IRS responds to Greenpeace call to investigate Koch brothers' tax-deductible climate denial
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-coleman/irs-to-investigate-koch-b_b_7110314.html
Earlier this year, the New York Times exposed the secret relationships between a well known climate change denier and the fossil fuel industry. The Times revealed that Dr. Willie Soon had been paid over 1.6 million dollars to create scientifically dubious studies absolving the fossil fuel industry of any responsibility for climate change. His funders included ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers, and Southern Company, a large coal-fired utility.
Willie Soon is a rare and valuable tool for the fossil fuel industry because he is one of the very few climate deniers with an actual background in science. Billed as a regular academic who just happened to disagree with 97% of actual climate scientists, Soon's work is omnipresent in Congress and state legislatures, and wherever there else there is a "debate" on climate change.
While Soon had long been known to be on the payroll of major polluters, new documents discovered through investigations by Greenpeace showed that Soon's work to obscure the facts on climate change were promised as "deliverables" to his corporate funders.
The documents also revealed a potential bombshell - the tax exempt "charity" Charles G Koch Foundation was paying for Dr. Soon's lobbying against renewable energy and climate change solutions. This means that the Kochs, heirs to an oil and gas fortune that tops $80 billion, could write the funding of Willie Soon off on their taxes. This potentially violates of the IRS rule that prohibits tax-exempt organizations like the Charles G Koch Foundation from attempting to influence legislation.