Group: ExxonMobil paid groups to mislead public on global warming

[LTR]

ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group's report.

Many scientists say accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice, alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for "public information and policy research" distributed to more than 140 think-tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070103/ap_on_bi_ge/exxonmobil_global_warming&printer=1

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. An oil company lied to us?

Yikes, what's next? The government?

[Cocoa]

2. I know one person who bought it whole

a bright young coworker who knows their message by heart, but doesn't know it's a message, he thinks it's his own thoughts on the matter.

[54anickel]

3. Ya know what I don't get is how they can piss that kind of money away

to hide the truth, just to get their own way. What if all that money was put into some R&D to alleviate the problem to begin with? Stupid greedy, short-sighted fools. Now they pissed away a fortune trying to sway the public, the planet is nearly doomed, and should we survive it's gonna cost them hundreds times that amount in lost profits, revenues, R&D, etc, etc, etc.

Ah, but they have the satisfaction of thinking they pulled another one of on the stupid public and can sing "I Did it My Way". Dumbf*cks :grr:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. It's like the inheritance tax.

There's a half dozen people in the Wall family that all have billions of dollars, each. They could either pay tens of millions of dollars in an inheritance tax, or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribing congressmen and hiring advertizing execs to sell "cutting the death tax" to Republican suckers.

[Canuckistanian]

6. Are you kidding?

The cost/benefit ratio soars when you only have to buy a few well-paid shills in high-placed positions to write your own regulatory laws.

[tuvor]

5. CBC's Fifth Estate did a story on this recently. Here's the video.

Entitled "The Denial Machine".

Rick Piltz talks about where the strategy of creating uncertainty as to the science on global warming originated.

Rick Piltz: I think this is a strategy that dates back. Actually it dates back to the tobacco industry and the smoking health effects, but, if you bring it forward into the nineteen nineties, there's a strategy that was developed by a range of political operatives in the industry and in these advocacy groups to hold off regulation, to hold off pressure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, by pursuing a strategy of manufacturing an enhanced sense of uncertainty about global warming, and that's what they've done.

And, even though they've ended up promoting a position that's far outside the mainstream of the science community, they've kind of, so far, won politically in that they have completely tied the hands of getting anything done about the global warming problem.

Runs about 40 minutes. Hope you all find it as worth watching as I did.

Go to this link and click on the red videocam on the right side under "Watch the Fifth Estate online".
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/piltz.html

[Quantess]

7. Thanks for posting that!

I'll check it out...

[tuvor]

8. You're quite welcome. Today was the second time I watched it.

It's a cliche, but I don't know how some people sleep at night.

[JudyM]

10. So perhaps there's a possibility of lawsuits against Exxon if we can show

their effort to cloud the waters was a significant causative factor in the atmosphere's destruction...

[Festivito]

9. Perhaps one of many HALF-VAST RW conspiracies. /nt