Exxon-Mobil, Koch Brothers and Others Wrecked Public Trust in Climate Science.

The think tanks have been around at least since the mid-90s and what they do is "throw dust into the air" while making the "dust" appear just as good as peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change. Purpose? To give Climate Deniers their talking points in order to grow doubt among the masses, who wouldn't know whom to trust.

 

Of course, they could have said that the amount of fossil fuel is finite and then say that climate change will not be as bad as the IPCC says it will get under business as usual with no limit to fossil fuels. But then, the investor class will realize that the fossil fuel extraction companies might not earn as much profit as they believed they will. And the public might panic and hunker down and conserve, further eating into these companies' profits. And we can't have that, now, can we? After all, this is America!

Another fine hat tip to dtlange at Robertscribbler.

Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,”

On Global Warming and Ice Ages

From Robertscribbler:

Colorado Bob posted:

By 1977, an Exxon senior scientist named James Black was, according to his own notes, able to tell the company’s management committee that there was “general scientific agreement” that what was then called the greenhouse effect was most likely caused by man-made CO2; a year later, speaking to an even wider audience inside the company, he said that research indicated that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, we would increase temperatures two to three degrees Celsius. That’s just about where the scientific consensus lies to this day. “Present thinking,” Black wrote in summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change

And I responded: "And back then the news media were telling us that we were falling headlong into a new ice age. And it was not hard to believe them, in fact hard not to believe them, because they interviewed the minority of scientists who hypothesized that, and because Boston and New York Harbors had ice floes in them.

"Can we convict ExxonMobil — and the corporate media — of Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes against Nature, and sentence them to corporate death?"

Indeed. The time for decision according to Mr. Black was 1982-1987, that is, 33 to 28 years ago. Now we have blown through that and as a result, Earth's atmosphere has 405 ppm CO₂ and 480 ppm CO₂e.