Exxon's Lickspittles: the big lies and greater frauds of the global warming denial movement
DeSmogBlog Book Title Search: Take II
The early suggestions for a DeSmogBlog book title have been fabulous - as you can see from the headline on this blog post.
I especially like the use of "lickspittle," which leads in my handy Rodale Synonym Finder, to a host of other great words: "toady," "sychophant," "backslapper," "brown-noser" and (Archaic) "parasite" and "leech."
It got me thinking about the flatterers and courtiers in the denial movement and about the selfish and thin-skinned captains of industry who pay for their counsel. We have a situation in which Exxon executives employ "intellectual" lackies to come up with clever arguments as to why oil companies should go on doing exactly what they want. Then, those same executives appear to take seriously the resulting smog from kowtower tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
The result, when this starts to happen, is always the same. A king who surrounds himself with with apple polishers and yes men is destined to get the kind of bad advice that will lead the kingdom into decline - perhaps not immediately, but inevitably.
But I digress. We're looking for book titles or for your reaction to some of the titles that we are already considering. Here's a new list. Vote, rewrite or create. The three best suggestions will be rewarded with one of the great climate science books we have in the existing DSB library.
Climate of Change
A look into the world of global warming science and it's opposition
Climate of Denial
Climate Science Fiction
Exposing the PR Campaign to Deny Global Warming
Courting Climate Chaos
Exploring the PR Campaign to Bamboozle the World about Climate Change
Exxon's Lickspittles
The big lies and greater frauds of the global warming denial movement
Fossil Fools
The PR Tactics used to Bamboozle the World about Climate Change
Lies and Ignorance
Manufacturing Doubt
Exposing the PR Campaign to Confuse People about Climate Change
Spinning Climate Change
Who Convinced Us to Ignore Global Warming; and How
The Smogscreen
How polluters push climate fraud as fact
You Can’t Spin Mother Nature
Exposing the PR Campaign to Deny Climate Change
Some Like it Hot: Exposing those behind the PR Campaign to Deny Global Warming
6 Degrees of Obfuscation: The PR Tactics used to Bamboozle the World about Climate Change
The Fog of Denial: Inside the PR War Machine to Deny Global Warming
(Richard, I still think Fossil Fools is the best title, but I hope you like one of these).
I have heard it claimed that proof exists that the denier foot-soldiers, the trolls who seem to patrol every blog on the www are paid by big oil.
"Visit Crichton's official Web site at http://www.crichton-official.com/index.shtml and spend time there. Take part in the State of Fear message forums. And if you come across any Web forums or blogs that are attacking Crichton's book, please let me know! That way, we can share those links here and get Crichton's defenders to participate on those blogs, too."
I know this isn't proof of funding, but it strongly suggests a degree of co-ordination that is verystrongly suggestive of a more-than-just-voluntary arrangement.
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16260#again2
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I recall George Monbiot seeming to confirm as much, but can't remember exactly where he said what he said. I emailed him, but so far have had no reply.
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"To all the frustrated real climaters out there, you need to know that infiltrated, paid (by big oil, alas the Texas connection)”moles” try to confuse the issues for several years now. You will find one or two on every popular blog, not only climate related. Peak oil is a very popular target too. Of course, there are some real ignorants and incompetent out there as well. Just ignore them ;-)
We show some proof of this on our website
Cheers, the Mare team
Comment by Mare Initiative — 3 January 2008 @ 8:22 AM"
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=497
(My comment: if they do, I couldn't find it!) I emailed them and got no answer.
Not sure about a direct connection to Big Oil, but there's more than ample proof that there are several "grassroots" and "independent" anti-climate-regulation campaigns that turn out to be not so "grassroots" and "independent" after all. DeSmogBlog has written about the ACCCE campaign, the campaigns created by Policy Communications Inc., and probably more; also, my blog discusses the campaign by Tom "Coordinated Local Activism!" Harris, the IP address 198.161.90.18, and Graham Young's National Forum.
-- bi
Fred Singer testified in a Canadian court case he had received $10K from Exxon. (But mostly he doesn't know where is funding comes from because it isn't 'written on a dollar bill').
The 'Interfaith Stewardship Alliance', now 'Cornwall Alliance' took $50K from Exxon (did Exxon write this off as a charitable donation to a nonprofit.) One committee member, the late Jerry Falwell preached a sermon saying warming was all caused by 'solar variation'. What a coincidence. Little is said about this deal, nobody wants to be seen as attacking religion, although both the National Council of Churches and the National Council of Evangelical Churches have issued resolutions to take action on mitigating global warming 'creation care'.
Exxon is estimated to have $20 or more million into denying global warming.
We aren't going to get into the Trail of Pennies from Exxon again, are we?
As I've said previously, you can't do propaganda for the pennies that Exxon has spent. $20 million over ten years still works out to less then 1 penny per person per year. Sorry, but propaganda can't be done for such tiny amounts of money. Especially when the warmer's budget spends vastly larger sums of money.
If you spend the $20million on ten $1million tv ads.
He he he. The most media savvy people to have ever inhabited the earth fooled by a few ads. Sure, I think it's possible too.
Well, paul s, at the end of the day you can't deny that the ads exist, and someone's paying good money to have them aired.
Hmm, how much money went through that Calgary slush fund, I wonder?
-- bi
As I've said previously, you can't do propaganda for the pennies that Exxon has spent.
paul s, your calculations forgot to include
Since 'skeptics' keep telling us that Government Is The Great Satan, I'm sure the government resources available at Inhofe and Morano's disposal amount to quite a good lot. Maybe $50 billion? :)
-- bi
What's Inhofe's budget? Pennies again.
99% of the public couldn't even identify Inhofe if you waved a $100 bill in front of their face.
What's Inhofe's budget?
Wrong question. It's not "Inhofe's budget", because it's not his money, it's taxpayers' money (which Inhofe and Morano treat as their own). The correct question is,
What's the federal budget?
I'll be charitable and say Inhofe's using only about $50 billion.
-- bi
False Profits: How Big Oil created an astroturf religion of denial to maintain the flow of dirty money and dirty oil.
Fossil Foolishness
I do like Exxon's Lickspittles
REcall that I asked about an outline.
The reason is: if it focusses on ExxonMobil, then ExxonMobil in title might make sense.
Still, I conjecture that more of the money for this comes from:
1) The coal folks
2) Family foundations, from wealth soemtiems built on fossil fuels.
One more time: ExxonMobil appears to be only a small part of this, and blaming it all on them is just missing the mark, and sometimes even helps them.
Seriosuly, we're going to use all the conventional oil and gas we can, but the big issue is coal.
Subtitle
The PR of the climate sceptics
Title
Some variation on the theme
Paranoid Rhetoric:
Perverting reality:
Perceptual ------------:
Perpetuating Revisionism:
Pejorative rejection:
perfidious representation:
Love the word Lickspittle -- but BigCoal is part of the deniers, Hansen blasted Peabody Coal which I'd never heard of before. Further, Exxon (under a new CEO) is supposedly stopping funding deniers.
So a good question is: Who is funding Heartland Institute which is sponsoring another NY deniers conference March 2009?
How about?:
How to Murder a Planet with Lies
Maybe it could be Energy's Lickspittles or Big Energy's Lickspittles.
Yesterday I got to thinking about a suitable epigraph for the new book. Since it was the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns I thought that he probably had written some thing appropriate.
So I poured myself a glass of Lagavulin and disappeared down stairs for a while and spent some time reading books on Burns. I came across the following which I thought might be appropriate:
"Here's freedom to them that wad read,
Here's freedom to them that wad write,
There's nane ever fear'd that the truth should be heard
But they whom the truth would indite".
From "Here's A Health To Them That's Away" - Robert Burns 1792
I must be missing something. 650 dissenting scientists (many UN IPCC current and former) and record cold and cooling?
What's *not* to deny? This isn't flat earth stuff.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7
We were taught in decades past that the ice age was imminent. Looks like they were closer to the truth then.
So Senator Inhofe gets his campaign money from Big Oil (the money, he says, is NOT ENOUGH!!!), and then helps Big Oil spread their messages using a taxpayer-funded web site during his taxpayer-funded day job.
Which, of course, proves that Al Gore is Fat.
-- bi
As LibertyBalls knows - using the 650 List as evidence is dishonest; like the 400 list; or the OISM's pseudo-science and laughably dishonest petition.
As these links show.
http://www.desmogblog.com/new-list-climate-quibblers-paid-deniers-dead-guys-and-ill-informed-fellow-travellers
http://www.desmogblog.com/senator-james-inhofe-skeptic-report-global-warming-screed
While this is evidently not a science blog, could I suggest that LibertyBalls looks at some science? You know that stuff that scientists produce and publish in respected scientific journals [hint not Energy and Environment or its bedfellows]; not the pseudo-science as manufactured by pseudo-scientists; failed scientists; liars; former tobacco-industry lobbyists; propagandists; architects; weathermen and assorted paid deceivers.
Why would I know that? I told you I don't patrol these hard left AGW sites; I ended up here from a link in The American Thinker :) Liberty Balls huh? You people sure do get angry easily.
Also, I posted my two replies within moments of each other; and other comments have shown up in the meantime between them.
Enough said.
-- bi
"I have heard it claimed that proof exists that the denier foot-soldiers, the trolls who seem to patrol every blog on the www are paid by big oil."
Wow. I don't patrol anyplace, but can you tell me how to get money? Maybe I'd start.
How about readng the discussion above instead of pretending it's not there?
-- bi