A google search for Eugene Volokh Climate Change Skeptics yields as the first item a page with the header “Factsheet: Eugene Volokh.” The left sidebar begins with:
EXXONSECRETS.ORG
Documenting Exxon-Mobil’s funding of climate change skeptics.
The body of the page points out the apparent reason for my being listed: I’m an Academic Advisory Board Member for the Reason Foundation, and I’m on some similar boards for the Heartland Institute and the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.
Except I’ve never been funded, to my knowledge, either by Exxon-Mobil, the Reason Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. My board membership is entirely unpaid. I have been paid for two articles in Reason Magazine, and I spoke once at a Reason Foundation event, for which I must have been paid an honorarium; but in that respect I’m equally funded by the New York Times, Hofstra University Law School, and dozens of others. This is not, I suspect, what “Exxon-Mobil’s funding” would normally mean to people.
What’s more, I’m not even a climate change skeptic in any significant sense. I don’t believe I’ve ever publicly spoken out about climate change, largely because I know next to nothing about the subject. If “climate change skeptic” means someone who has publicly taken a position skeptical of various climate change theory (which I suspect is the normal meaning of the phrase), I’m not it.
Now if they want to maintain a database of people who are affiliated with various groups that have gotten money from Exxon-Mobil, on the chance that these people may at some time speak out about climate change, that’s fine. They should just make sure that the Web pages make that clear. But if the Web page lists my name alongside the phrase “Documenting Exxon-Mobil’s funding of climate change skeptics,” then facts aren’t what the page is conveying.
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