The Poor Behavior of ExxonMobil, ARCO and Chevron

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

From here:

“ExxonMobil spent nearly $27.5 million in lobbying last year alone, their second-highest year on the books after the election year of 2008.” And that “doesn’t include the nearly $16 million ExxonMobil spent between 1998 and 2005 to bankroll more than 40 groups to quell claims of global warming.”

I am not surprised by their lobbying, but I submit it is not ok for corporations to quell claims of global warming, especially when their product is a prime contributor to this global problem. Corporations ought to be responsible enough to not purposefully spread misinformation and/or suppress true information in order to manipulate the market in their favor, especially considering the potential consequences in this case. I find it irresponsible and perhaps bordering on fraud (IANAL, maybe it is free speech and there’s nothing to do. I don’t have to like it).

From the same source:

Oil companies that acquired solar divisions (with their patents) and then killed them… includes Mobil, ARCO and Chevron

This example is exactly the kind of thing that can undermine people’s faith in the free market to mitigate problems like climate change on its own. And it seems like a bad-faith business move to buy competitors for the sole purpose of putting them under.

It’s perhaps not the best-written article (it doesn’t say when these companies bought the solar patents, for example). And the oil companies’ actions may not make much of a difference either way. But it still strikes me as poor behavior. I wish I could feel like they were on my side instead of trying to put one over on everyone.

[Kobal2]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

This example is exactly the kind of thing that can undermine people’s faith in the free market to mitigate problems like climate change on its own. And it seems like a bad-faith business move to buy competitors for the sole purpose of putting them under.

Chill out. It’s just bidness, nothing personal. The free market will find a solution to the problem of unrestricted free market fucking everything and everyone over for shortest of terms benefits.

[elucidator]

Its their planet. We just live here.

[Dallas_Jones]

At the basic level it IS just business. Assets and liabilities, risk mitigation, forecasting, and watching that bottom line. That is how money is made.

If you are a major widget manufacturer and technology is developed that might cut into the profit of your business, and you have the ability to purchase the new technology and put it on the shelf and remove it from the market, that’s what you do to protect your bottom line. This is what they have done with the solar patents you speak of. In the future when these patents can be used to benefit the energy companies the technology will be developed to add to the bottom line.

The global warming lobbying is just a stalling tactic that will be used until the energy companies find a way to make money off the new situation. The energy companies, (they don’t call themselves oil companies anymore) will position themselves to be the saviors of the planet just about the time that oil gets too rare or expensive to pull out of the ground.

Whatever the new source of energy becomes in the 22nd or 23rd century, you can bet your bippy that the same business entities will be in charge of it and making bank. Exxon Energy will control the power. I am kind of surprised they haven’t changed their name to Exxon Energy yet.

Didn’t anybody here major in business? Neither did I.

It’s just like in the Godfather II when Abe Vigoda (Tessio) is about to be taken out and shot:

Tessio: [to Hagen] Tell Mike it was only business, I always liked him.
Tom Hagen: He understands that.

It’s just business.

[TravisFromOR]

The worst of it is that they engage in that evil offshoring!

[Cat_Whisperer]

What it all boils down to for me is that if human beings manage to extinct ourselves on this planet (with oil and gas companies in bed with governments and global warming and overpopulation and AIDS and all that happy crappy), then we deserve it.

[Kobal2]

I was using the phrase ironically. The thing is, it’s *not *just business when it fucks the entire planet for the sake of a few thousand blokes’ pocketbook. Just as it would not be “just business” is some pharma company was sitting on the cure for cancer just because palliative medicine makes more Porsches. We’re not talking about making your VCR crap out a day after the warranty is over here. That’s just [del]fuckery[/del]business. This is personal.
Doesn’t get more personal than putting my life at risk, both through global warming AND conflict over fucking oil.

[elucidator]

“They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”

• Catch-22, Joseph Heller

[Rand_Rover]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

Corporations ought to be responsible enough to not purposefully spread misinformation and/or suppress true information in order to manipulate the market in their favor, especially considering the potential consequences in this case.

Cite that they are spreading misinformation or suppressing true information?

[GIGObuster]

@Rand_Rover

Cite that they are spreading misinformation or suppressing true information?

Well, lets start with bad faith, as in even using religion to spread misinformation:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/19/the-oily-operators-behind-the-religious-climate-change-disinformation-front-group-cornwall-alliance/

Defenders of the dirty energy status quo, particularly the lobbyists and politicians associated with the oil and coal industry, have repeatedly trotted out a group of evangelical leaders known as the Cornwall Alliance to counter the growing sentiment in the evangelical community that anthropogenic climate change is a threat to God’s creation. Cornwall declares that true Christians believe “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.” In this repost, Wonk Room exposes the Big Oil funding behind the Cornwall Alliance

On Friday, at the polluter-funded Heritage Foundation, Cornwall rolled out its latest campaign called “Resisting the Green Dragon.” Billed as “a Biblical response to one of the greatest deceptions of our day,” the video series claims the entire climate change movement is a “false religion,” a nefarious conspiracy to empower eugenicists and create a “global government.”

As for non religious disinformation, there are many examples:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/20/exxonmobil-funds-global-warming-deniers/

ExxonMobil gave $1.5 million to climate deniers and industry front groups known for working to create doubt about global warming, attacking the integrity of climate scientists, and protecting the status quo for polluters, according to a front-page story in the Times of London today.

Contrary to its stated commitment to stop funding climate denier groups, the Exxon funding spigot remained as open as the BP gusher, continuing to pollute the media landscape with oil-soaked misinformation designed to cripple international action on climate change.

Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets project has documented the nearly $25 million spent by ExxonMobil since 1998 to fund climate denier groups.

Exxon-funded groups used their latest infusion of oil money to create a media frenzy over the “Climategate” non-scandal and other efforts to derail progress towards an international agreement to fight climate change at the COP-15 talks in Copenhagen last winter.

As noted by the Times article [subscription required]:

“Several [of the Exxon-funded groups] made outspoken attacks on climate scientists at the University of East Anglia and argued their leaked e-mails showed that the dangers of global warming had been grossly exaggerated.

The scientists were exonerated this month by an independent inquiry but groups funded by Exxon have continued to lambast them. The Media Research Centre, which received $50,000 last year from Exxon, called the inquiry a “whitewash” and condemned “climate alarmists”.

Some of Exxon’s largest donations were to groups that lobbied against a global deal on emissions being reached at the climate summit last December in Copenhagen.

Exxon could see the value of its oil and gas investments fall sharply if governments adopt aggressive plans to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.”

[kaylasdad99]

I strongly suggest that you leave this be, T2BC. He is deliberately obtuse, and any cite you provide which connects the dots from “supports and utilizes the services of the purveyors of so-called ‘doubt’” to “spreads misinformation/suppresses true information” will be ignored and/or nitpicked to a fare-thee-well.

Besides which, he’s really not worth your time and effort.

ETA: Not worth yours, either, GIGOBuster.

[GIGObuster]

@kaylasdad99

I strongly suggest that you leave this be, T2BC. He is deliberately obtuse, and any cite you provide which connects the dots from “supports and utilizes the services of the purveyors of so-called ‘doubt’” to “spreads misinformation/suppresses true information” will be ignored and/or nitpicked to a fare-thee-well.

Besides which, he’s really not worth your time and effort.

ETA: Not worth yours, either, GIGOBuster.

Well, who said that I was posting just to convince him?

My posts are not only for the deniers, but also for the people who are learning about the stuff. With no evidence or cites supporting the “spreads misinformation/suppresses true information” bit, most people on the fence or lurkers would think that the evidence or citations do not exist and then doubt, precisely the reason why they are posting for, remains in the air.

Also it is important to tell others how in recent days one can expect that paid misinformation efforts are/were coming to social media like internet forums, just a heads up to others and not to the dumb or Machiavellian deniers.

These astroturf libertarians are the real threat to internet democracy |...

[wellanuff]

The statement that you quote about oil companies buying up solar companies and then killing them is perhaps written to imply that oil companies are buying up solar companies (and their patents!) for the purpose of stifling development of the technology, which seems very alarmist and poorly researched. (I understand it was not your statement.)

As an example, the list includes ARCO, which has been a subsidiary of BP since the year 2000. There was a company called “ARCO Solar” in the 1980s that was a subsidiary of ARCO. They had annual sales of up to $40 million (in the 1980s for solar panels, that sounds pretty big!), and the company had invested $200 million in R&D. They sold it to Siemens of Germany in 1989.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/03/business/arco-to-sell-siemens-its-solar-energy-unit.html

That hardly sounds like they killed it. Put it into more interested hands, if anything.

That took me one Google search to find.

If the other companies closed down solar units, it was almost certainly for business reasons peculiar to the company in question, not for some evil Monty Burns-esque plan to prevent the growth of solar power.

Coincidentally, it appears Siemens eventually sold that solar unit to BP, where it is now part of BP Solar, which is a very large player in the solar industry. Why? Because corporations are not entirely stupid. They know solar is a growing field, and they know that money will be made, and they want to be part of that.

Also, if oil companies were trying to get a stranglehold on the solar industry through controlling patents, they did a piss-poor job of it as annual installtions of solar panels range in the order of multiple gigawatts, and are growing rapidly.

I am no blind fan of corporations, but all of those solar panels are not going to be installed by hippies on communes for a few bags of weed. Those panels are being installed by, yep, big corporations.

Chevron, to take another corporation that you named, has invested in a company called Solazyme, which is a very promising player in the infant biofuels industry. They did not buy anything near a controlling interest (in other words, they are not trying to shelve Solazyme’s IP), and look to be working to help Solazyme’s research. I would imagine that other oil companies are doing the same thing. Solazyme’s technologiy is already proven as technologically feasible (for example, they are producing 150,000 gallons of fuel for the U.S. Navy this year, after 20,000 gallons last year), it is simply a question of scaling production up economically.

Solar power in the past did not fail to take off because oil companies were smothering the technology. It was because solar power was still too expensive on a relative basis. Although it is not quite down to grid parity, with government subsidies and with the benefits solar power supplies, the difference is close enough that solar power is now a huge and rapidly growing business.

[GIGObuster]

TriplePundit | We report the business case for sustainability

British Petroleum quit the Global Climate Coalition, the climate change denial group funded by the oil industry, in 1998, thus beginning its green marketing campaign. Two years after British Petroleum merged with Amoco and changed its name to BP Amoco, it shortened its name to BP. The same year, BP unveiled its new slogan, “Beyond Petroleum,” and a new logo. During the first quarter of this year, BP raked in $73 Billion*, but only $700 million (less than two percent) were for alternative energy.

I would say that I agree with the subject of the article, it is under “Greenwashing”

IMHO what BP and other energy companies are doing regarding solar panels is not offering much to solar development, but mostly as an effort to appear more green that what they are really, and to be ready if governments begin to finally put real pressure on changing the ways that we use energy.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=BP_and_Greenwashing

I can see however that BP is less responsible nowadays for the support of the denial sources and think tanks than other oil companies.

*Millions in the original cite, but I saw elsewhere that it is billions.

[elucidator]

Do not discourage GIGO! IF he isn’t on the spot with cites, facts, and proofs, then I’m gonna have to do it, and he does it as well if not better. Which leaves me time to cruise the interwebs looking for pictures of bare naked ladies.

Some creep comes out with the usual crap about a global warming hoax, I’m tempted to dive in, but why bother? If anybody asks, I’m just waiting for GIGO. So to speak.

[GIGObuster]

A much better source that the triplepundit is here:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/03/back_to_petroleum

But those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of green branding can’t fortify the company against the environmental and public relations catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. At least 210,000 gallons of crude are hemorrhaging into the Gulf each day after the April 20 explosion and subsequent collapse of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, a blast that killed 11 workers and injured 17 others. In a worst-case scenario for the spill, it could gush up to 6 million gallons per day. The spill is already well on its way to eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which dumped 10.8 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound and stands as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

The spill has wiped out years of ad spending for the company – but it has also highlighted how disingenuous much of that advertising was. Despite all BP has spent on rebranding, the company hasn’t done nearly as much to move “beyond petroleum” as its campaign implies. In fact, BP has been turning away from investments in nonfossil energy, last year cutting investment in alternative sources from $1.4 billion to $1 billion. Weeks before the spill, BP announced that it was shuttering its solar manufacturing plant in Maryland. The company brought in $73 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2010, but only about $700 million of its business was alternative energy sources like wind and solar.

[kaylasdad99]

@GIGObuster

Well, who said that I was posting just to convince him?

My posts are not only for the deniers, but also for the people who are learning about the stuff. With no evidence or cites supporting the “spreads misinformation/suppresses true information” bit, most people on the fence or lurkers would think that the evidence or citations do not exist and then doubt, precisely the reason why they are posting for, remains in the air.

Also it is important to tell others how in recent days one can expect that paid misinformation efforts are/were coming to social media like internet forums, just a heads up to others and not to the dumb or Machiavellian deniers.

These astroturf libertarians are the real threat to internet democracy | George Monbiot | The Guardian

Fair enough. Just a friendly warning to to get too invested in persuading someone who’s demonstrated that he enjoys tweaking noses, and is not persuadable on the subject at hand.

[wellanuff]

Just to be clear, I am not trying to defend oil companies or commenting either way on lobbying or greenwashing or global-warming denial or who is funding what. I am only trying to give context to the statements about solar power.

$700 million in three months (although that is given for wind and solar, I have no idea what the breakdown is) means BP Solar would be among the biggest stand-alone solar panel manufacturers in the world if it was not a subsidiary of BP. Yes, compared to the revenues from its existing mature oil business (which is what, more than 100 years old?), it is only 2%. But compared to the major independent solar panel manufacturers, that is huge. Frankly, I didn’t realize BP Solar was THAT big.

It takes time to build up manufacturing capacity, supplier relationships, distribution networks, etc. BP is not going to walk away from their existing oil business in the near future, and even if they somehow instantaneously increased their solar manufacturing capacity by a factor of 50, they wouldn’t be able to cram $35 billion worth of solar panels down the market’s throat in a quarter at present.

Also, it seems kind of pointless to compare the relative size of the revenues as if that has some sort of significance beyond saying one is a much bigger number than the other.

The oil sold is a consumable, the panels are a capital good. In other words, the oil sold is (or soon will be) consumed, to be replaced by oil sold in the current quarter, and so on. (And they do that kind of volume because there is an established market for that product with that kind of demand).

The panels sold will be producing energy for years, with more panels added every quarter. So the impact of that $700 million in sales is larger than it might seem. Finally, I have no idea how the multi-year energy output of the $700 million panels sold relates to the energy value of $73 billion of oil. That would be an interesting question to answer.

Closing the Maryland plant seems to be mentioned as a sign of a lack of commitment to solar, but the fact is PV solar panels can usually be produced much more cheaply in China and other countries than in the U.S. So I would imagine BP Solar either replaced that plant with one in China or another country, or else outsourced manufacturing to a Chinese company.

I have no interest in defending BP or oil companies in general. My only point is that I don’t think BP can be faulted on this particular score. They seem to be taking the solar business very seriously. Sure they are making sure they are ready for the future…but that is a perfectly good motivation to be in any business. That’s what good companies do.

[Rand_Rover]

@GIGObuster

Well, lets start with bad faith, as in even using religion to spread misinformation:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/19/the-oily-operators-behind-the-religious-climate-change-disinformation-front-group-cornwall-alliance/
As for non religious disinformation, there are many examples:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/20/exxonmobil-funds-global-warming-deniers/

These cites do not support the OP’s claim. You have drunk the kool-aid (and gone back for seconds, and gotten an IV drip of the stuff), so of course you think that anything that’s not 100% with the party line on AGW is “spreading misinformation.” But that’s just not so. The OP could support his claim only by showing that anything that’s not 100% pro-AGW is “misinformation,” which is of course complete hogwash.

I’ll keep siding with the science. You idiots that are all about the politics can keep posting cite after cite to politically funded and motivated organizations that have reached the answer you want and agree with your manufactured consensus. Doesn’t bother me. I’ll let the science resolve itself before taking a position.

[Rand_Rover]

@kaylasdad99

Fair enough. Just a friendly warning to to get too invested in persuading someone who’s demonstrated that he enjoys tweaking noses, and is not persuadable on the subject at hand.

Gigo’s the one who’s not persuadable. I approach AGW just like I do any other scientific topic–I evaluate claims on both sides and become comfortable with one sice or the other once the science resolves itself. Gigo doesn’t care about science, he cares only about politics.