Ever wonder where all these climate change denialist groups came from? It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to guess they were funded by the oil and gas industry, but it did take the Union of Concerned Scientists to string together the facts, and the evidence is pretty damning. A new http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html ">report from the Union of Concerned Scientists documents how the gas industry, and particularly ExxonMobil, has dumped millions of dollars into Astroturf organizations that seek to foster doubt about the existence of climate change. From the press release: According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government a ction just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."