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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Great Lisboa Reconciliation Bunfest -- headlined by Judith Curry(gate) -- funded by fossil fuel interests

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 02, 2011

That Ol' Devil Rabett

Eli has been wondering who fronted the money for the Great Lisboa Reconciliation Bunfest. Well, he SHRTFR which was posted at Tony's Place. With the exception, of Nick Stokes, who has an excellent set of links at moyhu, they were all arrivistes pretty much pushing themselves in the way we have all become fond of Roger for, and ranging pretty much from outright denialists to sort of warmers with Nick a talented amateur being perhaps the furthest towards the rational. On the other hand, evidently Gavin Schmidt was invited, took one look at who was coming and demurred at being bacalao gustado for the others to dine on. You can find the list at Nick's place. Explicitly Jerry Ravitz, who organized the thing is pissed that no one listens to him and you can find several more of that ilk.

Eli finds that the workshop was supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation. Most people who know of the Gulbenkian associate it with the world class museum in Lisboa (go, sell the bunnies and by all means go), but those of us old enough know Calouste Gulbenkian as Mr. Five Percent, an Armenian, born in Istanbul, trained as a petroleum engineer, who organized and took 5% (better 5% of a large company than 100% of a small one) of many of the biggest oil companies on earth, especially in the middle east.

Dig a bit deeper and you find that today, the principal support of the Gulbenkian Foundation is ownership of a large share of Partex, Gulbenkian's worldwide oil and gas company.

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might think that this is the equivalent of the Workshop being funded by the Exxon Corportation, but their museum sucks.

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