Union of Concerned Scientist's Report on Exxon

Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Oil Company Spent Nearly $16 Million to Fund Skeptic Groups, Create Confusion

WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 3–A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years." (more at link - including copies of the report)

From Exxon:

“We find some of them persuasive and enlightening, and some not,” ExxonMobil spokesman Dave Gardner said. “But there is value in the debate they prompt if it can lead to better informed and more optimal public policy decisions.”

"Optimal public policy decisions" for Exxon is what. (Assuming "they" don't care about the planet they are living on).

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In other news:

As reported in an article entitled: Global Warming is Here. Now What? - a group of 1300 scientists who participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report that The world's economy appears to be robust, but masks an approaching crisis -- the sustainability of future generations "can no longer be taken for granted....

Examining 24 major ecosystems that support human life, scientists found that 15 are "being pushed beyond their sustainable limits," toward a change that will be "abrupt and potentially irreversible." Humanity's genius at economic development has taxed our ecosystems to the point where we face "imminent ecological and economic crises."

Economically, the world is booming. Steel, aluminum, vehicle production and Gross World Product set records in 2005, as did Internet usage and cell phones. Unfortunately, the production of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the main greenhouse gas, is also booming -- 2004 measured the highest annual increase ever....