ExxonMobil's War on Science

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Huffington Post. Posted January 31, 2007.

In a quarter-page advertorial in Thursday's New York Times, ExxonMobil launched a new greenwashing campaign to salvage its earned reputation as Earth's number one global warming villain.

For over a decade the giant oil company has waged a successful multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to deceive the public about global warming. Using phony think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, scientists-for-hire called biostitutes, slick public relations firms, and their indentured servants in the political process, they have intentionally defrauded the public by promoting the notion that global warming is a hoax or a sketchy theory that requires more study.

The company now asserts that its position on global warming has been "misunderstood," but its decade of mischief is well documented.

Exxon has dished out at least $19 million dollars since the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to fund an elaborate network including over 75 industry front groups mobilized in a misleading campaign to cloud the public's understanding of global warming. Their objective has been to counter balance the overwhelming scientific evidence of man-induced climate change with pseudo scientific denials to derail reforms that might effect corporate profits.

In 2005, ExxonMobil paid over $3.5 million to 49 different front groups, according to the company's own records, which are collected each year by ExxonSecrets.org and the ExxposeExxon coalition. A report released earlier this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists traces the roots of this fraudulent propaganda broadside -- and many of its prime actors -- back to the tobacco industry's tactical war on science.

Exxon has also used vast political contributions to guide the Bush administration's posturing on climate change. ExxonMobil successfully arranged the ousting of the world's top climate scientist Robert Watson as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

An Exxon memo to President Bush's top staffers obtained by NRDC through the Freedom of Information Act asks bluntly, "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?" The White House's carbon cronies obligingly complied, arranging for Watson's dismissal. He was replaced by a little known scientist from New Delhi who would not be regularly available for Congressional hearings.

A 2002 Exxon memo recently obtained by Greenpeace through FOIA coaches one of the President's top environmental advisers Philip Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality on how to "improve" administration research on climate change by emphasizing "significant uncertainties" in the science.

The New York Times later revealed that Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute which is generously funded by Exxon, made myriad changes to government climate studies designed to weaken their strong conclusions about the need to act on global warming.

See more stories tagged with: climate change, global warming, exxonmobil

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a senior attorney for theNatural Resources Defense Council, and author of "Crimes Against Nature."

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