Sarah Palin, Polar Bears and Exxon Junk Science
Today, Guardian writer Ed Pilkington took a fresh swat at Governor Sarah Palin's use and defense of Exxon-funded junk science on polar bears in the State of Alaska's attempts to to kill the listing of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.
We have covered the evolution of this story on ExxonSecrets for over a year here and here with links to articles and documents of interest.
Much has been made of Palin's denial of global warming since she was nominated as the GOP Veep candidate, but no one has questioned her credibility for using 'research' that was funded by ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute and Charles Koch Foundation.
We are wondering if Gwen Ifill of PBS will ask Ms. Palin a pointed question tomorrow? or if Senator Biden has read the Guardian story?
Tom Kizza at the Anchorage Daily News has followed this story the best, filing two good articles earlier in the year here and here.
This classic ExxonSecrets map of the junk science authors from the Dyck, Soon, et al article shows once again the tentacles of the Denial Machine (see page 9 for acknowledgement of funding from Exxon and friends). Palin's goon squad cited the Dyck, Soon paper 6 times and even attached a copy of the article (pre-publication) to their 49 page submission to the Department of Interior.
All the background documents can be found on Greenpeace Investigations:
- Exxon funded junk science
- rebuttal by real polar bear scientists
- Alaska's submissions to Department of Interior
No reporters have questioned Exxon or API about funding this research and no one has gotten the scientists themselves on the record as to how much money they got from Exxon and friends and the marching orders attached to that funding.
Swindled by the swindle
The UK TV watchdog, Ofcom, is the watchdog for the UK broadcasting industry, keeping an eye on how broadcasters carry out their duty to the public to be both fair and accurate and not cause harm.
Ofcom ruled today on a complaint against the polemic documentary about global warming, The Great Global Warming Swindle.
It upheld complaints by the former UK Chief Scientist, Sir David King, the IPCC and oceanographer Carl Wunsch, stating that the filmmakers had treated them unfairly, misquoted them or misled them into being interviewed. However, it managed to cleverly dodge the complaint about accuracy or misleading the public, to the fury of some scientists.
The film itself has been sold around the world, and the DVD viewed by thousands online.
What those viewers still haven't been told is that at least 10 of the 16 interviewees are central to the denial industry - directly associated with - or even paid by - think tanks funded by ExxonMobil.
And yes, we have a map showing you just how that all works. Total funding to these groups since 1998? $11,335,600
But of course even Exxon is apparently walking away from them - if you believe the latest statements from the company.
The issue isn't over yet - the complainants are now considering appealing the decision. But meanwhile the UK public has been swayed by the film - a staggering 60% are now sceptic about climate science - a shift that has been squarely blamed on the Swindle by the UK's leading polling company, Ipsos MORI, as George Monbiot mentioned in his column.
The best interview I've seen of the problems with the programme was by ABC Australia's Tony Jones, which is well worth a watch.
Crimes against humanity?
The tipping point on global warming is close, according to James Hansen, director at NASA's Goddard Institute for space studies.
In his speech to congress on 23 June, Hansen has issued his strongest warning yet about the state of the climate.
He focuses, at one point, on the CEO's of major companies, singling out Exxon and Peabody in particular. "In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."
The crimes, as we know, are the continued funding of the denial industry, peddling confusion and doubt in the public. This week also saw an new poll in the UK paper, The Observer, pointing out the rise of climate scepticism, which follows an earlier poll in the US saying the same thing. The US poll, though, showed that the rise was amongst Republicans.
That would be the Republicans who are the denial industry's audience.
So again we point to the 23 organisations that Exxon continues to fund. The sooner they stop, the better.
Strike Out Exxon from the 7th Inning Stretch
Today we are launching a local campaign Strike Out Exxon to flush the red beast out of the brand new Washington Nationals baseball park. The park is touted as a certified "green" faciltiy by the US Green Building Council.
Exxon has bought the advertising rights to the 7th inning stretch...so now its no longer the...mom and apple pie, GodBlessAmerica, Take Me out to the Ballgame, Root Root Root for the home team, my first Phillies game with dad at Connie Mack at age 6, peanuts and crackerjack 7th inning stretch...
no no no... it's now branded "THE EXXONMOBIL 7th INNING STRETCH" 100 feet tall on the center field scoreboard with bright red ExxonMobil logo on every LED ad screen ringing the park.
Instead of singing our song, having a stretch and going to get some crackerjack and a beverage of choice from the concession stands, eager Washington fans are reminded of the $95 fill-up the just plowed into their Chevy Tahoe that GM wont even take back on trade-in!
I called the advertising guys at the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and a few other teams to get a sense if it was unusual to have an monster oil company as a sponsor of the "stretch" advertising parcel. I learned the BoSox have Coca Cola as a sponsor, which makes some sense, thirsty after 7 innings? The Yankees have Cracker Jack, which makes even more sense, its their song after all. The Yankees guy said he had never heard of an oil company buying that space before and seemed a little perplexed that a promotions person would take such an offer.
By the way, the song Take Me Out to the Ball Game is 100 years old this year, I read the other day in a great children's book by Jim Burke on the song's origins in NYC at the turn of the century when baseball came of age and became a integral part of the nation's fabric.
I updated the lyrics with apologies to Jack Norworth:
TAKE EXXON OUT OF THE BALL GAME
GET THEM OUT OF THE CROWD
TIRED OF FOUR DOLLAR GAS-O-LINE
AND GLOBAL WAR-MING IS MA-KING ME SCREAM
LETS ROOT, ROOT, ROOT FOR THE NAAATIONALS
AND STRIKE EXXON OUT OF THE GAME
FOR ITS 3…2…1 POLAR BEARS AND WE KNOW WHO TO BLAME.
The Strike Out Exxon campaign was spurred this spring by Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a great regional global warming advocates here in DC, and our friends at Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth and the Hip Hop Caucus. We welcome additional member organizations but hope this campaign is swift. There were even rumours that Exxon might vie for the naming rights to the park to be auctioned later this summer. Hopefully the Nationals owners think that through.
Because the only thing Exxon is stretching is the truth about global warming and its monster bank accounts. Stay tuned for updates and contact CCAN for free tickets.
Who's being cute, Exxon?
Who's being cute, Exxon?
While Exxon may have dropped some groups and is starting to admit that they "divert attention" CEO Rex Tillerson reverted immediately to type in comments made to the media after the shareholder meeting.
He duly trotted out the Bush/Exxon/Lee Raymond "more research" [therefore no action] line on climate, and told the Canadian Financial Post
"We have to let scientists to continue their investigative work, unencumbered by political influences. This is too important to be cute with it."
Excuse me? "unencumbered by political influences"? This is the company which spends millions on lobbying, which has spent $23 million on front groups to continue their climate denial. Or is Exxon not a "political influence"?
Yes, more research on climate is needed in all sorts of areas - but this is not an excuse for sitting on your hands, Mr Tillerson. If anyone is being "cute" it has to be your continued funding of 28 climate denial organisations.
If Exxon had gotten its hands out of political influence on climate science back in the early 1990's, things could be very different today.
And speaking of cute, check out Exxon's takeover of the new baseball park in Washington.
Unbelievable.
Exxon finally admits denialists cause problems
Exxon has admitted - for the first time - that the climate deniers it funds are causing problems for action on climate change.
This is a first for the company which has spent, since 1998, $23 million funding the climate denial industry.
And it's official - Exxon made this statement in this year's Corporate Citizenship Report, released in time for its shareholder meeting.
The statement reads:
"in 2008 we will distcontinue contributions to several public policy interest groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner." (page 41 under "public policy research contributions."
"Could divert attention"? We award Exxon a special prize for the Understatement of the Year. The denial industry can be held responsible for the US's failure to act on climate. And Exxon has been at the heart of it for more than a decade.
So which groups is Exxon dropping? According to Reuters, gone from the funding list in 2008 are the George C Marshall Institute, the Committe for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Frontiers of Freedom... and others.
These groups are what you might call the "engine room" of the climate denial industry.
But even Exxon's walking away from them now.
The company started dropping groups in 2006, with the Competitive Enterprise Institute being the first to go. Last year, it dumped the Heartland Institute, which organised the biggest denial conference for a long time, in New York in March and has been running a slightly ridiculous campaign against Al Gore.
The other groups were all co-sponsors of the Heartland conference which concluded, surprisingly enough, that global warming isn't happening.
We note that this announcement didn't come from the usual spokesman from Exxon, Ken Cohen, who chairs the company's funding committe, but from a new person. Clearly the new CEO Rex Tillerson is trying to shift his company from the poisoned chalice left to him by former CEO and arch denialist, Lee Raymond.
But is cutting nine groups getting the job done?
In short, no. From the 2007 Worldwide Giving Report, posted on Exxon's website on Friday, we can see that Exxon funded a total of 37 global warming denial groups, to the tune of nearly $2 million, which is pretty similar to 2006. Even cutting nine of them means the company is still funding 28 groups engaged in climate denial.
Tillerson needs to make a much wider sweep if he really wants to shake off Raymond's legacy - he has started, but we think he should apologise to the global community for the harm his company has caused.
1998 communications strategy groups finally seen off
The latest round of Exxon cuts means an end to the funding of the organisations who gathered together in 1998 to plot a communications strategy designed to foster public scepticism of climate science and undermine the Kyoto treaty.
The plan was drawn up by a small cabal of groups and companies, including Exxon, Chevron and the big energy provider, the Southern Company, and Fred Singer's outfit, SEPP. In there were also Frontiers of Freedom and the Marshall Institute, who have both enjoyed Exxon funding ever since.
The memo stated that "Victory will be achieved when:
... average citizens "understand" (recognise) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties become part of conventional wisdom;
..."Those promoting the Kyoto Treaty on the basis of extant science appear out of touch with reality."
Well, sorry guys, while you may have achieved a certain level of climate scepticism, the IPCC's latest report is absolutely clear on the climate science - and governments are acting on it.
Will this stop the denial industry?
Well, no. We note that Walt Buchholtz, Exxon's former funding man, left the company and went to work at Heartland for a year. No doubt he helped set up Heartland's new sources of funding from other members of the business community.
There's still a ways to go, but it's a start. When companies like Exxon start questioning this lot, there's not a lot of people who will continue to support them.
Mocking Americans
A clear window into what happened to our democracy could be seen today as the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, “Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil,” with executives from BP, Shell, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and ExxonMobil. I found it on C-Span. Some of the highlights:
None of the executives could remember how much they make, although most admitted it was in excess on 2 million dollars. They all did their best to look somber about the record high prices of oil and then went on to blame China, OPEC (remember that old boogeyman?) and most importantly, lack of access to new places to drill for oil to help make America energy independent. These guys are paid enormous amounts of money to pretend they care about the pain the public feels when they tighten the screws on us. Congress throws some theatrically tough questions and act concerned, although they don’t pay for the gas for their own limos. You and I do. So its sort of like Broadway except it seems the makeup artists use brooms.
J. Stephen Simon, the Senior VP of ExxonMobil went through a series of arguments showing how dramatically the oil industry margins have been reduced. By the end of his explanation it seemed that ExxonMobil was profitless, although thanks to public records we know that their profits were a record 40 billion dollars last year and are on pace to crush that record this year. He spoke of working together to strengthen American competitiveness, advised us not to worry about the current “upcycle” (that was his euphemism for the sky high gasoline prices) and all the while whining about taxes.
All the executives stated directly or implied that the oil price crisis could be alleviated by giving them access to the last wild places where oil is still to be found in America: the Rocky Mountain Front Range, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and more coastal drilling. If your grandmother had oil in her teeth they’d want those too. The fact is that these sources take years to explore, destroy wild areas permanently and would only reduce the price of oil marginally. But they would add handsomely to the oil companies’ profits. It’s the perfect argument for the oil companies: they want more of the same, record profits, easy access to our lands and waters, continued subsidies of about 40 billion dollars a year for oil and gas (easy to remember as it is the same as ExxonMobil’s 2007 profits – and both are on track to go up in 2008), and blame the lack of access on the environmentalists.
The fact is I am not against oil prices going up. That is what is going to make us use less. If oil prices were being driven up by a federal system that put a cap on the carbon that these and other companies bring into the economy and force them to buy credits to emit permitted amounts, the revenue from the credits would then go back to Americans, all Americans to help offset the higher energy costs – not drive profits higher.
The retiring head of Shell had a fun way to try and downplay the record profits. He mumbled out something about the profits they are reporting being very large in absolute numbers but you have to look at the segments of our business, the upstream something or another, historic age of oilfields, marginal costs…
I started to feel sorry for these guys, I felt less resentful of the 40 billion dollars in subsidies that we give these guys each year who can’t remember how many millions of dollars they are paid. Heck, I felt like running down to the Hill and bringing them flowers. After all, they got some pretty tough questions from the Senators. To make matters worse, a protest kicked in, I could hear the voices in the back of the room while watching on my computer screen the faces of the witnesses as they heard somebody demanding that we separate oil and state Dammed hippies insisting that the politicians stop taking campaign donations from the executives that they are supposed to protect Americans from, yeah, and wreck the whole game.
Pretty nuts… like enough to make you wanna take the bus.
Milloy's Limp Strategy Revealed
Today, HuffingtonPost's RFK Jr. and Brendan Demelle detail a revealing interview with Steve "Junk-for-Brains" Milloy in the Pittsburg Tribune-Review this week.
In the interview, Milloy talks about his current anti-corporate responsibility campaign against corporations who are better than the laggards at Exxon on global warming policy- which would be most of them at this point...Milloy is targetting General Electric, Alcoa, Fe-Ex and other movers to the left of Exxon on the climate consciousness continuum.
We at ExxonSecrets, remember that Exxon seeded Milloy's Free Enterprise Action Fund in 2003 with a $50,000 grant for "Research" to the Free Enterprise Action Institute, an organization that exists nowhere in the world except in Milloy's mind and on Exxon's World Giving Report documents. Exxon followed this with a $70,000 grant in 2005 to the Free Enterprise Education Institute for "Corporate Social Responsibility and Climate Change" though this annotation did not appear in the public Exxon World Giving Report, only in Exxon's tax forms to the IRS...hmmm but remember that Exxon dropped Milloy in 2006...so sad
Also of interest is the leading stock holding of Free Enterprise Action Fund is none other than Exxon at over 4% of stock held.
We also note that Milloy was scoffed at during a recent Wall St Journal green forum for trashing corporate leaders on climate policy. Hopefully corporations will brush Milloy aside at their annual meetings this year, as you would an annoying gnat...
Exxon Still Raking It In $$$$$$$$$$$$
Ahhhh, another good news for Exxon-bad news for the rest of us day...
The economy in shambles, food prices skyrocketing, gas prices at all time highs and going higher...at least Exxon is smiling.
Exxon's quarterly earnings report today turned out another record breaker - with $10.89 Billion, which works out to over $120 million a day and over $5 million an hour.
and what is Exxon spending all this loot on?
they tell us, don't worry they are exploring for more oil to sell to us, to make more record profits... what me worry?
oh, and they have been buying back their own stock at a record clip...they repurchased $8 billion in shares in the 1st quarter of 2008.
The quarterly profits announcement brought out the predictable calls for "windfall profits tax". Even Barack Obama took a shot at Exxon's profits in a recent TV Ad
But then it turned up that Obama, Clinton and McCain have all gotten money from Exxon employees during the '08 election cycle, and ironically, Obama has seen the most!
If you want to see if your Congressperson has recieved Exxon cash go here
So far 85% has gone to Republicans...go figure.
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Global Warming Denial-a-palooza 2008 – Where is Exxon?
The Heartland Institute has emerged over the last year as the ringleader of global warming denial, challenging Al Gore to pointless debates and now hosting what is possibly the largest Denial cnvergence ever- we'll call it
Denial-a-palooza 2008...
This two day festival of stuff and nonsense, might be better suited as an opening act for Monty Python's Spamalot, playing down the street on Broadway. The conference is sponsored and attended by the small and shrinking tribe of diehard deniers who question the veracity of the global warming crisis and attack those who are trying to do something about it.
But where on earth is Exxon? diehard sponsor of said organizations... A few years back, Exxon would have been giving the keynote speech at a show like this, or at least behind the scenes pulling puppet strings. In fact many companies would have been eager to endorse this counterinsurgency. Not now apparently.
Lost
The train has left the station, but they’ll always have each other, huddled grumpy on the platform. Well, a little better than the train platform, this week’s conference is being held at the quite pricey Marriot Marquis right on Times Square in New York City. Someone with deep pockets must be paying Heartland’s bills these days. We wonder who?
The subtitle of the innocous and official sounding 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is the pleading“Can you hear us now? Global Warming Is Not a Crisis? There is a megaphone on the cover. While on its face, this is a conference about global warming science, there are well populated conference tracks on Climate Change Politics and Economics. To us here at ExxonSecrets, there is no difference between doubting and denying the science and attacking policies to solve it. The overwhelming and unsettling conclusions of the scientific community on global warming have imparted an urgency and inspiration to the policy community around the world. If you argue we should do nothing, or do less, you ARE denying the science. There is no doubt about it.
What Inspires Them?
One wonders how these hardy deniers keep it up in the face of the momentum that has finally arrived. Or perhaps that is exactly what inspires them. This is the final battle for this crowd. It is a crisis for them, a crisis of lost credibility and corporate backing. After at least 15 years of success with tactics of delay and denial and distraction, they are losing badly.
We are finally on the cusp of passing national global warming regulations in the US (hopefully when we get a new president). Numerous major corporations have endorsed that goal. Still more corporations are moving ahead with corporate carbon reduction goals and moving into the market for clean technology. Just what do these denial professionals think of the likes of turncoats Walmart, General Electric, GM, Alcoa, Fed-Ex, Coca-Cola, Bank of America to name a few, who have acknowledged the threat, and either endorsed regulatory approaches or and taken measures to shift investment and business practices?
States and local communities across the country have moved even faster than the Fed to pass regulations and regional carbon reduction efforts. What do these deniers think of Arnold "the Global Warming Terminator" out in California?
And just what do they think of the fact that our next president, Obama, Clinton and McCain WILL tackle global warming one way or another. They are all speaking about global warming as the number one environmental threat, and speaking about the economic opportunity in finding solutions? No wonder Rush Limbaugh and the conservatives hate McCain, he went to the Arctic with Hillary a few years ago to see global warming damage firsthand with the scientists. McCain has been the unlikely Republican stalwart on global warming since 2000.
So Who Is Here?
There are weathermen, PR flacks, pundits, some scientists as well. Some fifty organizations are co-sponsors. Heartland, the host, has asserted on its website and in the program that “No corporate funding was used to support this conference.” One wonders why they are so insistent on stating this. Until a few years ago, these groups would proudly proclaim that they were supported by great American corporations (without disclosing their funders).
We've done an ExxonSecrets deluxe map of those we know about. We have all the cosponsors on the left side, the 50 some odd speakers down the middle and the other organizations they are linked to down the right.
We have data linking some $7.5 Million in Exxon funding (98-06) to many of the prominent cosponsors along with the Heartland Institute. Maybe Exxon opted out of Heartland’s workplan for 2008 or stipulated that it wouldn’t sponsor this conference? Again, why are they being so defensive about corporate funding?
We know that a few of the conference cosponsors were dropped by Exxon like rotten hot potatoes in 2006:
Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Center for Defense of Free Enterprise,
Independent Institute
Free Enterprise Education Institute the precursor to Steve Milloy’s Free Enterprise Action Fund
But 10 conference co-sponsors received a total of $782,500 from Exxon in 2006, the latest year for which Exxon has revealed its handouts.
The preface of the conference program claims 400 people will attend, including the 100 or so assorted speakers and panelists. The featured attendees include PR flacks, pundits, thinktankers, and a small handful of the old-school doctors of denial like Singer, Seitz and Micheals, a few ex-weatherman and even a comedian, not kidding. There are profiles of the 50 some odd people we know on ExxonSecrets wiki and DeSmog has posted some detailed profiles here.
Freedom?!
The title of ABC’s John Stossel’s closing address on Tuesday is "Freedom and Its Enemies” The conference must have something to do with “freedom” or more specifically “free enterprise”, which translates to freedom for corporations. There are five cosponsoring organizations with free in their names -The Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Frontiers of Freedom, Free Enterprise Action Fund, The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, The Free Market Foundation (from S. Africa).
We will report on this mess over the next couple of days. Stay tuned.
ExxonMobil: More Money than God
Over at DeSmogBlog today they picked up on the news of Exxon's quarterly earnings report...something we all look forward to...
The profiteers fiddle while the economy crumbles
DeSmog's details and fine calculator work:
ExxonMobil, everyone's favorite oil company, is set to announce 4th quarter
earnings of $10.37 billion - a paltry $111 million a day.
Expected annual earnings for ExxonMobil in 2007 are a whopping $39 billion -
or about $106 million a day,
$4.4 million an hour and
$73,000 a second.
And now Bush and the Congress want to put a "Economic Stimulus Package" in your pocket - $600 per person - so you can go put it right in Exxon's pocket the next time you fill up... hmm Exxon's economy seems to be stimulated quite nicely already
Polar Bears and Exxon
As the Fish and Wildlife Service misses its deadline this week to finish its decision on listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act... we wonder if the Exxon-funded study published last summer and referenced by the State of Alaska in its opposition to FWA action might have slowed them up...shame if indeed that is the case.
Speaking of which, the Governor of Alaska published a Op-Ed in the NY Times over the weekend vigorously opposing listing the polar bear with an inaccurate assessment of things. A nice editorial last week by the Times must have triggered the Governor's response...
We did an expanded treatment of the Exxon Polar Bear mess here, including Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina's request for information from Exxon on its funding of skeptic science. Don't miss the suggested unanswered questions at the end...
One additional nugget was the quote by an Exxon spokes recently. In response to Gore pointing out Exxon funding of the network that supports climate denial scientists, the Washington Times reported:
"Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories. " Walton stated, "Recycling of that kind of discredited conspiracy theory is nothing more than a distraction from the real challenge facing society and the energy industry..."
Distractions indeed...some people create distractions for a living...and maybe Mr. Walton should check with the Exxon Secret Payroll department before making such declarative statements next time.
See Inhofe post below this one for more on that episode....
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