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: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: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: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.