‘Blindingly stupid’: Soros-funded LA Times report mocked for blaming 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on global warming

– The Washington Times – Saturday, April 8, 2017

A report blaming the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in part on global warming has generated more ridicule than alarm, renewing scrutiny over the role of liberal foundations in keeping the fading #ExxonKnew social-media campaign alive.

The article, “The role a melting glacier played in Exxon’s biggest disaster,” earned a few hat tips from the environmental movement after appearing Thursday in the Los Angeles Times, but the taunting from climate-catastrophe challengers has been merciless.

“Blindingly stupid,” “climate change fan fiction,” “irrelevant” and “ridiculous” were among the insults hurled at the report, written by students from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.

“Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, which is funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.”

Not lost on critics were the project’s funders: left-of-center philanthropies, including those backed by the Rockefeller family and billionaire George Soros, that have made no secret of their support for climate advocacy and antipathy toward the fossil-fuel industry.

A disclosure at the end of the article said that the foundations “have no involvement in or influence over the articles produced by project fellows in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times,” but not everyone was buying it.

Roy W. Spencer, meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was also dubious, calling it “quite a stretch to blame the disaster on human-caused global warming.”

“Glaciers naturally flow to the ocean and calve. As long as it snows on them, gravity makes them flow to the ocean — no global warming required,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “Even if calving increased in the 1980s, the warming in Alaska that abruptly started around 1980 was due to a shift in a natural climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), not the result of a slow warming trend due to humans.”

By the article’s logic, “anyone can blame basically anything that happens to them on climate change. Did you avoid a puddle when you hit that telephone pole? Sue Exxon!”

Slick Rewrite: L.A. Times Blames Climate Change for 28-Year-Old Oil Spill

By Aly Nielsen | April 6, 2017 | 5:26 PM EDT

The Los Angeles Times has struck once again in a feeble attempt to sink ExxonMobil. This time, rewriting the story of a 28-year-old shipwreck.

The April 6 L.A. Times story, by Columbia Journalism School researchers, used 2,340 words to reject years of court cases and research. Instead, the agenda-driven story blamed the 1989 Exxon Valdez shipwreck and resulting oil spill on climate change.

The anti-Exxon hit piece is part of the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia Journalism School, which also produced the 2015 #ExxonKnew campaign. Both reports were published by the L.A. Times and funded by George Soros, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Rockefeller Family Fund. Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, has been attacking Exxon for years and is tied to at least $1.6 million from Rockefeller foundations. He wrote a book smearing Exxon in 2013 while president of the New America Foundation.…

Fake News: #ExxonKnew Campaign In LA Times Claims ‘Global Warming’ Caused 1989 Exxon Valdez Spill – Point By Point debunking

How irrelevant and desperate has the #ExxonKnew campaign become? Well, they’re now claiming that global warming caused the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, and that Exxon should have known it would happen. The claims were made in yet another article written by graduate students at the Columbia Journalism School, which was published today in the Los Angeles Times.

The article – fit more for The Onion than the LA Times – claims that ExxonMobil had evidence that the Columbia Glacier was calving due to climate change, but allowed one of its tankers to put itself in the way of the icebergs anyway.

Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night. But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.

For background, this is the LA Times’ latest installment of a series authored by graduate students at the Columbia School of Journalism, who were bankrolled by wealthy anti-fossil fuel foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) and Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF). The school’s dean, Steve Coll, also wrote an anti-Exxon book, Private Empire, while serving as President of the New America Foundation, which – surprise! – is also funded by the Rockefellers.

And yes, this is the same group that was criticized last week by a federal judge who said the Columbia School of Journalism and InsideClimate News (which is also funded by the Rockefellers and wrote its own anti-Exxon series) were “trying to pursue the same climate change policy agendas” as the attorneys general who have launched investigations into ExxonMobil.

Now why would the LA Times, which presumably wants to be seen as an objective news outlet, print such obviously paid-for (and ridiculous) “journalism”?

Perhaps it has to do with money. Recall that the LA Times failed to disclose that the original #ExxonKnew series it published in late 2015 was funded by the Rockefellers. It only did so months after other news outlets discovered the lack of disclosure. Even the Columbia Journalism Review said not disclosing this funding was a mistake, noting “the rollout after publication was botched. While this particular misstep occurred on the most contentious of stories, the question of when and how to disclose funding for such

27 Years later, LA TIMES NOW Blames Exxon Valdez Spill on — Global Warming! & Exxon Knew It!? (Soros funded article)

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-exxon-valdez/
 

The role a melting iceberg played in Exxon’s biggest disaster
By DINO GRANDONI, ASAF SHALEV, MICHAEL PHILLIS, SUSANNE RUST – APRIL 6, 2017

In the wee hours of March 24, 1989, the channel connecting the Alaskan port of Valdez with Prince William Sound was riddled with icebergs shed from the deteriorating Columbia Glacier, a massive river of ice that had begun breaking apart only a few years earlier.
With an inexperienced third mate guiding the massive, oil-laden tanker, the Exxon Valdez swerved out of its designated shipping lane to avoid the ice. It was a standard maneuver carried out hundreds of times before.
But this time, on this night, before the third mate could correct course, the tanker careened into the rocky outcropping of Bligh Reef where it ultimately released roughly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound.
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Fake News: #ExxonKnew Campaign Claims ‘Global Warming’ Caused 1989 Exxon Valdez Spill – Point By Point debunking

Big oil climate appeasement: ExxonMobil executives urge Trump to keep U.S. in UN Climate Agreement

ExxonMobil executives recently urged President Trump to break a campaign promise and keep the U.S. in the UN’s disastrous Paris climate agreement.

Secretary of State and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson agrees with his old colleagues and has said he favors taking the Trump Administration in the same direction.

This would be a huge mistake.

President Trump signed an executive order designed to roll back the Obama Administration’s global warming policies and end its war on energy.  The President’s E.O. makes no mention of the Paris agreement.

But if he’s going to push America toward energy independence, dumping this ill-founded UN agreement is an absolute must.

In recent years, energy companies – Exxon in particular – have been constant targets of Green campaigners.  This often makes them weak-kneed and fearful. They’d like nothing better than to rid themselves of these pesky Green gadflies and improve their image among the elitist media.

To accomplish this, businesses all too often seek to buy off the Greens rather than stand up to them.  Exxon’s position on the UN treaty appears to follow in this ignoble tradition.  Fueling the Greens with corporate credibility and cash is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, like “feeding a crocodile hoping it’ll eat you last.”

President Trump should see through Exxon’s attempt to “greenwash” away its public relations problems, keep his campaign promise, and free America from the UN climate agreement.

 

Exxon Ordered to Turn Over 40 Years of Climate Change Research

MASSACHUSETTS — (CNN) ExxonMobil has lost a key battle in an investigation into whether the oil giant misled the public about the dangers of climate change.

A Massachusetts judge ordered Exxon on Wednesday to hand over more than four decades of the company’s climate change research.

The court rejected Exxon’s emergency motion to kill the demand from Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is investigating allegations the company ignored internal scientific research going back to the 1970s.

The ruling came on the same day that longtime Exxon boss Rex Tillerson was being grilled by Congress about the company’s climate change tactics at his secretary of state hearing. Tillerson, who stepped down last month as CEO after a decade in charge, repeatedly ducked questions about the issue from U.S. Senators.

Asked if he lacks the knowledge to respond or is simply refusing to answer, Tillerson said, “A little of both.”

Last April, Massachusetts demanded Exxon turn over documents going back to 1976 related to the company’s study of carbon emissions and the effects of those emissions on the climate.

This week Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Heidi Brieger upheld the attorney general’s demand.

“Exxon must now end its obstructive tactics and come clean about whether it misled Massachusetts consumers and investors about what it knew about climate change, its causes and effects,” the Massachusetts attorney general’s office said in a statement.

However, Exxon didn’t immediately signal whether it’s going to comply with the order.

“We are reviewing the ruling to determine next steps,” Exxon said in a statement.

Exxon is still awaiting a ruling in Texas, where the company has filed a complaint arguing that the Massachusetts demand for documents violates its federal constitutional rights.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the Massachusetts court declined to put the proceeding on hold until the Texas court rules.…

Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl worried that Rex Tillerson is not strong climate skeptic

Rex Tillerson, a lukewarmer, stands out like a sore thumb in the new era

Donald Trump has said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese in order to weaken America. And believe me, Trump isn’t a great fan of China so this link between China and the man-made global warming movement wasn’t meant to be a compliment for the latter.

He has chosen numerous folks for his administration whose climate realist credentials seem indisputable: Scott Pruitt for the EPA, Cathy McMorris Rodgers for the Interior Department, and Rick Perry for the Department of Energy. Given the fact that Rex Tillerson has served as a CEO of ExxonMobil, you would think that it’s similar with this guy. Except that it’s not.

All climate jihadists who have been fighting “climate change” and ExxonMobil should notice: If you have a relative ally in the Trump administration, it’s the former CEO of ExxonMobil! 😉 What an irony. Don’t get me wrong. He is not as superficial and insane as his predecessor – he should be an improvement relatively to John Kerry. However, his views are mixed.

Christian Science Monitor’s section on climate solutions wrote

His zeal isn’t clear, but Tillerson calls climate change a ‘threat’

AGW is a threat, Tillerson says. On the other hand, in a testimony to the lawmakers (video), he said that the global warming wasn’t an imminent threat to the U.S. national security, a statement by which he differs from the Democrats’ party line, and he stated that there are mixed opinions in the scientific literature when it comes to the relationships between CO2 and unpleasant weather events (e.g. in Syria – and let me say that the suggestion that the mess in the Middle East was due to the “weather” is both arrogant and silly).

I must say one thing. Donald Trump seems to make rather radical changes but his team isn’t supposed to be an ideologically uniform group of Yes men and I surely think it’s right. Moreover, Tillerson has some experience with international relationships as well as with applied science and engineering – and those can be useful for his new job although I am not quite sure whether the engineering part is ideally exploited by the Department of State.

Tillerson’s scientific and engineering background places him into a special position that I can understand very well. While some other people who