Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
ExxonMobil's unscrupulous policy of deception	tonyrey	01/29/07
"For more than three decades, the tobacco industry carried on a campaign of disinformation intended to mislead Americans about the health risks of smoking—a strategy that has been dubbed “manufacturing uncertainty” in the minds of consumers. And ever since global warming emerged as an environmental threat, there has been a well-funded public campaign to cast doubt on the scientific consensus about the danger of global warming and its source in fossil-fuel combustion. A report this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists finds a parallel between the efforts to whitewash tobacco and “greenwash” oil—and points the finger of responsibility at the world’s largest corporation, ExxonMobil. Under its former chairman and CEO, Lee Raymond, who retired in 2005 as one of the best-paid corporate executives in history, ExxonMobil was well known for its hostility to government regulations on emissions of carbon dioxide. But, according to the report, the op-eds and position papers were only the visible tip of Exxon’s effort to fund a small group of researchers and an overlapping network of think tanks that could be relied on to spread the message that global warming was nothing to worry about—or at least, nothing the government could or should do anything about. Their frequently repeated call for “sound science” on global warming echoes the tobacco industry’s endless demand for more research on whether cigarettes really, truly, unquestionably cause cancer. Of course, cigarette companies weren’t concerned just about future sales, but the billions of dollars in compensation they eventually had to … umm … cough up. ExxonMobil’s motivation, presumably, is to protect a fantastically lucrative market: its 2005 profits of $36 billion made it the most profitable corporation in history. But that very wealth puts them in a position both to shape and eventually dominate the postcarbon energy world, if they choose to do so. Ironically, as the report points out, the company and its shareholders will suffer if it gets left behind in the transition to less polluting forms of energy. For its part, ExxonMobil—after promulgating, and then withdrawing 20 minutes later, a statement that called the report an “attempt to smear our name and confuse the discussion”—wants you to know that it now accepts some responsibility for global warming. Specifically, and in boldface, it admitted that “It is clear today that 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.” That would seem, on the face of it, to contradict the assertions of some of its favored researchers in the ever-shrinking coterie of global-warming skeptics." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16475341/site/newsweek/ Who is prepared to defend ExxonMobil now?
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 01/30/07 3:08 pm: so if Green Peace funded a study it would be simularily biased and therefore discounted .As long as both sides roll out scientists with political agendas, very little of it is taken seriously by the general population .The UN being the most politically corrupt organisation in the world;why should anyone take anything they say seriously ?
Answered By		Answered On
tomder55		01/30/07
"skepticism is the first step towards truth."Denis Diderot THE Big problem for global warming alarmists is a period called "The Medieval Warming," which occurred from about 950 A.D. to 1350 A.D. . The Vikings colonized Greenland in 982 A.D. and stayed until 1425 A.D., when the cold weather and permafrost drove them out. While there they mapped the northern coast of Greenland, which is now encased in ice ...although it's slowly melting. Leif Ericsson, blown off course while headed for Greenland in 1000 A.D., discovered "Vinland"probably Nova Scotia ; where he found wild wheat and grapes growing in abundance. Today the land is barren. The warmer climate of the Medieval Warm Period was accompanied by a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art in Europe. But the existence of the Medieval Warm Period was an "inconvenient truth" for true believers in global warming. Dennis Deming, a climate scientist at the University of Oklahoma, recently told the Senate : In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me. With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them.... One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent. "There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed." Sometime this week the UN will publish a study refuting claims that climate change is cyclical .They can count all the tree rings they want to in California but they cannot refute the historcal facts . The Hudson Institute (obviously card carrying members of the Exxon disinformation campaign )has just published an excellent book, 'Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years', chronicling the whole controversy and more. S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery present their own counter-theory ;that the earth goes through regular 1,500-year cycles of warming and cooling, driven by the fluctuating intensity of the sun. There was a 'Roman Warming'period from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D.;and the well-documented 'Little Ice Age 'from 1300 to 1850, when Europe nearly froze to death. There is enough evidence to make a solid case for both sides of this debate. The problem is that when those of us who are skeptics make a counterpoint it is treated by the global warming crusaders as information that should be outlawed. Has anyone considered that both sides are right ? That climate change is cyclical due to solar activity , AND , that human activity is having an impact ? Actually yes there are .Nir Shaviv , an Israeli astrophysicist wrote a detailed balance analysis on his web site 'ScienceBits'. The truth is probably somewhere in between, with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. Following [the] empirical evidence... about 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes. I have argued ,and still do so that to the extent that we can reduce harmful emissions ,we should do so. I do not favor pollution trading schemes like Kyoto mandates and I do not favor letting emerging industrial nations off the hook while we punish existing industrial nations . I have found that once a TRUE concensus is reached then human ingenuity is very capable of problem solving .Once it was discovered that acid rain was destroying the forests of N.E. United States and the source was clearly linked to coal fired emissions in the mid west ,it did not take long for a solution to be found that not only enabled to forests to begin a turn around ,but also for the industries that used coal fuel to productively continue their business.

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