{"id":25017,"date":"2017-08-29T20:50:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T01:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25017"},"modified":"2017-08-29T20:50:04","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T01:50:04","slug":"how-exxon-used-the-new-york-times-to-make-you-question-climate-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25017","title":{"rendered":"How Exxon Used the New York Times to Make You Question Climate Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Exxon Used the New York Times to Make You Question Climate Science<\/a><\/h3>\n
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A breakthrough study from Harvard unearths the extent Exxon has gone to in order to destroy the public’s trust in climate change\u00a0science.<\/p>\n

Last week, Harvard University researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes (of\u00a0Merchants of Doubt<\/a>\u00a0fame) published the first peer-reviewed study comparing\u00a0ExxonMobil\u2019s internal and external communications on climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The abstract of the Supran and Oreskes study shows that ExxonMobil\u2019s own scientists and executives had a much sharper understanding of climate science than the company told the public (emphasis\u00a0added):<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12 percent of advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science \u2014 by way of its scientists\u2019 academic publications \u2014 but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy,\u00a0we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public<\/strong>.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the Harvard authors\u00a0credit<\/a>, the advertorials came from a\u00a0study published on PolluterWatch<\/a>\u00a0by our former colleague at Greenpeace, Cindy\u00a0Baxter.<\/p>\n

Cindy\u00a0republished many of\u00a0ExxonMobil\u2019s New York Times advertorials<\/a>\u00a0back in 2015. This was right as investigative reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed the extent of\u00a0knowledge among Exxon\u2019s own scientists<\/a>\u00a0that burning fossil fuels caused unnatural global\u00a0warming.<\/p>\n

With these revelations in mind, Cindy recalled a peer-reviewed study in the journal Public Relations Review on \u201cadvertorials\u201d or \u201cop-ads\u201d that Mobil Oil paid to have published in the New York Times. The authors of that study, Clyde Brown and Herbert Waltzer, reviewed 819\u00a0New York Times advertorials that Mobil placed \u201cevery Thursday\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from 1985 to\u00a02000.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Exxon Used the New York Times to Make You Question Climate Science A breakthrough study from Harvard unearths the extent Exxon has gone to in order to destroy the public’s trust in climate change\u00a0science. Last week, Harvard University researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes (of\u00a0Merchants of Doubt\u00a0fame) published the first peer-reviewed study comparing\u00a0ExxonMobil\u2019s internal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[141,2956,15779,5317,4390,10151,1921],"class_list":["post-25017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-science","tag-connor-gibson","tag-desmog-blog","tag-exxon","tag-harvard","tag-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25018,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25017\/revisions\/25018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}