AGU Needs To Sever Ties With ExxonMobil's "Blood money"

When I joined the American Geophysical Union more than 30 years ago, I did so to be part of a professional organization of scientists at the forefront of research from space physics to climate change.  Indeed, from the time the AGU position on climate change first came out, followed by a mild revision, e.g.


http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf


It has been encouraging to see at least one major scientific organization out in the open stating clearly the extent to which climate change-global warming is real and a threat to all of us on this planet.

Therefore, it was somewhat shocking to read in a recent issue of Eos: Earth & Space Science News (December, page 8, 'AGU Should Sever Ties With ExxonMobil') that the research organization to which I belong has actually been taking money from the most arrogant and deceptive climate change deniers for the past 15 years.  This according to the three authors of the article: Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, and Kerry A. Emmanuel.

As the authors note:

"For decades, ExxonMobil has engaged in a campaign of disinformation: funding individuals and organizations committed to portraying climate change as highly uncertain, if not a hoax; questioning the motives of climate scientists; and targeting researchers for personal attacks aimed at discrediting their findings.

ExxonMobil executives have repeatedly suggested in speeches, in interviews, and in “advertorials” that climate science was too unreliable to be trusted as a basis for policy making. Flying in the face of peer-reviewed economic studies, they have also insisted that the costs of mitigating climate change would be greater than the benefits.

Accepting ExxonMobil money violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation. Given these facts, it baffles us that the American Geophysical Union (AGU) continues to accept money from ExxonMobil. The more than half a million dollars of ExxonMobil money that AGU has accepted over the past 15 years violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation.

Last month, AGU reaffirmed its perplexing stance. On 23 September, its Board of Directors chose not to sever ties to ExxonMobil funding, despite receiving a detailed report from AGU members that demonstrates that ExxonMobil is still in the business of disinformation."


These opening sentences left me with mouth agape and in near disbelief. How on earth could an organization to which I'd committed more than 3 decades of time, energy (and money!)  have made such an awful, near sighted decision? I mean, why accept "blood oil money" from a bunch dedicated to denying what your own position statement displays?  Have even the most venerable professional scientific organizations been perverted by "Trumpdom"? Well, of course, that can't be a factor given it's been going on for 15 years. This elicits the question of whether the money given was that important to AGU carrying out its mission.

I doubt it, given that a half million bucks over 15 years is, let's be clear, essentially "chump change" compared to the tens of millions collected in regular professional fees, membership fees. I mean, we're talking about  $33,300 a year. Is that really all it takes for a scientific organization to sell its principles, its very "soul"?   

These questions are even more to the point given, as the authors point out (ibid.):

"ExxonMobil’s systematic attacks on climate science are well documented. They have been detailed by our fellow scientists, as well as us—indeed, we ourselves have been targets of ExxonMobil’s repeated attacks. ExxonMobil’s assault on climate science has been documented in the scholarly research of historians and sociologists who have taken up the issue of attacks on science as a question of academic scholarship. The attacks have also been heavily explored by journalists, science advocacy organizations, and filmmakers.

What’s more, ExxonMobil’s attacks on climate science are not a thing of the past. A report by AGU members sent to AGU’s Board on 25 March 2016, ahead of their 6–7 April Board meeting, documented an exhaustive body of evidence supporting the fact that ExxonMobil “continues to generate its own misinformative comments, fund groups that promote climate science misinformation, and financially support more than 100 climate-denying members of Congress.”

Moreover, “despite stating publicly in 2008 that it would no longer support climate science misinformation, ExxonMobil has continued to make public statements disparaging the validity of climate science and to financially support others who do the same.”"

The most trenchant point of all is perhaps:


"The fact that AGU accepts this money is a clear violation of AGU’s Organizational Support Policy. The policy states, “AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

Adding:

"It is precisely because ExxonMobil so clearly fails to meet the standard of this policy that more than 100 leading AGU members, including the three of us, were signatories to an open letter last February urging AGU to sever its ties with the company. The letter noted that “AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action. But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU’s institutional social license to help legitimize the company’s climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members.”

AGU must understand that this is not merely a matter of cosmetics or optics. The fact that money - in any amount - is being accepted from ExxonMobil, actually undermines credibility in AGU's position statement and its commitment to serious climate science.

At the same time this schizoid behavior may need a broader explanation. As Naomi Klein has noted ('This Changes Everything') while insurance and re-insurance companies are at the forefront of concern over climate change, i.e. Ms. Klein quotes  (p. 49)one Swiss re-insurer (Swiss Re Americas):

"What keeps me up at night is climate change."

Many still contribute "substantial sums of money" to climate denier think tanks like the Heartland Institute. Ms. Klein offers no convincing reason for such contradictory behavior, but it could well be explained by a divergence between individuals in a company and the opinion of the whole Board of Directors.  In any case, as climate change disasters ramp up this split will have to end, given insurers will be bleeding more and more money.

In any case, one hopes AGU will soon see the gross error of its ways and send these ExxonMobil spinners and their money packing.

See also:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

Another Fake Climate Scientist Exposed: Willie Soon

Thanks to Chris Hayes in a segment on his  Monday might 'All In' for exposing yet another paid hack climate denier posing as a climate scientist and "astrophysicist". This would be none other than Willie Soon, whose dubious history regarding climate science precedes him.  This concerned a spurious paper in a joint 2003 effort by Soon and Sallie Baliunas with a graphic misuse of statistics. Reference to it may be found at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007A664-3534-1F03-BA6A80A84189EEDF

The methodology used by Soon and Baliunas was terrible, and any proper referee versed at all in statistics would've tossed most of their analyses out in a heartbeat. Especially their deliberate  use of 50-year data periods, increments when the IPCC scientists had already disclosed anthropogenic warming appears at 30 -year levels. In effect, Baliunas and Soon employed what we call a 'selective effects filter' to cull the data they preferred not to have to deal with. As serious climate critics pointed out in the aftermath of the paper, by using much wider 50 year periods one essentially whitewashes the signal right out of the data.

Sadly, it seems Soon hasn't learned his climate lessons. But mayhap he's being paid too much as a shill for the denial lobby to do so. Hayes led off the segment with a pie chart showing 97 percent of published climate papers agree global warming is happening and humans are the primary cause. This elicits the question: 'Who makes up the other 3 percent?'

Hayes' immediate response was that these minority climate change deniers (I disdain misuse of the word 'skeptics' as Chris does) are not all they appear That is, objective researchers in pursuit of scientific truth. Such is the case with Dr. Willie Soon, ostensibly based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, until one digs beneath the surface. (And btw, when one is praised by the most infamous climate change denier - James Inhofe - one knows he's hit new lows and is really a bottom feeder scientifically.)

Hayes then went on to cite the truth about Soon using a clip and excerpt from the New York Times. e.g.

"Though often described on conservative news programs as a 'Harvard astrophysicist', Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard."

More technically, Soon is actually a part-time employee of the Smithsonian which jointly runs  the Center along with Harvard. More to the point, Soon is only there because he brings in his own funding. What exactly this translates into wasn't known until Greenpeace submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for Soon's grant correspondence. What they found also appeared in the Times' piece on 'Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0)':

"He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers."

Can anyone say 'paid whore' for the fossil fuelers? I can!   Especially as Soon, according to the Times:

described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

So can Hayes. As he put it:

"There are now one point two million more reasons to doubt his work."

Which, let's face it, would already be doubt worthy given how he earlier played with statistics to wash out the actual global warming signal from his paper.

Maybe Soon needs to very soon click on the link below to see the more rapid melting of ice caps and glaciers, which we're actually seeing in real time, showing climate change-global warming is happening as I write:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899

The preceding ought to get even the most blinkered global warming denier's attention, as well as http://www.salon.com/2015/02/26/scientists_stick_it_to_climate_deniers_study_provides_direct_evidence_that_human_activity_is_causing_global_warming/

See also:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/23/the-favorite-scientist-of-climate-change-deniers-is-under-fire-for-taking-oil-money/

And more documents on Soon's deplorable brand of science can be found here:

http://www.climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-harvard-smithsonian-documents-reveal-southern-company-scandal

Payback Really IS a Bitch!

Many blog readers will recall two years ago when all hell broke loose after innominate hackers broke into the email directories of Michael Mann of Univ. of Pennsylvania and climate research collaborators at Univ. of East Anglia in Great Britain to try to reveal a "climate gate"scandal concealing a "hidden agenda". Of course, the Neo-liberal, corporate-coopted media picked up on a lot of this kerfuffle because, let's face it, they always get a hard-on for conflict - never mind the underlying issues.

So again, they framed it as a "Gotcha!" moment with the Denier faction "striking back" against those pointy-headed climate scientist nerds that really have the evidence for warming but just want to keep deniers out of their precious journals! Never mind that all this turned out to be mostly a storm in a teacup.

For exmple, Myles Allen of Oxford University, quoted in a Financial Times article from July 29, 2010, observed that it was clear from the accumulated work of climate scientists that human-engendered greenhouse gases were the problem. In his words (ibid.):

"Climategate never really brought climate science into question at all."

Meanwhile, according to an EOS Transactions article on the outcome ('Report on Climate Change Emails Exonerates Scientists', Vol. 91, No. 29, July 20, 2010):

"The report (Commissioned by the University of East Anglia) specifically refutes a number of concerns raised about tampering with scientific data and notes that allegations about CRU (Climate Research Unit) scientists misusing the IPCC's process 'cannot be upheld'"

The American Geophysical Union's own take on the email flap was even more blunt and to the point, reported in December, 2009, noting:

"The AGU finds it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks, then exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change".


Now it appears that payback has arrived, at least on one of the funded denier outfits, The Heartland Institute. According to a news brief making today's Denver Post (p. 7A), a prominent environmental activist, researchers and blogger - Peter H. Gleick - used subterfuge to obtain and distribute "confidential" internal materials from Heartland, which is dedicated to spreading lies on global warming which they dare call "questioning". (Hmmmmm.....how many cranks today are still "questioning" the sphericity of the Earth and the fact it orbits the Sun, not the converse? Well, maybe Rick Santorum, but not many others!)

Basically, Gleick didn't commit the terrorist act of actually hacking into a system as the rogue predators who obtained material from Michael Mann and East Anglia did. Rather he resorted to the simple expedient of posing as someone else to get the materials which included strategy and fund raising documents as well as the outline of a plan for major "greenwashing" by delivering "educational materials" to elementary school students to try to disabuse them of the global warming paradigm.

The last echoes earlier green washing efforts (cf. Polluters in the Classroom, by Chris Bedford, in Chesapeake Newsletter, The Sierra Club, May/June, 1998, p. 1), noting:

"Ironically, the polluting corporations contending that environmental education turns kids into 'green-eyed monsters' are dumping misinformation into our classrooms. For example, a video Exxon distributes rewrites the history of the worst oil spill ever as a 'great test for their cleanup equipment'."

Other green washing initiatives noted in the same piece included:

-The American Coal Foundation's 'Power from Coal'

-Proctor and Gamble's 'Planet Control'

-The Chlorine Institute's 'Welcome to Block City'

-Dupont's 'Less Is More - Learning About Source Reduction'

The principle operative throughout, the byword as it were, is that "every teachable moment is an advertising moment." And, in the same voice, the message is launched that ecological concerns are misplaced hysteria, or 'mythologies'.

And what, pray tell, was the response of the right wing reactionary financial press to Gleick's expose? Well, it was found in today's WSJ Editorial, 'The Not So Vast Conspiracy' noting that from available documents, Heartland is going to get barely "$7.7 million this year" - which they contend is toddly squat to the World Wildlife Fund which took in $238.5 million last year.

But this compares chalk and cheese.

First of all, only a minor portion of WWF's funds actually goes to climate research or education. If the total is $10 million, I'd be amazed. As a steady recipient of their literature, I see most (99%) is devoted to saving this or that species on the verge of extinction, from certain monkeys in Madasgascar to Polar Bears to Bengal Tigers. Thus, their emphasis is not on the climate aspect so much.

Second, there are many dozens of denier outfits apart from Heartland which the WSJ dares not mention, including:The Global Warming Coalition (definitiely funded by Big Oil and the fossil fuel0coal lobbies which investment the WSJ denies), The George C. Marshall Institute, which is a haven for publishing "research" by dedicated denier "scientists" such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas- who in a 2003 paper used 50-year data increments to conceal a CO2 warming effect, when the IPCC scientists already disclosed anthropogenic warming appears at 30 -year increments.

We refer to this as selection bias.

Then there is the American Enterprise Institute, which offered and as far as I know continues to offer, $10,000 per article to denier "scientists" to question global warming, the IPCC, or any adjuncts of them to do with climate research.

Above all, the WSJ conveniently omits the massive benefits in brain (green-)washing redounding to all the reactionary think tanks and their denier participants, politicos each time one publishes (for FREE) a syndicated column extolling or applauding global warming skepticism. It is such columns that we put into the category of public relations, not genuine information or scientific knowledge. (For more on the PR industry get the book, 'Toxic Sludge is Good for You' now available used on amazon.com for pennies).

Thus, we have a large interlinked network of deniers, including all the above named think tanks, plus American Heritage Foundation, Hudson Institute, Hoover Institute, CATO Institute and many others linked in common cause to try to baffle Americans with their flat Earth bullshit. Putting all of them together, I daresay the monetary -funding benefits accrued rival the WWF, the Natural Resource Defense Council and many progressive outfits by at least 5-1 in terms of bang for the buck delivered. (Certainly, I seldom if ever see a column in the Denver Post or anywhere composed by someone from the WWF or NDRC, as often as I see denier bunkum from a hack hailing from one of the reactionary tanks like CATO)

As I've stated in earlier blogs, I wouldn't have so much of a problem if these denier networks just came out and openly stated they fear the economic costs of carbon limits and taxes, and THAT is why they are actively fighting the IPCC, the AGU, the NOAA and others in the scientific - reality based - realm. Their campaigns then, are based on preservation of finance capital and profits, as opposed to any science!

Hence, don't come back with half-baked, specious mumbo-jumbo based on "sunspots", "natural warming cycles", "cosmic rays", or other bull pockey that seeks to challenge the established science with pseudo-science and piffle while insisting that the "warming mongers are doing it for the money-grants". Believe me, folks, the grant money isn't all that much and pales beside what the capitalist think tanks get each year - including freebie space in the mainstream press under the guise of 'syndicated columns" offered by the think tanks!