Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008 in The Nashua Telegraph

Big Oil’s prime goal to reward investors

The op-ed column “Energy independence isn’t Big Oil’s job” (June 28 in the Nashua Telegraph) got it exactly right. Like all corporations, “Big Oil’s” primary responsibilities are to make a profit and to work to maximize the return to their investors.

The piece by syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock quotes U.S. Rep. Edward Markey as saying ExxonMobil “only spent $10 million on renewables last year.” It states that ExxonMobil has spent $1 billion since 2004 on cogeneration technology and that the company is donating $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project.

Let’s be real. All of these “investments” by ExxonMobil are great public relations but “chump change” compared to ExxonMobil’s cumulative net income of $174.5 billion and its cumulative gross profit of $388.5 billion for the years of 2002 through 2007.

In 2007, the company invested $15.4 billion into capital expenditures, but it also spent $30.7 billion for something called “Retirement of Stock.” So in 2007, ExxonMobil spent about double the amount of funds in buying back its stock than the amount it spent on all capital expenditures.

When a company issues public stock to raise funds, its outstanding stock shares are usually “diluted.” After the issuance of new stock, the original stockholders own a little less percentage-wise of the company.

But when a company like ExxonMobil is flush with cash, it has the option of buying back shares. If the stock price is high, shareholders who sell their stock obtain immediate gratification. Individuals retaining shares (such as company officers and board members: the ones making the buyback decisions) will increase the value of their shares through a “reverse dilution” process.

This is not rocket science. What ExxonMobil and other Big Oil companies have been and will keep doing is in the best financial interest of its investors. It is not, nor has it ever been, corporate America’s responsibility do what is in the best interest of the public or our country.

Rather, the decades-long fallacy that corporate decisions would serve the best interest of the public is a concept that has successfully been sold to Americans by politicians whose true constituents (and major contributors) are the corporations and their corporate leaders.

The shame is not that corporations have been “evil” in pursuing their responsibilities to their investors, but that our government has failed in the 35 years since the first oil shocks of the 1970s to implement substantial national energy policies that take into account the fact that oil is a guaranteed limited global energy resource.

Your guest editorial on that same day (“Additional drilling is not the answer”) also got it right.

Our country will not be able to drill its way out of the current energy problems. It is now time for our politicians to step up and implement sensible national energy policies that encourage conservation and efficiency.

It is time for the politicians to implement legislation that facilitates the development of alternative and renewable energy sources that will reduce our dependence on oil and ensure our country’s national security and economic success.

Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.
Nashua

On July 2, 2008, Governor Deval Patrick signed an historic energy bill at the Museum of Science in Boston.  The bill signing was a wonderful event. In the picture above, you see the signing officials on stage and in the front row from right to left you see Keith Bergman (our colleague from The Climate Project and the Town Manager of Littleton, MA), me, my daughter Madelaine (with red hair), and Vanessa St. Laurent, Executive Secretary for Dept. of Applied Math and Sciences at Wewntworth. One of the members of the signing delegation was Senator Marc Pacheco who is also a Climate Project “Messenger.” We saw a fourth Climate Messenger at the event: Nick D’arbeloff.

More detail on the Green Communities Act is available here.

The president of an industry-funded front group with an environmental-friendly sounding name was charged Wednesday with tax evasion and obstruction of justice as part of the continuing federal criminal investigation into lobbying practices in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. Italia Federici, president of the “Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA)”, “plans to plead guilty to charges of obstructing Senate proceedings and tax evasion.”

If there is anything that should have been a tip-off as to the true bona fides of this supposed environmental group it would have been that text of this article from the Washington Post in 2001.

On a June evening in 1998, in the big ballroom of the J.W. Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue, Gale A. Norton hosted the national kickoff for an organization she founded that is now called, after several name changes, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.
The guest of honor was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.). The keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). The sponsors for the gala that night included the National Coal Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council and the political consulting firm of Karl Rove, one of Bush’s closest advisers.

True to form, the Bush administration and special interests aligned with it have been masters at creating “initiatives” and “non-profit” organizations that certainly sound to be environmental or consumer conscious but, in fact, have been supported morally and/or financially by major corporate interests. The implementation of President Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative” actually would have resulted in the weakening of the Clean Air Act. Mr. Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” was anything but healthy but rather an effort give free reign to the timber industry across National Forests under the guise of “fuel reduction. And Mr. Bush’s recently announced new “climate initiative” appears to me to have been suspiciously timed to successfully preempt and delay the implementation of a more proactive proposal to manage greenhouse emissions that had been put forth by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 Summit this week.

Many industry-funded front-groups like the CREA exist today. Sourcewatch calls them “the quintessential tool of deceptive propaganda.” The idea of such groups was the brain-child of Edward Bernays who is generally regarded as the “father of public relations.” On its website, Sourcewatch lists a number of other front-groups with environmental-friendly or consumer-friendly sounding names which, in fact, work primarily to block any honest-to-goodness attempts to protect the environment, preserve human health, or support the best interests of consumers and the public.

I have cross-posted this blog entry at the Earth Forum.

Contrary to what most climate change naysayers claim, scientists are mostly a conservative lot. The peer review process can sometimes be brutal. It is often only after significant resistance and repeated attempts and additional substantiation that new research ideas and findings traverse the gauntlet of reviewers and are published in the top scientific journals.

(One of the most important papers in ecology on the trophic-dynamic concept by Raymond Lindeman was originally rejected for publication. Reviewers felt there were insufficient data to support the theoretical model and that theoretical essays were inappropriate for the most important journal in the field.)

Recently, at least three reports have been published that document that recent scientific projections of global warming have likely been conservative.
The reports indicate that climate change models, used by the world’s scientists to make the projections, likely are providing underestimates of both future warming and the global impacts of a warming earth.

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First, new analyses reported in the journal Science, indicate that climate projections published in 2001 by the IPCC were conservative compared to actual warmings observed. The 2001 projections were part of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and modeled changes in key global climate parameters since 1973, compared with a series of differing emissions scenarios. Although published in 2001, the model projections were essentially independent from the observed climate data since 1990.

• As be seen in the figures (right), measured carbon dioxide concentrations between the years 1990 and 2006 followed the model projections almost exactly.
• But measured global mean surface temperature increase (land and ocean combined) between 1990 and 2006 was in the upper range of the various IPCC scenarios.
• However, the actual observed rates of sea-level rise since 1990 were faster than the those projected by models.

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Second, a NASA report suggests that existing climate models may be significantly underestimating future warmings in eastern North America due to limitations in their ability to accurately project future precipitation regimes.To focus on more local scales, the NASA scientists scaled the simulations from a global climate model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and coupled the simulations with those of a widely-used weather prediction model.

Coupling the weather prediction model with the global climate model allowed the scientists to assesses details about future climate at a finer geographic scale than global models alone. The coupling provided reliable simulations not only on the amounts of summer precipitation, but also on its frequency and timing. Accurately predicting the timing and frequency of precipitation events is important because daily temperatures are usually higher on rainless days and when precipitation falls less frequently than normal.

Once more accurate information on the timing and frequency of summer rainfall events were incorporated, the simulations projected much higher summer temperatures that had been projected with the global model alone.

The new projections indicate that eastern U.S. summer daily high temperatures that currently average in the low-to-mid-80s (degrees Fahrenheit) will most likely soar into the low-to-mid-90s during typical summers by the 2080s. In extreme seasons — when precipitation falls infrequently — July and August daily high temperatures could average between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit in cities such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta.

Image: A computer model projection of average daily maximum temperatures over the eastern United States for July 2085 (left) and July 1993 (right). Areas in violet shading show temperatures of 26°C (79°F); green 30°C (86°F); yellow 34°C (93°F); red 38°C (100°F);dark purple 42°C (108°F). Credit: NASA/GISS

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Third, another new study released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that arctic sea ice is melting at a significantly faster rate than projected by the most advanced computer models.Satellite and other observations showed the Arctic ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the eighteen computer models used by the IPCC in preparing its 2007 assessments.

Similar to the reports above, the authors of this study concluded that current model projections are providing conservative estimates of future global warming impacts such as the melting of the Arctic ice cap. The findings show that the shrinking of summertime ice is about thirty years ahead of the climate model projections.

The 2007 IPCC report projected that the Arctic would become seasonally ice free sometime between 2050 to well beyond 2100. The new results suggest the Arctic could become ice free in summers even earlier than the year 2050.

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Another argument made by the climate change naysayers against the facts of global warming is that the global climate models are not accurate. Computer simulation models are, by definition, designed as simplified representations of the complex systems they attempt to simulate.Earth processes are extremely complex. Simulation models are developed because an exact replication of all of the multitude of Earth processes is simply out of the scope of our human capacity today. So models are necessarily incorporate simplifications of both processes and scales of the real Earth and its climate and weather systems.

After 30-40 years of development, the global climate models are pretty good. They do a reasonable job of back-projecting known climate trends of the last 30-50 years against real world observed trends.

The naysayers are correct in asserting that the climate models are not 100% accurate. But the lesson of their argument is not what they think it to be. The contrarians argue that since climate models are not 100% accurate, they provide no support to the facts of global warming.

In fact as these reports show, in comparing model projections to real measured trends, the global climate models are doing a good job of projecting the directions of the trends, it is just that the current models have been underestimating the magnitudes and the rapidity in which the Earth is warming and in which the warming is impacting local and global Earth processes.

At a time of increasing environmental awareness by American citizens, the Bush Administration has included yet more cuts in environmental related funding in its proposed FY2008 budget.

It is time to contact your representatives in Congress and let them know that the environment is a priority and that funding should not be cut.

Here are some highlights from a report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on proposed cuts in the biological and ecological sciences:

• DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
  The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) funding from DOE will be exhausted at the end of May 2007 and as a result will likely be forced to close. Funds have been budgeted to complete these tasks, however DOE has not released these funds to SREL. SREL programs are more important than ever, performing environmental evaluation for SRS programs that will process new nuclear materials. For more information see www.savesrel.org

• ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
  The Administration is proposing a $8.8 million cut to the Human Health & Ecosystems Program that would nearly completely eliminate the extramural ecosystem program. Also, a $5.75 million cut is proposed to the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) of which some $800,000 that has funded long-term surface water monitoring in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for 20 years would be canceled.

• FOREST SERVICE
  A $17 million decrease is proposed for the Forest and Rangeland Research budget despite the fact that fire suppression costs have been increasing.

• NATIONAL OCEANIC & ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATIONThe agency has been essentially flat-funded for the last five years and the budget proposed by the Administration for fiscal year 2008 shows no sign of altering course. The majority of the agency’s research is supported by its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which would stay essentially flat-funded. The National Ocean Service would continue its decrease in funding since fiscal year 2005, while the National Marine Fisheries Service would reflect no real change since fiscal year 2003.

• NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION—EDUCATION & HUMAN RESOURCES
  The Administration proposes that the agency’s core education portfolio grow by 7.5 percent in fiscal year 2008 after remaining flat in 2007. But the Education and Human Resources budget would still lag 19 percent behind its 2004 funding levels despite the fact that the President has stated that science education should be a priority for America to remain competitive.

• USDA NATIONAL RESEARCH INITIATIVE
  The Administration proposes a $10 million cut to the National Research Initiative, the nation’s premier competitive research program for fundamental and applied agriculture research.

One really has to wonder just how far the American “news” media is willing to move away from the Principles of Journalism. In 1997, the Committee of Concerned Journalists of the Project for Excellence in Journalism outlined nine Principles of Journalism (below). Ten years after the formulation of these principles, it appears that every major American television news outlet, including CNN, has abandoned the nine core principles that are supposed to comprise the basis of objective journalism.

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

As I posted on this blog years ago, an October 2003 report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the university of Maryland found that “a substantial portion of the (American) public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false, or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community.”

According to the PIPA study, which consumers of the mainstream “news” media who were polled showed the highest frequency of misperceptions regarding events related to the Iraq war? The chart shows that the inappropriately named “Fox News” clearly won the misperception contest. But you know until now, I had not paid that much attention how closely behind Fox all the other television news outlets and even the print media were in their race to promote misperceptions and to abandon the nine principles of journalism.

But now it seems that CNN has upped “the ante” in the race to be the most disingenuous television news outlet in America.

On May 2, 2007, CNN aired a disinformation program on global warming hosted by Glen Beck entitled Exposed: The Climate of Fear. Beck seems to be CNN’s answer to the ratings grabber and Ad hominen attack specialist Bill O’Reilly.

A new study from Indiana University found that Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.” The study shows that O’Reilly frequently employs multiple propagandist techniques that have been documented to have been in popular since after the end of World War I.

The May 2 CNN program brings back on to the stage a cadre of the well-known climate change deniers (many of whom are funded by Exxon Mobil and other industry powerhouses) as well as their tired arguments which have been thoroughly debated and debunked by scientists and the few remaining American news outlets that actually attempt to uphold the Principles of Journalism.

CNN promoted the program as being a vehicle to present the “other side of the climate debate that you don’t hear anywhere.” But in fact the program is rife with techniques that the climate deniers have been using ad naseum for decades including Ad hominen attacks on the deniers’ preferred high profile target, former Vice President Al Gore.

From Glen Beck, the man

• who claimed that the movie Happy Feet was a propaganda tool designed by a Hollywood director to indoctrinate children from being able to think for themselves about issues including global warming, and
• who uses the same name-calling techniques as does Bill O’Reilly,

one could not have expected anything more in this “television special” that purported to look “for answers and solutions about why Earth is warming and what man can do about it.”

But from CNN and Time Warner, outfits that claim to be “The Most Trusted Name in News” and offer “socially responsible programming” whose “actions must be guided by the highest standards of ethics”, one could and should expect a tremendous amount more.

It is time for American citizens to insist that CNN and many of the other once great and trusted American news media outlets change the direction of their race. To now move away from disingenuity and the promotion of misperception and distasteful discourse in the obvious quest for greater ratings. And to now move back to the objective Principles of Journalism.

Well, if you read the reports that Exxon Mobil was softening its stance on climate change, you can forget those false pronouncements right now.

Exxon Mobil has launched the latest salvo in its multi-million dollar, decades long disinformation campaign on climate change.

Exxon Mobil backed front groups, American Enterprise Institute and Pacific Research Institute have released a new “report” and film called “An Inconvenient Fiction“.

Before you read the report or watch the film, you should make yourself aware of the following.

These American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) are known “conservative think tanks” with strong industry ties to big oil and big tobacco. These groups have worked for decades to produce “white papers” and “reports” that provide alternate realties to valid scientific and economic findings.

The report’s authors are Stephen F. Hayward a “Scholar” at AEI and Amy L. Kaleita a “Public Policy Fellow” Environmental Studies at PRI.

AEI, PRI, and their fellow industry front groups have worked hard to convince Americans that, among other things, nicotine is not addictive and that cigarettes can cause no harm.

In my opinion, what the organizations have accomplished over the decades in their disinformation campaigns is nothing less than criminal.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air” documents how Exxon Mobil has funneled over $16 Million during the last decade to such groups to provide disinformation on climate science.

According tho the UCS report, American Enterprise Institute has received at least $1,625,000 of funding from Exxon Mobil’s disinformation campaign and Lee R. Raymond, retired chair and CEO of ExxonMobil, is vice chairman of AEI’s Board of Trustees.

Also according to the UCS report, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy has received at least $355,000 from ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign. PRI’s largest donation from Exxon Mobil since 1998 is $100,000 in 2004 (up from $45,000 for ach of the two previous years). Exxon Mobil allocated half of this grant for “climate change and environmental quality research.”

AEI also had no problem this February in sending letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings from the recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climtae Change.

Remember the famous quote that was attributed to “Deep Throat” in the film “All the Presidents Men.”

“Follow the money.”

A book soon to be released will provide more information on this long-term campaign to deceive and confuse the American public is Chris Mooney’s: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.

“Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start now to help mitigate the severity of some of these emergent challenges. The decision to act should be made soon in order to plan prudently for the nation’s security. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay”.

The statement above was not made by some tree-hugger, not by some Hollywood “liberal”, nor by some climate scientists (who the naysayers claim have some kind of biased “agenda”).

The statement above was issued today by eleven retired three-star and four-star U.S. admirals and generals who were brought together too provide advice, expertise and perspective on the impact of climate change.

The former military men released their report, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” which explores how projected climate change serves as a threat multiplier to U.S. national security, especially in already fragile regions. The military experts conclude that projected climate change would likely exacerbate conditions that lead to failed states : the types of places that can serve as the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.

The report includes several formal findings:

• Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.
• Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.
• Projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.
• Climate change, national security and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges.

The report also made several specific recommendations:

• The national security consequences of climate change should be fully integrated into national security and national defense strategies.
• The U.S. should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.
• The U.S. should commit to global partnerships that help less developed nations build the capacity and resiliency to better manage climate impacts.
• The Department of Defense should enhance its operational capability by accelerating the adoption of improved business processes and innovative technologies that result in improved U.S. combat power through energy efficiency.
• DoD should conduct an assessment of the impact on US military installations worldwide of rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other possible climate change impacts over the next thirty to forty years.

If you have read my previous post: “It’s Official: U.S. Pollutes to HELP Millions of Poor,” you know that some global warming deniers (including some in the Bush Administration) are now making the ridiculous claim that efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions would keep “hundreds millions of people in poverty” in China and India.

Of course the exact opposite is true. Failure to act to reduce emissions and stabilize the Earth’s climate will have the greatest impact on poor people and the poor nations of the world. As described in the New York Times today, this is a major conclusion of the latest volume of the sixth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be released next Friday.

Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is quoted in the Times as saying: “Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic. A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We’ll see the same phenomenon with global warming.” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate panel said: “The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who’s responsible and who’s suffering as a result”.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a western or developed country will have to face an interesting dilemma. It is our countries that have gained the most from extensive use of fossil fuels in the 150+ years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Two-thirds of the atmospheric increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. The carbon dioxide that our industrialized countries released during the past 150+ years will persist in the air for more than a century. So the documented increase in global temperatures today and that which will occur in the future are and will be primarily the result of activities that have and are taking place in the developed countries. Yet, for a number of geographic and demographic reasons, it will be the developing nations who will be least prepared to deal with the consequences of a warming Earth and, for a number of geographic and technological reasons, it will be the developed reason who are most prepared to adapt to changing ecological, agricultural, and economic environments. We in the developed countries will also be the most able to help others across the world dealing with the consequences of a changing Earth through economic and technological transfers and aid.

A major question to ponder will be how we in the United States and the Western European countries will respond to to the coming great moral challenges that will emerge as global warming exacerbates the disparities between the world’s rich and poor nations.

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The New York Times has a GRAPHIC showing Winners and Losers.

In a stunning revelation, United States Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell has now explained America’s humanitarian role in acting for many years as the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

George W. Bush and other representatives of the Administration had previously stated that a major reason why the United States was only one of two countries in the world that had refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was because it gave an unfair advantage to developing countries like China and India and because it would harm the U.S. economy.

Apparently that earlier argument for America’s inaction on curbing emissions of greenhouse gases did not clearly show America’s humanitarian basis for the policy. Mr. Sell has now set the record straight. He has enlightened us that the U.S. emission of 7,074.4 teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2004 (24 megagrams per person), both the largest per country and per person emission rates in the word, actually is a sign of America’s moral mission to help millions of starving people in developing countries.

You see, Mr. Sell said that the United States, as the world’s top energy consumer and economy, was NOT morally obliged to lead rapidly developing countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If the U.S. took a lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that might actually compel the leaders of developing countries to follow our lead and such measures would keep “hundreds millions of people in poverty” in China and India.

Currently those countries are not obliged to place mandatory cuts on emissions under any international agreement. By Mr. Sell’s reasoning, if America actually took a lead role in the world and applied our ingenuity and brainpower in improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, those efforts could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe for millions in developing countries worldwide by their leaders trying to emulate our silly ways.

Thank goodness America’s leaders, like Deputy Energy Secretary Sell, have now stepped up to the plate to show the world the true meaning of “compassionate conservatism.”

Mr. Sell can be proud that America’s inaction over the past decade regarding the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions has sent the right signals to leaders of countries like China. Estimates are that China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world’s greatest carbon emitter. Mr. Sell will be disappointed to learn that the U.S. will still retain the champion title of per-person carbon emitter (at the rate of 6.25 times the amount per person in China) and that China’s emission per-person rate is actually below the average for the world’s countries. (China only “wins” as being the top emitter on a per country basis by having so many damn people).

Mr. Sell has now “spilled the beans” behind the Administration’s true secret policy basis for America’s steadfast inaction on curbing greenhouse gases. Like for so many other ingenious policy initiatives developed by the current Bush Administration, the genius behind this one should immediately be rewarded. We should request that the current Administration identify the individuals behind the secret humanitarian plan to NOT curb greenhouse gas emissions. In keeping with this Administration’s practice, those individuals should be immediately nominated and awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom.