Can anyone show an accounting of these billions? Because you can't spend that kind of money without leaving a lot of paper trails.
> “Fear and anger have to be a part of this campaign,” Berman said. “We’re not going to get people to like the oil and gas industry over the next few months.”
> Berman also advised that executives continue to spend big. “I think $2 to $3 million would be a game changer,” he said. “We’ve had six-figure contributions to date from a few companies in this room to help us get to where we are.”
> But always cover your tracks, he suggested, adding that no is better equipped at doing so than his firm. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.”
> Berman, whose tobacco ties were profiled yesterday by DeSmog contributor John Mashey, is the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm. He attended the conference in Colorado, hat in hand, looking to raise money from energy companies for an advertising and public relations campaign he started called Big Green Radicals.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/koch-pledge-tied-to...
[1] http://www.noclimatetax.com/
[2] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/753...
"ExxonMobil‘s $33 million campaign to sow doubt and denial about global warming"
> [...] We know this $33M figure is an underestimate of the total spending by Exxon to fund opposition work on climate policy. For example, the Chamber of Commerce appears for the first time on Exxon’s Worldwide Giving report in 2014 at $1 Million. We assume this is not the first (or the last) contribution Exxon has made to the US Chamber of Commerce.
> On this page, you’ll find the total amount of funding from ExxonMobil and its foundations to dozens of organizations that worked to spread climate denial. Hyperlinks will take you to further detail about each organization’s funding specifics and activities.
https://www.desmog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-de...
2. This $33M appears to be all charitable giving by Exxon spread over more than 20 years. That's not much, nowhere close to billions of dollars.
3. The tiny amounts are a problem for them, so they say they "know" it's really a lot more. As befits a site that just makes things up, the reason they "know" is: "We assume this is not the first (or the last) contribution Exxon has made to the US Chamber of Commerce". Brilliant. Assumptions, facts, what's the difference?
Again, this isn't evidence for "billions of dollars" being spent on "increasing public ignorance". It's not even evidence for any money being spent on climate, because the reasons they donated to these various foundations isn't really known to the desmog guys. It's just more assumptions.
For example, your argument that one incomplete list of a single company's "charitable activity" is "nowhere close to billions of dollars" when the claim was "probably billions" across the entire industry, where "probably billions" is pretty obviously no more than a vague gesture at "huge amounts of money".
That you find a climate-disinformation spend even in the $10s of millions acceptable is something you might ponder before you start lecturing people on what sites they should post on.
Yes you hedged your claim, but so what? It's still wrong. You don't get to make wild and totally false claims by sticking "probable" onto everything.
> That you find a climate-disinformation spend
You haven't shown that or even laid the groundwork for that. Even if these firms were spending the amounts you claim, which they apparently aren't, did it occur to you that they might be right? Nope. You just assume anything they say must be wrong, because you've been brainwashed by propaganda. You can't even find any specific campaign!? If you could we could then debate the real issues, but didn't even get that far.
Again you omit the salient detail that "probable billions" referred to an entire industry and the (conservative) $33m (offered as a simple example in relation to your claim of "I could only find $10k!") is the contribution from only a single component of that industry. Classic goalpost shifting, which is why it's fruitless to engage.