Finally. After years of denying its role in the campaign of climate denial, Exxon has revealed a dirty secret, that it has and likely still is directly funding junk scientists.
The ExxonMobil 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report and Worldwide Giving Report were just released by the company ahead of their Annual General Meeting in Dallas tomorrow (May 27th) where the company is once again under significant pressure from Shareholder Activists.
The Worldwide Giving Reports are a key part of the data from which we have derived the ExxonSecrets funding linkages for the past decade. Through the years, most ExxonMobil Foundation and corporate grants (the ones they report to the IRS anyway) have gone to think-tanks, organizations who have in turn propped up the small army of denial scientists, amplified their voices and injected them into the media and policy arenas.
Thanks to Exxon's revealing this little secret, we now have a direct link between the Exxon black bag o' cash and two scientists who have made their careers as global warming deniers.
The new Exxon Giving report shows straight pipe funding, in the odd but specific sum of $76,106 to the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, home of Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas. Or we assume the cash went to these two, until Exxon explains itself.
The Observatory is the research arm of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), which has little to do with either the Smithsonian or Harvard at this point, other than in name (founded as a joint venture in 1973). In past episodes, Smithsonian has distanced itself from Baliunas, who discredits their name.
Wait. Is that Ben Stiller starring as Willie and Amy Adams portraying a young spry Sally? Maybe they should spend a Night at the Museum...they might learn a few things.
The Observatory has produced some pretty useful publications over time, like the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Star Catalog, originally published in 1966 by Fred L. Whipple. But somewhere along the line they let in the riff raff...
Sally Baliunas built her denial career downplaying the significance of the destruction of the ozone layer, publishing a report entitled "The Ozone Crisis" in 1994 for the George Marshall Institute. Baliunas was, at the time, the chair of the Marshall Institute's Science Advisory Board and Fred Seitz was the Chairman of the Board...a full throttle denial team if ever there was one.
Remember the Marshall Institute? Oh yeah, Exxon announced that they had dropped their funding last year...who needs Marshall when you have their scientists on a leash.
Here is an excerpt from SallyBali's Ozone junk science:
Sound familiar? Talk about lies and misinformation, check out the projected cost estimates of getting rid of CFCs! Wow, was Sally wrong...its a wonder she wasn't so ashamed as to never publish again...but wait, there is no shame for a denier!
During the early Bush years, Soon and Baliunas were back in action, joint authors of a denial classic attacking mainstream climate conclusions.
"Lessons & Limits of Climate History: Was the 20th Century Climate Unusual?" was published by the George Marshall Institute. Jeff Nesmith of Cox News Service, revealed that the study was funded by the American Petroleum Institute. Senator Inhofe of course loved the report!
Soon went on to coauthor another denial classic, Polar Bears Are Doing Just Fine, reviewed by ExxonSecrets back in 2007.
This polar bear paper is key because, old Willie proudly admits both Exxon and American Petroleum Institute funding to support the research. However, Exxon didn't report this funding in its Worldwide Giving Report or to the IRS...they never said a word about it...
After an October 17th 2007 House Science Committee hearing entitled, Disappearing Polar Bears and Permafrost: Is a Global Warming Tipping Point Embedded in the Ice?, Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina penned a letter to Exxon demanding answers. He wrote, "Exxon has the right to fund any research or publications it wishes. However, the Congress and the public have the right to know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing is outside his area of expertise to create the impression that expert scientists have conducted rigorous, peer-reviewed work that says the problems with polar bears are unproven or unserious."
As far as we know Rep. Miller never got answers.
By now, Willie Nilly has emerged from Sally Bali's shadow to become one of the go-to skeptics, appearing as a key speaker at the two recent Heartland Institute's Denial-Paloozas in New York. Soon is again a featured panelist at next week's 3rd Heartland Institute Denial-Palooza (wait, didnt they just have the 2nd one about 2 months ago?) Senator Inhofe and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) will join the shrinking but noisy denial crew in DC on June 2nd.
The Exxon AGM season is like Christmas for us at ExxonSecrets and this year Santa treated us right. Now, Rex Tillerson, what exactly have you been paying Soon and Baliunas to do and for how long? Clearly it didn't start in 2008. Answers please.....we're waiting...
Oh, and if the denial stuff was true, Exxon's in-house scientists would be publishing it. Exxon has the $$ to hire the best, and they do.
Different sides of the smugness coin.
Science is an opinion backed by sizable investments of money and egotism.
Sometimes theory becomes truth, until another theory discredits the prevailing truth, thus becoming Truth. Eventually more theories will elevate Truth to TRuth, and to TRUth, until we arrive at the gates of enlightenment... TRUTH.
Sadly, our puny range of intelligence has trouble comprehending and knee jerks back to comfortable territory - hysteria and hearsay. Theory becomes anathema and opinion takes the high road. Truth, who needs that when opinion wins the day!
You lose, and you didn't even start.
Science grants are A CASH COW. Nobody cares who gives them or why.
Science FOLLOWS THE MONEY.
Research? hah!
t's a business.
:-)
Climate is weather over time. Our local guy has been studying weather, and weather patterns, in one of the most volatile parts of the country - tornado alley. One of the claims made by the global warming crowd is that there will larger and more severe storms as a result of the warming, and it's not happening. The models they have been touting since the 90's have already proven wrong, as the predictions they made simply aren't happening. I guess the actual study of the way weather and climate function is not as valid as the "peer-reviewed" articles you all so love to cite.
http://hemp4fuel.com/
Grow Here, Grow Now..!
Scientists are very much like witch doctors ... they make a living and get respect by giving their spiel to explain why things happen. In both cases, the preemminent principle is self gain ... truth be da**ed.
Please. I am always good for a laugh.
:-)
How do the people in their target audience feel about evolution through natural selection? Biblical literalism? How about astrology?
Hey, watchtvgetstupid, the temperature on the Antarctic continent averages about 2.5 degrees C warmer than it in the forties. The overall volume of ice is down significantly, mostly through ice shelf disintegration, not thinning of the entire ice cover, which averages some 7000 feet thick. Oh, and 'An Inconvenient Truth' page 178? I read it, the actual page, instead of googling some would-be critic's notes. It concerns the decline in population of colonies of penguins, in, of course, Antarctica.
Your citation is disenginous, if not dishonest. Typical for those on the wrong side of public controversy, grabing somebody else's mistaken statement, uncritically running with it, repeating it without attribution, as if it were their own.
Rhetticent, in the peer reviewed scientific literature, there's no more controversy about man's role in climate change than in evolution. Your cries of "peer review is a fraud", and mechanism to "prove it" reveal your ignorance of the community. You are clearly outside, looking in, and not looking closely. The "peer review doesn't support my position so it must be garbage, and this is how it's garbage.." assertion reveals all too much about how you view the world to take anything you write seriously. Exxon's own internal documents reveal a belief in anthropogenic climate change. It is the motivation for their spending so much money on the propaganda that people like you so readily consume..
Apparently, you've got hold of a "bizarro-world" copy of Gore's book. Nearly every scientist cited has established climatology credentials, and contributed to the field. Perhaps if you actually look at the book, rather than blindly asserting things you've read elsewhere, you would be a bit credible. A little bit.
Or they seem to be in denial about what it means for our society at large. Hopefully this terrific story will blow a hole in their ignorance.
I never went through a peer review process where the final result wasn't considerably better than what I submitted initially. Sometimes peer-reviewers don't care enough to correct papers. That always pissed me off because it means one of two things: it either means my paper is so boring that nobody cares OR they don't take their role seriously. And that's bad for me because if they don't catch my nonsense, nobody will before it's published. And once it's published it taints your whole future career. And who wants to be known for writing crappy papers?
Al Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth" is a lie. He claims as scientific fact that the Antarctic ice is thinning everywhere. The reality is the ice is both thickening and thinning depending on where you measure.
"land ice is thinning across the whole continent"
You need to back your claims up with something more than whinging about Al Gore.
I just e-mailed your posting to the observatory.
I may also decide to e-mail this to Dan Greene who is in
charge of CBAT
I think they will probably be getting back to you.
These are serious folks who chart the comings and goings of
Comets and Asteroids, but I have to assume you didn't know that.
Like I said, it's not nice to mess with Astronomers!:)
:-)
:-)
Are you trying to "Dirty" the reputation of The Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory?
Better be careful, in recent memory (last year in fact) a "certain" Republican Nominee tried to mess with my fellow astronomers....
And that "certain" nominee...
LOST!
Now, what was it you said about LIGHT POLLUTION?
Oh, you didn't say anything?
Try lookng at the November,2008 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC cover story:
THE END OF NIGHT: WHY WE NEED DARKNESS
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text
Sounds very much like they've done that to themselves, he merely seems to cite the facts.
:-)