Essay by Eric Worrall
It’s not that nobody cares, its just people worried about the imminent end of the world are too shy to speak up.
COVERING CLIMATE NOW / MARCH 19, 2026
The Silencing Power of Big Oil’s Climate Lies
A new report suggests that the majority of people think new economic rules are required to curb climate change. The issue is that those majorities think they are a minority.
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Over the years, companies like BP and ExxonMobil have employed various strategies to deflect public anger and the changes in policy it might encourage. For decades, the strategy was simply to lie. By the 1970s, their own scientists were telling senior management that burning fossil fuels would threaten the survival of civilization. But the industry chose to hide the truth anyway, spending millions of dollars on advertising, phony research, and other forms of propaganda to convince the public, government officials, and the press there was no cause for alarm.
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One reason Big Oil has worked so assiduously to manage public opinion is simple enough: Most people understandably don’t want to see global warming ruin the planet. As CCNow’s 89% Project has reported, 80 to 89 percent of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action. However, these same people think that they’re the minority, so they mostly stay silent. It’s a perverse tribute to the industry’s propaganda, which has many people convinced that climate change is too divisive to even talk about, much less to tackle.
A report by Climate Majority Project, a nonprofit based in the UK, argues that climate change is not the only issue where most people favor radically different approaches than what the status quo is delivering. The report finds that the majority of people around the world feel threatened by climate chaos, fear societal breakdown, and want less consumerism. But these majorities also mistakenly think that they are a minority, so they tend to say, and do, nothing. For example, a “climate concerned business majority” believes that new economic rules are needed to avoid catastrophe, but they don’t lobby for such rules. The result is a “spiral of silence” that blunts the action that most people want, according to the report.
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Read more: https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/the-silencing-power-of-big-oils-climate-lies/
I guess it was inevitable that greens would lay claim to supporters who are too shy to speak up. I mean, anyone who claims we are in the midst of a climate emergency nobody can see has the capacity to imagine supporters who nobody can hear.
That’s some weird pretend circular BS
Bear in mind that the pretend circular tripe author is CCNow’s Mark Hertsgaard, the guy I covered here at WUWT back in 2019. His CCNow outfit labels itself as a ‘provider of information’ to news networks, but the reality is that he provides climate issue disinformation. Case in point, upon the death of the namesake of my GelbspanFiles blog in early 2024, he told everyone that Ross Gelbspan was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, the highest award a U.S. journalist can achieve. Fake news, the man never won a Pulitzer.
And the dolt is a journalist, ie.. he writes crap to make himself known.
He has absolutely ZERO academic credentials in anything remotely related to climate studies or science.
He is a FAKER, from top to bottom and from start to finish.
It isn’t a Spiral of Science “Concealing Majority Support” it’s a “Lack of Conviction” on the part of that “Concealed Majority” that they don’t voluntarily do what “They deem necessary” without Government edict.
OK, weird ——- circular BS
Let me guess, the author of the article was …
Kamala Harris right???
“but the reality is that he provides climate issue disinformation.”
Yes, the theme of his article is a blatant lie. He and Naomi must be good friends.
One could call it a circular jerk !
One might call it a circle of jerks.
— bnice2000 beat me to it, so to speak.
and a cute reversal of the 98% stunt?
leftists live in a make believe world
I know some like that: they are SO idealistic that they are delusional.
“The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan
Been that way for a long time.
Yesterday afternoon in this small Navy town in Western Washington, the high school kids decided to march around town with “Ice Out”, “This nation was built by immigrants” and all the other nonsense banners. They know nothing apart from what Tik Tok has spoon-fed them, and their activist teachers.
“For decades, the strategy was simply to lie.”
Methinks the pot doth call the kettle black.
In this case there is no evidence that the kettle was ever black.
Mark Hertsgaard must be Angie’s brother.
Angie baby
You’re a Special Lady
Living in a world of Make Believe
For the purpose of the Climate Majority Project, let’s define Majority as 3% or more.
When everybody around you thinks like you do, you think you are the majority. Because you don’t know anything else.
Yep. Part of the reason politicians so often get it wrong.
After the Reagan against Mondale election there were reports of gobsmacked NY journalists who could not believe Reagan had won because all the people they knew had voted for the other guy.
Reagan won 49 of 50 States. He lost Mondale’s home State of Minnesota by 1500 votes.
Mondale must have attended one of those Learing Centers as a child.
Perhaps later in life as well.
The majority of people know less about economics than climate change. 🙂
And the majority of economists know less about economics than climate change. 🙂
Less than zero?
If the “Majority” of people Really Cared (believed in) climate science they would all take their ICVs to the Junkyard so they aren’t resold and buy new EVs. This action would remove sufficient value from Gasoline/Diesel fuels that further exploration would become unprofitable. But They Don’t! The Majority of People don’t give a HOOT about climate science where their pocketbook is concerned.
The majority of people are way smarter than the elites think they are.
Actually if they really cared, they wouldn’t have a vehicle at all, or computers, phones, plastics, anything requiring FF to manufacture or transport.
True!!!
This “new” report is a tissue of lies and evasions. Far from ignoring climate change, public opinion surveys for the last three decades have shown that climate change is the environmental issue people are least concerned about.
There has not been one single public opinion poll that has any reliability whatsoever that has contradicted this. This is the result after hundreds of public surveys by dozens of different organizations.
Not one. This silence speaks louder than any hysteria ginned up by some bogus fly-by-night called CCNow.
What all public opinion surveys do show is that people are primarily concerned about “kitchen-table” issues. These are things like cost of living, crime, the plague of drug overdoses, the uncontrolled migration of illegal migrants, real pollution, clean water, the disintegrating education systems, rising antiSemitism in universities, and a host of other issues.
This supposed study is a sign of how desperate the international global warming industry has become in the absolute indifference of the public to their scare-mongering. No lie is too absurd for them to refrain from using. So the question is: are they trying to persuade the public of this nonsense; or are they trying to shore up belief among their own members?
This is among the most over-the-top delusional rants of the “Exxon Knew” variety!
“By the 1970s, their own scientists were telling senior management that burning fossil fuels would threaten the survival of civilization.”
Lets see, 2026-1970 is 56 years, civilization is larger, with citizens who live both better and longer… yeah those scientists were wrong. If they existed. If they said those words.
In the mid-1970s we were in the middle of a global cooling scare, “good” cars got 17 mpg, everybody was building lots of huge coal fired power plants (and nuclear plants) and we had some of the coldest winters on record. If scientists were telling senior management that, senior management was laughing at them.
“yeah those scientists were wrong. If they existed. If they said those words”
The oil company scientists did Not say those words. The author is lying.
Oil company scientists didn’t know any more about CO2’s effects on the atmosphere than any other scientist of the time. All any of them had was speculation. That’s all any of them have today.
To claim that “Exxon Knew!” Is a blatant lie. Nobody knew then, and nobody knows today, either.
The author is a Climate Alarmist Propagandist.
And once again, there’s that ludicrous, and frankly loony claim by the Climate Loons about some “Big Oil Conspiracy” to lie about climate change. But hey, if they keep making it, maybe, just maybe, some people might believe it.
That’s the idea.
Yep, repeating a lie often enough and parroting it in all liberal media outlets makes it sound true but it’s still just a lie.
It’s not just climate per se, it’s statistics which seems less of a concern. Caution about models goes back decades, one suggestion was to only use them as a “codicil,” a legal term not favored in the profession so I have been told. This is not only the error of ‘attribution’ but using models to, well not quite to verify, idealistically it seems. We need to put computer models as an additive to the old saying about statistics, but have to wonder how old that is in order to predict its addition. Simulate–“to copy, represent, feign.” 1. to give or assume the appearance or effect, often with the intent to deceive. Maybe out of date definitions, more likely misuse of hypotheticals.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-studies/index.html
“There are various ways of carrying out an attribution study, but scientists commonly use climate models to simulate an extreme event in the current climate and compare them with idealised model runs of that event in a world without human-caused warming. The difference between the two sets of simulations indicates how the likelihood or severity of that extreme event has changed.”
Big name, small minds. https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/
“…too shy to speak up.”
Not so!
I am not shy (Surprised?) and actively & openly censored far and wide!
I suspect even by the USPS!!
“…anyone who claims we are in the midst of a climate emergency nobody can see has the capacity to imagine supporters who nobody can hear.”
And spend money that doesn’t exist…
So all the polls that consistently place CC as last on their list of priorities are wrong?
“Climate action” can only mean one thing. That is to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration.
NOTHING that has happened in 45 years of effort has resulted in this by any conceivable measure.
Therefore, ALL “climate action” has resulted in NO “climate action”.
The trillions wasted already could have been used for other purposes that do give measurable results. This principle was already described in detail in the “broken windows” fallacy by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen” to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.
Once the money goes, the Climate Change™ goes.
It took a long while to build a head of steam and the soft sciences were slow to board the gravy train. Now that the hard science has won and proven that CO2 induced global warming is utter tripe, the soft sciences are grimly hanging on to squeeze all they can.
AR7 is floundering for want of US dollars and the expertise to resolve the growing mismatch between net radiation and ocean heat content. No money, no bought science and no hope. And why is ocean heat uptake in the SH decelerating while it is still accelerating in the NH.
These guys are losing it. Losing is an ugly thing.
This article does appear to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. It comes across more like a whimper, than it does the confident, strident claims of past AGW propaganda!
I have to laugh the line about Big Oil’s own scientists in the 1970’s warning that fossil fuels would threaten civilization. So here it is a half-century later and somehow civilization is flourishing more than ever. Could it be that the scientists were just as dead wrong with their predictions as the rest of the alarmists?
IIRC correctly, it was a memo quoting what some so-called “climate scientists” were saying.
In other words, they didn’t “know” anything…
.. and they still haven’t got any measured scientific evidence that incremental CO2 causes any warming.
It was all speculation, just like it is today. Nothing has changed.
If there were any journalistic standards – this article would have trashed them all with the first few words.
1) There is almost no power big oil has in this regard (99% of all articles and google search results and reviews are anti fossil fuel/pro AGW) .
And the silencing power does not exist at all.
There is none of the standard AGW strategies like name calling,shaming, jobloss, censorship, no silencing of people,no blue boxes below YouTube videos for those who argue against big oil.
If the big oil grip were this big it should be easy to show us the flow of the hundreds of billions of dollars that are necessary to execute so much power + a large scale conspiracy amongst big oil companies would be necessary to pull this off.
2) pretending facts (and leaving a backdoor): A new report SUGGESTS
SUGGESTS means nothing as everyone can SUGGEST stuff.
3) after pretending facts (suggests):
comes the big, and actually impossible lie:
“the majority of people think new economic rules are required to curb climate change”
a ) the majority of people does not think at all in terms of climate change as they are bombarded 24/ 7 with AGW propaganda that does not allow criticism, let alone dissent
b) there is no society, no matter how well educated, where a majority would ever think about something complex and far reaching like ” new economic rules ” for whatever, let alone something abstract and complex like climate.
This hilarious claim is an Alibi, more A lie by apparatchik, to justify the destructive policies of Milliband+ Millibrain(AOC) + co, while trying to brainwash people into the belief that they wanted it that way, hiding the fact that it was forced down their throat.
4 ) the communist component : The biggest trick of the communist was to pretend that they represent the will of the people and therefore the ruling minority used the trick to call themselves the majority = Bolsheviks.
and the article ends with the same level of lies it started.
the ” spiral of silence ” does not exist.
Not even the silence, as these people never waste a chance to scream, protest, organize, to destroy paintings, to glue themselves to the ground –
while Big Oil has none of these.
Per 1000 AGW activists there is barely 1 from the other side.
Even worse: Major AGW pushers of the Rio 1992 UN summit David Rockefeller, Edmond de Rothschild and Maurice Strong(who was made Petro Candas CEO by Pierre Trudeau – it’s a small world ) were massively involved in Big Oil Business.
How was the polling done?
“By the 1970s, their own scientists were telling senior management that burning fossil fuels would threaten the survival of civilization.”
Some lies just keep getting bigger over time.
What the scientists were saying was that more CO2 in the atmosphere was likely to result in a small amount of warming.
“It’s a perverse tribute to the industry’s propaganda, which has many people convinced that climate change is too divisive to even talk about, much less to tackle.”
I don’t think that this purported “industry propaganda” is what has made discussion of how Earth’s climate works “divisive”. That has been the sole domain of the revered “Climate Scientists” who have proclaimed the scripture of “The Science” from their high palaces and cathedrals. Ostracizing any who do not fully agree with them, and they have the nerve to talk of divisiveness.
Where is all the Big Oil propaganda?
Every mainstream media outlet I’m aware of is 100% saturated with alarmist “news”.
In the last 30 years I cannot recall any Big Oil material opposing global warming or climate change stories.
Those who claim Big Oil produces such propaganda should at least give us a few examples.
Geoff S
Big oil do have PR departments, but claims big oil is stifling the green revolution or hiding climate impacts are absurd.
One of the funniest examples of someone who went to uncover the big oil conspiracy is Michael Moore. Instead of a big oil conspiracy, Trump hater Michael Moore claims he discovered a conspiracy of greens trying to conceal the shortcomings of renewable energy.
The issue isn’t that a majority of people don’t want more climate action – polling reports they want it, the issue is cost. Government and climate change organisations obfuscate the truth so people are not informed about what sacrifices they will need to make. Most do NOT want to make sacrifices for (climate change) ideology, and many simply cannot afford to pay the price Green fanatics demand. You’ll note those loudest in support of it e.g. Greens or Teals, are usually the ones with more money than sense and\or the ones not required to sacrifice.
Activists insist that without the action they demand people will lose their homes, their savings, even their lives! The problem is if the full measure of demands is met, people will lose their homes, their savings, even their lives. Transport ceases to be affordable for many, unreliable power becomes a luxury they cannot afford, depending where they live the water sources may become polluted and unusable, and things like food or medicine become luxuries only the rich can afford.
There’s also the issue that by committing national suicide Western nations open themselves to invasion and occupation by nations not stupid enough to blindly follow climate change. Of course the Green fundamentalists tend to also be anti-Western so the idea of Islamic Europe, Estados Unidos de América y Canadá, and 澳洲人民共和國 (Àozhōu rénmín gònghéguó) undoubtedly appeals to them, as long as they’re not inconvenienced.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
As long as these cultist drones are alive, they will always be scurrying to find safety under their beds.