Last week’s leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute is the latest in a long line. A couple of these leaked memos reveal the motives and the methods of the oil and coal industries as they spread confusion about climate science.
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| Memo from Stanley Lewandowski, General Manager of IREA |
On August 12, 2009, an American Petroleum Institute memo came to light. The memo, from API President Jack Gerard, details the API’s plans for an astroturfing campaign to oppose U.S. climate change legislation [1]. The memo was leaked to Greenpeace USA. It sets out a plan for a series of API-funded “Energy Citizen” rallies to be held in August ’09. The “Energy Citizen” rallies will be populated by oil company employees, and the API was hoping to keep the venues confidential:
Please indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies.
[...]
The list of tentative venues is attached. Please treat this information as sensitive and ask those in your company to do so as well, as some of these places may be subject to change, and we don’t want critics to know our game plan.Jack N. Gerard,
Copy of API memo [1]
This most recent insight into the API’s activities is getting extensive coverage [2] [3], so I’ll use this post to look back a bit.
The API’s efforts to oppose climate change legislation go back more than a decade. Other oil and coal interests have been doing the same. Two earlier leaked memos, one from the API, and one from an electric distribution cooperative called IREA, provide some clear information about these organisations’ motives, methods, and funding arrangements.
The 1998 API memo
By early 1998, the Kyoto Protocol had been formally adopted, but it was clear that it would not be ratified by the U.S. Senate. Nevertheless, the American Petroleum Institute was keen to sustain strong opposition to the treaty. In April 1998 Joseph Walker of the API sent a memo to a task force that the API had brought together, the “Global Climate Science Team”, spelling out their strategy for a “Global Climate Science Communications Plan” [4].
The campaign strategy was based on the creation of uncertainty and doubt. It would “develop and implement a national media relations program to inform the media about uncertainties in climate science”. This approach draws heavily on the methods used in the earlier campaign by the tobacco industry to sow doubt about the smoking-cancer link (see Tobacco, part 2: “A Frank Statement” and “Doubt is our product”: PR versus science).
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| Steven Milloy
(Fox News screen grab)
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In fact, the same people were often involved in both the tobacco and climate disinformation campaigns. For example, Steve Milloy is listed as a member of the Global Climate Science Communications Team, and he is listed as a contributor to the API action plan. Steve Milloy and his Advancement of Sound Science Coalition were heavily involved in the tobacco campaign as well [5]. Milloy is quite an all-rounder.
What were the API’s motives? Who was involved? Who was paying? Who was getting paid? A few excerpts from the API memo provide several of the answers:
In December 1997, the Clinton Administration agreed in Kyoto, Japan, to a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [...]
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As the climate change debate has evolved, those who oppose action have argued mainly that signing such a treaty will place the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with most other nations, and will be extremely expensive to implement. Much of the cost will be borne by American consumers who will pay higher prices for most energy and transportation.
[...]
There has been little, if any, public resistance or pressure applied to Congress to reject the treaty, except by those “inside the Beltway” with vested interests.
Moreover, from the political viewpoint, it is difficult for the United States to oppose the treaty solely on economic grounds, valid as the economic issues are. It makes it too easy for others to portray the United States as putting preservation of its own lifestyle above the greater concerns of mankind. This argument, in turn, forces our negotiators to make concessions that have not been well thought through, and in the end may do far more harm than good.
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Strategy and tactics: [...] Develop and implement a national media relations program to inform the media about uncertainties in climate science; to generate national, regional and local media coverage on the scientific uncertainties,
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GCSCT members who contributed to the development of the plan are A. John Adams, John Adams Associates; Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project; David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow; Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute; Lee Garrigan, environmental issues Council; Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom; Peter Cleary, Americans for Tax Reform; Randy Randol, Exxon Corp.; Robert Gehri, The Southern Company; Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp; Steve Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition; and Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute.
[...]
Potential funding sources were identified as American Petroleum Institute (API) and its members; Business Round Table (BRT) and its members, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and its members; Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and its members; and the National Mining Association (NMA) and its members.
Potential fund allocators were identified as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Competitive Enterprise Institute , Frontiers of Freedom and The Marshall Institute.
American Petroleum Institute memo, April 3, 1998 [4]
As the memo makes clear, the API’s primary motivation for opposing the Kyoto treaty was economic, but it recognised that the economic arguments would appear self-serving and ineffective, so it decided to use pseudoscience to bolster it’s case.
The 2006 IREA memo
Eight years later, a memo from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association was obtained by ABC News. The IREA is a member-owned electric distribution cooperative. The memo was from its general manager, Stanley Lewandowski.
Here Lewandowski explains what IREA’s problem is, and what he’s doing about it:
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We decided to support Dr. Patrick Michaels and his group (New Hope Environmental Services, Inc.). Dr. Michaels has been supported by electric cooperatives in the past and also receives financial support from other sources. [...] In February of this year IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr. Michaels. In addition, we have contacted all of the G & T’s in the United States and as of the writing of this letter, we have obtained additional contributions and pledges for Dr. Michaels group.
IREA memo, July 17, 2006 [6]
(A G&T is a Generation and Transmission Cooperative.)
The IREA would be funding the climate sceptic lobbyist company of Patrick Michaels.
The IREA’s thinking is strikingly similar to the API’s. In the API memo, Joseph Walker explained that the API’s economic arguments would look self-serving, so they decided to go for pseudoscience instead. In the IREA memo, exactly the same theme emerges. The IREA faces a commercial problem with a carbon tax, but it is unwilling to make the commercial case directly. Instead, it goes for a pseudoscience disinformation campaign.
IREA is a member-owned electric distribution cooperative operating on a non-profit basis. How did the IREA’s management get a mandate to spend the cooperative’s money on political lobbying?
What is an unusual breach of trust, the advocates say, is that a relatively small company like IREA has given such a substantial sum to Michaels without telling customers.
“It’s outrageous. It’s an abuse of authority,” said Ron Binz, a public utility consultant who was Colorado’s state utility consumer advocate from 1984 to 1995.
“Intermountain is a rural electric cooperative,” Binz said. “The customers are member-owners. Stan Lewandowski is basically spending other people’s money.”
Lewandowski is unapologetic about the contents of the document and for donating the money to Michaels, who did not immediately return calls and e-mails seeking comment.
“I think what we need to talk about is how much can be done, and at what cost,” Lewandowski said to ABC News. “My intent is to get the issue out there and say, ‘This is important.’ I’m trying to keep the low rates for our customers. And I’ll do anything in my power to try and do that.”
Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore,
ABC News, August 3, 2006 [7]
In his memo, Stanley Lewandowski reveals that IREA has paid $100,000 to Patrick Michaels, and he points out that “Dr. Michaels has been supported by electric cooperatives in the past”. In this New York Times opinion piece, Paul Krugman goes over Patrick Michaels’ activities in the climate debate [8]:
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| Dr. James Hansen
(Bill Ebbesen )
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Dr. Hansen was one of the first climate scientists to say publicly that global warming was under way. In 1988, he made headlines with Senate testimony in which he declared that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”
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But soon after Dr. Hansen’s 1988 testimony, energy companies began a campaign to create doubt about global warming, in spite of the increasingly overwhelming evidence. And in the late 1990′s, climate skeptics began a smear campaign against Dr. Hansen himself.Leading the charge was Patrick Michaels, a professor at the University of Virginia who has received substantial financial support from the energy industry. In Senate testimony, and then in numerous presentations, Dr. Michaels claimed that the actual pace of global warming was falling far short of Dr. Hansen’s predictions. As evidence, he presented a chart supposedly taken from a 1988 paper written by Dr. Hansen and others, which showed a curve of rising temperatures considerably steeper than the trend that has actually taken place.
In fact, the chart Dr. Michaels showed was a fraud – that is, it wasn’t what Dr. Hansen actually predicted. The original paper showed a range of possibilities, and the actual rise in temperature has fallen squarely in the middle of that range. So how did Dr. Michaels make it seem as if Dr. Hansen’s prediction was wildly off? Why, he erased all the lower curves, leaving only the curve that the original paper described as being “on the high side of reality.”
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Even now, Dr. Hansen seems reluctant to say the obvious. “Is this treading close to scientific fraud?” he recently asked about Dr. Michaels’s smear. The answer is no: it isn’t “treading close,” it’s fraud pure and simple.Paul Krugman,
The New York Times, May 29, 2006 [8]
The 1998 API memo and the 2006 IREA memo reveal virtually identical motives and methods. The two organisations recognise that their commercial case against climate legislation would appear self-serving and ineffective, therefore they are unwilling to make their commercial case directly. Instead, they decide to fund pseudoscience-based disinformation campaigns to sow uncertainty and confusion about basic science.
More Information
The Union of Concerned Scientists’ report, “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science” [9] details ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign on global warming.
Related Post
References
- Copy of email from American Petroleum Institute to its membership – obtained by Greenpeace – August 2009, Copy on DeSmogBlog, August 2009
- Oil Lobby’s ‘Energy Citizens’ Astroturf Campaign Exposed, Kevin Grandia, The Huffington Post, August 13, 2009
- Oil lobby to fund campaign against Obama’s climate change strategy, Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, August 14, 2009
- Draft Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan, Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute, April 3, 1998
- How Big Tobacco Helped Create “the Junkman”, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, PR Watch 7, No. 3, 2000
- IREA memo, Stanley R. Lewandowski, Jr., General Manager, Intermountain Rural Electric Association, July 17, 2006
- ABC News Reporting Cited As Evidence In Congressional Hearing On Global Warming, Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore, ABC News, August 3, 2006
- Swift Boating the Planet, Paul Krugman, The New York Times, May 29, 2006
- Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics
to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, Union of Concerned Scientists, January 2007
Very useful information — thank you.
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