EXXOM SCANDAL EXXPOSED! So where's the news media?

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The exposure of the EXXOM-backed, tobacco-like, anti-science disinformation & denial conspiracy is finally getting some overdue coverage on the blogosphere.

Ask yourself why SciGuy or the Houston Chron is not reporting this potentially globally hot scandal that directly involves EXXOM, the, if not a, biggest employer & contributor & sponsor in So. Texas?

Could it be allegiance to, if not fear of, one of the biggest authoritarian carbon polluters this side of the Ganges, if not Yellow, River?

Or simply an uber-conservative sense, if not a history textbook full, of revisionist history & creationist ideology?

Or just news media business-as-usual that caters to fundamentally anti-science, anti-democratic sentiments in the libertarian bible belt?

Smacks of a major scandal, if not complicit coverup, to the rest of Colbert Nation.

Climate Science Watch: Dealing in Doubt: New Greenpeace report reviews 20 years of the climate change denial machine

The Cost of Energy: Greenpeace exposes those “dealing in doubt”

Hot Topics New Zealand: Dealing in doubt: 20 years of attacks on climate science

Post Carbon Institute: A Confederacy of (Climate) Dunces

The new report succinctly explains how fossil fuel interests used the tobacco industry’s playbook and an extensive arsenal of lobbyists and “experts” for hire in order to manufacture disinformation designed to confuse the public and stifle action to address climate change.

ExxonMobil deservedly gets special attention for its role as the ringleader of the “campaign of denial.” As Greenpeace has documented meticulously over the years with its ExxonSecrets website, ExxonMobil is known to have invested over $23 million since 1998 to bankroll an entire movement of climate confusionists, including over 35 anti-science and right wing nonprofits, to divert attention away from the critical threat of climate disruption caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels.

The report ... calls out by name a number of key climate skeptics and deniers who have worked with industry front groups to confuse the public, including S. Fred Singer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, David Legates, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Tim Ball, Pat Michaels and many other figures familiar to DeSmog Blog readers.

A number of the key “think tanks” at the forefront of the attacks on climate science — including the Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Enterprise Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute — are also examined for their climate denial work on behalf of oil and coal interests.

Greenpeace explains how the network of denial was created in the early 1990s to dissuade politicians from taking action to prevent climate change. Chief among these early groups were the Global Climate Coalition, the Climate Council and the Information Council on the Environment (ICE).

The report also provides a brief history of the attacks launched against each of the IPCC’s scientific assessment reports dating back to 1990, noting the key players involved in each successive attack leading up to the present day attempts to tarnish the IPCC’s reputation and to falsely suggest that a debate still exists among climate scientists.

Personal attacks endured by climate scientists, especially key contributors to the IPCC reports, are also discussed in some detail, including the virulent attacks by the climate denial industry against reputed scientists like Michael Mann, Ben Santer, and Kevin Trenberth.

Greenpeace also calls out Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and other members of Congress who are beholden to polluting industries through campaign contributions, and who regularly aid and abet the climate denial industry by promoting the false and misleading claims of deniers and skeptics on Capitol Hill.

Finally, “Dealing in Doubt” notes the escalation of the denial campaign during the administration of George W. Bush, when key White House and regulatory agency positions were filled with polluter lobbyists.

The placement of Philip Cooney, a lawyer and lobbyist who spent 15 years at the American Petroleum Institute before he was picked as chief of staff in the Bush White House Council on Environmental Quality, serves as a key example. Days after the New York Times broke the story that Cooney had made extensive edits on government scientific reports on global warming, Cooney resigned to go work for ExxonMobil.

“Dealing in Doubt” is recommended reading for anyone looking for a brief primer on the history of the denial industry’s relentless campaign against science and reason.

DeSmogBlog: Greenpeace Releases 20-Year History of Climate Denial Industry
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Climate Criminals at Large

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WANTED FOR CLIMATE CRIMES, libertarian John Bircher oil-billionaires who fund anti-science denier front groups even more than EXXOM.

From 2005 to 2008, the Koch Foundations provided over $24.8 million in funding to climate denial groups; ExxonMobil provided about $9.1 million to similar organizations over the same period.

Some of the most determined opponents of action on climate change in the U.S. are so-called libertarians, motivated by an ideological commitment to minimal government and "free market" laissez-faire capitalism. Their efforts on behalf of unregulated corporate wealth and power have been funded heavily by patrons in the fossil fuel industry. While ExxonMobil has drawn much attention for its patronage of global warming denialist activity by such groups, much less public attention has been paid to the activities of the multibillionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries. Koch Industries is the second largest private company in the U.S., with estimated 2008 revenues of $100 billion. Started as a petroleum business by their father Fred Koch, who was also a founder of the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, Koch Industries has become a diversified enterprise that funds large-scale lobbying and a range of libertarian policy and activist groups that play a significant role in the global warming denial machine.

Koch Industries multibillionaire Koch brothers bankroll attacks on climate change science and policy
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Sic semper tyrannis!

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Now, it's become even more transparent that EXXONMOBIL foreign-oil subsidies are behind the tobacco-like propaganda campaign to deceive the American public.

Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”.

The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images.

Americans are paying the price for these subsidies with our tax dollars, our health, and our national security. Removing these subsidies would “ripple through the economy” by unleashing a clean-energy future.

This is just the latest in a stream of polluter front groups using stock photos in Astroturf campaigns against clean energy policy. API was recently caught trying to add diversity to its dirty ads by photoshopping minorities into stock photography. West Virginia’s “FACES of Coal” turned out to be from iStockPhoto.com. And Virginia’s “Coalition for American Jobs” is a stock-photo front group for the American Chemistry Council.

Big Oil uses fake “Americans” to attack fake “energy taxes.”

Americans red-white-&-blue need to stand up to these oil industry executive liars & deceivers, already drenched in our red blood from oil wars, before it's too late.

Remember when tobacco company execs in expensive suits & straight faces, all the while funding denier campaigns of no scientific connection between tobacco or nicotine-addiction & cancer, repeatedly told deliberate lies to the American people under oath? How many of our family & friends suffer from or have already died horrible deaths from smoking cancer, coronary & heart diseases, & related killers?

Remember the last time something like this happened in Germany when facts were subverted by lies? How many of our parents & grandparents paid the price for such power-mad manipulation & deceit?

Enough is enough! Sic semper tyrannis!
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Texas climate scientists stick it to EXXOM-funded deniers.

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Bravo Zulu! Texas climate scientists stick it to EXXOM-backed deniers.

Texas' challenge to the EPA's endangerment finding on carbon dioxide contains very little science. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott admitted that the state did not consult any climate scientists, including the many here in the state, before putting together the challenge to the EPA. Instead, the footnotes in the document reveal that the state relied mainly on British newspaper articles to make its case.

Contrary to what one might read in newspapers, the science of climate change is strong.

• The global climate is changing
• Human activities produce heat-trapping gases.
• Heat-trapping gases are very likely responsible for most of the warming observed over the past half century.
• The higher the levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the higher the risk of potentially dangerous consequences for humans and our environment.

The national academies of science of 32 nations, and every major scientific organization in the United States whose members include climate experts, have issued statements endorsing these points.... In fact, to the best of our knowledge, there are no climate scientists in Texas who disagree with the mainstream view of climate science.

We are all aware of the news reports describing the stolen e-mails from climate scientists and the errors in the IPCC reports. While aspects of climate change impacts have been overstated, none of the errors or allegations of misbehavior undermine the science behind any of the statements made above. In particular, they do not alter the conclusions that humans have taken over from nature as the dominant influence on our climate.

On global warming, the science is solid
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AWEA on Renewable Energy Standards & American Jobs

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re: "Our economy is at risk, because these jobs are being created overseas."

Utter disinformed tea party palin-beck propagandic nonsense, pilgrim. Our economy is at risk because we haven't yet invested in sufficient manufacturing base necessary to produce the sheer volume of electrical components needed for wind turbine farms here & in foreign markets.

While the Bush/Cheney administration pumped trillions of our taxpayer dollars into foreign oil subsidies & foreign oil wars & foreign EXXOM mega-profits, Europe & China provided the necessary government regulatory infrastructure & stimuli to attract 100s of billions of investment dollars into renewable energy manufacturing capacity & demand.

So again, thanks to the utter stupidity of the Party of No-Way, No-How, No-Jobs criminal malfeasance & disgovernance to line the pockets of EXXOM Rex Tillerson's & Denier-in-Chief James Inhofe's Saudi billionaire buds, we're now relegated to playing catch up.

And catch up we'd better, else trillions more of our taxpayer dollars will flow to Prince Al-Walid & Prez. Chavez & EXXOM boardroom bonuses, instead of building a strong manufacturing base in renewable clean technologies to provide jobs for 100s of thousands of long-unemployed construction & industrial American workers.

"Rather than adopt policies that will kill American jobs, Congress should enact policies that will create jobs by encouraging manufacturers to invest in U.S. plants. That means passing a Renewable Electricity Standard now."

"The Recovery Act has been creating jobs by helping finance new American wind energy projects that have broken ground or been completed since the Act was passed. The proposed moratorium and legislation would kill this effort and destroy the momentum for one of the few industries that has been creating jobs and economic growth."

"It is unfortunate that the proponents of this moratorium and legislation are using a deeply flawed study as the basis for a policy that would destroy tens of thousands of American jobs."

"We support the goal of continuing the rapid expansion of U.S. wind manufacturing. More than half of the value of wind turbines used in U.S. wind projects is domestically produced, and that percentage is increasing every year as more turbine makers build U.S. manufacturing capability. We do not have the capability today to produce 100% of wind turbine components in the U.S., but we can grow our manufacturing base and add 274,000 American jobs if Congress passes a strong Renewable Electricity Standard." AWEA

The House of Saud dictates FOX NEWS?

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Well, we can all certainly give this a 50/50, rather, a 57+2/41.

FOX NEWS in bed with Saudi Arabia? Watts up with that?

[Saudi Prince] al-Waleed has formed multiple connections with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the owner of Fox News. In September 2005, he acquired 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp., and just a few months later, when Fox ran coverage of riots in Paris under the banner "Muslim riots," he allegedly phoned Murdoch and had him change the heading to "civil riots." Murdoch’s News Corp. cements ties with Saudi prince

So, that Saudi billionaire Prince tells Aussie billionaire Murdoch how to report the FOX NEWS. But surely, both these foreign-borns have America's best interests before their own Swiss bank accounts?

Now the partnership is growing even closer, with News Corp. acquiring a 10% stake in al-Waleed's media conglomerate, Rotana, along with an option for another 10%.

And that oil-billionaire Saudi Prince is now the biggest shareholder in FOX NEWS?

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Conservative Activists Rebel Against Fox News: Saudi Ownership Is ‘Really Dangerous For America’

Call us red-blooded American, but what were the nationalities of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers?

[Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal] owns a very significant percentage of the News Corp and has let the world know that he can get things taken off Fox News when he finds them objectionable and has in the past. And I really believe this is really dangerous for America.

Perhaps, we should all crank up the odds of a congressional investigation into FOX NEWS foreign ownership to a unanimous 100% of red-blooded American Senators, unless, of course, you're not interested in facts or truth.
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Is Houston the epicenter of anti-science?

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Food for thought.

Back later with our take after some fun on Not on the origin of species, but the origin of life over at our favorite Houston science blog, SciGuy.

Won't you join Eric Berger (the SciGuy moderator) & the rest of us? Pewfuls of anti-science guaranteed.
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Watts' Self-driven Self-deception.

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Really, these days (since the middle ages), to quote WattsUpHisButt on D'Aleo & Watts' latest XOM-funded anti-science attack rag is impure, adulterated denial BS.

Or as the esteemed Texas State Climatologist all too politely puts it:

It's called "Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?" (pdf here) and it's by Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts. A reader asked me to comment on it. It turns out to represent a refreshing change from the IPCC reports. While it's necessary to dig and dig to find errors in the IPCC reports, the errors in what I'll call STR are right there on the surface, easy to spot. Here's a sampling:...

D'Aleo and Watts are saying that because predominantly only warm stations are available in the data set in recent years, the temperature anomalies will be falsely positive and show a bogus warming. Their logic is absolutely wrong, and all major global temperature compilations (NCDC, GISS, and CRUTEM3) are calculated in such a way that a loss of stations like this doesn't bias the anomaly estimates.

To sum up, the fundamental premise of the D'Aleo and Watts report is incorrect, and in all likelihood means the exact opposite of what they think it means. The IPCC vs. Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts