{"id":975,"date":"2014-11-01T18:37:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-01T22:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=975"},"modified":"2014-11-01T18:37:29","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T22:37:29","slug":"oil-and-gas-industrys-endless-war-on-fracking-critics-revealed-by-rick-berman-desmogblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"Oil and Gas Industry&#8217;s &#8220;Endless War&#8221; on Fracking Critics Revealed by Rick Berman | DeSmogBlog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2014\/10\/31\/oil-and-gas-industry-s-endless-war-fracking-critics-revealed-rick-berman\">Oil and Gas Industry&#8217;s &#8220;Endless War&#8221; on Fracking Critics Revealed by Rick Berman | DeSmogBlog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">Leave it to Washington&#8217;s top attack-dog lobbyist Richard Berman to verify what many always suspected: that the oil and gas industry uses dirty tricks to undermine science, vilify its critics and discredit journalists who cast doubt on the prudence of fossil\u00a0fuels.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">In a speech at an industry conference in June, surreptitiously recorded by an energy executive, Rick Berman, the foremost go-to guy for Republican smear campaigns, gave unusually candid advice to a meeting of drilling\u00a0companies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\"><span class=\"dquo\" style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px -0.5em;\">\u201c<\/span>Think of this as an endless war,\u201d he told executives in a speech, which was\u00a0<a style=\"color: #3399cc; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/10\/31\/us\/politics\/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html?ref=us&amp;_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">leaked to The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0by an attendee at the conferenece who was offended by Berman&#8217;s\u00a0remarks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\"><span class=\"dquo\" style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px -0.5em;\">\u201c<\/span>And you have to budget for it.\u201d He said the industry needs to dig up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, exploit the public\u2019s short attention span for scientific debate, and play on people\u2019s\u00a0emotions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\"><span class=\"dquo\" style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px -0.5em;\">\u201c<\/span>Fear and anger have to be a part of this campaign,\u201d\u00a0<a style=\"color: #3399cc; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/10\/31\/us\/politics\/31lobbyist-docs.html#document\/p2\/a184722\" target=\"_blank\">Berman said<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to get people to like the oil and gas industry over the next few\u00a0months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">Berman also advised that executives continue to spend big. \u201cI think $2 to $3 million would be a game changer,\u201d he\u00a0<a style=\"color: #3399cc; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/10\/31\/us\/politics\/31lobbyist-docs.html#document\/p2\/a184722\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve had six-figure contributions to date from a few companies in this room to help us get to where we\u00a0are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the story&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oil and Gas Industry&#8217;s &#8220;Endless War&#8221; on Fracking Critics Revealed by Rick Berman | DeSmogBlog. Leave it to Washington&#8217;s top attack-dog lobbyist Richard Berman to verify what many always suspected: that the oil and gas industry uses dirty tricks to undermine science, vilify its critics and discredit journalists who cast doubt on the prudence of [&hellip;]<\/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],"tags":[141,655,686,705],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-propaganda","tag-richard-berman","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}