Former ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva testified on Capitol Hill about the "potential long-term risks associated with climate change," but his company has flip-flopped on the issue for years. (AP)
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece revealing that a number of major U.S. corporations that publicly acknowledge the threat of global warming are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a stealthy lobby group that ghostwrites legislation to scuttle climate change initiatives.
This corporate disconnect on climate goes way beyond ALEC.
A new report analyzing more than two dozen Standard & Poor 500 companies found that despite their public pronouncements about the reality of global warming, three-quarters of them at least indirectly hindered climate change mitigation efforts through lobbying, campaign contributions, agency comments, or their affiliations with trade associations and advocacy groups.
The report, "A Climate of Corporate Control," focused on 28 companies that made formal comments on the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon emissions endanger public health and contributed to campaigns for or against Proposition 23, a 2010 California ballot initiative that would have undermined the state's landmark law combating climate change. Ten of the companies, including ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Marathon Oil and Peabody Energy, are ALEC members.
"What we found most surprising is all of the companies expressed concern about climate change," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Scientific Integrity Program, which issued the report on Wednesday. "But when we took a deeper look, we found that a lot of the actions they took outside the public eye were inconsistent with their PR message."
ConocoPhillips is one of the companies that plays both sides of the fence. It has acknowledged on its website that "human activity ... is contributing to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that can lead to adverse changes in global climate." But in its comments on the 2009 EPA endangerment finding, it claimed "the support for the effects of climate change on public health and welfare is limited and is typified by a high degree of uncertainty," and a year later it dropped out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of corporations and environmental groups supporting a federal cap-and-trade system.
The oil giant's campaign contribution track record, however, is a lot less ambiguous. Of the $742,951 it spent between 2002 and 2010, it contributed $697,551 to candidates who were against taking action on climate change and only $45,400 to candidates who promised to address it.
General Electric, which touts climate change as one of its three pillars of corporate citizenship, also works the issue both ways, likely because it makes equipment for wind and solar power as well as the oil and gas industry. The company is a member of at least eight organizations and trade groups that support climate change initiatives, including the American Wind Energy Association, Global Roundtable on Climate Change, Solar Energy Industries Association and U.S. Climate Action Partnership. But it also supports groups that misrepresent climate science, including ALEC, the American Petroleum Institute, Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Some of the companies did put their money where there mouth is. Among the good actors were Nike and NRG Energy, which have consistently supported climate change policies publicly and behind the scenes. Among the worst actors, labeled "obstructionists" in the report, were coal giant Peabody Energy and Marathon Oil, which offered halfhearted statements on their websites about the "potential" impact of climate change and trashed climate science in other venues.
The report, a product of months of research, was based on an exhaustive review of corporate public relations materials, federal tax filings, campaign contributions, lobbying expenditures, congressional testimony, and funding to outside organizations. Despite the UCS research team's thoroughness, it was hampered by the fact that companies are not required to reveal key information about their activities, especially the purpose of their lobbying expenditures and contributions to political action committees, advocacy groups and think tanks.
"This lack of disclosure about how corporations spend their money allows them to get away with taking these contradictory actions," said Gretchen Goldman, a UCS Scientific Integrity Program analyst and lead author of the report. "We need more transparency to enable investors, policymakers and the general public to make informed decisions and hold corporations accountable."
To that end, the report recommended a number of reforms, including expanded reporting requirements for the Securities and Exchange Commission and passage of the Disclose Act, which would require corporations to share more information about their political spending within 48 hours.
"The actions of many of these companies come right out of the tobacco industry playbook to delay sensible regulations that protect public health and safety," said Grifo. "Historically, complying with new rules is never as burdensome as companies like to claim, but that doesn't prevent them from misrepresenting the science to create confusion and delay."
Elliott Negin is the director of news & commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
1) There is scientific evidence that earth is warming for many 100's of years;
2) Increase in Co2 if it doubles will lead to about 1 degree C rise in temperature (all things being equal);
3) Temperature of earth (definition yet not agreed) has about 0.53 r squared link to Co2.
All of this is known and verifiable science.
The non scientific part of:
1) TCR - ratio and
2) ECS - (equilibrium climate sensitivity)
these above 2 are the reason of what you are referring to in your article as climate change BUT in scientific terms you are actually referring to CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming). CAGW is entirely based on TCR and ECS. These 2 ratio's have very poor basis in math or physics and in an emergent system like climate will in all probability not be one dimensional ratios as currently assumed.
Until such time as ECS and TCR are accurately determined your article, with all due respect, is simply non scientific guess work or an opinion without appropriate backing of math or physics.
thanks
(1) Yes, the climate changes, but over the past 800,000 years the surface temperature has not increased as fast, nor as much, as it has in the past 150 years. One must consider scales.
(2) You have neglected a feedback analysis. You are insincere to not mention feedbacks when quantifying CO2 doubling in this context.
(3) Not sure what point you are trying to make. If you are saying that surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 are unrelated, then you have contradicted yourself with your point (2).
I conclude your analysis is insincere and without credibility.
1) My point one - climate is a 4.6 billion yeasr old phenomena and thus model needs to incorporate the timeline. (eg FSC - fine structure constant in physics is estimetd to be valid over 5 billion years);
2) My point 2 it not my problem that you refuse to understand that ECS and TCR constant are feedback constants - please kindly read Idso et alland about 8 other papers on this published since 1998);
3) Your 3rd point is not relevant. There is no scientific basis to claim a causal relationship between ECS & TCR with Co2. None had been established.
thank you. Please kindly stick to science.
thank you
The fossil fuel industries are not made accountable for the deaths and illness attributable to fossil fuel combustion gases such as SOx and NOx. Ozone resulting from such fossil fuel pollutants can actually blister the lungs of a small number of susceptible individuals. But you hardly ever hear about that, do you. The Holy business logic has allowed fossil industries to profit at the expense of citizens who have been sacrificed on the altar of greed and profit. In a culture such as ours, where profit is the greatest good, there is little justification for not polluting, even if that pollution will cause pain, suffering and premature death to some.
At least so long as our modern global culture worships profit above all else, you can expect the quality of life to be controlled by those with the most money. It is only when vast numbers of people are horrified by things like Chernobyl or Love Canal that people can push back against corporations who supply them products and energy but also, disease and death.
I say more Solyndras, not fewer, and 4 more years to boot! And a ban on hydrocarbons like natural gas. Forward!
"http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png"
Apparently nobody told the sea ice. In recent months it is tracking close to a 1980-2000 baseline
It is the volume of ice that matters, not the extent or area so much.
The GRACE satellites have been constantly measuring the MASS of ice in Antarctic and Greenland and the rate at which this ice is disappearing is accelerating. It is getting more rapid. It is increasing. It is more now than it was earlier. The ice is melting more quickly. There is less ice than a few years ago.
Ice thickness of floating ice over huge areas cannot be measured as easily as the thickness of ice grounded on land. The later can be measured by gravity detection devices. Floating ice cannot.
Another problem we see time and time again is the reference to a brief anomaly that completely overlooks a long term trend.
Getting jubilant about minor changes in ice extent is not conclusive of anything except lack of knowledge of its significance.
A modern nation could not possibly power a modern economy, provide a decent standard of living, by Wind or Sun "passive resourced" energy facilities. Les than !% of the nation's energy grid is now supplied by passive resources.
Clean Nuclear energy is absolutely necessary, especially in the greater crisis of our now collapsing national economy. I am suspicious of going back to questionable, soft technology while the nation's standard of living is under assault from the Fed's bailout policy and Perpetual War.
It is vital that the US National Energy policy launch a new nuclear energy policy now as economic recovery measures that facilitate higher economy platforms, can only be undergirded by several, coordinating, nuclear fueled energy systems. That is the Integral Fast Reactor, the Hydrogen fueled and fusion energy facilities, etc. If we are not discussing, nuclear energy resources, we will not meet the energy requirements necessary to sustain or perpetuate humanity. Really.
but calling current scientific understanding about climate "rash judgements" makes it sound like you either don't understand how science works or have not looked very deeply at this issue.
there has been no failure to disclose the Sun's power, or has there been any ignoring of cosmic radiation in intergalactic dust (if that is what you are referring to. the "conclusion of ACC is neither erroneous nor rigged. It would take a conspiracy of thousands to make that happen. It was possible under Stalin and Mao to so terrify scientists that they would willingly be blind to reality, but not in today's world. Scientists can be biased and stubborn and make mistakes, sometimes systematically about issues that others point out are wrong. But the situation here is a politicized issue because LOTS of money is at stake, and the actors become polarized. But it is just not possible for the entire scientific community to be completely wrong about this. The physics and chemistry is understood well enough to know that the issue of CO2 causing average global heating is real. there is uncertainty and issues that are not well understood, but that does not mean there is a strong reason to believe the consequences are wrong.
It is Earth's electromagnetic field impacted by the Sun's solar flares that send massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, and the solar system's travel through the fingers of the Milky Way, that have way more effect on our weather. CO2 increases should not be demonized as man needs CO2, and are believed to increase crop yield and food production. We should be planting more seed now. Water harvesting and management, the redevelopment of North America, as proposed in the NWAPA plan, the coming ICE Age, should be our national focus.
NASA space exploration projects, improving and increasing our space sensorium ought to be the immediate imperative here. Instead, Congress votes to slowly take-down NASA, the source of America's strength.
The elites in Science, Academia, Government and Finance, in charge of our national interests have been working, since the death of JFK, to undermine the nation's ambition, aspirations and potential to fulfill man's destiny, the distribution of humanity throughout the Galactic Universe.The Green movement, the radical population reduction policy, are components of this medieval Imperial conspiracy.
B) None of them are calling for an end to using fossils fuels, only a multi-tiered approach involving conservation, transition, matched with technological and policy innovations. Its called sustainable development.
C) We're running out of oil, and LNG won't be able to fill the gap for long. NRG has its place, but it generates waste that is still difficult to deal with and it consumes lots of fresh water, another resource under intense pressure.