Comments on: Putting the “Ex” in “Exxon”: AGU asked to dump big oil sponsorship

By: Tell The AGU To Do The Right Thing About AGW #ExxonKnew – Greg Laden's Blog

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:50:51 +0000

[…] Recent revelations about Exxon have indicated that that organization’s activities are over the top. And, hundreds of members of the scientific community that is served by AGU and that engages in this sort of research signed on to a letter demanding that the AGU stop taking Exxon’s tainted money. […]

By: Herman Good

Herman Good — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 17:59:22 +0000

Exxon is worst than the tobacco companies of the 1950s

By: Scientists to AGU: Drop Exxon Sponsorship | The Natural History Museum

Scientists to AGU: Drop Exxon Sponsorship | The Natural History Museum — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 18:10:24 +0000

[…] coverage: The Guardian, Think Progress, Scientific American, InsideClimate News, Climate Wire, National Geographic ScienceBlogs, The New Republic, Triple Pundit, EcoWatch, Daily Kos, The Hill, Nature, Royal Society of Chemistry […]

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:16:21 +0000

…and their dead are still dead, the destroyed families still destroyed.

By: Julian Frost

Julian Frost — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 09:47:46 +0000

Now where have I heard this narrative before?
Oh yes, the Tobacco Companies.
In the 1950’s, medical practitioners began warning of the dangers of smoking tobacco. The cigarette makers started questioning and attacking the sentries, and for years denied that tobacco was addictive and that smoking caused cancer.
We now know that the tobacco companies carried out research in the 1960’s, hoping to refute the claims of harm, only for their own researchers to confirm it. What did they do? Come clean? Admit the truth? Look to make less dangerous alternatives?
No, no, and no. They covered up their evidence, continued with their attacks on the researchers who found the truth, and lied repeatedly. In the end, they had to pay huge fines.
This is no different from what Exxon did, and I hope they also get clobbered in the wallet.

By: Christopher Winter

Christopher Winter — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:09:44 +0000

I am, by the way, delighted to find that among the signers of the letter to the AGU president is a scientist named Ignatius Rigor.

By: Christopher Winter

Christopher Winter — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:07:44 +0000

Greg: You all know about the Exxon maneno. Exxon, aka ExxonMobil, has recently been exposed as having repressed scientific information that indicated that we, our species, would ultimately need to change our energy systems in order to keep fossil fuels in the ground, else face dire consequences. Decades ago, when the science already indicated that this was a problem, Exxon independently verified that we needed to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, then shut up about it, because it was, and is, in their corporate interest to take the fossil fuel out of the ground. (Emphasis added.) As far as I've been able to determine, maneno is a word in either Malagasy or Swahili. In the former language it means "chirp" and in the latter "children" (plural of "neno", child.) Unless there's a slang meaning I didn't discover, the use of the word here makes no sense to me.

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 21:15:05 +0000

As an AGU member, I got an e-mail from AGU about this today. My interpretation is that AGU is aware of the problem, but there are procedures that need to be followed in order to take action. This is, admittedly, the company line, but I’d rather trust them than a source like WUWT, which is known to be unreliable (to put it mildly).

I can see how the situation came about. Historically, and even today, the petroleum industry is a major source of industrial jobs for geophysicists. It makes sense for a company like Exxon-Mobil to sponsor the AGU in exchange for access to job seekers at AGU meetings. But AGU covers a much larger range of disciplines than are relevant to the petroleum industry, and one of those fields is atmospheric science–the specific field on which groups like Exxon-Mobil have been trying to cast doubt. The situation was tenable as long as Exxon-Mobil could plausibly deny that their internally funded research contradicted their public stance on the issue. But now we know that the C-suite was suppressing the results of their own research department.This puts AGU in an awkward position if they continue to accept Exxon-Mobil’s sponsorship.

By: dean

dean — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 20:16:47 +0000

In the old days, AT&T funded Bell Labs. It still exists today, and I have no idea how it works now. I’m told by people who worked there back in the mid 20th century that it was a place where funding came in from the mother company to allow scientists to do more or less what they wanted to.

They also funded a lot of fundamental research in mathematics – Graph Theory and applications to networks is still a big deal there (Ron Graham led a big research group).

Now all the things that tea-baggers (cough RickA cough) would decide are useless are scaled way back.

By: RickA

RickA — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 19:54:47 +0000

Good try:

LINK TO KNOWN SCIENCE DENIER SITE DELETED

Dont do that again.