Why don't polluting companies do more to try to disprove AGW?

The following article is the best answer to your question. Big Oil and Big Coal have chosen to hire PR activists, not scientists. To summarize the article, there’s no way for the deniers to argue on the science. So their goal is to sow misinformation and to manufacture uncertainty:

[Quote]There is a line between public relations and propaganda - or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth - to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival.

And it is infuriating - as a public relations professional - to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.

That's what is happening today, and I think it's a disgrace. On one hand, you have the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific consensus in history, advising that:

climate change is real;

it is caused by human activity; and

it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.

On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate - not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty.

Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change.

This is a triumph of disinformation. It is a living proof of the success of one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world. As a public relations practitioner, it is a marvel - and a deep humiliation - and I want to see it stop.

Here's the way it works: Public relations is not a process of telling people what to think; people are too smart for that, and North Americans are way too stubborn. Tell a bunch of North Americans what they are supposed to think and you're likely to wind up the only person at the party enjoying your can of New Coke.

No, the trick to executing a good PR campaign is twofold: you figure out what people are thinking already; and then you nudge them gently from that position to one that is closer to where you want them to be. The first step is research: you find out what they know and understand; you identify the specific gaps in their knowledge. Then you fill those gaps with a purpose-built campaign. You educate. If people are afraid to take Tylenol (as they were after someone poisoned some pills), you explain the extensive safety precautions now typical in the pharmaceutical industry. If people think Martha Stewart is arrogant and uncaring, you create opportunities for her to show a more human side.

In the best cases - the cases that are most personally rewarding - the advice you give to clients actually drives corporate behavior. That is, if a client wants to protect or revive their reputation, if they want to convince the public that they're running a responsible company and doing the right thing, the most obvious public relations advice is that they should do the right thing.

It's the kind of advice that, historically, has been a hard sell in the tobacco industry, in the asbestos industry - and too often in the automotive industry. Those sectors have provided some of the most famous examples of PR disinformation: "smoking isn't necessarily bad for you;" "it's not an absolute certainty that asbestos will give you cancer;" "your seatbelt might actually kill you if you're the one person in five million who flips his car into a watery ditch."

But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. Few have been so coldly calculating and few have been so well documented. For example, Ross Gelbspan, in his books, The Heat is On and Boiling Point sets out the whole case, pointing fingers and naming names. PR Watch founder John Stauber has done similarly exemplary work, tracking the bogus campaigns and linking various pseudo scientists to their energy industry funders.

One of the best examples - the most compelling proofs that the disinformation generation is no accident - came in a November 2002 memo from political consultant Frank Luntz to the U.S. Republican Party. Luntz followed the rules: he did the research; he identified the soft spots in public opinion; and he made a clever critical judgment about which way the public could be induced to move.

In a section entitled "Winning the Global Warming Debate," Luntz says this (and all the points of emphasis are his own):

"The Scientific Debate Remains Open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."

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The public doesn't care about "proof" or the whole AGW scam wouldn't exist. Besides, you see from the posting here that many people will only think that "Big Oil" is supporting propaganda, so why should they waste their resources.

Instead, oil companies have been the primary investors in alternative energy, and BP is the #1 producer of solar equipment in the world today. Oil companies are also investing in wind and other alternatives.

They are doing it for 2 reasons.

1, there is no real alternative to carbon based energy right now, so it will in no way hurt their bottom line. They can sell as much oil as they want, regardless of alternatives.

2. it is a good PR move, and people really just want to feel good about themselves, they don't really care about results. Since so many people are brainwashed into following the AGW religion, it makes no sense to try to disprove what will become obvious to the rest of us in time, the earth is getting cooler, and ÇO2 does not, and has never had anything to do with it.

Moreover, there are already thousands of scientists standing up and saying that AGW is a farce:

http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/270395.sht...

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/1...

http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218...

the problem is one of public relations. lets say you owned exxon, and you put out a public campaign to prove that global warming was a natural cycle and that nothing could be done by man to prevent it from happening. what would happen is that the public at large would move the man made global warming position, and claim that you are talking out of your backside to keep making money and to keep polluting the air and causing the globe to warm.

if on the other hand you decided to invest in alternative forms of energy, and get them to market, you would be hailed as a savior of the environment.

now as a publicly traded company which would you rather choose? a money losing proposition? or the money making one?

ExxonMobil did invest in anti-AGW proponents (see the Union of Concerned Scientists report 'Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air...')

The investment was tiny compared to their turnover (a few tens of millions or possibly less iirc), but it has proven successful at 'manufacturing doubt' amongst the public.

I have a few theories of my own as to why companies now tend to support AGW theory:

1) They believe it is correct

2) they know that governments won't do much against them anyway. They're too powerful.

3) they know governments are mostly incompetent and won't regulate greenhouse gases effectively enough to damage their own profitability anyway.

4) large portions of the popular media 'carry the flag' for them anyway. Particularly conservative ones; in the UK, the telegraph & mail are well known for spreading disinformation and opposing AGW theory.

5) pressure from scientists; the Royal Society wrote to ExxonMobil to ask them to stop spreading misinformation for example.

6) lack of scientific evidence in their favour. The overwhelming majority of scientific reports I've checked support AGW if they take a position. Buying off scientists could be too difficult when the popular media does a much better job at persuading the overall population.

7) they accept that in the long term, global warming could cause potentially catastrophic effects to the economy and might damage their profitability OR there are people with some kind of ethics and moral values running oil companies.

8) they have ideas for investments in new & renewable technologies.

9) they realise that the majority of profitable oil and gas reserves are going to be burnt anyway.

10) pretending to support green initiatives allows them to get positive publicity which can help them avoid effective government regulation

These are all theoretical, but one or more of them could be contributing.

Do a little bit of research and you will find that oil companies are investing heavily in alternative energy sources.... especially wind.

This is not necessarily because they are supporters of AGW but rather, because there are big $$$ to be made. The subsidies provided by you and I (taxpayers) are a huge source of big profits for anyone wanting to build a windfarm.

If there was no taxpayer support for Wind... Solar....Ethanol....etc., there would be no corporate involvement/investment in those questionable technologies.

In short, why should an oil company 'challenge' an issue that stands to give them an opportunity for guaranteed profit? If we taxpayers are so willing to squander our hard-earned money to support such subsidies, then Oil companies are only too willing to be on the receiving end of the profits to be gained.

Why doesn't someone prove that God doesn't exist? Because that wouldn't stop people from believing.

AGW doesn't come from science, It's a political movement.

As far as serious scientists are concened, the enhanced greenhouse theory was proved wrong in the 1950's. The atmosphere was found to be opaque to the resonant frequencies of CO2. There's been no warming for the last 10 years, but that just makes the believers more determined to believe more.

WHOA there, those companies only make what YOU, yes YOU personally, yes, you are attacking yourself and you should report yourself for personal attacks!!

Companies make what you want. If you personally gave up heat, AC, driving, food, water, the internety, then all those companies will stop using energy.

As always., its all about YOU!!!

Oil and coal companies have given up on the scientific debate on global warming. They know the real debate is over.

Some companies have begun investing in the alternatives to preserve their future, others fund the disinformation campaign in an attempt to buy themselves some time, and some companies do both of these.

Science is about proving, not disproving, something.

I could tell you I saw a ghost last night. I'd ask you to disprove that.