Op-Ed Column:Big Oil Tries to Gore Al's Inconvenient Truth

Like fur matted to an endangered wild yak, Think Progress was all over big oil’s imminent attack on Al Gore’s new global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Just a week before its May 24th opening, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) - a disinformation front group for big oil - will unleash two TV ads on “global warming alarmism” in cities nationwide. While CEI is funded by other oil companies through the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil is a major donor, with more than $1.6 million in contributions since 1998. (Busy promoting an image of environmental responsibility, Exxon Mobil has, in fact, pumped millions of dollars into think tanks, media outlets, consumer and religious groups, and other organizations that promote a skeptical global warming agenda. Surprise, surprise.)

So what exactly is CEI’s perspective on global warming? Here’s the straight dope from their website:

Although global warming has been described as the greatest threat facing mankind, the policies designed to address global warming actually pose a greater threat. The Kyoto Protocol and similar domestic schemes to ration carbon-based energy use would do little to slow carbon dioxide emissions, but would have enormous costs. These costs would eventually fall most heavily on the poorest nations in the world. Luckily, predictions of the extent of future warming are based on implausible scientific and economic assumptions, and the negative impacts of predicted warming have been vastly exaggerated. In the unlikely event that global warming turns out to be a problem, the correct approach is not energy rationing, but rather long-term technological transformation and building resiliency in societies by increasing wealth. CEI has been a leader in the fight against the global warming scare.

Who’s wearing the tin foil hats now, huh? The "fight against the global warming scare." Great. Just what we need. A global war on global warming informants. Maybe the NSA can start spying on who's leaking those incontrovertible scientific facts.

As Think Progress points out, “Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus that the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.”

And not to throw gasoline on a fire, but here’s CEI’s founder Fred Smith and reporter Michael Kinsley from a 1992 Crossfire interview:

SMITH: Look, the point- what we do know and don’t know, we know that carbon dioxide is increasing. We know carbon dioxide is a plant fertilizer which is a positive benefit to the peoples of the world. We know that there are these elaborate computer models that have never been right before, may be right this time, that suggest climate changes, possibly good, possibly bad. Most of the indications right now are it looks pretty good. Warmer winters, warmer nights, no effects during the day because of clouding, sounds to me like we’re moving to a more benign planet, more rain, richer, easier productivity to agriculture -

KINSLEY: Wait a minute.

SMITH: We’re basically to a world now that’s a lot closer to heaven than hell.

Is it any wonder that big oil has been the driving force behind Bush administration policy? These are the people with whom Dick “Leave All the Lights On” Cheney carved out our nation’s energy policies behind closed doors. Smith on Crossfire and CEI’s website statement sound strikingly similar in tone and twisted logic to that of Cheney describing why we attacked Iraq, Rumsfeld defending troop levels and insufficient body armor, Gonzales and Rice denying our use of torture and secret gulags, and President Snoop Dog asking us to trust him and his crooked-to-the-core administration not to spy on us.

Every single one of their policies and positions stands in the way of human progress, science and decency. To these villainously greedy dead-enders, money trumps death, even if it means the demise of their own family’s future generations.

Incidentally, this past April was the warmest on record in the United States. I guess that means we’re all one step closer to heaven.

Comments

[buzz19]

Uhhhhh.....Mr. Smith?.....see, while more rain is one issue of a warmer planet Earth, there's also that little problem of all the glaciers melting and all that water having to go somewhere.....rising ocean levels and Idaho soon becomes the United States' new west coast....of course California being the biggest blue state, I guess Mr. Smith won't miss it.

[PlusDistance]

You missed the best part of the ads. The commercials end with the line "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life." (this via TAPPED)

I can't wait to see the ads in favor of tropical heat, tsunamis and rising sea levels ("Water. They call it flooding. We call it refreshing.")

[MediaBloodhound]

I missed the best part yesterday because it wasn't available yet, Sir PlusDistance. Otherwise, say it with me, Think Progress would've been on that, too, like matted fur on a wild yak.

But the ads are in today's Story of the Day. Enjoy the wonderment.

[MediaBloodhound]

Oh, forgot to mention - love your tagline!

And after all of our springs are too polluted to bottle, I'm looking forward to bottled water that's promoted as coming straight from freshly melted ice caps. Campaign slogan:

"The last stuff on earth."