains apart in all of this but I have a feeling that there may be a connection. After all, they are more than just “anti-evolution” as can be seen from their “Wedge Document” they want to re-write all of science and other disciplines with their own version of “truth.”

There seems to be a strong Moonie influence with the Discovery Institute and its cohorts, see Jonathan Wells’ cv for proof.

While reading through some tobacco related information I came across the interesting finding that Fred Singer once occupied office space in the Moonie Building and has been listed as president of the Moonie Washington Institute of Values in Public Policy. Thus it would appear that there is Moonie influence and money in both the anti-evolution web and the anti AGW web.

I would appreciate any further comments on Moonie linkage to the anti-AGW groups.

Ian Forrester