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How ExxonMobil’s PR Machine Impacted The Climate Change Debate
How ExxonMobil’s PR Machine Impacted The Climate Change Debate
Our DeSmog UK epic history series continues asExxonMobil uses its PR power to change the public’s mind on climate change.
The basic tenet of ExxonMobil’s strategy was clear: it would use PR, not to change their image, but to change the public’s mind.
Exxon’s longstanding senior environmental advisor was a large, bullish, but “brilliant”, nuclear engineer, heroically named Arthur G Randall III. He went by the name of “Randy”.
Though Randy was nearing the end of his career, he was a powerful force within ExxonMobil’s Washington network.
The Action Plan
In April 1998, four months after BP boss Lord Browne praised the new Kyoto Protocol to limit emissions, the hardliners came together to create an “Action Plan” to combat America’s growing fondness for fighting climate change.
The “Global Climate Science Communications Team” was led by the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry lobby group bankrolled by Exxon and increasingly used as a political cover for their activities.
Randy was one of just a few industry representatives present; apart from this, the group was dominated by think tank representatives from the Heartland Institute, the Marshall Institute, and Frontiers for Freedom.
The group had a singular clarity of vision. The problem was that the public was sympathetic to the Kyoto Protocol. But this was alterable.
Media Outreach
The environmentalists’ Achilles heel was the public’s understanding of the science. By recruiting and training “a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach”, industry representatives would ensure that “a majority of the American public” recognise that significant uncertainties exist in climate change.
They would have a direct outreach programme to engage with colleges, the press and politicians “about uncertainties in climate science.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
This Is The Man Exxon Chose To Lead Its Effort Against Climate Science
This Is The Man Exxon Chose To Lead Its Effort Against Climate Science
This DeSmog UK epic history post portrays Lee Raymond, the Texan captain who steered the Exxon ship against the rising tide of climate science.
In 1997, BP’s British boss, John Brown, stunned the world by endorsing the science of climate change and calling for government regulation to reduce carbon emissions. Exxon’s Lee Raymond (pictured), however, was an entirely different beast: brash, bullish and brutal.
This real life J.R. Ewing came from working class stock all the way from the Great Plains and fought his way to the top of the oil giant Exxon.
Raymond lived in a 8,642-square-foot, five-bedroom brick-façade home in Dallas, had around-the-clock access to the Exxon fleet of nine corporate planes for personal and work trips, and enjoyed the protection of an armed bodyguard and chauffeur who was a former New York police officer.
‘Oil and Gas Purist’
According to Steve Coll, the author of the award-winning Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Raymond ruled the company with a “drill sergeant-inspired ethos” and he “considered himself unabashedly to be a ‘free-market capitalist’ and resisted government intervention and regulation instinctively.”
Raymond was also an “oil and gas purist” and, in taking over the company, ended the brief flirtation with environmentalism that had taken place under the former chairman Clifton Garvin, who had installed solar panels to heat his home’s swimming pool.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Harvard-Smithsonian Profited as Much as Willie Soon with Fossil Fuel Funding
Harvard-Smithsonian Profited as Much as Willie Soon with Fossil Fuel Funding
Both Harvard and the Smithsonian Institute are trying to shake off the controversy surrounding Willie Soon, but these esteemed organizations should not be let off the hook easily.
Earlier this week, documents revealed by the Guardian and New York Times provide irefutable evidence that climate denier Willie Soon and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophyics received more than $1 million in funding from fossil fuel companies to deliver scientific reports that called into question the scientific conclusion that climate change is the result of burning too much oil, coal and other carbon-emitting fuel sources.
Harvard quickly tried to distance themselves from the Soon scandal telling the Guardian that “Soon operated outside of the university.” This, despite the fact that Soon “carries a Harvard ID and uses a Harvard email address.”
The Smithsonian Institute also reacted quickly announcing that they have tasked their Inspector General to look into the ethical conduct of Dr. Soon.
“The Smithsonian is greatly concerned about the allegations surrounding Dr. Willie Soon’s failure to disclose funding sources for his climate change research,” they said in a statement shortly after the scandal broke over the weekend.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
THE YEAR THE DAM OF DENIAL BREAKS – READY FOR THE FLOOD?
THE YEAR THE DAM OF DENIAL BREAKS – READY FOR THE FLOOD?
This is the year the “dam of denial” will break and the momentum for climate action will become an unstoppable flood. It will be messy, confusing and endlessly debated but with historical hindsight, 2015 will be the year. The year the world turned, primarily because the market woke up to the economic threat posed by climate change and the economic opportunity in the inevitable decline of fossil fuels. That shift will in turn unlock government policy and public opinion because the previous resistance to action argued on economic grounds, will reverse tofavour action on economic grounds.
Before I argue for this conclusion, let me explain what I mean by the “dam of denial” and why the concept is so important to understanding what’s underway.
Anyone who “gets” the urgency of the climate issue and the scale of economic transformation it necessitates, is bewildered by those who don’t. How can so many otherwise intelligent and logical people – such as company executives, politicians and investment managers – not see the obvious urgency or the equally obvious economic risk? It is so illogical it can only be seen as denial.
This is not climate denial but an example of “implicatory denial”, the rather bizarre ability of humans to accept a risk but then stop processing the implications, just because those implications are so overwhelming. It is well covered in a study by Kari Marie Norgaard, described in her book “Living in Denial”.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bjørn Lomborg Sings WSJ’s Same Old Climate Change Song: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Bjørn Lomborg Sings WSJ’s Same Old Climate Change Song: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Bjorn Lomborg’s latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal resurrects repeatedly demolished distortions of fact to downplay the real and increasingly documented threats of climate change. His trademark tactic is to acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, only to then dismiss the solutions—reducing emissions and promoting clean energy now—as unnecessary or infeasible.
Fortunately, his longstanding fight against climate action is failing to persuade the public, as an overwhelming majority of Americans understand that climate change is a serious threat and that we’re already feeling the impacts. More to the point they support action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially through continued expansion of clean energy and new rules for coal-fired power plants.
Mr. Lomborg has relied on similar distortions for his arguments many times before, even drawing censure from the Danish government for his “perversion of the scientific method.”
After the release of Lomborg’s “deeply flawed” book The Skeptical Environmentalist, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science remarked that Lomborg’s work was a testament to the “vulnerability of the scientific process…to outright misrepresentation and distortion.” One researcher decided to fact check Lomborg’s claims, and had so much material that Yale published it as a book: The Lomborg Deception. In the book, Lomborg’s many sloppy citations and misleading myths are thoroughly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped him from repeating the same general arguments in years since.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Osborne Dines Former Chancellors, See the Menu They Fought to Keep Secret for Half a Decade
Osborne Dines Former Chancellors, See the Menu They Fought to Keep Secret for Half a Decade
Just before Christmas, back in December 2010, the chancellor George Osborne (pictured) sat down to a sumptuous lunch with his successors, including Lord Lawson of the climate denial charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
At the time, Lawson was telling anyone who would listen that he advised Osborne to make savage cuts to public services as part of the Tory austerity drive designed to drag Britain out of recession following the 2008 banking crisis.
It seems very likely that Lawson would have regaled his luncheon companions with this latest obsession: climate change. The world, he would have inevitably argued, simply cannot afford to make the sacrifices needed to reduce our profligate use of fossil fuels.
The Treasury claims they have no minutes or agendas from what was primarily a party political meeting among old friends. And expensive lawyers working for the government department fought tooth and nail for three years to stop even the menu being published.
However, DeSmog UK can reveal for the first time the delightful meal that cost the taxpayer £355.99 and was wolfed down as the political heavyweights argued the merits of austerity for everyone else.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A clash of epistemologies: why the debate on climate change is going nowhere.
A clash of epistemologies: why the debate on climate change is going nowhere.
A few weeks ago, someone barreled into the comment section of a post on climate change on the blog of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI) with a series of attacks against climate science and climate scientists. The ensuing clash was all in Italian but, if you follow the debate on climate, you know very well how these things go. The newcomer monopolized the discussion by repeating the usual legends; climate has always been changed, there has been no temperature increase during the past 15 years, there is no proof of the human effect on climate, and so on. And you can imagine how the scientists following the blog reacted. The discussion rapidly degenerated into assorted insults and personal smears, until the moderator closed the comments. That was way too late: the climate science denier emerged as the winner; while the scientists managed to give the impression of being both narrow-minded and sectarian.
It was a classic case of climate trolling, but with one difference. This time, the troll didn’t try to hide his identity (as trolls usually do); rather, he came with a name, an address, and a CV. He was Mr. Rinaldo Sorgenti, vice-president of the Italian Coal Industry Association (“Assocarboni“). Mr. Sorgenti’s exploits on the SCI blog give us a chance to understand what generates the kind of behavior that we define as “trolling.” So, I am willing to bet that Mr. Sorgenti is NOT a paid disinformer – as he was accused to be in the debate. In other words, he doesn’t deny climate science becausehe is on the payroll of Assocarboni (actually, he maintains that he gets no money for his position of vice-president, but I figure he gets at least a few perks from it). I would also say that not even the opposite holds true: Mr. Sorgenti is not the president of Assocarboni because he is a climate science denier. No, I would bet that denying climate science and being involved in the coal industry are two non-separate and non-separable elements of Mr. Sorgenti’s worldview. And this worldview has little or nothing to do with what we call science. Mr. Sorgenti is not a scientist, he doesn’t know how the scientific method works or, if he knows, he doesn’t believe it works or it is useful for anything. He uses the methods of debate commonly used in the political debate; a method of discussion that we can define as “rhetoric.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Warnings on Climate Spark Aggressive Denials – Truthdig
Why Warnings on Climate Spark Aggressive Denials – Truthdig.
LONDON—If you don’t like the message on climate change, it seems that the answer is to shoot the messenger.
According to a new book by veteran environmentalist George Marshall, thousands of abusive emails—including demands that he commit suicide or be “shot, quartered and fed to the pigs, along with your family”—were received by climate scientist Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre, who drew and published the “hockey stick graph” that charts a steep rise in global average temperatures.
Glenn Beck, a commentator on Fox TV, called on climate scientists to commit suicide. Aclimate denial blogger called Marc Morano claimed that one group of climate scientists deserved “to be publicly flogged”. And the late Stephen Schneider found his name and that of other Jewish climate scientists on a “death list” maintained by an American neo-Nazi website.
Very strange
As Marshall points out in his absorbing, all-embracing, immensely readable book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, something very strange is going on.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
