Consumer Advocates Call on Congress to Subpoena Exxon's Funding Records

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Consumer Advocates Call on Congress to Subpoena Exxon's Funding Records As Oil Giant Underwrites Efforts to Deny Reality of Global Warming

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) today called on Congress to subpoena ExxonMobil's records and probe the oil giant's funding of organizations involved in disputing the reality of global warming.

The nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation's call came as a widely respected international report warned that climate change cannot be stopped and is "very likely" caused by human activity.

FTCR urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch the investigation after a report in the respected British newspaper, "The Guardian," that the Exxon-financed American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each to write articles undercutting the report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses were also being offered.

The AEI has received more than $1.6 million from Exxon Mobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration, which has resisted reports of global warming. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees, "The Guardian" reported.

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/pr/?postId=7352

[ShockediSay]

1. Don't forget INDIRECT fudning of propaganda, i.e., through the lobbyists

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=abramoff+article&hl=en&num=50&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=think+tank&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

I wouldn't limit myself to only the funds expended directly by Exxon to propaganda mills .... see what they give to their lobby lawyers

[UpInArms]

2. background

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html


Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank


ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.


May/June 2005 Issue
Organization
Funding
Hot Air
Fun Fact


Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty
$155,000
Calls CO2 caps "a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist."
Advised by an AEI fellow.


Advancement of Sound Science Center
$40,000
Run by FoxNews.com's Steve Milloy.


American Council for Capital Formation
$250,000
"Science questions must be addressed before the United States and its allies embark on a path as nonproductive as that of the Kyoto Protocol."
Group netted nearly a million dollars from ExxonMobil from 2000-2003 but the real science bashing was in 2001 when they got a quarter million.


American Council on Science and Health
$90,000
"Policymakers can safely take several decades to plan a response" to global warming.
Michaels and Singer are advisors.


American Enterprise Institute
$960,000
Published 2004 climate article titled "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Dick Cheney is a former senior fellow.

...more...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html


As The World Burns
A Mother Jones special project on global warming



May/June 2005 Issue


Climate of Denial: Introduction
By Bill McKibben
One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?


Some Like It Hot
By Chris Mooney
A dose of doubt trumps years of solid science, but skepticism doesn’t come cheap. ExxonMobil is spending millions to sustain an echo chamber of global warming denial.


Snowed
By Ross Gelbspan
Why the “balanced” media would rather promote paid flaks and fantasy than report the biggest story on earth
P L U S :
How an Asian tsunami flooded America with a conservative lie
Exxon’s extensive doubt refinery
Playing the race card (and getting it wrong)
Interactive Map: Global Hot Spots
Big U.S. business sees the light, in Europe



O N L I N E O N L Y :
How the insurance industry is putting its money on global warming
Two explorers attempt to cross the Arctic--before it melts.
A film crew crosses the US to find out if anyone cares about climate change
The Hockey Stick: Professor Michael Mann on the science
Drop It Like It's Hot! Ross Gelbspan on our ineffectual media
Some people think climate change is still up for debate. Here's how to set them straight.
A quick look at some of the best books on global warming


Got global warming questions? Go to AskQuestions.org
Want to learn more? Try these online resources.
Get the latest global warming news

...more...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0404-01.htm


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4894758-102275,00.html


Published on Sunday, April 4, 2004 by the Observer/UK
Bush Attacks Environment 'Scare Stories'
Secret email gives advice on denying climate change
by Antony Barnett in New York

George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny aggressively.

The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.

It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.

The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states.

The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'

Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.

It gives a list of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific Research Institute - an organization that has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.

...more...

and this link no longer works (but try wwww.archive.org)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070103/ts_nm/environment_exxonmobil_dc&printer=1

ExxonMobil cultivates global warming doubt: report

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
Wed Jan 3, 3:32 PM ET

Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to raise doubt about climate change, spending $16 million on groups that question global warming, a science watchdog group said on Wednesday.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at a telephone news conference releasing the report.

An ExxonMobil spokesman did not respond immediately to calls for comment.

The union, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said ExxonMobil, the world's biggest publicly traded corporation, had succeeded in parlaying a relatively modest investment into unwarranted public doubt on findings that have been overwhelmingly endorsed by mainstream science.

ExxonMobil did this by using the same methods used for decades by the U.S. tobacco industry, the report said, including:

-- raising doubts about even the most undisputed science;

-- funding a variety of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform;

-- recruiting a number of vocal climate change contrarians;

...more...

[Hokie]

3. Great Reading about the Repub's corrupting science

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney.

[PhilipShore]

4. Kick

:nuke:

[PhilipShore]

5. Dupe - self delete