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

Posted by yaelk on from the why-listen-to-science dept.

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.

39 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. They stopped funding denial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As I understood it, although they gave millions to groups trying to cast doubt on climate science in the 1990s and early 2000s, Exxon had stopped funding such political groups in 2008 (although they still contribute to political campaigns of congressmen who are opposed to climate science.)
    It might be more worthwhile to be outraged about the fossil fuel companies who are still funding them.

    1. Re:They stopped funding denial by edibobb · · Score: 2

      Maybe their activities lasted a little longer than 2008: "Just last year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson downplayed the validity of climate models and the value of renewable energy policies."

    2. Re:They stopped funding denial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:They stopped funding denial by HiThere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:They stopped funding denial by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      go back and look, IPCC climate models have not panned out five years later. we can't model climate usefully

      Of course 5 years (or even 15 years) is a ridiculously short period of time on which to judge climate models. Maybe it's your expectations of what climate models do that have not panned out.

  2. Nothing says "SCIENCE!" like "STFU!!!!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's no better way to promote science than call someone names and basically tell them to STFU?

    How is that different from calling ExxonMobil "heretics"?

    1. Re:Nothing says "SCIENCE!" like "STFU!!!!" by patabongo · · Score: 3, Funny

      The Inquisition didn't deal with Galileo by refusing to let him sponsor their conference.

  3. Exxon seems kind of even handed by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed by mdsolar · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    4. Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      Hit much of a nerve?

      Anyway, in the 1970s I would have considered lung cancer studies funded by RJReynolds to be suspect, similarly lead studies from paint and fuel companies back then - if you are a research scientist and your entire income is derived from grants given by a parties with clear vested interests in the outcome of your research you can never clear the conflict of interest - the best you can hope for is to publish your methods and your findings and maybe get validation from the community that is not wholly owned by a biased party. Meta-research that aggregates results from previously published studies needs to be especially sensitive to these issues, because they really do exist and they really do bias the findings.

      NIH, NSF, DOE, and any other government grants are supposed to be neutral funding sources, not expected to bias the research, but if you're talking about a DOE grant to study the effects of radioisotope leakage from SRNF - then, the bias question re-arises: DOE has a huge investment in SRNF, they should fund studies of its safety, but they should also avoid "owning" the researchers by providing a majority of their livelihood - and they do this through the local universities which have a stronger vested interest in finding bad things that will affect their children and families. Government grants and programs actually have strong protections against conflict of interest, for instance: submissions to the FDA regarding safety and efficacy of a device must be backed by studies from dis-interested third parties, not equity shareholders in the company seeking approval of a new device. Can this system be gamed? Certainly: use friends, ex-colleagues, and others who appear to have greater "distance" from the issue than they actually do, and this happens a lot. Which is why "science" shouldn't be accepted at face value on first publication, it needs to be verified by enough disparate sources to effectively nullify these concerns of bias.

      This is also why biased science is such a bad thing, if you have a multinational deep pockets entity funding research around the globe and effectively buying the published results they want, it takes a tremendous amount of untainted research to bring "consensus" around to the unbiased truth. Researchers are supposed to disclose their sources of funding to help reduce this problem, but they don't always do that. If the money is good enough, some will take a chance on disgracing their careers just for the big payday - maybe they won't get caught, but even if they do the money can be just too good for them to walk away from.

    5. Re:Exxon seems kind of even handed by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      There are varying degrees of sophistication in readership... most good M.D.s won't look twice at research unless it's in a respected journal, by people with some credibility in the field, and they'll at least try to sniff the obvious sources for conflict of interest information. Good scientists in other fields are mostly the same. But, I worked for one medical device manufacturer who managed to get a collection of over a dozen studies done on their device, published in the most recognized journals, and with minimal fishy-ness to the authorship viz. This work funded in-part by a grant from the Corporation who you know has an axe to grind on this topic.... Lots and lots of M.D.s accepted that research at face value, and they sold lots of product with that confidence. Representatives from companies selling alternative technology had their own research and spin that put the product's efficacy numbers at about 10% of what the in-house sponsored research said, but their sources were equally fishy. Makes forming an informed opinion basically impossible.

  4. Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree with by tomhath · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

  5. Climate denying views by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Freeman Dyson doesn't believe human activity is causing global climate change, nor does he believe a changing climate is necessarily harmful. Historically, warmer times have been better times.

    "Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson.

    If Freeman Dyson says your maths are rubbish -- They are.

    1. Re:Climate denying views by s122604 · · Score: 5, Funny

      well that sonofabitch should stick to making overpriced vacuum cleaners

    2. Re:Climate denying views by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Freeman Dyson doesn't believe human activity is causing global climate change, nor does he believe a changing climate is necessarily harmful. Historically, warmer times have been better times.

      "Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson.

      If Freeman Dyson says your maths are rubbish -- They are.

      You need to read up on what he's said in the past 10 years, and how the IPCC has been iterating on the process. Because your shit is out of date.

    3. Re:Climate denying views by Cl1mh4224rd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Freeman Dyson doesn't believe human activity is causing global climate change...

      This is incorrect. Here's Wikipedia summary, but here are some choice quotes

      'One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas.' (Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society, by Freeman Dyson)

      'In 2008, he endorsed the now common usage of "global warming" as synonymous with global anthropogenic climate change, referring to "measurements that transformed global warming from a vague theoretical speculation into a precise observational science.' (from the above linked Wikipedia article)

      If Freeman Dyson says your maths are rubbish -- They are.

      He doesn't appear to be making any claims about the math.

      My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have. I think that’s what upsets me. (Freeman Dyson Takes on the Climate Establishment)

      --
      People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
  6. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by rockout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
  7. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by rickb928 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ExxonMobil also has a huge vested interest in refuting any false role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.

    The disagreement can only be on whether the premise, that fossil fuels are in fact accelerating climate change, is correct. If no, shame on the majority fo scientists that have been convinced in error.

    And the raw data is not at all convincing to me any more. Feel free to continue to toe the party line and claim it is not so, but a cursory examination of the media shows that several climate change groups both admit to and defend manipulating the data to prove their points.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  8. More than that by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exxon studied the science, found it to be persuasive, even raising rigs to adapt to sea level rise, but lied about the science to the public for years. http://insideclimatenews.org/c...

  9. Informed Denier by watermark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I saw someone wearing a button that said "Informed Denier \n I love nature". Asked her about it and she said she was informed enough to know that climate change wasn't real. Sorry I didn't have more time to talk to her.

    There are a lot of people that I like to talk to one-on-one. Among them are climate change deniers, flat earthers, young earthers, trump/cruz supporters, and general conspiracy theorists. They are an entertaining bunch, you can give them facts and empirical data, and they find some way to ignore it or redirect as opposed to disputing the facts. It's become fascinating.

  10. And the other funders ARE neutral? (ROTFL) by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think it is well established the Exxon is not "neutral" in any sense of the word on climate change. They directly fund deniers and have been doing this for years. Their financial interest is in continuing to burn more fossil fuels.

    As opposed to, say, nation-states, whose incentive is to use a catastrophe-scare to vastly increase their control over businesses and populations (and have spent tens - maybe hundreds - of billions on "climate research"), or politically-connected financial types (such as Al Gore) whose incentive is to create an artificial, rent-seeking, gate-keeping, market in "carbon credits" to skim billions off the energy market.

    Seems to me that there ARE no "neutral" funding sources. In order to avoid an appearance (if not an actuality) of bias, the AGU may need to accept funding from all "sides" of the issue. To refuse "tainted" money from an interested party is to publicly sign on with its opposition.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  11. Contradictory Summary by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Funny

    The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation

    Boo!

    try to thwart policies that address climate change

    I thought you just said Exxon was *funding* organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation, not *fighting* them.

    After all, the real misinformation would be continuing to spread the lie that CO2 will have a significant impact on temperature increase, or in any way hasten the inevitable ice age that could come back any moment.

    Perhaps just a misspelling in the summary?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  12. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  13. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by slashping · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  14. Well, the NEW prediction says that... by cirby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're sort of forgetting all of the others.

    Like the ones back in the 1990s that claimed it was ALREADY happening. Every time we had a big storm, it was global warming!

    And no, it wasn't the fringe warmists who said that, either. It was a major theme by everyone who supported the theory. James Hansen (one of the leading lights in the field) was telling people that there would be massively increased storms of all sorts in twenty years - in 1989. Which would make that 2009 prediction false in a very dramatic way. He also said that sea levels would be meters higher by now, instead of centimeters.

    Even as recent as 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme said that all of the dire predictions were "imminent," and we'd have 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010. So far, according to the most generous counting, it's about 100. If you count the island off south Louisiana that got munched by a hurricane. If you go by actual refugee counts, it's negative (population increases in just about all of the potential "climate refugee" countries, to the order of a few hundred thousand).

    Up until the last couple of years, all of the "increased tropical storm frequency and intensity" predictions were for shorter terms - a few years to a decade. Now that we know that never happened, they had to move the predictions out past a human lifetime so they can stop being wrong quite so often.

    1. Re:Well, the NEW prediction says that... by Xyrus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      [citation needed]

      I'll save you the trouble though. There isn't a single scientific research article that substantiates any of the horseshit you've said. And it is horseshit because you and the "I do believe in fairies" crowd who wouldn't know thermodynamics if it came up and kicked in the balls have been repeating the same horseshit for the past few decades.

      --
      ~X~
  15. Re:what BS by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  16. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by slashping · · Score: 4, Informative

    A) http://berkeleyearth.org/ Your turn.

  17. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by slashping · · Score: 2

    Please explain what you mean with "manipulating" data. We all know that every method of measurement has a systematic bias. And we have to deal with that fact, and we do it by trying to determine the systematical bias and subtract it from the data. If that's "manipulating data" to you, then please elaborate a better way to deal with it.

    A practical example is the shift from mercury thermometers that were read by hand at certain times in the day to electronic thermometers that were logged continuously. The change in thermometers and measuring moments resulted in a sudden small jump in the temperature record. Climate scientists identify these sudden jumps, and add an adjustment to compensate for them. To some people that may sound like "manipulation", but in reality it's error reduction. The original raw data, all the changes, as well as the methods used to identify the jumps are all documented, by the way. Another example is the measurement of sea surface temperatures. That used to be done by sailors lowering a bucket in the sea, pulling it back up, sticking a thermometer in the water, and writing down the temperature. Nowadays, there's a continuous electronic measurement of the temperature of water inlets in the ship's hull. The new method is more accurate, but has a clearly visible offset compared to the old method.

  18. Re:Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree w by slashping · · Score: 2

    Instead of going back and re-measuring everything,

    Excellent idea! We'll simply go back to 1880 and start re-measuring everything. You're a genius!

  19. $21.4 BIllion by sycodon · · Score: 2

    That's how much was spent in 2014 by the feds.

    That's a lot of vest interest in showing that AGW is real and needs more research dollars.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:$21.4 BIllion by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      So I went and looked at the report you cited. They split the expenditures into 5 categories:

      1) Scientific research into climate change, about $2.5 billion.
      2) Clean energy technologies, about $6 billion.
      3) International assistance, about $0.9 billion.
      4) Natural resource adaption, about $0.09 billion.
      5) Energy tax provisions that may reduce GHG emissions and energy payments in lieu of tax provisions, about $10 billion.

      So direct climate research is only about 11.6% of the total expenditures and by far the biggest chunk is tax provisions that aren't actually expenditures but just reduce the taxes collected.

      Regarding the tax provisions and other breaks fossil fuel producers get plenty of that sort of support as well. For example coal mines that pay less than $5/ton for coal mined on government lands that they can sell to China for around $50/ton.

  20. Re:And the other funders ARE neutral? (ROTFL) by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  21. Re: Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree by Phantom+of+the+Opera · · Score: 2

    Are you taking it on faith that not only are old temperature measurements wrong, they are wrong in the way that would support your point of view?

  22. Re: Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree by riverat1 · · Score: 2

    The old temperature measurement methods are not wrong, they are just different than current methods. You don't think scientists should be doing anything to reconcile the differences between different measurement techniques?

  23. Re:The science is settled by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    >If their allegations are true about exxon,

    Two separate publications working entirely independently (indeed - without knowledge of each other) both found hard evidence proving these allegations. Documents from the company itself showing them acknowledging the reality of climate change decades ago and planning the cover-up - and even basing business plans on exploiting the fact that warming would melt glaciers and make arctic drilling more profitable if they delay it for 20 years (which they did).

    There is no shred of reasonable doubt that these allegations are true and in light of the documents published by the journalists the state of California is already investigating bringing criminal charges against the company for large-scale fraud.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  24. Re: Kind of like down-modding a post you disagree by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    Now don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with that as such - not everybody can be a scientist and we don't all need to be experts at everything, if your way of being a good citizen is to be very political so be it, if your choice of information about politics is deranged and your "reading the left" only to look for strawman in a sort of inverted act of confirmation bias - that's sad but perfectly within your rights.

    However, when the issue is scientific in nature - party affiliation, tribal identity and all the other things that cloud our political thinking simply don't matter - it's no longer a matter of politics. You chose ot be informed about the latter (for a lose definition of "informed") but not of the former, so when the topic is the former the only acceptable thing for you to is shut the fuck up and do what the experts tell you to do.
    If you don't like that, acquire the needed expertise to make counter-argument worthy of the name. Facts and evidence don't go away because your ideologically opposed to their existence.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *