Scientists Urge American Geophysical Union To Cut Ties With Exxon (insideclimatenews.org)

mdsolar writes: More than 100 geoscientists are calling on the American Geophysical Union to drop ExxonMobil as a sponsor of its annual earth science conference in response to the company's years of spreading climate denial views. The call appeared in an open letter posted Monday morning on a science website called The Natural History Museum. The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation and try to thwart policies that address climate change (in direct conflict with the earth science association's mission and funding policies), the scientists said in their letter to Margaret Leinen, president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action," the letter said. "But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU's institutional social license to help legitimize the company's climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members," it added.

Comments

Exxon seems kind of even handed

[tomhath]

It's not like Exxon is trying to stifle the American Geophysical Union by sponsoring their event.

The geoscientists are really making themselves look bad by doing this.

Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed

[JoeMerchant]

It's not like Exxon is trying to stifle the American Geophysical Union by sponsoring their event.

The geoscientists are really making themselves look bad by doing this.

They are attempting to have some principles regarding where they get funding - if they can't demonstrate their ability to function without Exxon funding, it calls into question whether or not Exxon has influence over their publications.

It's a political statement - since they have no problem calling out climate change as real, it's kind of ridiculous to say that Exxon is making them take a biased stand on that, but what other important issues (fracking, for instance) might be better investigated without corporate funding pressures?

Better to do good science with "clean" funding than questionable science with twice as much money.

Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed

[mdsolar]

Exxon hires geologists, so they are getting something from their sponsorship: advertising.

Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed

[rgbatduke]

Hmmm, so by the same token, we must conclude that e.g. the NSF can be called into question as to whether or not they have influence of the publications of the scientists they support, the NIH over the ones THEY support, the DOE over the projects they support, etc etc. Because the only funding that is clean is the funding you earned yourself doing unrelated work.

Once upon a time, the "ideal" ivory tower model of the University was that you banded together with a bunch of other academics, taught classes, and used the resulting income stream to support your life and your research. The whole concept of tenure was built on the notion that once you passed through a review process designed to first and foremost guarantee that you could teach classes at the University level and not be an embarrassment or drive off students, you ought to be free to pursue whatever research you liked and publish whatever you found without fear of political or economic repercussions in the event that your results were not politically correct or disagreed with the conclusions of some Famous Filosopher who preceded you.

To some extent, this model existed and persisted in both the United States and Europe up through the end of World War II. Then Big Science was born along with the nuclear bomb, and Big Medicine followed in Big Science's footsteps almost immediately. The government started funding more and more research at the University level, initially in nuclear physics (which simply required a lot of money to do at all), then in general physics, chemistry, medicine, all at an ever increasing pace. It rapidly got to the point where one simply could not get a tenured position at any University in the US without demonstrating an ability not to teach, not to "do research", but to obtain grants through a cycle of application and renewal through at least a couple of three to five year grant cycles. And this in turn, absolutely relied on doing research that had No Null Results. Null results meant No Tenure For You, it meant being put out onto the street and falling back on a small position at a teaching college or selling cars -- if you were in any sort of science department at first, then increasingly in other departments or areas of knowledge.

It also meant that your academic career was completely at the mercy of the granting agencies even AFTER getting tenure. Sure, supersymmetry or string theory or whatever the fad of the day is are popular this year, but after a decade of results null or otherwise, the funding dries up as new directives from on high arrive as to what we the people "need" to stimulate. Even tenured professors have to shift disciplines into whatever the latest rage is or risk being marginalized, given a broom closet for an office, being gently asked to leave (pretty please) to make room for an aggressive young researcher more willing to be blown by the winds of Popular science.

So speak to me not about clean, pure money, at least not with the implication that government money is somehow "good" but corporate money is "bad" because the corporations influence the direction of your work but the government (agencies) do no not. The current system of funding absolutely guarantees that a truly substantial fraction of University research is just confirmation bias at work, getting non-null results in precisely the sweet spot of what the granting agencies want to fund in order to perpetuate one's funding. It is also a mistake to imply that just because a large, august body of "objective" scientists whose work is clearly disconnected from any politically or economically sensitive conclusion all agree on a consensus view of some "truth" that that truth is actually true. Counterexamples exist in abundance, the latest one being that dietary cholesterol, instead of being (as the consensus view held it in countless publications all supposedly supported by objective research) Satan Himself attempting to destroy your heart and soul with plaque, is mostly irrelevant to heart disea

Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w

[rockout]

At some point, you have to look at the motivations that each party has for their "speech." ExxonMobil has a huge vested interest in downplaying the role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.

Suppressing their speech? When they have billions at their disposal to continue lying to the public? That's a laugh.

Re:They stopped funding denial

[Anonymous Coward]

That's equivocation. When somebody says the validity of scientific models should always be in question, that doesn't imply you should treat all scientific conclusions as coin tosses. If you conclude there's a 97% chance of global average temperature increases at an unprecedented rate, you don't point hide out in the 3% because it's convenient to your argument.

Likewise, the value of subsidies to cars running on alternative fuels is valid to question, but the statement was that he downplayed the value of renewable energy policies. You're making an argument on his behalf, which he may or may not have made himself, but is not included in the letter.

Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w

[Geoffrey.landis]

Same mentality. Disagree with someone? Do whatever you can to suppress their speech.

Except it's the opposite: this is more like Disagree with someone? Stop taking their money.

Do keep in mind that the groups Exxon had been funding weren't doing climate science-- those groups, as it turns out, actually were agreeing with the consensus on global warming (until Exxon stopped funding them). The groups the geoscientists are complaining about Exxon spending a hundred million dollars to support were ones that were making political points by calling climate scientists "frauds", saying climate science is a "scam", the conclusions were "a hoax," and climate scientists "need to be sent to prison."

"Stop accepting money from an organization that pays people to denigrate your work" seems like a reasonable decision to me.

Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w

[slashping]

Go ahead and show us better data. I'm sure Exxon can fund the search. After all, they have a huge vested interested in refuting the data you claim is bad.

Re:what BS

[ClickOnThis]

ExxonMobile has rights. Stop trying to lock them out.

Exxon Mobil has the right to offer money to the AGU.

And the AGU has the right to say no.

The End.

Re:And the other funders ARE neutral? (ROTFL)

[SuricouRaven]

Not only them. There are several flavors of denial. The fossil fuel industry is one, motivated by money, but it's not the only one. There are also those who deny it out of political ideology - dedicated libertarians who refuse to accept it because if climate change were a real concern then there would be no option but to impose strict government regulation to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Such an act would be in direct violation with libertarian ideals, and therefore climate change cannot be accepted as a real concern. There are also the culture-war types, who reject climate change concern because it is a 'liberal thing' - American politics is very much a team sport, and if one side takes a position the other is pressured to oppose them.

Re:They stopped funding denial

[HiThere]

You mean because they underestimated the warming? Or what?

I don't think any of the models the IPCC approved of forecast such a continuous chain of years with record breaking heat. If you want to say some areas were also colder than forecast, yes, that's also true. And much does depend on exactly how you measure temperature. But if I propose any specific method there are reasons why that's not a good choice. (Which is why many different methods are used.)

The temperature that I consider most significant over the short term is the average temperature of the ocean surface, but that's quite difficult to measure. Infrared measurments from space tend to get the top several meters (admittedly with rapidly decaying significance), samples taken from ships only pick up very local measurements, etc. But it's the temperature most directly related to the rate of evaporation.

FWIW, the IPCC was a political document and it trimmed out models at both extremes. This may have been unwise. But too many models were predicting things that politicians weren't willing to hear.

All that said, weather is complex and there have been areas where it didn't behave as expected. E.g., this was supposed to be a particularly wet winter where I live, but it has, instead, been drier and warmer than usual. For some reason that I haven't checked into, however, the snowpack is slightly ahead of normal. But things have been so warm that I still expect it to melt off in the early spring. Not good.