As many WUWT readers know, I attended the AGU fall meeting and I have a number of posts coming up that will highlight many of the posters and sessions that I attended. I have some video interviews in the bag also that I’ll be posting. Right now, I’m playing catch up at work.
However, this bit of a surprise juxtaposition was sent to me by WUWT regular “Jabba the cat” and is worth highlighting, because I’m pretty sure that if skeptics had a conference with these sponsors, we’d be vociferously vilified with sponsors like these.
Those with high climate sensitivity should avert your eyes from the following image.
Don’t believe me?
Have a look for yourself: http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/general-information/thank-you-to-our-sponsors/
So when the alarmist see this “Big Oil” will be responsible for The Big Boil?
This looks like a case of greenmail.
No wonder you are always waiting for your Big Oil cheque – the opposition got there first.
A pension fund of mine.
I hope they know what they’re doing . . . . .
Auto
Duh, guess who wins when gas costs $5 a gallon.
That’s called “public relations” and the amount of money those large energy companies spend on such sponsorship activity (and on eco-friendly TV ads) is a negligible rounding error in their budgets. Of course the irony you allude to is that the AGU openly accepts their money. I suppose it’s akin to an Amazon headhunter displaying his trophies.
This post did not pick up on the sponsorship of Schlumberger, probably the major supporter of oilfield services in the world. If virtually anyone drills anywhere in the world Schlumberger can help and has provided excellent technical and other support services for at least 50 years to my knowledge. A fine company by the way.
elmer says:
December 17, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Duh, guess who wins when gas costs $5 a gallon.
——————————————————
The oil companies AND the Kleptocrats. Win – Win.
Big Oil never looses. The new Carbon Tax proposals could concieveably raise the price of Gas by 300%
Big Oil would still rake in their 4% per US gallon. We would just be stuck with $12-15 USD per gallon where it is now $4.
Anthony, they also list Schlumberger, which is “the world’s largest oilfield services company”.
Oops, F.A.H. said the same thing.
So that’s why all my Big Oil cheques dried out…
tsk tsk!!
It’s called Green Washing. Otherwise it’s “crap” according to David Cameron.
Thanks Anthony.
As always …. Follow the money!
As an aside I wonder how many WUWT readers are familiar with the origin of the phrase “going postal” in Antony’s title? see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal
British Petroleum is green because this color is emblematic of ideology as profit.
Of course they want to have coal regulated out of the market. With no competition it is much easier to make profits.
Must… stop… grinning…
OK. I give up – GRIN
Just shills for Big Oil!
Big oil sponsors it to puff it up bigger and higher and make it more visible so that when it (CAGW theory) inevitably crashes and burns it (the crash) will be more visible and memorable and thus less likely to be embraced again for a long time to come.
Shall we say there is a certain class of people in the world with a certain sort of ideology that pretty much always point at you and accuse you of everything they’re actually doing.
And there we are again.
The CRU was founded with BP money. So this has always been known.
I am curious why these companies provide sponorship for individuals/groups/conferences that oppose thier very existence?
Fracking is a mere extension of old school established interests, whereas green banking schemes are a brand new boom that all energy companies and energy start-ups are skimming as the government becomes more and more a mirror of Enron. Alas for them, Mother Nature is now bursting their bubble in ways that afford skeptics much greater cultural authority.
Does that make Michael Mann a fossil fuel funded amateur?
The oil companies should get together and decide to stop funding AGU conventions because it makes it look like they are buying the science. That should be interesting.
Why in the hell do they keep blaming Big Oil for “climate denialism”?? It’s unbelievably clear THEY are the ones in the pocket of Big Oil…
When I wished those deniers to foil
I would say, they are backed by Big Oil
Till l once turned around
Saw the face on my pound
Which did cause me my trousers to soil.
Warmists will use this to call our host an oil funded shill. 😉
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a nonprofit organization of geophysicists, consisting of over 62,000 members from 144 countries. AGU’s activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international field of geophysics. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Geophysical_Union
Exxon, BP, Chevron et al employ thousands of geologists and geophysicists. Why wouldn’t they support the AGU and its work?
Big Oil has never been worried about global warming alarmism, quite the contrary. There is no realistic alternative to gasoline for fueling cars (except cheap thorium electricity converting coal to gas) and natural gas will never be replaced for heating homes. The threat to Big Oil has always come from coal and that’s why we see the EPA targeting coal plants for CO2 reductions (ever see any nat gas plants being shut down?). And as mentioned earlier any CO2 tax will simply be passed onto the end user, who won’t be able to reduce consumption much.
The alarmists are either disingenuous or haven’t thought through the issue when they claim that Big Oil is behind climate skepticism. Big Oil welcomes global warming alarmism as they stand to run coal out of town and reap huge profits.
I see Swis Re there too as one of the sponsors.
http://www.swissre.com/about_us/
Here they are about climate and risk
Managing climate change and natural disaster risk
Further to your accurate point big oil welcomes carbon capture and storage ‘solutions’. They’ve only been at it for around 40 years, but not because of climate, but to get at residual oil. How about that!
If I had my last $1,000 and had to invest it and make a profit within 2 years I would put it into big oil as opposed to windmills and shattered glass.
Big oil – hoping the eco animals will be less aggressive then they already are – dumb playing. Putin is the one guy who knows exactly how to deal with the eco nuts. Throw them in jail where they rightly belong, period! Big oil is merely what the west have become – wimps! The facts are not one of those morons got the gonads to go over to the middle east and try their stupidity where they know the Arabs don’t put up with that crap. They target the west simply because they know full well all the bleeding hearts in the western press gush over their criminality, including the wimpy oil companies.
It been clear since the 1970s when the Climate Research Unit kept taking Shell and BP cash Shell, BP, and others helped set up the Climate Research Unit in 1971. The Rockefeller Foundation was also a subsequent benefactor.
References:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=50HjSi5o8J0C&pg=PA285
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history
For anyone interested in oil funding see my list of oil funded green bodies & climate / environmental units.
Climate Science’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry is deep and longstanding, i.e.:
University Of East Anglia’s “Unit of Climatic Research” was
In the Climategate emails Geoff Jenkins Head, Climate Prediction Programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research writes that:
In 2000 the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was courting Shell “as a strategic partner”
and Exxon-Mobil, Enron and BP Amoco were in the mix as well:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/uea-sleeping-with-the-enemy/
It is ridiculous is it not.
Every second tweet from Michael Mann is about the big-oil funded denial machine yet it is the pro-warmers who are funded by the big-oil machine (1000 to 1 that is) because it is politically correct for the oil companies to do so.
You just can’t combat stupidity and hypocrisy at this level.
Howsabout somebody starting a blog about all the fossil fuel funding the greenies are getting? Maybe even call it “The Smog Blog” (giggle) http://www.desmogblog.com/
Bill Illis says: December 17, 2013 at 4:36 pm
It is ridiculous is it not.
Every second tweet from Michael Mann is about the big-oil funded denial machine yet it is the pro-warmers who are funded by the big-oil machine (1000 to 1 that is) because it is politically correct for the oil companies to do so.
You just can’t combat stupidity and hypocrisy at this level.
Combat, no, but you can expose and laugh, e.g. this recent Huffington Post article “Amazing Grace: A Survivor’s Story”, about Mann’s book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-r-tucker/amazing-grace-a-survivors_b_4340632.html
You have to remember that AGU is largely about solid earth science – ie they guys who find the oil for oil companies (geologists & geophysicists) so it should come as no surprise to see oil companies as sponsors – their intent is to get visibility in front of solid earth scientists – as this is who they employ – you have to show you are a good company to work for if you want to recruit new talent. They probably never thought twice about the atmospheric / climatic parts of the conference
I bet the Koch brothers also contributed to the AGU meeting…bahahahaha!! /sarc
(On second thought, I better not make the paranoid, delusional CAGW scientists any more paranoid or delusional than they already are…)
Elmer,
“Big Oil” makes about 5 cents on a gallon of gas. The govt makes many times that.
What’s that sound? It’s the sound of brainless Greenie heads exploding from the cognitive dissonance: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/Dealing-in-Doubt—the-Climate-Denial-Machine-vs-Climate-Science/
The “oil-funded” smear tactic will still be used, of course, but it will be much harder for them to get away with it.
It all starts with an environmental paradigm shift into the Anthropocene age; then come the scientists to provide the paint-by-number research which fits the paradigm in every case, and then come the political mandates and other market coercions and distortions, and then the big companies and their customers are forced to participate. The head bone’s connected to the neck bone, second verse same as the first.
ostensibly, this is Reuters’ report on the IEA Medium-Term Coal Market Report, but no mention of “additional coal production capacity of a half‐million tonnes per annum will be added worldwide … each day”
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/speeches/131206MCMR2013LaunchRemarks.pdf
BIG OIL + BIG OIL, BIG-TIME:
18 Dec: Age: Reuters: John Kemp: Coal ‘prime culprit’ behind climate change but can we live without it?
Coal is climate change
China accounts for more than half of the growth in coal consumption in recent years and is forecast to retain that role over the rest of the decade. As a result, it is often said: “Coal is China, and China is coal.”
But given the role of coal-fired power plants in releasing carbon dioxide, it could also be said “Coal is climate change, and climate change is coal.”…
Two broad options have emerged.
***The first, favoured by climate campaigners and gas producers like Shell and Exxon, is to replace coal with renewables and cleaner burning natural gas, leaving the coal reserves in the ground unburned…
Shell and Exxon are now among the world’s largest gas producers, and both have been quietly lobbying governments in favour of policies that prioritise the use of gas over coal, including carbon pricing and curbs on power plant emissions.
***The aim is to guarantee future demand for gas and make it relatively insensitive to prices by ensuring power producers do not revert to burning more coal if gas prices rise in future…
Grassroots campaigns such as Bill McKibben’s 350.org and the Carbon Tracker Initiative are pressing fossil fuel companies and governments to stop exploring and drilling new reserves…
Not all fossil fuel companies are equally vulnerable. As with other divestment campaigns the Smith School notes “some players are able to avoid disapproval, while others face intense public vilification.
“A handful of fossil fuel companies are likely to become scapegoats. From this perspective coal companies appear more vulnerable than oil and gas,” the Smith School concludes…
***But the divestment campaigners’ most powerful allies are in the oil and gas industry…
If oil, gas and coal each comprise roughly one third of global fossil fuel resources, and two-thirds of reserves must remain unburned, putting coal off limits leaves a bigger share of the carbon budget for oil and gas firms.
Five of the biggest oil companies (Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell) are among 29 major companies operating in the United States that are planning on the assumption the U.S. government will eventually put a price on carbon, according to the New York Times (“Large companies prepared to pay price on carbon” Dec 5)…
As the Times explains: “ExxonMobil is now the nation’s biggest natural gas producer, meaning it will stand to profit in a future in which a price is placed on carbon emissions. Coal, which produces twice the carbon pollution of natural gas, would be a loser.”
***In the war on coal, as coal producers term it, the coal miners are almost friendless. Major oil and gas producers, as well as the renewables industry, are all willing to join with climate campaigners to point the finger at coal to secure a bigger share of the energy market and divert attention from their own emissions…
Policymakers are under enormous pressure to provide more electric power and ensure its reliability. It is not clear how the enormous unmet demand for more power can be supplied without coal…
***(FINAL LINE) In the meantime, divestment campaigns will also support the profitability of gas and oil producers.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/coal-prime-culprit-behind-climate-change-but-can-we-live-without-it-20131218-2zju9.html
Oh my,,,,, this is the second “Oh The Pain ” moment of the week. We might need categories soon 🙂
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Anthony Watts posted: “As many WUWT readers know, I attended the AGU fall meeting and I have a number of posts coming up that will highlight many of the posters and sessions that I attended. I have some video interviews in the bag also that I’ll be posting. Right now, I’m playi”
REPLY: huh?
No surprise here. We’ve always known Big Money of one sort or another was backing the issue. Hence all the media support. Big Money runs Big Media.
Seems kinda redundant.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that an Omissions Trading Scheme would have more financial potential than anything tried heretofore.
It’s protection money. If there is catastrophic warming and it’s caused by CO2, Big Oil will be blamed. If they pay the piper now, it’s less likely they will be purged and end up in a death camp somewhere in Belgium.
Tainted! TAAAAAAAAAINTED!!!
bullocky: Yes. As I’ve said before, if the warmists really believe their predictions are so absolutely certain to be correct, they should establish a temperatures futures trading index and sell us poor skeptic fools steeply discounted (because remember, they’re really really really sure) options that we only have to pay if the predicted trend shows up in the satellite record.
Needless to say this suggestion has never been greeted with the appropriate paroxysms of joy, for much the same reason that the value of oceanfront property is not cratering.
Almost all the Big Oil companies have subsidiaries that make some coin on the stupid ‘green in our cronies pockets’ alternative energy subsidy scams. Not to mention that Big Oil are small potatoes comparied to the pockets of Uncle Sam.
At least 13 years ago I put on several blogs that “If the AGW computer models are as good as they claim, why aren’t they writing computer models for the stock market? Modeling the stock market would be much simpler.” Well, here it is 2013, and you see where there predictions have gone. If they had invested money based upon their predictions they would be BROKE. And, I just read that one solar company after another are going bankrupt in China,
…very comical… methane madness to replace coal hysteria..following the greenmail is correct!
Good point. We should raise the corporate tax rate and fully fund science through peer reviewed NSF grants. 😉
So what do you think would happen IF our side had a conference like that and we had the exact same sponsors?
Bob Diaz says: December 17, 2013 at 8:21 pm
So what do you think would happen IF our side had a conference like that and we had the exact same sponsors?
—————————————–
Well it would only happen if there was a quid pro quo, sponsors always have an agenda..what could skeptics offer as a return on their investment?
Anthony-san:
Helpful hint: Please remember that airlines have a 50 lbs carry-on-bag weight limit, and that $1 million in $100’s weighs about 21 lbs…
Please take this into consideration given all the $ millions the oil-company fairies undoubtedly left under your hotel bed pillow while you were attending the AGU conference……
Ciao, and have a safe trip home.
At the risk of being seen as a pedant I would like to point out a few facts about BP.
From the wikipedia page
That is British Petroleum no longer exists, BP is the company name for the past 12+ years.
I’ve noticed that Michael Mann and other warmists like to single out the “Koch machine” for attacks. With so many “evil” fossil-fuel companies around, I always wondered why they picked on the Koch brothers. Now I think I know. The rest are dutifully forking over protection money.
The problem is it won’t count. Big Oil paying the Catastrophists is just Big Oil “seeing the light” and coming over to the “right” side, realizing and admitting their sins, etc., etc., etc. It’s only if they pay the realists anything at all – even a dime – that they are castigated for sinning again. The Cause is everything to these people, they don’t care where the money comes from.
Does this mean that if all the invited speakers received any form of reimbursement they received “big oil money” ?
Other than the fact going postal is a really sad metaphor, I thought the Postal services could not exist without all their pieces of equipment relying on a large amount of big oil. (Ponies went out a few years ago).
RoHa, exactly!
Dan Toppins says:
I am curious why these companies provide sponorship for individuals/groups/conferences that oppose thier very existence?
Because the greenies express their opposition to the existence of petro companies by taking actions that greatly benefit the petro companies. Petro companies LOVE global warming hysteria more than greenies ever will. It has already handed them 50% of the US electricity generation market, and is working hard to give them the rest, by regulating coal out of existence.
Meanwhile, other hard working greenies are protecting petro companies from competition by keeping reliable nuclear and hydropower off the market, and keeping unreliable solar and wind schemes that require petro fueled back-up in their place.
What’s not to like about hateblind greenies? They do what you want, are extremely predictable, and are cheap to purchase. Sure, they are annoying and smell bad, but if you convince them to hate you, you don’t have to socialize with them.
Useful idiots.
Oops! That didn’t work. Want some oil or gas? The line forms to the right.
Where’s Gazprom? Scared away by Greenpeace?
Jimbo says:
December 17, 2013 at 4:11 pm
“Re/insurance plays an important role in managing climate and natural disaster risk, and that’s why it’s part of Swiss Re’s core business.
Natural disasters cost the global insurance industry around USD 77 billion in 2012, but the human toll was higher: according to the Swiss Re sigma publication “Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in 2012,” 14,000 lives were lost.”
———————————————————————–
Hold it…
14,000 lost to natural and man made disasters
7,000,000,000 souls in the world
that’s 14 / 7,000,000 equals .0002%?
That’s all? I thought the human population had a CAGW problem?
cn
tom0mason says:
December 17, 2013 at 8:59 pm
A fact which Obama chose to ignore.
No surprise, these companies are the only ones doing real geophysics with bankable results. They basically invented the science. Like everything else of value, AGU has been hijacked by the back-to-the-caves, asterisked PhDs.
DaveS, you are quite correct and he did (as usual) have me shouting at the screen for this (and so many other of his errors). Of course Obama wouldn’t know that he’s incorrect but his trained minders should.
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-addresses-problems-with-renewable-energy-subsidy-system-a-852549.html):
“… power-hungry industries receive generous subsidies – the country’s largest industrial consumers use some 18 percent of the electricity produced but pay only 0.3 percent of the extra costs generated by the mandated feed-in tariffs. German consumers have to COUGH UP the difference.”
…
On UNIDO website:
“STATOIL is an international energy company and is currently involved in three large CCS projects, one of which is the Sleipner platform field in the North Sea.”
…
(http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9040837&contentId=7074218):
“BP has been involved in CCS for more than 10 years, focusing on a continuing programme of research and technology development, as well as full-scale projects such as In Salah, Algeria, one of the few operating industrial-scale C02 storage facilities in the world.”
…
“SHELL is involved in a number of demonstration projects around the world, but GOVERNMENT SUPPORT IS NEEDED […] to allow CCS to become financially viable and widespread.”
“Chevron is leading the Gorgon project, with Shell and ExxonMobil as partners [!!!]. Gorgon is the world’s largest CCS project.”
“In September 2012 Shell and partners made the final decision to begin construction, with $865 million [!!!] in funding from the governments […] of Alberta and Canada to support the project.”
( http://www.shell.com/global/environment-society/environment/climate-change/ccs/shell-ccs.html).
…
CAGW theory does not reduce the extraction of fossil fuels, but only raise their prices – profits oil and gas and coal companies.
Can additionally earn big money for CCS. CAGW also for the fossil fuels companies is: “business as usual …”
semczyszakarkadiusz says:
December 18, 2013 at 6:14 am
“… power-hungry industries receive generous subsidies – the country’s largest industrial consumers use some 18 percent of the electricity produced but pay only 0.3 percent of the extra costs generated”
Hungry Germans do benefit from having these industries. When they are gone, there will be no power, no subsidies, no jobs and people will be fighting over road-kill, or collecting dead birds from windmills to bake in a pie. It’s already high idiocy that power costs are what they are. The idiocy would be complete if industry was required to pay for the foolishness. People can’t afford it, but industries simply die at such costs. We need big industry to go on strike so that the complainers can be educated on some salient aspects of economics.
“Duh, guess who wins when gas costs $5 a gallon.”
Gas goes up and up and up and still not substitute. Tells you how far away from a substitute we are.
This is a typical Saul Alinsky tactic that those on the left use: “always accuse the other side of doing what we are doing.” When you understand this you will know exactly what they are up to. There is another similar rule that the alinskyites use and that is, “always accuse the other side of being who we are.” Remember that deception is a rule of war, and the battle between the police state utopianists (read: those who lust for power) and those who want freedom and liberty is an eternal war.