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How ExxonMobil Funded Global Warming Skeptics
Erik Moeller writes "According to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, oil company 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.' The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns. Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"
Big business lobbies to protect its interests!
I'm willing to accept that bias. Until we find Earth v2.0, we should be much more careful with Earth v1.0.
Blar.
$16 million over a 7 year period is nothing, especially for a company that regularly posts profits in the $30 billion dollar range. And none of this matters unless someone actually reports on the "findings" and "analysis" of ExxonMobile's "specialists." If anything, the media is responsible for creating the image of some debate about global warming (even though a huge scientific consensus exists).
They have. Slowdown of the North Atlantic Current, increases in global average temperatures, melting of glaciers, raising of ocean levels (and no, they were not expected to be in the multiple yard levels) have all been inline with the median models.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I agree that UCS is heavily biased and is just a political front group that has abandoned scientific reporting and married itself to marketing. Read their FAQ about global warming. They certainty about topics that are still heavily debated by legit scientists.
That said... Exxon has every right to honestly defend itself, but if they have indeed created front groups or are knowingly spreading misinformation they should be properly scorned.
It's too bad that you got a mod or two as "troll" instead of "funny", but that itself should have been expected because you're absolutely correct with respect to what's about to happen. The inflammatory (no pun intended) nature of the article summary itself just begs for the whole damned thing to be marked as "troll" or "flamebait".
Look, the whole idea that any company or organization would attempt to skew any studies to their own viewpoint is universal. Enviornmentalists are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Corporations are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Skeptics are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Conspiracy theorists are always looking to make surveys/studies support their viewpoint. Anyone with any kind of agenda is always looking to make surveys/studies support his viewpoint. But in this case it's "big oil" { insert doom-and-gloom music here }, so therefore their attempts to skew results are somehow more evil than other groups doing it? What a complete and utter crock.
The question of "Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?" is infuriating by itself. Hell, yes there would be a controversy for numerous reasons that have been stated time and time and time again, not the least of which is that without indisputable proof, which I still don't believe we have, there will always be room for skepticism. Honestly, the whole notion that skepticism is unhealthy, as that last line suggests, is an abhorrent idea in itself.
Yeah, yeah, mod me down for actually contesting a Slashdot article and for being somewhat of a global warming skeptic. I have karma to burn, but that doesn't make what I've said any less valid.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The average American is confused enough as it is.
Look, it's simple: all of the authorities and powers-that-be could have been in total agreement for the last 2 decades, warning people about global warming in every available media outlet and it wouldn't have mattered because Joe Sixpack doesn't give a shit. And politicians won't force people to do the right thing, because that doesn't get you elected.
Unless it unavoidably and directly impacts the price of beer or his ability to watch his favorite TV show, Joe wouldn't care if his SUV ran on mulched babies. "Scrubs" has it right: people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. And global warming is Somebody Else's Problem.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Global warming shouldn't even enter into it. The whole "global warming debate" is a smokescreen blown from both sides to avoid asking the really tricky, really pertinent questions, namely: "Global warming aside, is spewing fossil fuel byproducts into the atmosphere bad for the environment in general?" (Yes.) "Is a complete and total reliance on nonrenewable fossil fuels and pigheadedly refusing to look into alternative energy sources because they aren't where the money is a bad plan?" (Yes.) "What are our next steps?" (We don't know.) So people bitch and moan about global warming because it's a nice, round cornered, warm and fuzzy topic that any idiot can get his head around, as opposed to the intricate economic and political machinations behind the energy (read: fossil fuel) trade as a whole. It's just like hippies whining about recycling saving trees when the real issue is so much more complex than that. They just ignore the rest of it because it doesn't make a good tagline and it's harder for the average public-school-educated-Joe to understand. And things that the average public-school-educated-Joe has a hard time understanding make him change the channel, which is bad for support and bad for business.
Because the scientific communty would still shun any scientist that questions the present assumptions. Now take away funding from those voices that dare to question and we would has even less understanding than we have today.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I think this is a report that is trying to link some sort of monies to conspiracies and agendas. $15M spread across 42 (to remove the one high example they use) organizations over 8 years = $45K a year on average. Its a lot to an individual but hardly enough to fund "access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming".
Further, I see froth but no substance - no irrefutible proof saying that Exxon doesnt mind global warning or that it doesnt exist, or even that they dont care. The best I can see is that a group that recieved money "touted a book". Incidently, they use this as "an example" because the group recieved $600K - far above the average amount given, so its hardly a typical example.
This is clearly a biased report hoping to use allegations and bend them into truth. I am a sceptic but in the sense that I dont think anyone has a grasp on whats really going on, whats normal, and how much us humans have played a part in any change that has happened. I'm a skeptic when anyone tells me they have all the answers.
So much money! That $16 million, over 7 years, divided by 43 groups, comes to the amazingly huge sum of $53,000 per year per group. Why, with that king of money, they could probably pay the salary of 1 person!
My God! They could take over the world with an army like that!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist
But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists.
Maybe you ought to take a course in the statistical analysis of experimental data, and when you have a grasp of how scientists analyze data to construct theories that explain observations, they often take many things into account, you can rejoin the discussion.
Or, the short version: THE FACT THAT THE SOLAR RADIATION HAS INCREASED HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR.
Good day!
Except that environmentalists interests are for the general welfare of the planet and its inhabitants, not for the increased wealth of acorporation and its stockholders. A rather significant difference, wouldn't you agree?
From the other, more pressing issues that we should be dealing with. For example:
I could go on...
Anyway, Global Warming fanatics always bring up the negative aspects that it could produce, but not necessarily that it will. Indeed, anyone who is going to make 100 or 1000 year predictions on a few decades of data is foolish. We simply don't know. Regardless, does anyone ever bring up the possible benefits of global warming?
And these are just a few. The real question shouldn't be "is GW happening?", but, "Is it a bad thing?". It could be that preventing global warming would leave us with a worldwide shortage of food a few centuries from now. How are you going to feed 10 billion people?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Where's the article about the tree huggers funding pro global warming research? Since it's functionaly identical everyone should be up in arms about that too.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Woah, hold on there a minute.
"both sides have lied", so the truth must be "somewhere in the middle?"
That's the logical fallacy that Fox News uses all the time.
A quick example should illustrate the fallacy:
Billy: There's a cake here!
Bobby: I want it!
Billy: Why don't we split it 50/50?
Bobby: No! mine!
Their Mom: I've heard both of your extreme viewpoints, so we'll need to compromise. Bobby gets 75%, Billy gets 25%.
Saying that both sides "have lied" and so "the truth is somewhere in between" somehow puts paid industry propagandists on the same credibility level as professional climate research scientists. (And does a great disservice to science, I think.) There is a fair amount of difference in the professional opinion of a corporate shill who is paid to spout the company line, and someone who has spent the majority of their life studying something.
Should read:
The fact that the solar radiation has increased has been accounted for and blamed on Americans driving SUVs and George Bush.
And blame the Chinese pollution problem on America too because they should all be in cold, damp, and dark huts with no jobs and no food to feed themselves. That is until they find that fish that grants wishes then we can all have rainbows and Skittles.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
If there were skeptics, on ANY topic, who is going to FUND them except if you have a stake in it? For any viewpoint in any issue, ONLY the people that stand to lose if the issue goes the other way will fund research supporting them. Thus saying that big oil is funding most of the research that contradicts "prevailing opinion" makes 100% sense. Do you actually expect the Sierra Club to fund a study who's goal is skepticism?
This comes from confusing cause & effect. The studies don't come out a certain way because the group funding them dictates that it should, but only because the only ones LOOKING for an opposite outcome are those with something to lose. A very slight difference, but it's still critical to understanding it. The first is straight-out lying. The 2nd can happen with the most honest of intentions. I'm not saying that's the case here, but to dismiss it automatically as the 1st just means your mind is made up without even looking at what evidence may exist.
Subway sponsors the American Heart Association and in return, Subway's food is now endorsed by the AHA as heart healthy. I hope to see the USC bring Jared and his cronies down!
The word "skeptic" comes from a Greek work, "skepsis", which refers to looking at something and examining it. Skepticism is that the person from Missouri does when they say "show me".
A skeptic isn't a denier. A denier says the scientests are making it all up to curry favor with government grant issuers, you know, the rabid environmentalist Bush administration. A skeptic asks how big the error bars are on the temperature measurements and finds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record. A skeptic asks how a huge computer model of a system which is incompletely defined can ever be validated (and finds annoyingly little in the popular literature). A skeptic asks whether increased solar output could account for the changes and finds out that nights are getting warmer and the upper atmosphere is getting colder, both of which point to heat getting trapped in the lower atmosphere.
A skeptic refuses to be rushed into policy choices. A skeptic asks the question Bjorn Lomborg has been exploring, whether it's better to mitigate the results of climate change than to uproot the foundations of the world economy trying to prevent it.
Skepticism clarifies issues, astroturf campaigns and phony think tanks obscure issues.
Except that environmentalists interests are for the general welfare of the planet and its inhabitants, not for the increased wealth of acorporation and its stockholders. A rather significant difference, wouldn't you agree?
I would not agree.
That is a very charitable evaluation, but your conclusion doesn't make much sense. The Spanish Inquisition (bet you didn't expect that) would have claimed, quite sincerely, that their goal was the general welfare and spiritual well being of the planet and its inhabitants. All they required was absolute obedience and license to do pretty much anything they wanted. By your logic they would rank as one of the most trustworthy and wonderful organizations in history. Most of their victims would not agree. Good intentions do not automatically bring about good results.
So sre environmentalists the Spanish Inquisition, blessed with absolute knowledge of right and wrong and empowered to change the world and crush all dissent? No, of course not. But some of them sure seem to wish they were.
Is science done by people with alleged good intentions always right, and science paid for by people with a profit motive always suspect? No, obviously not. I don't care who pays for what. All that matters is whether the science is sound enough to stand up to scrutiny. A lot of climate science is really, really slipshod stuff rigged up to support foregone ideological conclusion. Regardless of whether you agree with the conclusions or not, that's not science.
Can you please offer some real-life experience that backs up any of those assertions? Note: what you read on Free Republic does not count as experience.
I have a degree in physical oceanography, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are wrong on this as the deniers i the lies bought from them. The whole time I was in graduate school, I held the point of view that anthropogenic effects could not be separated from natural variability. While people didn't agree with me, I was never disparaged, and nobody even thought of trying to link my work to that. At the time, there were a lot of challenges to be made to important conclusions like Mann's, and modelling was much less well developed. There are still important uncertainties, but the open scientific process has worked, and it has confirmed the findings about anthropogenic climate change. I have been obligated to change my point of view by the increasing body of evidence here.
There is no controversy. There is no doubt. There are some claims which are not fully supported - e.g., how exactly anthropenic warming will affect hurricane formation is not clear, but the most of the basic physical mechanisms are pretty well undertand (if not the second order problems like interaction between wind shear and sea surface temperature), but when they are made and answered within the context of scientific debate (e.g. Kerry Emmanuel's paper), they have tended to confirm the magnitude of risks. Part of the reason scientists are pissed and have begun publishing reports like this is that they resent the endless meddling in the process by these oil-funded "think tanks".
The problem the denialists have is not bias, it is that they are trying to challenge an increasingly established body of science with loopier and loopier ideas. This is similiar to the small but active community of denialists who claim that cold fusion is being suppressed - they more evidence thatemerges against it, the more they turn to whiny claims of bias of crazy counterarguments. Trying to make improbable criticisms stick is never a good strategy for funding. Any responsible grant administrator will consider the question of, say, the meaning of correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature as an approximately closed question. There are of course caveats and valid criticisms to any particular paper using those correlations, but the basic science is considered fairly well established. It might be nice if there was so much funding just lying around that the correlation could be subjected to nearly endless testing, but it can't. It's had its day in scientific debate, and barring some truly innovative method or a new framework that raises new concerns, the question is settled. The denialists have provided none of this (barring Lindzen's loony IRIS theory), yet they continue to whine and moan about how their lack of good ideas and unwillingness to accepted results of good work is not in fact petty obstinacy (or more likely outright bought loyalty), but is some kind of noble keeper of the flame movement. That's self-flattering bullshit, and an insult to serious scientists everywhere. Climate science has a healthy scientific process - like anything else, it could probably use improvement in some areas. But to suggest that the whole field of climate science is fundamentally unsound is breathtakingly arrogant and small-minded.
So until you have something real to the conversation, do us the favor of keeping your unfounded slander in your mom's basement next to your teddy bear and anime girlfriend.
A lot of climate science is really, really slipshod stuff rigged up to support foregone ideological conclusion.
And you are qualified enough to make that judgement, how, exactly? Could you please cite some specific examples of peer reviewed literature that demonstrate your point and explain why you think they are slipshod stuff? Otherwise, you are just engaging in a logical fallacy known as wishful thinking.
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