The Hudson Institute is a right-wing think tank whose agenda is supporting industry and unregulated free markets. They state their mission as a "commitment to free markets and individual responsibility, confidence in the power of technology to assist progress, respect for the importance of culture and religion in human affairs, and determination to preserve America's national security."
Its current and past trustees and fellows make up a who's-who of prominent right-wing Neoconservatives, such as Robert Bork, Conrad Black, Donald Kagan, Richard Perle, Henry Kissinger, General William Odom, Alexander Haig, Scooter Libby, Dan Quayle, Ken Duberstein, Norman Podhoretz, Francis Fukuyama, and numerous others.
They are heavily funded by ADM, American Cyanamid, ExxonMobil, Merck, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, National Agricultural Chemical Association, PhRMA, Sunkist, Heinz, Ciba-Geigy, Cargill, Proctor & Gamble, and Cargill.
They also receive large grants from the usual cast of characters among the extreme right-wing billionaire family foundations that fund virtually every think tank and issue group on the right, including Adolf Coors' Castle Rock foundation, various Richard Mellon Scaife foundations, Smith Richardson Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Koch Family Foundation, Earhart Foundation, and John M. Olin Foundation.
Google any of these, and you will see virtually every wingnut think tank and fringe issue group in their list of grantees.
I don't know where they cherrypick their scientists, except to continue to go to the same small group of either ideologically blindered free-marketeers or industry-funded flacks, but I do know that a poll taken in January of thousands of earth scientists showed that 97% of climatologists agreed that global warming is real and human activity is a significant factor.
The two scientific disciplines that produce any significant number of doubters, many of whom end up on surveys by groups like the Hudson Institute, are petroleum geologists (no surprise there) and, for some strange reason, meteorologists. The likely reason for this is that meteorologists are not educated as climatologists, but study primarily very short-term phenomena.
In conclusion, the study found that the more a scientist knows about the field of climate science, the more likely he or she is to accept global warming and man's contribution to it.
The study published in Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, concludes "the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."
The remaining challenge, they write, "is how to effectively communicate this to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists."
