Climate Change Denial

URL	https://Persagen.com/docs/climate_change_denial.html	Global Temperature Over My Lifetime xkcd.com/2500  |  explainxkcd.com
Sources	Persagen.com  |  Wikipedia  |  other sources (cited in situ)
Source URL	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
Date published	2021-08-12
Curator	Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D.
Curation date	2021-08-12
Modified
Editorial practice	Refer here  |  Dates: yyyy-mm-dd
Summary	Climate change denial contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including: the extent to which it is caused by humans; its effects on nature and human society; or, the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. Social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism,   pseudoscience, or propaganda.
Main article	Anthropogenic Climate Change
Key points	Public trust in climate science has been undermined by a campaigning by industrial, political and ideological interests - supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers - to manufacture uncertainty about global warming. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none (adopting a page from the tobacco industry's disinformation playbook). As recently as the 1970s, oil companies were publishing research which broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades. Organized campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO2 emissions. Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates and conservative think tanks, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers skeptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.
Related	Anthropogenic Climate Change Climate justice Environmental justice Climate Change Denial American Petroleum Institute Climate Change Denial: Facebook Dark Money American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) The Heartland Institute
Oil companies	Chevron Corporation ExxonMobil Royal Dutch Shell plc ("Shell") Shell Oil Company ("Shell Oil;" United States)
Reports	IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report on climate change (2021-08) In-depth Q&A: IPCC 6th Assessment Report on Climate Science, 2021-08-09
Keywords	Show adaptation to global warming | anthropogenic | anthropogenic climate change | anthropogenic global warming | anthropogenic-caused global warming | anthropogenic-induced climate change | carbon dioxide | carbon tax | catastrophic climate change | centrist think tanks | clean energy | climate | climate bills | climate change | climate change controversy | climate change denial | climate change denial campaign | climate change skepticism | climate change skeptics | climate crisis | climate emergency | climate science denial group | CO2 | congressional climate action | conservative economic policies | conservative media | conservative think tanks | dark money | denialism | disinformation | economic loss | emergency_management | emission of greenhouse gases | environmental damage | extreme precipitation | extreme weather | fake news | fossil fuel industry | fossil fuels | fossil fuels lobby | fossil fuels lobbyists | fraudulent science | glaciers | global heating | global surface temperature | global temperature | global warming | global warming controversy | global warming denial | greenhouse gas emissions | greenhouse gases | greenwash | human impact | human-caused global warming | human-induced warming | inadvertent climate modification | industrial interests | irreversible environmental damage | lobbyists | media manipulation | misinformation | near-zero emissions | oil companies | oil industry | oil sands | permafrost | petroleum industry | politics of global warming | production cuts | propaganda | pseudoscience | public disinformation | public transportation | public trust | reef bleaching | resistant crops | retreating glaciers | right-wing think tanks | scientific basis for global warming | scientific consensus on climate change | scientific controversy | shadow groups | skeptical bloggers | solar energy | steel making | surface temperature | sustainable_energy | talking point | tax breaks | temperature rise | tobacco industry playbook | weather extremes | wind energy | wind turbines
Named entities	Show #Totalknew | Africa glaciers | ALEC | Amazon.com | American Legislative Exchange Council | American Petroleum Institute | Amy Coney Barrett | Arctic | Ben Franta | Big Oil | BP America | BP plc | Carolyn Maloney | Charity Commission for England and Wales | Charles Koch | Chevron | Chevron Corporation | Congressional Black Caucus | Congressional Black Caucus Foundation | COP26 | Darren Woods | DeSmog.com | EcoWatch.org | Environmental Defence | Environmental Research Letters | Exxon | ExxonMobil | ExxonMobil lobbyist | Facebook | French Oil Company Total | Global Warming Policy Forum | Global Warming Policy Foundation | Greenpeace | Greenpeace UK | The Heartland Institute | House Oversight Committee | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association | IPCC | IPCC 6th Assessment Report on Climate Science | IPCC: Sixth Assessment Report | IPIECA | Joe Biden | Keith McCoy | Koch brothers | Microsoft | Microsoft Corporation | Net Zero Watch | Paris Agreement | Ro Khanna | Royal Dutch Shell | Royal Dutch Shell plc | Shell | Shell Oil | TotalEnergies | Twitter | Unearthed | United States Congress | United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform | United States House of Representatives
Ontologies	Show Culture - Cultural studies - Media culture - Deception - Media manipulation - Propaganda Culture - Cultural studies - Media culture - Deception - Media manipulation - Propaganda - Propaganda techniques - Disinformation - News outlets - Facebook Nature - Earth - Environment - Climate change Nature - Earth - Environment - Climate change - Climate change denial Science - Issues - Integrity - Fraudulent science - Pseudoscience - Climate change denial Science - Issues - Integrity - Fraudulent science - Pseudoscience - Climate change denial - Facebook Society - Business - Companies - Facebook - Controversies Society - Business - Companies - Royal Dutch Shell plc Society - Business - Companies - Royal Dutch Shell plc - Subsidiaries - Shell Oil Company Society - Business - Corporations - BP plc Society - Business - Corporations - Chevron Corporation Society - Business - Corporations - ExxonMobil Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Organizations - Nonprofit Organizations - Dark Money Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Organizations - Nonprofit Organizations - Dark Money - Countries - United States Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - American Petroleum Institute Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - The Heartland Institute Society - Issues - Environment - Climate change denial

Background

Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. Many who deny, dismiss, or hold unwarranted doubt about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming self-label as "climate change skeptics," which several scientists have noted is an inaccurate description. Climate change denial can also be implicit when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism,   pseudoscience, or propaganda.

The campaign to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" organized by industrial, political and ideological interests, and supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers to manufacture uncertainty about global warming.

The politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial and the political global warming controversy, undermining the efforts to act on climate change or adapting to the warming climate. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.

Organised campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO₂ emissions [Greenhouse gas emissions]. Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates and conservative think tanks, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers skeptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.

Since the late 1970s, oil companies were publishing research which broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, a strategy that has been compared to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by the tobacco industry, and often even carried out by the same individuals who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda.

Additional Reading

A University of Victoria economics professor who has spent years questioning whether global warming is "a real thing" is doing research supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the Canadian government. Gerrit Cornelis van Kooten  [UVic departmental page: G. Cornelis van Kooten  |  local copy] holds the prestigious title of Canada Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate Change  [Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Climate and/or Ocean History  |  local copy], a distinction reserved for "outstanding researchers acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in their fields."

But as recently as 2018, G. Cornelis van Kooten was publicly supporting a fringe scientific argument claiming "It is quite likely that future generations will benefit from the enrichment of Earth's atmosphere with more carbon dioxide." Last December [2021-12], van Kooten authored a blog post entitled, "'Renewable' energy can't replace fossil fuels," which made the scientifically dubious claim that toxic chemicals contained in solar panels "are several orders of magnitude more hazardous than nuclear waste."

Meanwhile G. Cornelis van Kooten's peers are producing leading-edge research about climate change. Several University of Victoria researchers recently released a paper calculating that the deadly atmospheric river which caused floods and landslides in southwestern British Columbia last November [2021-11] was potentially made 60 percent more likely due to global warming. G. Cornelis van Kooten has spent years denying that human activities are warming the planet. Yet van Kooten is a "Tier 1 Chair," meaning that his research on climate change and the environment qualifies the University of Victoria to receive $200,000 annually for seven years.

G. Cornelis van Kooten is currently serving his second term as Canada Research Chair  [Wikipedia: Canada Research Chair]. In order for his 2016 research grant renewal to succeed, he had to demonstrate to a review board of three experts that his work is "producing lead-edge results that are making a significant impact at the international level." This is a "rigorous peer review process," a spokesperson for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada told DeSmog in an email. "Consequently, each Chairholder is expected to strive to follow best research practices honestly, accountably, openly, and fairly."

G. Cornelis van Kooten says his research into the economic impacts of lowering greenhouse gas emissions provides a much-needed perspective for decision-makers. "Climate science often ignores economic considerations, and climate models do not usually include interactive economic sectors, making it difficult to explore cost-effective policy responses to climate change and its consequences," he writes in his program biography. Van Kooten said he was unavailable for an interview with DeSmog. "Unfortunately, I am totally bogged down with teaching," he wrote in an email.

It's not clear from G. Cornelis van Kooten's public statements that he views global warming as a serious threat. In 2015, DeSmog spoke at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by The Heartland Institute  [The Heartland Institute] - a group that's received over $1 million in contributions from Exxon  [ExxonMobil], Koch Industries  [Koch Industries], and the coal company Murray Energy  [now: American Consolidated Natural Resources]. The Heartland Institute has previously led campaigns seeking to "cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet," according to leaked documents from the organization.

"Thank you to The Heartland Institute for paying my way here," G. Cornelis van Kooten said at the 2015 conference, where he identified himself as a Canada Research Chair. "Even if nations conclude an agreement to reduce CO2 emissions, it will cost a lot of money but have no perceptible impact whatsoever on atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global warming - if it's a real thing."

In 2018, G. Cornelis van Kooten was one of dozens of academics who signed his name to an open letter defending Rebekah Mercer  [Wikipedia: Rebekah Mercer] - the daughter of far-right billionaire Robert Mercer - who served on President Donald Trump's transition team and has directed millions of dollars through her family foundation  [Mercer Family Foundation] to organizations that dispute the science of climate change. "The case for harm from catastrophic global warming is growing weaker as more is learned about the Earth's climate system," reads the letter signed by van Kooten, who is again identified as a Canada Research Chair.

While serving as a Canada Research Chair, G. Cornelis van Kooten has headed a research group at the University of Victoria titled Resource Economics & Policy Analysis that releases regular working papers related to climate change, economics, forestry, and agriculture. In these papers, van Kooten has claimed, "There is a great deal of uncertainty concerning climate change," while citing Canadian climate change skeptic Ross McKitrick  [Wikipedia: Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph, and a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute] - and George Mason University research fellow Patrick Michaels  [Wikipedia: Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until Spring 2019], in the United States.

Among multiple other examples, G. Cornelis van Kooten has suggested "there is no straightforward causal link between human fossil fuel use and temperatures, although this remains an area of contention," again citing himself and Ross McKitrick. Ross McKitrick and van Kooten both endorsed the "Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming"  [see also: Christian right] a document created by the Cornwall Alliance, an evangelical Christian group that claims: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming." Van Kooten remains a senior fellow with the Cornwall Alliance.

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Climate change science skeptic   Patrick Moore has been dropped as the keynote speaker at a joint conference of two British Columbia provincial regulatory bodies. Organizers told The Tyee that Patrick Moore was originally hired because they wanted their keynote speakers to present "both sides" of the debate around climate science. "Just because someone has an opinion most of us don't agree with they still have the right to have that opinion," said John-Paul Ellson  [local copy], CEO and registrar of the B.C. Institute of Agrologists, which regulates soil scientists. "Without debate you'd never be able to move forward, and you can't have a debate if everyone agrees on everything."

The B.C. Institute of Agrologists and Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of B.C.  [Wikipedia: Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia] joint-conference is scheduled for 2022-05-05. The conference website had featured Patrick Moore as the keynote speaker, noting his work "to expose the misinformation and outright lies used to scare us and our children about the future of the Earth." But on Monday [2022-02-07] John-Paul Ellson said the conference was cancelling Patrick Moore's speech because "material shown to us by his agency didn't provide the whole story." "When we got the full story we said it's not accurate," added Ellson, who didn't elaborate further. Ellson said booking a speaker like Moore would have encouraged debate, but in the end it was "not worth the attention - we'll get someone who isn't as controversial."

Reached at his Vancouver Island home, Patrick Moore said he hadn't been given any details on the reason for the cancellation. But Moore said the cancellation sounded political, not scientific. "Cancel culture is alive and well," he said. Moore declined to say how much he would have been paid for the speech. But in 2020, Moore was scheduled to receive $10,000 for a speech at a Regina conference that was also cancelled.

John-Paul Ellson said the conference would lose its deposit, which is about half of the total, after cancelling. The British Columbia provincial government has given the Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia and the B.C. Institute of Agrologists the power to license and regulate people who work in those fields.

Patrick Moore told The Tyee "I don't accept there's a climate emergency." Patrick Moore also said burning fossil fuels is necessary to "restore balance to the global carbon cycle." Patrick Moore added the information he gave his agency was accurate and often peer-reviewed, like his recently published book Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. "People are always saying I'm incorrect but they're never saying exactly what it is that isn't true," Moore said. (A Tyee article fact-checked 10 claims made in Moore's book.)

The conference's website didn't present Patrick Moore as a controversial figure or someone who disputes that CO2 emissions are creating a climate emergency. Instead it said Patrick Moore was a "leader of the international environmental movement for more than 50 years," listed him as a former leader of Greenpeace, and said Patrick Moore "reveals the myths and misinformation that distort current environmental debates." The Tyee contacted Moore's agency, the National Speakers Bureau, for comment but did not hear back by publication time.

The B.C. Institute of Agrologists has around 1,800 members and is the regulator of soil scientists, John-Paul Ellson said. Agrologistsagrologists  [agriculturists] are hired to help reclaim, restore and remediate soil. They can also be found replanting native grasses in an area after a wildfire. The Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia regulates about 10,000 applied science and engineering technology professionals in British Columbia and the Yukon. Agrologists must meet professional development standards, education standards and competency standards, Ellson said. When asked if Patrick Moore would meet those standards, John-Paul Ellson said he has "no idea," because Moore is not part of his institute. But conferences bring in unrelated speakers all the time, he added, like athletes or motivational speakers.

If you've ever written a report for school, you've probably been told not to use Wikipedia as a reliable source. While there's a fountain of information on this website, Wikipedia itself notes that it is not a reliable source because it's made up of user-generated content. That means just about anyone can go in and write falsehoods, which can live on until a volunteer editor makes a correction. That's why a team of volunteers is working hard to keep climate-deniers off of Wikipedia.

English Wikipedia has over 9 billion page views every month, leaving a lot of opportunities for climate-deniers to write falsehoods and for viewers to receive that information and take it as hard truths.
Many troublesome comments have been written on climate-related pages. According to the BBC, one person wrote that climate scientists work together in a secret, Communist organization, and another person turned an entire page's text about climate change into a hyperlink leading to a website about hoaxes.

Volunteers such as David Tetta, a former employee of the United States Environmental Protection Agency for over 30 years, work diligently to stop the spread of misinformation on Wikipedia. While people can still try to put out the misinformation, David Tetta says that Wikipedia editors typically catch these errors within a few minutes or an hour most. Tetta himself puts hundreds of hours into Wikipedia. "I'll send [the deniers] a note on their personal page on Wikipedia saying, 'This is vandalism, this could have consequences,'" Tetta told the BBC. "Sometimes these people get kicked off Wikipedia."

Although climate-deniers do infiltrate Wikipedia from time to time, there are many editors and contributors putting a lot of volunteer efforts into writing thorough, well-researched articles about climate change. Wikipedia also has a requirement that statements are accompanied by legitimate sources, making it easier for editors to quickly spot and remove inaccuracies. "Wikipedia is just an uncomfortable place to be if you want to promote a point of view that goes against science," volunteer editor Su-Laine Brodsky  [Twitter:  Su-Laine Yeo Brodsky, a technology writer, says. "It's much easier to be on social media, where you can say whatever you want, and not really be held to task for it."

Alex Stinson, of the Wikimedia Foundation, notes that about 97% of misinformation is caught quickly. In addition to the large amounts of volunteers who work on Wikipedia, there are also automated bots programmed to prevent vandalism. Some highly visited pages, like the climate change page, also require those who try to edit the page to have extensive Wikipedia editing experience before they can make changes.

Overall, Wikipedia is ramping up protection to keep the information on its website as accurate as possible, but viewers should still proceed with caution. "Because, as a user-generated source, it can be edited by anyone at any time, any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong," Wikipedia itself states.

"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes," said ExxonMobil lobbyist Keith McCoy. "Did we join some of these 'shadow groups' to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing illegal about that." These are the words McCoy was caught saying on a secretly recorded video released by Unearthed  [Wikipedia entry], Greenpeace U.K.'s investigative journalism arm, and the British Channel 4 News this summer exposing how the oil giant and lobby groups such as the American Petroleum Institute  [DeSmog.com entry] seed doubt about climate change and undermine legislation to stop global warming.

These revelations quickly spurred calls for Congress to investigate Exxon's and other fossil fuel companies' efforts to obstruct climate action. On 2021-07-26, the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to Keith McCoy requesting his voluntary appearance before the committee. And on 2021-10-28, Congress questioned the CEOs of ExxonMobil,   Chevron,   BP America,   Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute on their history of blocking climate policy.

For years, academics, journalists, and activists have been unearthing documents proving that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change since the late 1950s. That's many, many years before Keith McCoy was even twinkle in his daddy's eye and decades before he came to Washington to join in Exxon's campaign to deny science and delay action to save the planet from "catastrophic climate change" - a term Exxon used back in 1981.

These documents show how companies worked to erode public acceptance of climate science over the years - including Exxon corporate reports from the late 1970s, revealed by DeSmog in 2016, which stated "There is no doubt" that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing "problem."

To explain the long history of what the fossil fuel industry knew and when they knew it, Stanford University science historian Ben Franta has collected a dozen of his favorite documents.

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Highlights

• Archives, interviews used to trace Total's engagement with global warming since 1970s.

• Total [now; TotalEnergies] or predecessors aware of harmful global warming impacts since at least 1971.

• Total engaged in overt denial of climate science in late 1980s, early 1990s.

• Various postures and strategies pursued by Total other than overt science denial.

• IPIECA played key role in coordinating international oil industry beginning in 1980s.

Abstract

Building upon recent work on other major fossil fuel companies, we report new archival research and primary source interviews describing how TotalInternational Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s. This represents one of the first longitudinal studies of a major fossil fuel company's responses to global warming to the present, describing historical stages of awareness, preparation, denial, and delay.

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ExxonMobil's chief executive said Thursday [2021-10-28] that his company "does not spread disinformation regarding climate change" as he and other oil company chiefs countered congressional allegations the industry concealed evidence about the dangers of it. Testifying at a landmark House hearing, CEO Darren Woods said ExxonMobil "has long acknowledged the reality and risks of climate change, and it has devoted significant resources to addressing those risks." The oil giant's public statements on climate "are and have always been truthful, fact-based ... and consistent" with mainstream climate science, Woods said. Woods was among top officials at four major oil companies testifying Thursday as congressional Democrats investigate what they describe as a decades-long, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.

The much-anticipated hearing before the House Oversight Committee [United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform] comes after months of public efforts by Democrats to obtain documents and other information on the oil industry's role in stopping climate action over multiple decades. The appearance of the four oil executives -- from ExxonMobil,   Chevron,   BP America, and Shell -- has drawn comparisons to a high-profile hearing in the 1990s with tobacco executives who famously testified that they didn't believe nicotine was addictive.

"The fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change since at least 1977. Yet for decades, the industry spread denial and doubt about the harm of its products -- undermining the science and preventing meaningful action on climate change even as the global climate crisis became increasingly dire," said Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. "For far too long, Big Oil has escaped accountability for its central role in bringing our planet to the brink of a climate catastrophe. That ends today," said Maloney, who chairs the Oversight panel. "This hearing is just the start of our investigation," added Khanna, who leads a subcommittee on the environment. "These companies must be held accountable."

The committee released a memo Thursday [2021-10-28] charging that the oil industry's public support for climate reforms has not been matched by meaningful actions, and that the industry has spent billions of dollars to block reforms. Oil companies frequently boast about their efforts to produce clean energy in advertisements and social media posts accompanied by sleek videos or pictures of wind turbines. "Today's staff memo shows Big Oil's campaign to 'greenwash' their role in the climate crisis in action," Maloney said. "These oil companies pay lip service to climate reforms, but behind the scenes they spend far more time lobbying to preserve their lucrative tax breaks."

Carolyn Maloney and other Democrats have focused particular ire on Exxon, after a senior lobbyist for the company was caught in a secret video bragging that Exxon had fought climate science through "shadow groups" and had targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken President Joe Biden's climate agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate and social policy bill currently moving through Congress.

Keith McCoy, a former Washington-based lobbyist for Exxon, dismissed the company's public expressions of support for a proposed carbon tax on fossil fuel emissions as a "talking point." McCoy's comments were made public in June by the environmental group Greenpeace UK, which secretly recorded him and another lobbyist in Zoom interviews. McCoy no longer works for the company, an Exxon spokesperson said last month [2021-09].

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French oil giant Total knew that its fossil fuel extraction could contribute to global warming as early as 1971 but stayed silent about it until 1988, according to a new study.

Research published today in the journal Global Environmental Change, based on internal company documents and interviews with former staff, found that personnel "received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971".

Total - which this year rebranded as TotalEnergies - "became more fully informed" about climate change in the 1980s and "began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s". The company publicly accepted climate science in the 1990s but promoted "policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control", the authors found.

The research - which has sparked the hashtag #Totalknew on social media - follows similar revelations about ExxonMobil and Shell [Royal Dutch Shell] in recent years which exposed how companies were aware of the impact of their emissions on the climate as early as the 1980s.

Today's study also finds that ExxonMobil "coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s" through the IPIECA (International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association).

"These revelations provide proof that TotalEnergies and the other oil and gas majors have stolen the precious time of a generation to stem the climate crisis", climate justice campaign groups 350.org and Notre Affaire à Tous said in a joint statement. They added: "The dire consequences of climate change we are now experiencing could have been avoided if Total executives fifty years ago had decided that the future of the planet is more important than their profits."

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ABSTRACT.  While controls over the Earth's climate system have undergone rigorous hypothesis-testing since the 1800s, questions over the scientific consensus of the role of human activities in modern climate change continue to arise in public settings. We update previous efforts to quantify the scientific consensus on climate change by searching the recent literature for papers sceptical of anthropogenic-caused global warming. From a dataset of 88125 climate-related papers published since 2012, when this question was last addressed comprehensively, we examine a randomized subset of 3000 such publications. We also use a second sample-weighted approach that was specifically biased with keywords to help identify any sceptical peer-reviewed papers in the whole dataset. We identify four sceptical papers out of the sub-set of 3000, as evidenced by abstracts that were rated as implicitly or explicitly sceptical of human-caused global warming. In our sample utilizing pre-identified sceptical keywords we found 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly sceptical. We conclude with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change - expressed as a proportion of the total publications - exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.

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• [EcoWatch.com, 2021-10-20] 99.9% of Scientists Agree That Climate Crisis Is Caused by Humans, Study Finds.  ... A review of scientific literature, published in Environmental Research Letters, found just 28 papers linked to climate skepticism in its trawl of more than 88,000. The findings support the IPCC's declaration in August that the science of human influence on the heating atmosphere is "unequivocal," and refute the concerted disinformation campaign by fossil fuel interests seeking to sow doubt and uncertainty about their products' causation of the crisis - the impacts of which are visible around the world. A U.N. report released Tuesday [2021-10-19] warned all of Africa's glaciers could vanish in the next two decades. Africa is responsible for just 4% of greenhouse gas pollution, but the continent and its people are exceptionally vulnerable to the ravages of the climate crisis. Climate change accelerates glacier melt, intensifies droughts, and worsens extreme precipitation events like those that cause flash flooding. ...

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Global Warming Policy Foundation

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a lobby group in the United Kingdom whose stated aims are to challenge "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. The GWPF as well as some of its prominent members have been characterized as promoting climate change denial.

In 2014, when the Charity Commission ruled that the GWPF had breached rules on impartiality, a non-charitable organisation called the "Global Warming Policy Forum" was created as a wholly owned subsidiary, to do lobbying that a charity could not. The GWPF website carries an array of articles "sceptical" of scientific findings of anthropogenic global warming and its impacts.  [Source: Wikipedia, 2021-10-11.]

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ExxonMobil senior lobbyist Keith McCoy was caught on video more than a month ago [2021-06] saying that he and his employer fight congressional climate action by using "shadow groups" and centrist think tanks. But the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation has so far decided to keep McCoy on as an advisor.

McCoy is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's (CBC Foundation; CBCF) corporate advisory council, which "[advises] the CBCF's Board of Directors on policy, special initiatives, and leadership development." The CBCF's Board of Directors currently includes six members of the United States House of Representatives, some of whom hold positions on the House committee with jurisdiction over legislation related to environmental protections and climate change. The CBCF is a nonprofit affiliate of the Congressional Black Caucus that researches how policies affect Black communities, publishes legislative reports, and hosts an annual legislative conference that it describes as "the leading policy conference on issues impacting African Americans and the global Black community."

On 2021-06-30, a Greenpeace-affiliated outlet released video of Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for ExxonMobil [ExxonMobil], telling an undercover reporter that his company works behind the scenes to stall action on climate change even as it claims publicly to support the Paris Agreement and policies like a carbon tax. McCoy, who believed he was giving advice to someone who was looking to hire a lobbyist, said that the company backs a carbon tax because it believes it will never happen but gives it a good talking point.

  

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