Armstrong Williams redux

February 3, 2007 9:32 PM

Here's $10,000! All you have to do is pick it up and it is yours. There it is, just staring at you. You are a global climate scientist or economist and the American Enterprise Institute, "an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration" wants you to lend them some of your legitimacy, for which they will pay you ten grand.
posted by publius (33 comments total)

We have to wait until all the facts are in!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:34 PM on February 3, 2007

How about if I just let them say that I'm a global climate scientist?

Then can I have, like, a grand?
posted by Flunkie at 9:36 PM on February 3, 2007

I can print out a diploma that says I'm a Global Climate Scientist Economist Superhero, would that work?
posted by fenriq at 9:45 PM on February 3, 2007

I can get one that says that I'm a Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality.

That's got to be worth something, right?
posted by Flunkie at 9:51 PM on February 3, 2007

I thought that scientists were all millionaires with secret lairs, wise and incorruptible.
posted by Iron Rat at 9:51 PM on February 3, 2007 [3 favorites]

First you have to go through that polar bear to get it.

Pfffffft. No problem. I'm a patient man, and it's looking more and more like I'll be able to wait that polar bear out.
posted by Flunkie at 9:52 PM on February 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh noes, Matt!
posted by five fresh fish at 10:09 PM on February 3, 2007

Jonathan Adler seems to think that because the AEI letter doesn't contain the word "payola" or anything, it's all on the up and up.

I've spent a lot of time trying to give a due hearing to the other side in policy debates. But this sort of shit-- making excuses for any tactic that the anti-reality folks want to use to muddy the water-- just makes me hate Republicans. It's the worst sort of eyes-closed, my-party-right-or-wrong thinking that's sending this country and planet down the fucking toilet.

AEI has zero credibility on this issue. Here's an example from, at random among their publications on the issue, their classic 2001 press release "Bush Is Right on Global Warming":

The sun is today as magnetically active as it has been in 400 years of direct telescope observations. In other words, the mystery of global warming may have a simple solution—it’s the sun that’s heating the earth, with its heat rising and falling in fairly regular cycles. If so, there’s nothing humans can do about it. ...
Global warming is not a here-and-now problem. If the computers are right, the dire effects will unfold slowly over the century. But signs now indicate that the models vastly overstate the problem. We’ll see.

posted by ibmcginty at 10:15 PM on February 3, 2007 [3 favorites]

Who is Armstrong Williams?
posted by wilful at 10:16 PM on February 3, 2007

AEI has zero credibility on this issue.

On this issue? Is there some other issue on which they have nonzero credibility?

I admit that I'm not familiar with all members of the AEI, nor with all of their positions. But I do know that they include such luminaries as:

• Richard "I will be surprised if there is not a grand square in Baghdad named after President Bush a year from now" Perle
• John "The word 'Executive' in 'Executive Branch' means 'Only'" Yoo
• Newt "We have to rethink this whole 'freedom of speech' thing" Gingrich

So, while I again admit that I am not an expert on the AEI, I think that I am justified in my disinclination to believe that they have any credibility on any issue.
posted by Flunkie at 10:29 PM on February 3, 2007 [2 favorites]

wilful, Armstrong Williams is a talking head who was paid by the Bush administration to shill for them in his newspaper columns and TV appearances.

And not as an official spokesperson; rather, on the hush-hush. This was only discovered via the Freedom of Information Act.

Unfortunately, I'm not kidding.
posted by Flunkie at 10:36 PM on February 3, 2007

I think that I am justified in my disinclination to believe that they have any credibility on any issue.

To be fair, they do employ noted researcher Charles Murray as their W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom.

what? what?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:37 PM on February 3, 2007

Double.
posted by russilwvong at 10:43 PM on February 3, 2007

So, is there like a list of the scientists who have received the Payola, so I can go through my Endnote library and delete them, lest I might accidentally cite them in the future?
posted by Jimbob at 11:06 PM on February 3, 2007

Isn't the AEI basically Cheney's flying monkey army?
posted by maryh at 11:37 PM on February 3, 2007

Denial 2.0: not just for the Holocaust anymore.
posted by rob511 at 11:38 PM on February 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Somehow I don't think global warming is a debate anymore. Just because someone is delusional and disagreeable doesn't mean they are engaging in debate.
posted by edgeways at 11:38 PM on February 3, 2007

Would you accept $10,000 in return for publicly shredding your professional reputation?

Especially if you work in a field where the particular mode of reputation-shredding in question is going to make you a pariah next time you apply for a job?

What this really tells us is the precise degree of contempt with which anti-climate-change lobbyists view actual working scientists.
posted by cstross at 1:56 AM on February 4, 2007

As russilwvong points out, this is sort of a double, but I think it's outrageous enough to deserve its own FPP.
Not that one is really surprised to learn that the AEI and other so-called "think" tanks resort to this kind of strategy. I'm much more surprised that they've been caught this time.
And as cstross points out, 10,000 $?! Are they that cheap? In lobby-land that hardly covers one day expenses in a "fact-finding" trip with congressmen to St. Andrew's.
posted by Skeptic at 3:15 AM on February 4, 2007

Swift Boat Scientists ensuring record profits for Exxon and perpetual denial of climate change.
posted by amberglow at 4:01 AM on February 4, 2007

After ringing up the biggest annual profit figure in U.S. corporate history in 2005, Exxon Mobil yesterday announced that it topped that number in 2006. Riding the wave of high crude oil and gasoline prices, the company reported a profit of $39.5 billion, up 9 percent from the year before.

Its revenue of $377.6 billion exceeded the gross domestic product of all but 25 countries. ...
posted by amberglow at 5:09 AM on February 4, 2007

cstross, I'm sure they'll have no problem giving the $10K to one of the two or three tenured professors who are frequently paid and cited by AEI.
posted by rxrfrx at 5:53 AM on February 4, 2007

I'm not against selling out. But for $10,00?! How insulting.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:08 AM on February 4, 2007

Exxon cuts ties to global warming skeptics.
posted by stbalbach at 6:17 AM on February 4, 2007

I think we can stop picking on Exxon, at least over global warming skepticism, at least going forward. They have changed thier tune (AEI is burning off cash to fulfill prior obligations).

The new stalling tactic will be "what to do about it".. which can eat up a lot of time and is the big question - the science has always been pretty black and white, but what to do about it, is a lot more controversial and will be a political battle.
posted by stbalbach at 6:23 AM on February 4, 2007

kid's books too: Following the announcement that Scholastic will publish a children’s book on global warming written by a liberal film maker, the conservative imprint World Ahead Publishing is extending an open call for manuscripts that will present children with a more balanced point-of-view on the controversial topic. ...
posted by amberglow at 7:04 AM on February 4, 2007

The new stalling tactic will be "what to do about it".. which can eat up a lot of time and is the big question - the science has always been pretty black and white, but what to do about it, is a lot more controversial and will be a political battle.

I've always favored the "Giant Space Mirrors" approach. It's got that Mad Science feel to it.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:07 AM on February 4, 2007

there's that word "debate" again. it keeps popping up anytime climate change is mentioned. what's up with that?
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:40 AM on February 4, 2007

18 years on, Exxon Valdez oil still pours into Alaskan waters
posted by homunculus at 10:02 AM on February 4, 2007

Christmas For Exxon: How a Federal Appeals Court Reduced the Punitive Damage Award in the Exxon Valdez Case by $2 Billion, and Why It Appears Arbitrary
posted by homunculus at 10:02 AM on February 4, 2007

I think we can stop picking on Exxon, at least over global warming skepticism, at least going forward. They have changed thier tune (AEI is burning off cash to fulfill prior obligations).

'scuse my cynicism, but what are the odds that Exxon has made a public announcement of changed behaviour without actually changing anything they do, or merely being more secretive?
posted by wilful at 2:22 PM on February 4, 2007

The new stalling tactic will be "what to do about it"...
posted by stbalbach at 9:23 AM EST on February 4

Duh, Dyson Sphere.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 2:48 PM on February 4, 2007

Heh. $10,000 is not enough to do serious climatological research with. It might just about support a junket visiting all of the "contrarians," buying their books, and retreating to a warm and sunny beach resort on the Arctic Circle to write another contrarian book.

Which is all that's needed to maintain "opposing viewpoints," free of real content.
posted by bad grammar at 4:01 PM on February 4, 2007