I see people say this all the time. Some mysterious group is willing to pay for skeptic research. I've never seen any evidence of this. Can you post a link to something substantial.
You know of two people known as the Koch brothers? They fund a whole series of institutions doing science trolling.
And to step out of American politics: In Denmark normally considered an environmental and left-leaning country the right wing government of the early 2000s hired the famous sceptic Bjørn Lombog (who coined the term climate sceptic) to lead an institute called the Environmental Assessment Institutue a climate studýing institute supposed to "evaluate" the state of climate studies. The institute only purpose was to prove that climate science was wrong, but was never able to prove anything, and ended up having to shut itself down as it proved its mission pointless (though only after a long serious of weak articles and bad science).
Since then Bjørn Lomborg reluctingly stopped questiong whether global warming was happing or was man caused and is now running an initiate trying to argue that it is either not worthwhile or too late to do anything about it.