Naomi Oreskes Slams Big Oil Climate Change Ads

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Naomi Oreskes, who believes that Climate Change is a problem, has written a dramatic expose of old Big Oil ads which actually told the truth about global warming.

The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing

Since the 1980s, fossil fuel firms have run ads touting climate denial messages – many of which they’d now like us to forget. Here’s our visual guide

by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi OreskesSupported by

About this content Thu 18 Nov 2021 21.00 AEDT

Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads.

The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day.

As recently as last month, six big oil CEOs were summoned to US Congress to answer for the industry’s history of discrediting climate science – yet they lied under oath about it. In other words, the fossil fuel industry is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public.

We are experts in the history of climate disinformation, and we want to set the record straight. So here, in black and white (and color), is a selection of big oil’s thousands of deceptive climate ads from 1984 to 2021. This isn’t an exhaustive analysis, of which we have published several, but a brief, illustrated history – like the “sizzle reels” that creatives use to highlight their best work – of the 30-plus year evolution of fossil fuel industry propaganda. This is big oil’s PR sizzle reel.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forgotten-oil-ads-that-told-us-climate-change-was-nothing

To be fair some of the ads, which questioned whether the world was warming, likely called it wrong – though I would have liked to see the full text to be sure. Maybe they just said the mild warming we have experienced is not a problem.

But the underlying theme of most of those ads, that climate change is not a big deal, is only disputed by people who think broken computer climate models are evidence.

The only genuine threat global warming poses to our civilisation is the crypto communist economy wrecking policy responses.