Climate Change Denial - Private Sector

Private Sector

In one of the first attempts by industry to influence public opinion on climate change, a 1998 proposal (later posted online by Greenpeace) was circulated among U.S. opponents of a treaty to fight global warming, including both industry and conservative political groups, in an effort to influence public perception of the extent of the problem. Written by a public relations specialist for the American Petroleum Institute and then leaked to The New York Times, the memo described, in the article's words, a plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases." Cushman quoted the document as proposing a US$ 5,000,000 multi-point strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences," with a goal of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'"

The Guardian reported that after the IPCC released its February 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses, to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute, which had received more than $US 1.6 million from Exxon and whose vice-chairman of trustees is Lee Raymond, former head of Exxon, sent letters that, The Guardian said, "attack the UN's panel as 'resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work' and ask for essays that 'thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs'." More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration. Despite her initial conviction that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered," Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, "I realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

The Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change," 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter, which was leaked to the media, drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball and others, who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."

ExxonMobil has denied the accusations that it has been trying to mislead the public about global warming. A spokesman, Gantt Walton, said that ExxonMobil's funding of research does not mean that it acts to influence the research, and that ExxonMobil supports taking action to curb the output of greenhouse gasses. Gantt said, "The recycling of this type of discredited conspiracy theory diverts attention from the real challenge at hand: how to provide the energy needed to improve global living standards while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions."