Researchers in a recent study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reviewed nearly 20 years of data in order to show how climate change-denying groups and individuals who received money from Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers began to amalgamate their messages in 2007.

Study author Justin Farrell and a sociologist at Yale University told ThinkProgress that the issue that corporate funding influences climate change has been discussed among people since long, but they lacked the data to fully support the conclusions.

In order to understand properly how corporate funding has contributed to the polarization of climate change in the United States, Farrell went through data from past 20 years. He even analyzed articles, texts, and policy papers produced by 164 organizations and more than 4,500 individuals who do not accept the science of climate change.

Researchers during the study also laid emphasis on funding from two key contrarian entities: the Koch Family Foundations and ExxonMobil.

Farrell after analyzing the networks of individuals and organizations that were part of climate misinformation campaigns found that the ‘ecosystem of influence’ within the groups received corporate funding.

He mentioned that those groups received funding from corporate houses such as Koch or Exxon. The group that received funding tout the idea that climate change is a long term cycle or that carbon dioxide is in fact good for the planet.

“This funding has an impact on the nature and amount of what is going out in the climate misinformation effort”, said Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University.