The denial industry

[blonndee]

The denial industry

The oil giant ExxonMobil gives money to scores of organisations that claim the science on global warming is inconclusive - which it isn't. It's a strategy that has set back action on climate change by a decade, and it involves the same people who insist that passive smoking is harmless, reveals George Monbiot in the first of three extracts from his new book

Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".

Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens' organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. One or two of them, such as the Congress of Racial Equality, are citizens' organisations or academic bodies, but the line they take on climate change is very much like that of the other sponsored groups. While all these groups are based in America, their publications are read and cited, and their staff are interviewed and quoted, all over the world.

By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.

Lengthy extract continues at http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1875762,00.html

[Viking12]

1. There are some good resources to feret out the denialists...

Here are some web resources to help identify industry disonformation campaigns:

SourceWatch, a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org) to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch's primary focus is on documenting public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists and government agencies.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch

Exxon Secrets: How Exxon Mobil funds Climate Change skeptics

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/

"There appears to be a concerted and systematic effort by some individuals to undermine and discredit the scientific process that has led many scientists working on understanding climate to conclude that there is a very real possibility that humans are modifying Earth's climate on a global scale. Rather than carrying out a legitimate scientific debate through the peer-reviewed literature, they are waging in the public media a vocal campaign against scientific results with which they disagree."

http://info-pollution.com/


Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/MediarologyFrameset.html