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Speaker 1: Previously on drilled.

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Speaker 2: The issue was not where we're going to have a problem.

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Speaker 3: The issue was simply how soon and how fashion.

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Speaker 2: And how bad is it going to be?

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Speaker 1: Audi Nobody at Exon when I was there, was discussing.

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Speaker 2: It was just Okay, how fast is it going to

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Speaker 2: come and get me do something about it?

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Speaker 3: How bad is it going to be? And when is

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Speaker 3: it going to get here?

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Speaker 1: But not if. When we left off, Exon had sent

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Speaker 1: most of its scientists packing and seemed determined to spend

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Speaker 1: millions not conducting climate science but undermining it.

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Speaker 4: When I first started doing this, and I would talk

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Speaker 4: about climate change, it was like another subject like geology, hydrology, meteorology,

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Speaker 4: and it was well received. And then at some point

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Speaker 4: it got politicized, and then it got more difficult to

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Speaker 4: convey the science.

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Speaker 5: Exxon as a company was putting ads in the newspaper

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Speaker 5: that were contrary to the research that they were paying

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Speaker 5: us to be doing.

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Speaker 2: So this is an experiment in shifting public opinion away

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Speaker 2: from urgency, because they know by nineteen ninety one we're

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Speaker 2: on the verge of a call to arms. There is

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Speaker 2: legislation being proposed, there's hearings in Congress, there's going to

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Speaker 2: be an international meeting about this, an international body has

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Speaker 2: been formed to study it. The world is waking up.

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Speaker 1: A key element to this new approach was medium manipulation,

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Speaker 1: but not just the sort of garden variety pr we'd

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Speaker 1: seen before. This was more like psychological warfare. The targeted journalists.

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Speaker 1: They may not have created false equivalents, that thing the

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Speaker 1: media does where it gives equal coverage to both sides

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Speaker 1: of a story, even when those two sides are not

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Speaker 1: at all equally valid, but oil companies and the consultants

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Speaker 1: they hired certainly weaponized it. Science historian Naomi Oreski's has

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Speaker 1: traced this for years when.

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Speaker 6: Journalists asked me about this problem of balance. So when

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Speaker 6: I prefer to call false equivalents, honestly, I get a

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Speaker 6: pit in my stomach because this has been going on

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Speaker 6: for so long, and it's so distressing and it's so

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Speaker 6: hard to fix. Many journalists think that being objective means

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Speaker 6: giving equal time to quote both sides of an issue.

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Speaker 6: But in the case of scientific work, where scientists have

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Speaker 6: worked on a problem, examined the evidence, and come to

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Speaker 6: a conclusion, there really isn't an equal and opposite side.

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Speaker 6: Sometimes I make an analogy or a metaphor with sports reporting.

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Speaker 6: If the Yankees beat the Red Sox last night six

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Speaker 6: to one, journalists would report that, and they would not

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Speaker 6: feel compelled to find someone to claim that the score

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Speaker 6: was actually six to four, or that, in fact, the

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Speaker 6: Red Sox had won six to one. That would be

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Speaker 6: seen as completely preposterous, as in fact it is. But

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Speaker 6: for me, as a scientist and a science historian, the

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Speaker 6: kind of false equivalence that goes on in science journalism

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Speaker 6: is as preposterous as if we were looking at both

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Speaker 6: sides of a baseball game. And I think the fact

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Speaker 6: that journalists don't get that as part of the problem.

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Speaker 6: We all understand on baseball, we know that baseball is

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Speaker 6: a game. It's played by certain kinds of rules. At

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Speaker 6: the end of the game, there's a score. Most journalists

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Speaker 6: don't understand that. While science is not a game, it

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Speaker 6: is played by certain kinds of rules. Scientists follow those rules,

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Speaker 6: and when they come to a conclusion, then unless you

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Speaker 6: have new evidence, there really isn't another side.

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Speaker 1: Really, if a journalist wanted to both sides a climate story,

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Speaker 1: they'd be looking for a climate scientist with conservative projections

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Speaker 1: on warming and one who's more of an alarmist, not

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Speaker 1: one who still claims that climate change either isn't happening

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Speaker 1: at all, isn't that bad, or isn't exacerbated by humans.

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Speaker 1: Part of the issue is the media's tendency to overcorrect

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Speaker 1: in the face of accusations over bias. I myself have

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Speaker 1: had editors remove mentions of climate science from a story

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Speaker 1: about worsening wildfires because they don't want to quote make

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Speaker 1: the story political. That framing was entirely manufactured by the industry.

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Speaker 1: Here's researcher Kurt Davies.

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Speaker 4: Again.

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Speaker 2: What they did well was they politicized. It is the

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Speaker 2: wrong word, but it gets close. They made it a

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Speaker 2: contentious science issue to the point where everybody had that feeling,

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Speaker 2: and it was very deliberate.

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Speaker 1: But oil companies didn't just manipulate the media and exploit

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Speaker 1: their tendency toward false equivalency. That was just one part

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Speaker 1: of a multi pronged strategy. The industry also had to

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Speaker 1: create a whole new batch of experts to drown out

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Speaker 1: the legitimate science Exxon had previously funded. The so called

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Speaker 1: contrarian scientists had a variety of other explanations for what

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Speaker 1: was causing climate change, the sun, volcanoes, normal shifts in climate.

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Speaker 1: WILLI Soon is a longtime industry favorite. He's best known

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Speaker 1: for pushing the solar radiation theory, the idea that sunspots

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Speaker 1: and natural solar cycles are what's actually responsible for climate change.

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Speaker 1: It's a theory that's been debunked over and over again,

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Speaker 1: including by the industry's own scientists. The most recent flop

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Speaker 1: pointed out in students' work is that if solar cycles

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Speaker 1: were what controlled climate, we'd be cooling now, not warming.

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Speaker 1: He's also fond of saying polar bears actually need less ice,

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Speaker 1: and he still gets cited regularly by politicians.

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Speaker 5: First of all, I like to know how many of

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Speaker 5: you really believe that this guest called CO two some

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Speaker 5: people call it satanic gas can be really dangerous for

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Speaker 5: the climate and for the whole planetary Earth itself. How

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Speaker 5: many of you.

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Speaker 1: Zero?

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Speaker 5: Y'all can go home now anyway. The first disclaimer is

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Speaker 5: that I truly speak it on my own behalf, but

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Speaker 5: I am a scientist. I've been working in this subject.

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Speaker 5: I would say, they in and you can ask my

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Speaker 5: wife for some twenty seven plus years, and I really

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Speaker 5: are very serious. What I'm concerned about is actually the truth?

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Speaker 5: As you know, any of you know what what is

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Speaker 5: ZEO two?

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Speaker 4: Guests?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 4: COO two?

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Speaker 5: Okay, this is case of life. So if they want

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Speaker 5: to tell you that COEO two is dangerous, you tell

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Speaker 5: them to stop reading.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 1: Although he always claims to work only for himself, a

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Speaker 1: popular line amongst industry funded scientists is that they only

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Speaker 1: ever accept money for travel. At various points, Soon has

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Speaker 1: had to disclose who his funders are Axon Mobile, Southern Company,

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Speaker 1: Peabody Coal, the American Petroleum Institute, or the API and

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Speaker 1: coke industries. It's worth pointing out that oil companies knew

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Speaker 1: full well that theories like zoons didn't hold water. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, a primer on climate change was developed

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Speaker 1: by the Global Climate Coalition, a trade group that included manufacturing,

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Speaker 1: oil and gas companies and utilities. The primer was intended

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Speaker 1: for public release and underscored the uncertainty of climate science

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Speaker 1: and provided talking points for those who wish to combat

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Speaker 1: with denialis of the time referred to as quote climate alarmism.

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Speaker 1: In an early draft of the primer circulated amongst the

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Speaker 1: group in nineteen ninety six, scientists from member companies debunked

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Speaker 1: the contrion theories of the day, which are still being

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Speaker 1: pushed today. Here's our document, Guy Kurt Davies again with.

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Speaker 2: That set the stage here that in nineteen ninety six,

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Speaker 2: the Global Climate Coalition, which was the allied forces of

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Speaker 2: everything from the oil industry to the autos, to mining

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Speaker 2: to metals, heavy manufacturing, all of them in one group,

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Speaker 2: allied against the unf Triple C. Basically their aim was

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Speaker 2: to slow down international policy. So they're monitoring everything, they're

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Speaker 2: sending people to the meetings, and they're doing a variety

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Speaker 2: of variety of publications that they're handing out at these meetings.

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Speaker 2: So IBCC is supposed to do these reports every five years.

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Speaker 2: The second one comes out in ninety five, and they're

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Speaker 2: doing this book that will respond to that and give

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Speaker 2: industry's opinion. So as a whole draft, and they go

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Speaker 2: through all these different different ways that you can still

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Speaker 2: say that it's uncertain in the face of this phone

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Speaker 2: book thick IPCC report. Part of this draft is a

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Speaker 2: discussion in the again only in the draft form of

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Speaker 2: the question as it stated here, quote, are there alternative

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Speaker 2: explanations for the climate change which has occurred over the

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Speaker 2: last one hundred and twenty years. And they go on

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Speaker 2: to say several arguments have been put forward attempting to

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Speaker 2: challenge the conventional view of greenhouse gas induced climate change.

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Speaker 2: These are generally referred to as quote contrarian theories. This

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Speaker 2: section summarizes these theories and the counter arguments presented against them,

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Speaker 2: and one by one in this draft, solar variability, the

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Speaker 2: role of water vapor differences in the temperature record between

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Speaker 2: the satellite record and the surface record. That's the John

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Speaker 2: Christie argument, and the various arguments Pat Michael's argument on

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Speaker 2: whether or not models line up, naming the scientist Dick

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Speaker 2: Linz and Pat Michaels Jastro as the authors of these

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Speaker 2: various theories, and then they give the counter argument, the

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Speaker 2: solar variability argument, which of course carries through to Willie

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Speaker 2: Soon's work. This some fifteen years later, funded by Exxon,

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Speaker 2: funded by American Petrollum Institute funded by the Koch Brothers,

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Speaker 2: started with this guy, Robert Jastro at Mount Wilson Observatory,

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Speaker 2: and they publish various papers showing that they felt there

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Speaker 2: was a correlation between sunspot cycles and differences in solar

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Speaker 2: intensity that matches up with the temperature record better than

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Speaker 2: anything to do with carbon dioxide. This approval draft says

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Speaker 2: that argument is sufficient to account for no more than

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Speaker 2: point one degree see of temperature change, so they say

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Speaker 2: it may be factor. Solar radiation may be a factor,

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Speaker 2: but quote if solar variability has accounted fer point one

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Speaker 2: degree temperature increase over the past the last one and

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Speaker 2: twenty years, it is an interesting finding, but it does

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Speaker 2: not allay concerns about future warming which could result from

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Speaker 2: greenhouse gas emissions. So this draft, written by a mobile

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Speaker 2: oil scientist, knocks down the variety of arguments that we

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Speaker 2: still hear today.

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Speaker 1: That chapter was never published. The primer was printed and

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Speaker 1: distributed without it, and member companies went on to fund

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Speaker 1: scientists who promoted these theories, despite the fact that they

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Speaker 1: had already disproven them. Climate scientists have continued to debunk

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Speaker 1: them ever since, but it's hard for them to compete

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Speaker 1: with the viral videos and full court press of the

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Speaker 1: industry backed contrarians. In addition to weaponizing the media's myth

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Speaker 1: of its own objectivity and propping up science they knew

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Speaker 1: to be flawed, oil company pr teams created a whole

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Speaker 1: new tool for influencing the public, particularly influencers and media.

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Speaker 1: They invented the op AD, an advertorial published in the

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Speaker 1: op ed section that feels and looks like a regular

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Speaker 1: op ED mobile, and then Excellent and then Exon Mobil

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Speaker 1: placed these in papers throughout the country. These weren't always

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Speaker 1: or even often obvious pleas against regulation or outright denials

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Speaker 1: of climate science. Instead, they focused on making oil companies

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Speaker 1: look like good corporate citizens. This was a key part

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Speaker 1: of the work Ebruce Harrison had begun when he was

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Speaker 1: working with American Cyanamide in DuPont to combat any harm

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Speaker 1: done to the chemicals industry by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

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Speaker 1: A mix of greenwashing and corporate social responsibility, this pr

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Speaker 1: strategy held that to avoid onerous regulations or damage to reputation,

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Speaker 1: companies needed to at least appear like good global citizens.

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Speaker 1: From nineteen seventy two to the two thousands, Exxon ran

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Speaker 1: advertorials regularly in the New York Times editorial pages. Naomireski's

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Speaker 1: and her research partner Jeffrey Supran studied these as part

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Speaker 1: of a recent study of all of Exxon's public facing

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Speaker 1: communications efforts. Around climate science. Here's Supran on the scale

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Speaker 1: of this advertorial effort and how it dwarfed the minimal

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Speaker 1: amount of climate science the company continued to do in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 3: These advertorials, which it became clear, were part of a

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Speaker 3: very comprehensive exomobile climate change communication plan, whereby they took

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Speaker 3: out advertorials every Thursday between nineteen seventy two and you know,

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Speaker 3: the two thousands, and they paid like about thirty one

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Speaker 3: thousand dollars per advatorial. They got a discounted rate from

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Speaker 3: the New York Times, and so it was such a

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Speaker 3: sort of orchestrated, comprehensive effort to reach literally millions of

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Speaker 3: people in the general public versus one guy conducting you know,

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Speaker 3: genuinely decent, peer reviewed science on average read by a

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Speaker 3: few tens of people in the academic world, so that

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Speaker 3: the discrepancy in scale is sort of on both ends

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Speaker 3: of that equation.

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Speaker 1: A recently discovered and not yet published early eighties internal

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Speaker 1: Mobile memo reveals just how valuable this advertorial program was.

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Speaker 1: In it, the mobile communications team focuses not on how

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Speaker 1: many readers they're reaching, but on the way these pieces

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Speaker 1: have helped to influence how these issues get covered in general.

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Speaker 1: Here's Kurt again with.

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Speaker 2: That this is an evaluation inside Mobile Oil of their

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Speaker 2: op ED program, and they talk about the impact on

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Speaker 2: opinion leaders since Mobile began its various expanded public affairs

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Speaker 2: programs in nineteen seventy the views of the majority of

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Speaker 2: the American people on certain basic issues. In helping change

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Speaker 2: these perceptions, Mobile can claim to have played a significant role.

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Speaker 2: Our op ED program and our support for the Masterpiece

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Speaker 2: Theater in particular, have enabled the company to become part

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Speaker 2: of the quote collective unconscious of the nation as the

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Speaker 2: change views of opinion leaders have gradually molded general public opinion.

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Speaker 1: They go on to congratulate themselves on the fact that

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Speaker 1: The New York Times in particular has quote even changed

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Speaker 1: to positions similar to Mobiles on at least seven key

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Speaker 1: energy issues.

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Speaker 2: In another section of the document, they talk about having

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Speaker 2: influenced the New York Times editorial viewpoints, and the document says, quote,

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Speaker 2: our analysis shows that the Times has altered or significantly

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Speaker 2: softened its viewpoints on conservation, moving from a total reliance

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Speaker 2: on conservation to advocating increased production incentives to solve the

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Speaker 2: supply shortage. On monopoly and divestitures, moving from approving the

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Speaker 2: breakup of the oil companies to opposing divestiture on something

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Speaker 2: called decontrol, moving from opposing decontrol to urging phase deregulation

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Speaker 2: on natural gas, moving from urging price controls to endorsing

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Speaker 2: a speed up of deregulation and decontrol of new gas prices,

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Speaker 2: And moving from advocating strict environmental safeguards to suggesting more

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Speaker 2: relaxed controls on offshore drilling, moving from valuing environmental concerns

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Speaker 2: at the expensive exploration and development to urging accelerated offshore drilling.

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Speaker 2: And on gas a hall which is another name for ethanol,

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Speaker 2: moving from increased subsidies for gas hall production from grain

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Speaker 2: to arguing against such subsidies. So they tallying how they

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Speaker 2: have affected the viewpoints of The New York Times on conservation, monopoly, indovestiture, decontrol,

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Speaker 2: natural gas, coal, offshore drilling, and gas hall, all things

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Speaker 2: that they had written op eds on.

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Speaker 1: A decade or so later. Mobile was still taking out

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Speaker 1: arboritorials every week, and in the lead up to Kyoto

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties it placed a fairly aggressive ad

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Speaker 1: in both the New York Times and The Washington Post.

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Speaker 1: The ad read quote, Let's face it, the science of

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Speaker 1: climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of

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Speaker 1: action that could plunge economies into turmoil. Scientists cannot predict

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Speaker 1: with certainty if temperatures will increase by how much, and

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Speaker 1: wear changes will occur. In fact, scientists predictions of climate

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Speaker 1: change were remarkably accurate, including exons whose experts in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies accurately predicted CO two concentrations by twenty ten

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Speaker 1: and the result in warming. But oil companies weren't about

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Speaker 1: to let facts get in the way of a good story.

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Speaker 1: Next time I'm on Drilled.

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Speaker 4: I was on a radio show two hours. They called

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Speaker 4: and said, can you come in and talk about climate change? Sure?

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Speaker 4: And it was Katok Radio six thirty am. And I

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Speaker 4: still remember this so well. And it was two hours

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Speaker 4: of live TV and they broke the call record and

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Speaker 4: everybody that called in was antagonistic toward me, nasty. It

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Speaker 4: was all, let me talk to that tree hug and

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Speaker 4: do gooder kind of guy. And that's how the whole

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Speaker 4: interview went. And I got done. I was like, why

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Speaker 4: are they so angry?

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Speaker 1: Drilled is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. Reporting for

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Speaker 1: this series was done by me Amy Westervelt. Our producer

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Speaker 1: and composer is David Whited. Our executive producer is Richard Wiles.

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Speaker 1: Our story and concept consultant was Raka Murphy. Our cover

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Speaker 1: art was designed by Lucas Lisakowski. You can find Drilled

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts. Please remember to rate and

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Speaker 1: review the podcast. It helps us find new listeners. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening, See you next time.