By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
(reposted with permission)

Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) took Obama administration officials to task for encouraging Americans to believe that the majority of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed.

People want to believe that everything is OK and I think this report and the way it is being discussed is giving many people a false sense of confidence regarding the state of the Gulf,” Markey said.

Belief, after all, is powerful force. As coal baron Don Blankenship says, “You have to have your own beliefs, your own core beliefs, your own strengths and do what you think is right. You can’t do what others believe is right, you have to do what you believe is right.”

But what if your beliefs, even those backed up by science, are wrong? If you believed government officials who reported the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed—wrong. If you believed McDonald’s or Sara Lee really was helping save the planet—wrong. (Does anyone actually believe that one?) And if you believed you were conserving tons of energy by flicking off the light switches when you left the room—wrong again!

Gullible Greens

Wait, what? Yes, it turns out that environmentally friendly folk don’t know how little energy they save by line-drying clothes, recycling bottles, or turning off the lights, Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum writes. Don’t worry! Those activities still conserve energy. Just not as much as you might have thought.

Drum’s evidence comes from a study that asked people to estimate the amount of energy they were saving by engaging in a given activity. Green-minded people tended to miss the mark on how much energy certain activities conserved. Perhaps they want to believe their conservation activities have a more dramatic impact, the studies’ authors suggested.

There’s a kicker, though. “The most accurate perceptions about energy use, it seems, are held by numerate, conservative homeowners who don’t bother trying to save energy,” Drum writes. Ouch. Apparently, knowing how much energy they’ll save, conservatives decide it’s not worth it to even try.

“A green-tinged fog”

But perhaps energy conservationists aren’t to blame for their own confusion. After all, as Anna Lappé writes at Yes! Magazine, corporations increasingly are using green messaging to sell their products:

McDonald’s recently launched an “Endangered Species” Happy Meal, “to engage kids in a fun and informative way about protecting the environment,” explains project partner Conservation International…. Earlier this year, Sara Lee unleashed with much fanfare a new line of “Earth Grains” bread that promotes “innovative farming practices that promote sustainable land use” as part of what the company calls its “Plot to Save the Earth.”

Lappé calls the confusion created by these campaigns “a green-tinged fog” that consumers can get lost in. And in the same way that green advertising is increasing, tips for green living are proliferating, which could explain the confusion about which ones are actually useful.

Government spin

But for the government, there’s no excuse for spreading misinformation. For instance, earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report showing that most of the oil in the Gulf had either been collected or dispersed. Scientists questioned the report from the very first day of its release, and this week evidence is mounting that the report misrepresented the situation in the Gulf.

At the Washington Independent, Andrew Restuccia writes that a group of scientists in Georgia have released a report countermanding the claims of the government’s study, and that other scientists have found a 21-mile smear of oil still in the Gulf.

Riki Ott reports at Chelsea Green on a more vivid argument against the Obama administration’s claims that the oil in the Gulf is no longer a problem:

Off Long Beach, Mississippi, on August 8, fisherman James “Catfish” Miller tied an oil absorbent pad onto a pole and lowered it 8-12 feet down into deceptively clear ocean water. When he pulled it up, the pad was soaked in oil, much to the startled amazement of his guests, including Dr. Timothy Davis with the Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System. Repeated samples produced the same result.

How’d it happen?

So what is the government’s excuse? Right now, NOAA is standing by its analysis, Restuccia reports. Bill Lehr, a senior scientist with the agency, said yesterday that NOAA will release more documentation supporting its claims in two months.

“I assure you it will bore everybody except those of us that do oil spill science,” he said, according to Restuccia.

But as Ott explains, part of the government’s issue is the standard they’re using to evaluate the fate of the oil to begin with:

The problem is the ‘rigorous safety standards’ are outdated. The protocol relies on visual oil. What of the underwater plumes? The chart produced by NOAA last week shows, in effect, that over 50 percent of the oil (not to mention dispersant) is still in the water column as dispersed or dissolved oil. Scientists have found that the oil-dispersant mixture is getting into the foodweb.

In other words, just because you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. And in this case, what NOAA believes is less important than the scientific facts on the ground. To deal with the oil spilled in the Gulf, NOAA and its partners might have to admit that they were wrong.

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Amidst the devastation that is, or perhaps was, the Gulf Coast, an immense spill in China, thousands of abandoned offshore wells continuously leaking, and the effects of GHG-driven climate change becoming increasingly apparent, one could have thought that now is the time for climate legislation. But alas, no – as evident in the wake, (and I mean wake) of the Senate’s failure to pass any sort of climate or energy bill before they headed off for August recess/vacation. This failure due to the fact that not one Republican would support such legislation, claiming it would raise taxes, raise electricity bills, kill jobs and force more manufacturers to take their factories overseas; just as they did more than ten years ago with the Kyoto Protocol.

Furthermore, somehow the “debate” about climate change continues. Somehow, the don of climate contrarians, Senator James Inhofe, still gets away with pronouncing that “catastrophic global warming is not occurring,” and we are currently in a cooling period that has lasted for the past nine years.  The Heartland Institute insists that global warming does not produce drought but rather the Northern Hemisphere is becoming a “gardener’s greenhouse.” Somehow, the media, continue to promote the idea of a viable and balanced debate about climate change – including CNN and the BBC. Even the public, albeit stressed and overwhelmed by the economy, is less concerned with climate change than it was six months ago, according to a new study from Yale.

This all during a summer of devastating heat waves, in a year already on track to be the hottest on record after the past decade, which has been the warmest decade in recorded history. A year, that nine nations have so far reached their all time temperature records. A year that is, “tied with 2007 as the year with the most national extreme heat records–fifteen.” In addition, atmospheric CO2 levels have risen 36 percent in the last 250 years with half of that rise occurring since the 1970s, and are currently higher than levels recorded over the past 800, 000 years.

So, in despite of recent events, and a mass of scientific and physical evidence – just ask Russia – more than thirty years after the findings of the Charney panel, twenty years since Hansen testified that the current warming trend was “caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases,”  the United States is still doing nothing to mitigate climate change.

The reason? As Paul Krugman so aptly explains: “Follow the money.”

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy.”

They’re all “on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades…Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.”

For, once again, the massive and massively lucrative fossil fuel industry rears it’s ugly head, and demonstrates that it can, and will, do whatever it takes to ensure its own interests, at the expense of the public, the climate and the planet.

Accounting for 70 percent of the world’s energy supply, the fossil fuel industry constitutes not only the biggest single industry in history, but is the most profitable industry in the world. ExxonMobil, itself, became the world’s largest corporation when the two companies merged in 1999. In 2007, it was worth more than General Electric, Bank of America and Google combined. In 2008, ExxonMobil reported a record annual profit at $40.61 billion. In 2009, it again reported a record-breaking profit at $45.2 billion.

Consider this: From 2005 to 2008, Exxon Mobil spent $8.9 million while Koch Industries contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate denial machine. Since 1997, Koch Industries has spent over $48.5 million. Between 2000-2008, Sen. Inhofe, has received at least $662, 506 from oil companies, and $152,800 in coal contributions during the 110th Congress.  During the same time, BP apologist, Sen. Barton has received $1,030,426 from the oil industry and $121,050 from the coal industry.

Accordingly, the administration’s attempt at a moratorium of deepwater drilling was basically dead in the water before it began. Judge Feldman, who originally struck down the moratorium, owned stock in ExxonMobil as well as oil service providers Halliburton, Prospect Energy, Hercules Offshore, Parker Drilling Co., and ATP Oil & Gas.  The three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled in favor of Feldman’s decision, all own investments in oil. Two of the judges not only attended oil industry sponsored, all expense-paid “junkets for judges“, but had previously worked as oil-industry litigators before their appointments to the federal bench. Even President Obama does not remain unscathed. His 2008 presidential campaign was the top recipient of BP-related donations. And these are just a few examples. You can just guess who’s funding the Republican campaigns this fall.

And so, here we are. It seems the issue itself has reached a tipping point and it is now up to us. No longer can we sit by and hope and pray that our leaders will “get it”. Not while the amount of climate change inducing and global warming emissions continue to increase, the Arctic melts, and temperatures rise. While China is quickly overtaking us in research, development, technology and polices to combat climate change. So, speak with your fellow citizens, call and write letters to your representatives, hold community meetings, rally in the streets. Basically, in the words of Bill McKibben, it’s time to stand up and show our leaders that “We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More.”

Image credit: Wyatt’s Virtual Drifting’s photostream, courtesy Flickr

I recently attended the following ClimateOne event with Joe Romm, publisher of ClimateProgress and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Romm addresses inaction in Congress on climate, and the inadequacy of the scientific community to deliver their message in the face of the powerful and organized disinformation campaign arrayed against it. A topic we will take up later in a subsequent post.