The report, Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air describes how ExxonMobil uses Big Tobacco-like tactics to spread doubt about climate science that overwhelmingly points to human-causes of global warming. ExxonMobil has “funded about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue.”
And, like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil’s strategy is to:
Patrick Michaels, the report says:
has, over the past several years, been affiliated with at least ten organizations funded by ExxonMobil.
The Cato Institute being one of them. It received $105,000 in 2002 from ExxonMobil.
Ironically, the only MSM to cover UCS’s report (in a Google search of ExxonMobil) is USA Today.
So while it’s fun to joke about buying waterfront property in the Berkshires and retiring to Revere (believe me, I’ve said the same thing recently?we don’t need to move south in retirement. South is moving north to us!), this is not only a very serious issue, but there are very real threats from Big Oil to keep us happy with the way things are going so they can continue to pump oil and make huge profits.
From The Clarion Ledger (Mississippi):
An example of the huge profit levels can be seen in ExxonMobil Corp. The oil company scored the biggest profit of all time for a public company after posting a $10.71 billion profit in the 2005 fourth quarter. And, then scored the second-biggest profit during this past third quarter with earnings of $10.49 billion.
That’s a pretty well spent $16 million in comparison!
