Oil Giant Accused of Funding Global Warming 'Disinformation'

Cybercast News Service ^ | January 4, 2007 | Monisha Bansal

[Froufrou]

Accusing ExxonMobil of funding a "disinformation campaign" against global warming, an environmental activist group said Wednesday the oil giant has been paying advocacy groups to create confusion about climate change.

The corporation and two of the organizations targeted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) dismissed the allegation, variously calling it a smear, "junk," and motivated by a left-wing agenda.

In a new report, the UCS charged that ExxonMobil "doesn't want you to know the facts about global warming" and that it "vehemently opposes any governmental regulation that would require significantly expanded investments in clean energy technologies or reductions in global warming emissions."

Alden Meyer, UCS director of strategy and policy, said during a conference call that ExxonMobil had "for years underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign whose aim has been to deceive the public and policy makers about the reality of global warming."

Meyer accused the corporation of giving some $16 million over the past seven years "to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue."

Meyer said the UCS report names 43 ExxonMobil-funded organizations which he claimed "seek to manufacture uncertainty about the strong scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping emissions in the atmosphere -- and that this buildup is the direct result of human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels."

"These groups promote spokespeople who misrepresent peer reviewed scientific findings, or cherry-pick the facts in an attempt to mislead the media and the public into thinking that there is rigorous debate among the mainstream scientific community about global warming," Meyer said.

Upending claims frequently made by global warming skeptics, Meyer accused the named organizations of crafting data "to look like legitimate science."

ExxonMobil spokesman Dave Gardner called the report "yet another attempt to smear our name and confuse the discussion of the serious issue of CO2 emissions and global climate change."

Gardner told Cybercast News Service ExxonMobil believes "greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change, and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions."

The corporation was also taking "significant" steps to reduce the emissions, he said - making its operations less energy intensive, pursuing research with engine and vehicle manufacturers to improve transportation efficiency, and carrying out advanced research "to pursue breakthroughs in technology for future energy sources."

On the funding allegations, Gardner said the corporation supports "a fairly broad array of organizations that research significant domestic and foreign policy issues and promote discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company."

"As most of these organizations are independent of their corporate sponsors and are tax-exempt, our financial support does not connote any substantive control over or responsibility for the policy recommendations or analyses they produce," Gardner added.

"As you might expect, in many cases and with respect to the full range of policy positions taken by these organizations, we find some of them persuasive and enlightening, and some not," he said.

"But there is value in the debate they prompt if it can lead to better informed and more optimal public policy decisions," Gardner added.

'Piece of junk'

Of the organizations cited in the UCS report, the biggest recipient of ExxonMobil funding - about $2 million - was the free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Myron Ebell, CEI director of energy and global warming policy, dismissed the report as "just a piece of junk."

"These claims that we are part of some conspiracy, that we're misleading the public, that we're misrepresenting the science, I reject that," Ebell told Cybercast News Service.

"They are completely false, and they are certainly not proved by this junky, rubbishy report. These are just assertions," he said.

"This whole list has been published over and over again," Ebell said, noting that one of the documents cited by the UCS was an email sent by himself, which he said had been taken out of context.

Ebell said the donations do not signify a conspiracy.

"We have been the grateful recipients of some major contributions from ExxonMobil, and we wish we could get more corporations to contribute so we could do more on global warming," he said.

"We are not a scientific group. We are a policy group," Ebell added. "We believe in limited government and political and economic liberties. We address issues and promote those policies that we think will do the most to limit government and promote liberty based on what the scientific facts are."

Other organizations listed by the UCS included the Media Research Center (MRC), the parent organization of Cybercast News Service. The report said the MRC had received $150,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.

MRC founder and President Brent Bozell said Wednesday ExxonMobil's total contribution to the MRC "represents two-tenths of one percent of our operating budget during this study period. If that influences us, we're cheap ... how is that influencing anything that we do?"

Bozell rejected allegations of funding for favors.

"I have never had a conversation - and I know no one at the MRC has ever had a conversation - with anyone at Exxon where Exxon has ever put any kind of controls or any kind of strings on any kind of contribution," Bozell said.

"Nor has the MRC ever made any kind of commitments in return for any kind of contributions. It would be professional suicide if the MRC ever did that for anyone," he said.

Bozell called the UCS "a left-wing activist organization with a left-wing activist political agenda."

"The Union of Concerned Scientists is trying to position itself as being some kind of objective, centrist, moderate, apolitical entity when it is nothing of the sort," he said.

[Still Thinking]

Meyer said the UCS report names 43 ExxonMobil-funded organizations which he claimed "seek to manufacture uncertainty about the strong scientific consensus among people who agree with us that global warming is caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping emissions in the atmosphere -- and that this buildup is the direct result of human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels."

[Froufrou]

" scientific consensus among people who agree with us "

I get your point...no random sample here!