ExxonMobil cultivates global warming doubt: report

[leftchick]

Al Gore is proven right yet again.....



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070103/ts_nm/environment_exxonmobil_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to raise doubt about climate change, spending $16 million on groups that question global warming, a science watchdog group said on Wednesday.


"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at a telephone news conference releasing the report.

An ExxonMobil spokesman did not respond immediately to calls for comment.

The union, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said ExxonMobil, the world's biggest publicly traded corporation, had succeeded in parlaying a relatively modest investment into unwarranted public doubt on findings that have been overwhelmingly endorsed by mainstream science.

ExxonMobil did this by using the same methods used for decades by the U.S. tobacco industry, the report said, including:

-- raising doubts about even the most undisputed science;

-- funding a variety of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform;

-- recruiting a number of vocal climate change contrarians;

-- portraying its opposition to action as a quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest;

-- using its access to the Bush administration to shape federal communications and policies on global warming.

[Robbien]

1. How is this just getting to be news?

This has been a known fact for years now.

I expect the news is that Reuters actually reported the story.

[Cocoa]

9. Reuters has reported on this in the past

and they're reporting on it now.

Maybe it's a "known fact" to you because of something you read reported by Reuters.

I don't have any interest in defending Reuters, but I think media criticism is very important and I think it should be done sensibly.

[nam78_two]

2. K&R.nt

[Harper_is_Bush]

3. Please help, we need activists to fight EXXON, go here:

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/

[leftchick]

5. thank you and we do indeed...

here is an example of the lies three years ago. We are so very far behind...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0404-01.htm

Bush Attacks Environment 'Scare Stories'
Secret email gives advice on denying climate change

by Antony Barnett in New York

George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny aggressively.

The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.

It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.

The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states.

The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'

[brentspeak]

4. Toxic sludge is good for you

[leftchick]

6. MoJo: As The World Burns....

another great article on exxonmobil LIES....

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html


Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank
ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.

May/June 2005 Issue

Organization
Funding
Hot Air
Fun Fact

Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty
$155,000
Calls CO2 caps "a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist."
Advised by an AEI fellow.

Advancement of Sound Science Center
$40,000
Run by FoxNews.com's Steve Milloy.

American Council for Capital Formation
$250,000
"Science questions must be addressed before the United States and its allies embark on a path as nonproductive as that of the Kyoto Protocol."
Group netted nearly a million dollars from ExxonMobil from 2000-2003 but the real science bashing was in 2001 when they got a quarter million.

American Council on Science and Health
$90,000
"Policymakers can safely take several decades to plan a response" to global warming.
Michaels and Singer are advisors.

American Enterprise Institute
$960,000
Published 2004 climate article titled "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Dick Cheney is a former senior fellow.

American Legislative Exchange Council
$712,200
Published Michaels' paper that claims "global warming could actually save lives."
Launched attack on "Sons of Kyoto" state legislation in 2004.

Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy
$427,500
"Answering questions about global warming takes more than a few thermometers, an agenda and a press release."
Baliunas is an adviser; honored Senator Inhofe for "supporting rational, science-based thinking and policy-making."

Arizona State University Office of Climatology
$49,500
They got this amount in 2001 when the office was headed by

Robert C. Balling, a well known climate change "skeptic."

Atlas Economic Research Foundation
$440,000
"As the science behind global warming becomes increasingly sketchy, many environmentalists clutch even harder to their views."

Atlas fellow, Deroy Murdock , "You call this global "warming"?" The Washington Times, May 31, 1996.

Cato Institute
$75,000
One of the modern right's most respected think tanks
Michaels is a senior fellow.

[MaineYooper]

7. Tell your family. Tell your friends.

Never, ever buy gas from a Mobil/Exxon station.

Never.

Maybe, just maybe, if enough people do this, it'll have an effect.

[madrchsod]

8. most people in this country are seeing the future today

no snow,50+ degrees, the lakes rivers free of ice and plant life coming to life earlier than normal. no amount of money is going to change what people can see in front of them

[Telly Savalas]

10. So what we are going to do about this?

Call Exxon executives poopyheads?

Or are we going to start building our cities on a human scale so we don't have to drive everywhere like we do with the lovely urban sprawl we have now? This Truth to Power bullshit doesn't mean anything if we have to keep buying their damn gas.

[leftchick]

11. Greenpeace Presents: Exxonsecrets.org.....

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/

an interactive guide to follow those oily dollars

[FreeStateDemocrat]

12. NYT: Exxon Accused of Trying to Mislead Public

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: January 4, 2007
HOUSTON, Jan. 3 — The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on Wednesday accusing Exxon Mobil of spending millions of dollars to manipulate public opinion on the seriousness of global warming.

“Many of the tactics, and even some of the same organizations and actors used by Exxon Mobil to mislead the public, draw upon the tobacco industry’s 40-year disinformation campaign,” the report said.

The report said that a task force that Exxon Mobil helped create on global climate science in 1998 included someone who had led a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, “which had been covertly created by the tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke.”

Many of the accusations in the report have been made before by the scientists’ organization and environmental groups. But the organization, a liberal advocacy group, said this report more completely detailed connections between money donated by Exxon Mobil and the scientists in groups that question the degree to which humans are contributing to climate change.

The release of the report comes as Democrats take control of Congress, and the organization said it hoped incoming committee chairmen investigate the links detailed in the report. (contd)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/business/04exxon.html?ref=science

[gasperc]

13. I bought 10 new low watt bulbs at Home Depot

so FUCK YOU EXXON.

I just finished reading Gore's book. It was a great presentation of story, graphs, jaw dropping pictures and common sense. He goes into some detail about the confusion issue and relates it with the tabacco companies efforts to intentionally sow seeds of doubt in the public to keep people from quitting.

I to put off buying new light bulbs since I still had a basket full of incandesant bulbs in my basement. But we don't have to dig as deep as we think to make the necessary change. Home Depot sells a 6-pack of the low watt flouresant bulbs for just $9.97. Each bulb uses only 14watts and keeps about 140lbs of C02 out of the air. I bought 10 bulbs, have a lower electricity bill and will prevent 1400 lbs of CO2 from going into the atmosphere a month, all for $19.

So FUCK YOU EXXON and your efforts to confuse. Greenland is melting, and rapidly. The costs of global climate change will far, far exceed the profits you may lose by helping prevent this diaster.

[Uncle Joe]

14. I quit buying fuel from Exxon,

I see no sense in funding their propaganda campaign.