I don’t think it’s possible to insult us any more than to think we don’t know what it means to be greedy.
They are not in danger of being eliminated outright. However, every dollar spent on, say, a hybrid car as opposed to a gas guzzler, a solar panel or a nuclear plant instead of a good ol’ fuel burner or really any other not_oil energy source is one buck that does not come their way. Why settle for anything less than ALL THE MONEYS ?
Practical alternative energy sources also decrease the price of oil per barrel for relatively obvious reasons. Supply, demand, all that.
So yeah, there absolutely is a vested interest for Big Oil to try and stem the tide. Denying that moves past candid territory and into “are you actually a paid-for astroturfing shill ? :dubious:” land.
And when did I do that?
Welcome to the Dope, n00b. 
“Golly! What reason would they have ever have for wanting even more money then they already have?” :rolleyes:
I don’t think it’s that simple. You want to know what oil companies generally want? They want high stable prices that are not too high that they will make alternatives price competitive or hurt the economy. So, in today’s environment, they like oil being around $100. They would get nervous if oil prices were to spike to those summer 2008 levels. At certain prices, the economy starts to falter and/or demand destruction occurs. Oil companies certainly don’t want that. They want a strong growing economy.
They also want to be able to meet demand for their product. There is very little spare capacity right now even though prices are high; that is not good. Could oil/gas production ramp up to replace coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc and keep up with projected demand? Absolutely not. Most sources project declining OECD oil consumption and growing non-OECD oil production with large growth in natural gas and alternatives to replace coal and meet forecasted consumption growth. Oil production could never do that on its own.
I guess I don’t understand why any of that would be controversial. What’s “salesy” about it?
Well, I think they’d probably like to not face fines/sanctions or be nationalized or something like that. They operate primarily on land they don’t own, much of it government owned; they probably want to continue to do that. Most of the rest of it is owned by individuals; they probably want to be able to operate on that. Might help if they didn’t have bad reputations. I think there are a lot of reasons why they might not want to lie due to just unfettered greed. I think when you are facing extinction, like the tobacco companies were, you might be motivated a little differently. They have a little less to lose.
The OP has ruled out energy companies as the main source. So who’s giving the money, then?
So, in reading through the Exxon link I provided in the OP, I’ve come across two additional pieces of information that might be of interest.
First, Exxon provides a list of all companies that they donate to related to Climate Change. It can be found here for 2013.
They also provide a Carbon Disclosure Project report for their investors shown here.
This is a very long and detailed summary of specific actions that they take or plan to take to reduce emissions.
I didn’t due that. I have not seen any evidence that Big Oil is the driving dollars behind it. In this thread I have stated that smaller historical contributions (of which there appears to be some evidence for) are not material.
I’m not making any claims nor have I even really thought hard about contributions by other energy companies. I’ve seen some references about coal companies and companies such as Koch Industries that might indicate they are large sources behind much of the funding.
And of course I noticed early what was coming up, indeed the next step, when failing to support denialism directly the next best thing as the tobacco and drinking alcohol companies showed, is to fund organizations that do good work; but the idea is to influence them when hard regulations come and then many of those organizations are expected to know who has the power of the purse and will be expected to help them when the harsh regulations come.
Once again, they saw the writing in the wall and they are, like in the steps of grief, in the bargaining step.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/24/3417692/exxon-climate-risk-disclosure/
This. Exactly this. Every measure to mitigate emissions, every measure to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, every measure toward energy efficiency, is lost revenue for the oil companies.
It’s astounding to me that anyone could claim that oil company lobbying doesn’t make a difference in view of what has already been stated – the nearly $1 billion that the cited Brulle paper was able to account for between 2003 and 2010 (of which Exxon was large enough to have its own entry on the chart, and that was just public money, not dark money), the $16 million that the UCC was able to trace to ExxonMobil alone*, and most importantly, the resultant state of public perception about climate change. And no, it’s not a matter of “convenience” that so much of the public is in denial – as the above-cited paper points out (and other surveys corroborate) 43% of the US public believes that scientists are in doubt about AGW (45% correctly reported the near-unanimity of the science, and 12% didn’t know). And of course there’s anecdotally some segment of the public who believes that scientists are actually lying to us for some nefarious purpose. Where are people getting these impressions about the science if denialism funding is “too small to make a difference”?
Some of the cites I provided explain just where they’re getting it. I think it’s fair to say that the more than $1 million in grants obtained by the crackpot denialist Willie Soon alone from coal and oil companies since 2001 to produce reprehensibly bad science [previously cited] is a typical source of this kind of disinformation. Soon and his fellow crackpot fraudster Sallie Baliunas produce the kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense that is then spun by denialist media – also well funded by the fossil fuel industry – into the notion that there is real “debate” in the science about the nature of AGW.
If anyone could possibly believe that oil company lobbying doesn’t make a difference, here’s yet another example:
The American Energy Alliance was formed in 1993 by the American Petroleum Institute and some other corporations as one of many front groups to lobby against environmental legislation. In 2009 the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey Bill) was introduced into the House, basically an emissions trading and energy efficiency plan. The bill managed to pass the then Democratically controlled House but failed in the Senate, and what is interesting is the AEA’s active and reprehensibly deceptive role in this. The AEA (incidentally, headed at the time by disgraced former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay) began running ads warning that American taxpayers “would pay a heavy price” if Waxman-Markey was approved – specifically, that the bill would cost taxpayers “more than $3100 per year in new taxes”. They claimed they got that number from an MIT study.
What they did not disclose in their flagrantly deceptive ads was that, though the study contains that number, the claim that the AEA was making was utterly false, and the study’s author, John Reilly, publicly repudiated the lie. In fact, the MIT study was supporting just the sort of emissions reductions and trading being proposed, similar to the European model, which has nothing whatsoever to do with costing the taxpayer anything. Moreover, a related study by the Union of Concerned Scientists showed that the bill’s provisions for energy efficiency would actually save consumers and businesses an estimated $465 billion per year. And if the government used money raised by the bill to finance tax breaks for consumers to improve their energy efficiency, the average household would save $900 a year, including $580 on fuel and $320 on electricity and heating.
The bill failed despite a Democratic majority in both chambers at the time, and one can only imagine what its fate would have been had outright denialists like Inhofe and most currrent Republicans been the dominant votes. These people have political power and profess the views they do because it’s what most of their constituents believe. Let’s not kid ourselves about why they believe it. Joe Romm, the physicist who founded the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions and was cited by Time magazine as one of its “Heroes for Environment” in 2009, has called the oil industry’s manipulation of public opinion “the greatest disinformation campaign in human history”. And what is the counter-evidence against that? A few general platitudes on oil company websites – platitudes so obvious, given the overwhelming body of scientific evidence for AGW, that they have no choice but to make them in order to retain even a shred of credibility? Gimme a break!
So my bottom line is that I don’t care about these meaningless platitudes; what I care about is the oil companies’ long and sordid history of secretive manipulation of public opinion, their stunning hypocrisy and their persistent mendacity and flagrant dishonesty.
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- I inadvertently and incorrectly referenced this amount as $29 million earlier, my apologies.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but from my reading, if Exxon gives money to the Heritage Foundation, 100% of the money is being counted in this total? That’s correct, right?
I’m just now reading this study and am not an expert, so please correct me where I’m wrong. Seems like this study counts any dollars that go to these organizations that Brulle says oppose mandatory limits on carbon emissions.
Seems like any dollar donated to any group that opposes mandatory limits on carbon emissions is included in this total. Am I right in reading that?
Some, not all, of the front groups and astroturf “policy foundations” are right-wing groups with more than one agenda. Others – and there are many – are exclusively intended to spread disinformation about climate science. Oil and coal companies fund both. Are you suggesting that when oil companies fund the former (often through money-laundered arms-length third parties), they have no interest in climate change denial but are only promoting the other agendas? Because oil companies freely recognize the reality of AGW and reflect this in all their PR including their dark money expenditures, and if this means that the use of oil will be more rapidly phased out for clean energy, well, as good corporate citizens the oil companies are delighted with that outcome? Is that what you’re seriously suggesting? If so, please read my last post again. For that matter, read this whole thread again.
Just to be clear, these are things that Exxon is doing that are not good. I just want to get this right, so please correct me where I’m wrong.
It’s not good that they publicly acknowledge climate change is happening and is caused by man-made emissions of green house gases.
It’s also not a good thing if they provide funding to environmental organizations because that’s just for PR purposes and so they can later control them.
It’s not a good thing that they disclose what their emissions are.
It’s not a good thing that they have shown they are accountable to their shareholders’ concerns and provide a detailed report for the Carbon Disclosure Project.
It’s not a good thing that they publicly support a carbon tax.
Just want to get my talking points, right. None of those are good?
Missed the point by a mile, that is a point in their favor, but completely wasted in light of what they are doing in the background.
IIRC in England for example the hard liquor companies are funding health groups that are against them in principle, recently there was the item that those health groups were in favor of minimal prices for hard liquor, but after a few years of funding from the hard liquor companies those groups suddenly dropped that idea.
Sometimes subtle pressure will do wonders. And it is, as pointed before one of the few cards that they have left to play, the political one is now one of the big ones.
Missing the point again, it is good, but it is a lousy deal once one looks at the details and what they refused to look at when doing those disclosures.
Same thing. And this also ignores the pressure many CEOs and members of the fossil fuel companies should be getting from those shareholders for using their power to undermine what they are “officially” supporting now.
Again, show me were their funded groups like Heritage Foundation or Americans for Prosperity are supporting politicians that are in favor of it.
Some of them are, but incomplete as usual.
I’m suggesting that donating to groups like the Heritage Foundation shouldn’t count as funding climate change denialism. I’m not suggesting anything like what you posted.
Sorry, but they count, as MediaMatters noticed:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545
Well, why couldn’t they be funding these groups for totally unrelated reasons to climate change? These groups have almost nothing to do with climate change.
That’s craziness. The Heritage Foundation has a history going back years and years before Climate Change was even a thought. Maybe they like their positions on taxes for example. Maybe recent donations reflect the Affordable Care Act. Maybe they like their positions on National Defense.
If you really wanted to count these donations, it would seem to make sense to proportionally adjust down the dollar amount that they are counting to reflect what portion of their budget these organizations spend on Climate Change activism.