Global Warming Deniers Take A Cue From Big Tobacco – How They Lie And Put Profits Before The Public Welfare

One of the most famous and dramatic events depicted in the motion picture "The Insider", was the testimony of the seven CEOs of Big Tobacco. Their "nicotine is not addictive" testimony, under oath as part of the Congressional Waxman hearings, started the modern day practice of having educated persons of authority disseminate scientifically fraudulent information to the public. Each CEO repeated,

"I don´t believe that nicotine or our products are addictive."

To support the claims of their corporate leaders, Big Tobacco learned how to take revisionist science one step further, buying off scientists to disseminate false data in order to manipulate and mislead the public. Now the big oil companies like ExxonMobil and their right-wing, global warming denying friends are using the same play book, as an unsuspecting public scratches their head and wonders what the truth really is.

Alden Mayer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said recently that . . . 

“ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or cherry-picking facts”. 

Mayer also stated that . . .

"They have manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer."

Big Tobacco knew just how effective it could be, when they used supposedly impartial experts to knowingly disseminate their corporate talking points to the public. The reality was that these experts were far from being impartial. In actuality they were hand-picked industry advocates whose job was to use the media to report distorted, biased information to the public under the guise of it being credible news. In most cases, they were paid exorbitant amounts of money to do so.

In 1993 Philip Morris determined that smoking restrictions were estimated to have decreased their profits by $40 million, knowing this was a result of legal restrictions being put on smokers and where they could smoke. To combat this assault on their corporate profits, they decided that they would initiate a massive campaign to recruit scientists willing to publicly support a position that smoking was not harmful.

They thus made an evil and calculated pact with the devil, signing away their souls when they decided that maximizing corporate profits was far more important than the health and welfare of their customers. Former Philip Morris political affairs director Ellen Merlo said . . .

"If smokers can't smoke on the way to work, at work, in stores, banks, restaurants, malls, and other public places, they are going to smoke less and a large percentage of them are going to quit. In short, cigarette purchases will be drastically reduced and volume declines will accelerate."

In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write letters to influential medical journals with one getting $10,000 for writing a single letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher also received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal.  

Professor Gary Huber was a scientific researcher for the tobacco industry for many years. He had built a career by regularly disputing the growing body of scientific evidence about tobacco's deadly effects and over the years received more than $7 million in money from the tobacco industry. His emphysema project at Harvard was paid for directly by the tobacco law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon. 

Having learned well from their corporate big brothers in the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil and their sister oil companies have likewise engaged in a systematic campaign of disinformation and lies to manipulate public opinion on global warming and man’s contribution to it.

Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to . . .

"create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

They haved pumped millions into think tanks, association, media outlets, and consumer groups and religious organizations to preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe and discredit the science behind global warming. They paid $16 million between 1998 and 2004 and in 2005 alone, shelled out $133 million including $6.8 million for public information and policy research to groups that publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. 

Here are a few of the recipients of ExxonMobil’s money and what they received.

1. Advancement of Sound Science Center - Run by FoxNews.com's Steve Milloy $40,000.

2. American Council for Capital Formation - Says science questions must be addressed before the United States and its allies embark on a path as non-productive as that of the Kyoto Protocol.- Group netted nearly a million dollars from ExxonMobil from 2000-2003 but the real science bashing was in 2001 when they got $250,000.

3. Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty - Calls CO2 caps a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist. - $155,000.
   
4. American Council on Science and Health - Says Policymakers can safely take several decades to plan a response to global warming -$90,000.
   
5. American Enterprise Institute - Published 2004 climate article titled, 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.' Dick Cheney is a former senior fellow.- $960,000.

6. American Legislative Exchange Council - Launched attack on 'Sons of Kyoto' state legislation in 2004 Published Michaels paper that claims 'global warming could actually save lives.' - $712,200.
   
7. Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy - Says answering questions about global warming takes more than a few thermometers, an agenda and a press release. Honored Senator Inhofe for 'supporting rational, science-based thinking and policy-making' - $427,500

8. Atlas Economic Research Foundation - Said that 'As the science behind global warming becomes increasingly sketchy, many environmentalists clutch even harder to their views.'  - $440,000.
   
9. Cato Institute - One of the modern right's most respected think tanks - $75,000
   
10. Capital Research Center - Right-wing nonprofit watchdog group says, 'scientists disagree about climate change, but you wouldn't know that from the Kyoto treaty' - $115,000.

Today, an educated and aware public needs to be continually on guard and skeptical of corporate pronouncements that seem to go against common sense and reason. In the end, we have to take responsibility for what we believe. The stakes are now too high not to.