# Exxon announces merger with White House **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 15, 2005, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441 "2005-06-15T21:00:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2005, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/1 "2005-06-15T21:00:12Z")
[Former White House official takes Exxon job](http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/15/cooney.exxon.ap/index.html) > [@](#): > > Last week, the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistle blowers, made available documents showing that Cooney was closely involved in final editing of two administration climate reports. He made changes that critics said consistently played down the certainty of the science surrounding climate change. Didn’t we have a thread about Cooney’s creative editing of global warming reports? I thought we did but search is turning up nothing. I don’t know if there is much meat to the story, or if it’s anything more than blog fodder. If nothing else, another in a string of image problems for the administration. Does it even matter? ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2005, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/2 "2005-06-15T21:36:38Z")
> [@Patty O'Furniture](#): > > I don’t know if there is much meat to the story, or if it’s anything more than blog fodder. If nothing else, another in a string of image problems for the administration. > Does it even matter? Umm…after everything that came before why would this little blip matter? Seriously. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2005, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/3 "2005-06-15T22:45:28Z")
Just as a side note, the evidence in favor of human-caused global warming has now become so overwhelming that most of the oil companies are no longer bothering to fund junk science trying to cloud the issue. However, it seems that Exxon-Mobil has decidexd to pick up the slack where the other oil companies left off, funding literally dozens of sources of nonsense. For instance, a recent cross-country speaking tour by author Michael Crichton trashing environmentalists was funded by E-M. ([cite](http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html)) ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Gene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@Soylent\_Gene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Gene)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/4 "2005-06-16T04:15:37Z")
This developemtn does absolutely nothing to embarass the Bush administration. Is there anyone out there that does not already know that the Bush administration is completely in bed with the oil industry? This is about as news-worthy as a Dick Cheney speech on WMDs. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2005, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/5 "2005-06-17T14:41:00Z")
um…I might be missing something but…so what? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/6 "2005-06-18T02:13:39Z")
I think the [best quote](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/science/14cnd-climate.html) on this story comes from David G. Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council: > [@](#): > > Perhaps he won’t even notice he has changed jobs. > [@Patty O'Furniture](#): > > Didn’t we have a thread about Cooney’s creative editing of global warming reports? I thought we did but search is turning up nothing. I haven’t been around enough recently to know if there was a recent thread on this. But, going a ways back (a year or so), there was [a thread about the Bush Administration’s misuse of science](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=240649) as documented in a report by Union of Concerned Scientists. One of the stories was about the alterations made by the White House to the climate change chapter of an EPA report on the state of the environment (see especially pgs. 4-5 of that thread), alterations that eventually resulted in the chapter being left out altogether with a memo later leaked in which staffers at the EPA said that that these changes made the report scientifically unsound and discussing various options, including the one apparently chosen to just leave out the chapter altogether. I’m not sure if we now know that Cooney was directly responsible for those particular edits…but it wouldn’t be surprising if he was. Certainly they were attributed at least in part to the organization in the White House that he was a part of. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/7 "2005-06-18T02:26:39Z")
By the way, you can read more about what Cooney did on this [Government Accountability Project website](http://www.whistleblower.org/template/index.cfm). ---
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/exxon-announces-merger-with-white-house/308441/8 "2005-06-18T03:30:12Z")
Statistically, very few people in the US really give a flying fig, sorry to say. As long as folks can fire up their SUVs, program their TiVos, barrel on over to Costco and gobble down supersized meals and thereafter walk out their restaurant of choice chomping on toothpicks, it’s all autopilot, baby. Ethics or environmental issues are like the stealth bomber–not even on the radar. I think most people have simply withdrawn and concluded that one man, one group, one state can’t make a damn difference.