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/
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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.