ExxonMobil's biggest bribe pays dividends in divisiveness

[acroyear]

The National Science Teachers Association has turned down an offer for 50,000 free dvds of the global warming documentary, An Inconvenience Truth, expressing "concern that other 'special interests' might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer 'political' endorsement of the film; and they saw '"little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members' in accepting the free DVDs" according to this editorial by one of the film's producers.  A little digging finds something more interesting...

Science a la Joe Camel - washingtonpost.com:

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

ExxonMobil's not the only ones in this game of supporting "science education" to avoid criticism from those who would know better.

Science a la Joe Camel - washingtonpost.com:

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

The war on terror and the "partisanship" debates have actually continued to cloud that which was easily seen 10 years ago: the real enemy of America is it's establishment of corporatism. The religious right can try to influence the decisions of government all they want, but they will only be able to do so as long as their "beliefs" don't interfere with big business making big money. When those two divide, the party attached to both will fall.

But fortunately for big business, the other party is perfectly willing to take big business money for big business handouts just as the first party is.

Comments

[piraterogue.livejournal.com]

As a man holding a bachlors of science in Marine Science I can intergect a comment to this debate.

First I will say global temeratures Are going up. Second, mans contribution of greenhouse gasses is causing problems.
The point I'd like to interject here is that there has been no Diffinative studies showing how much the temerature rise is caused my natural warming trands and how much is caused by man. There are plenty of studies saysing the temerature is going up and mans greenhouse gas emmissions are going up, Therefore the studies show greenhouse gas causes the temperature rise. Those studies saying greenhouse gas emmissions are Directly responcible for All of the temperature rise are based on a false premise. The false premise is that the earths temperature is Constant. That premise is Incorrect. There is geological evidence that the earths temperature is variable, the variability is Even cyclic. The evidence also shows that the earth is in a warming trend now and would be even if man had not had the industrial revolution to start producing greenhouse gasses.

Studies need to be made on exactly how much the greenhouse gasses are actually raiseing temperatures versus how much temperatures are going up via a narutal warming trend.

Now before everyone desides I am anti-enviromental and should be killed for it, I beleive in sustanable development. Keeping the levels of whatever at indefinatly sustainable levels, ie. only taking as many fish from a fishery as can be allowed to leave a viable reproductive group, so that Next year there will still be as many fish to take out of the fishery. I also think that oil companies have been supressing alternative energy source investigation for years.

Now back to my looking into being able to afford a solar power house because I am sick of my heating and electric bills each month.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

In the "long long term", looking at changes over millions of years, yes this is true.

However, looking at changes of "millions of years" shows that most species and genuses don't survive that long, with some very successful exceptions like sharks and crocs.

Long term history over "millions of years" show that most mass extinctions are followed by an explosion in variety of the survivors, the KT boundary being the most significant to us (the end of the dinosaurs -> room for mammals to explode).

However, this isn't long term history. This is short-term thinking (can MAN deal with the implications of warmer weather) vs shorter-term thinking (can ExxonMobil survive in a world where Oil doesn't drive everything).

This planet was, in the words of Groucho Marx, "here before you got here and it'll be here before you go."

There are two facts.

1) increase in carbon-based gasses causes increases in global climate temperature.

2) man is contributing to the increase in carbon-based gasses.

that past carbon-based gas increases with their temperature increases (and the global disruptions that followed, including the mass extinctions) happened without man is relatively irrelevant. the point is man is contributing this time.

and the question is, can man survive? if the temp is going to go up and the ice ages finally end (they're still on as long as there is ice at the poles 365.25 days a year), regardless of what we do, fine.

but as long as there is a CHANCE (and there is a significant chance) that man can preserve the environmental status quo that we currently depend on for a little longer until better scientific understanding and technology can allow us to adapt without the disruption to life and lifestyle, then we should act now to give us that chance in the future.

sometime over 20 years ago, the Colorado river flooded over the Hoover dam in a beautiful example of mass chaos, all caused by the indecisiveness of the bureaucrats in charge who debates the merits of opening the flood gates in a controled manner every day until the flood happened.

wouldn't it be better now to try to get a control over it while we can than to continue to debate day after day whether or not the end result is inevitable as it happens?

[sequentialscott.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I post most of this to the boiling_frog community?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

feel free. i keep most things public.