0:00

COP28 is underway in Dubai

0:02

at the moment. It's

0:06

being presided over by the

0:08

president of the national oil

0:10

company Adnok. A lot of us have been

0:12

made of that. I've written about it quite

0:14

a bit. We're not bringing

0:16

you an episode on COP today

0:18

although you can read lots

0:20

of things that I've been writing about

0:22

it all over the place. We are

0:24

bringing you an episode of Vox's Unexplainable.

0:27

I went on

0:29

there recently to talk through

0:31

how the fossil fuel industry

0:34

weaponized a common component of

0:36

scientific research. Uncertainty.

0:39

Uncertainty is baked into how

0:41

science works and that's

0:43

a good thing. We're supposed to always be

0:45

questioning what we think we know, to always

0:48

be trying to understand things better

0:51

with more detail. But in the

0:54

case of climate science, fossil

0:56

fuel companies and their PR

0:58

reps took that basic fact

1:00

of scientific research and turned

1:02

it into a flaw. In

1:05

this episode I walked host

1:07

Noam Hassenfeld through the history

1:09

of that, how it

1:11

happened, and how we're still dealing with

1:13

it today. Which is a very very

1:15

big component of what we're seeing at

1:18

COP28, especially as you're seeing

1:20

all these stories come out about Al

1:22

Jaber talking around the science of 1.5,

1:24

the science of how these targets are

1:28

set, all of those kinds of things. It's

1:31

an important time to understand

1:33

how the fossil fuel industry

1:35

has historically talked about science

1:38

and especially about what science tells

1:40

us we should or shouldn't do

1:42

or how urgent or not the

1:44

problem of climate change is. I

1:48

hope you enjoy it. I really enjoyed

1:50

doing the episode. Here it is. uncertainty

2:00

on this show. We tolerate it,

2:02

actually. Because when scientists admit they

2:04

don't know things, it's

2:06

good. That's science working the way

2:08

it's supposed to. And it can

2:10

feel like embracing uncertainty is just

2:13

a fundamentally good thing. But

2:16

I was listening to this podcast recently that

2:18

made me wonder about this idea. It's a

2:20

show called Drilled. It's all about climate change.

2:23

And the host of the show, Amy Westervelt, who

2:26

doesn't think uncertainty in science is

2:28

necessarily bad, but she does

2:30

tell a compelling story about how it's

2:32

been used against good science, how

2:35

uncertainty has been weaponized by certain actors

2:37

to prevent the world from acting on

2:40

climate change. So this

2:42

week on the show, right in the middle of

2:44

COP 28, the biggest climate conference of the year,

2:46

I wanted to talk to

2:48

Amy about climate change and the downside

2:50

of uncertainty. How

2:53

uncertainty can be used against progress

2:56

and what we can learn from a decades

2:58

long campaign to distort the truth. Amy,

3:17

hello. Yes, hello. I think

3:19

a pretty good place to start would

3:21

just be to try and understand how

3:23

we got to where we are today.

3:26

You have climate skeptics on one side

3:28

versus climate believers on the other side.

3:30

You've got environmentalists pitted against oil companies.

3:32

Has it always been this way? No, that's

3:34

what makes it so interesting

3:37

and sort of troubling is that in fact

3:39

the oil industry was one

3:41

of the biggest funders of

3:43

research into climate change or

3:45

what they called the greenhouse

3:47

effect at the time.

3:50

ExxonMobil in particular had several

3:52

scientists that were doing research

3:54

on climate change and

3:57

different types of renewable

3:59

energy. So Exxon

4:01

was actually funding research on the

4:04

greenhouse effect on climate change? Yes. So Exxon

4:07

at the time, this is like early 70s. Exxon

4:10

wants to be what they describe as

4:13

the bell labs of energy. So at

4:15

the time, Bell Labs was this big

4:17

telecommunications company. They invented cell phones and

4:19

satellites and all kinds of things. So

4:21

Exxon wanted to be that for energy. And

4:25

what did that look like in the company? Do

4:27

you know? So I went back to a guy named Ed

4:29

Garvey, who worked there in the 70s. He

4:31

was sort of like a young postdoc, excited.

4:35

For him, Exxon was the place that you wanted

4:37

to get hired to do really interesting

4:39

energy research. And

4:41

he got put on a project where

4:43

they were taking measurements

4:46

to understand climate change.

4:48

There was no questioning that the

4:51

atmospheric carbon dioxide was increasing. He

4:53

was like, yeah, it was like there was

4:55

no question that this was real. It was

4:58

something we were researching. The issue was

5:00

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

5:02

simply how soon and how fast and how bad was it

5:04

going to be? Not if. Nobody at

5:06

Exxon, when I was there, was discussing that.

5:09

I just can't. Exxon

5:11

is the place for idealistic science postgrads

5:13

to go work and solve the greenhouse

5:16

effect on climate change. It's just kind

5:18

of hard to put myself in that

5:20

brain space. Yeah. And

5:22

their big focus was on having

5:25

a seat at the table when energy

5:27

policy was being discussed. And this is

5:29

like it's important to remember sort of the

5:31

timeline that we're in here. Anger

5:34

and bewilderment are growing as more and

5:36

more Americans cope with gasoline lines and

5:38

empty pumps. Like early

5:40

to mid 70s, you've got the

5:42

OPEC oil embargo happening. Fuel for

5:45

heating homes up 50 percent over

5:47

last fall. We've got

5:49

these years where Americans are having

5:51

to ration energy and line up

5:53

at the gas station. Gasoline

5:56

up 26 percent. Jimmy Carter's

5:58

like putting soul. panels on the

6:00

White House. Solar energy of course was

6:03

already on its way to becoming a big

6:05

thing even before President Carter got involved, but

6:07

his actions have definitely heightened it all. There's

6:09

all this talk of, you know, look, we have

6:11

a limited amount of petroleum, we need to figure

6:14

out other energy sources, and Exxon is

6:16

like super embracing this and like, okay,

6:18

well, we're going to be the ones

6:20

that figure that out. The major energy

6:22

companies such as Mobil and Exxon are

6:24

also getting into solar in a big

6:26

way, line up smaller companies and launching

6:29

new research on their own. So

6:33

that sounds just like

6:35

an entirely different universe.

6:37

How did we get

6:39

from Exxon pushing alternative

6:41

energies to Exxon just pushing

6:43

oil? So there

6:46

are changes in the economy and geopolitics

6:48

and all of that happening and also

6:51

changes in Exxon's

6:53

executive staff. So,

6:56

you know, the oil embargo ends and

6:59

the industry actually gets kind of all

7:01

of its wish list of items, which

7:03

includes being able to do more drilling

7:05

of oil and gas. So all of

7:08

a sudden, the economics of oil and

7:10

gas have shifted. We're now looking at,

7:12

you know, a lot less per barrel than

7:14

what we're used to getting. And in

7:16

that context, you get a new head

7:18

of Exxon who's like, what are we

7:21

doing with all this, you

7:23

know, batteries and solar panels? Like we're

7:25

an oil company and that's what we're

7:27

going to do. So they shift from,

7:29

hey, let's have a seat at the

7:31

table and be part of the solution to let's

7:34

convince people that this is not a problem

7:36

that they need to be looking into. And

7:39

at the time, Exxon had quite a bit of sway

7:43

within the industry at large, and it

7:45

still does. You know, it's a big

7:47

oil major. So it wasn't just, you

7:49

know, them making that decision. For their

7:51

company, they were also kind of encouraging

7:53

other folks to do the same. So

7:56

other energy companies were following Exxon's

7:58

lead of... not

8:00

focusing on the alternative energies and focusing on

8:02

the oil. Yeah, and you

8:04

see this turn up in a lot

8:07

of the trade group communications happening at

8:09

the time. So there's multiple organizations

8:11

where all the companies kind of meet and talk about

8:13

all these things. And you see sort

8:15

of over and over again, Axon being like,

8:18

okay, guys, like, here's how we're going to

8:20

handle this problem. So there's all

8:22

these companies that are focusing on oil, they're getting

8:24

together, they're coming up with this new

8:27

strategy, I guess. Was there a moment that

8:29

they were all just like, we're

8:32

going to see doubt about climate change?

8:36

There were a few moments, and

8:38

there's one in particular where there

8:40

was actually a document created at

8:42

a meeting of all of these

8:45

guys that ended up in the

8:47

New York Times. It has

8:49

since been called the victory memo

8:51

because it lays out

8:53

what victory would mean for this

8:56

coalition of industries. You're saying there's

8:58

actually a memo, like a

9:00

document, almost like a literal smoking gun

9:03

that says what victory means for us

9:05

is to confuse the public and make

9:07

them think that climate change isn't real.

9:10

Yes, that's right. Okay,

9:12

that's nuts. Yeah.

9:14

What kind of, I mean, is there anything that you

9:16

can kind of say that's actually in the memo? Yes,

9:19

hold on. Can I, sorry, I'm

9:21

just going to pull this up. I should have had

9:24

it at my fingertips. You actually have it? Yep, it's,

9:26

okay, so this is, it's in 1998, and they say

9:28

victory will be achieved when average

9:35

citizens in air quotes

9:37

understand uncertainties in

9:39

climate science. Recognition

9:41

of uncertainties becomes part

9:43

of the, quote, conventional

9:46

wisdom. Oh. Media,

9:48

quote, understands slash

9:51

recognizes uncertainties in climate

9:53

science. Media coverage

9:55

reflects balance on climate science and

9:57

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14:43

Hey, it's Amy. If you're

14:45

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14:48

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14:50

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14:52

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14:54

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15:55

And tell them we sent you. A

16:09

decent gas mileage plus the convertible is

16:11

a ridiculous choice for this climate. Take

16:15

it back. So Amy, you

16:18

just mentioned this plan, this memo that

16:20

explicitly laid out how Exxon wanted

16:22

to weaponize uncertainty to get people

16:25

to drag their feet on climate

16:27

change. And it's interesting to

16:29

me because we usually spend a lot

16:31

of time on this show talking about how

16:33

embracing unknowns in science is a

16:35

good thing. Yeah, you're supposed to always

16:37

be asking questions. That's the

16:40

whole point of the scientific method. So

16:42

you're supposed to always be questioning

16:45

and trying to learn new things

16:47

and trying to understand things in

16:49

greater detail. Right, like even when we're pretty

16:51

confident, we should still be honest about what

16:53

we don't know. And science

16:56

in almost every peer

16:58

reviewed study you read, it will say,

17:00

you know, we have a high degree

17:02

of certainty that XYZ is happening, but

17:04

more research is needed. And that is

17:07

very common. And it does not mean

17:09

that the scientists have no idea what's

17:11

going on or have no faith in

17:14

what they have found in this study.

17:16

It's just sort of how they talk

17:19

about it. And so Exxon actually took

17:21

the way scientists talk and used it

17:23

against scientists to slow things down? Yeah,

17:25

so it was again, it was like in

17:28

the climate context in particular, any

17:30

degree of uncertainty has been really

17:33

sort of weaponized to argue that

17:36

in fact, scientists have no idea what's

17:38

going on and they're very unsure

17:40

about what's contributing to

17:42

climate change and that

17:44

therefore nothing should be

17:46

done about it because most of the things

17:49

that people suggest doing about it would

17:51

create pretty significant changes in our

17:53

energy system and our economy. And so

17:55

the idea is, well, those changes are

17:57

too big and the science is not.

18:00

certain enough to warrant it. How

18:02

does that actually happen? How

18:04

do you implement a plan like that to sort of

18:07

broadly increase uncertainty among quote

18:09

unquote average people? They

18:11

figure out like what demographics are

18:13

most open to the idea

18:15

that this is not a real problem

18:18

and that we shouldn't act

18:20

on it. And they target those demographics

18:23

with news stories.

18:25

There is not a crisis. So

18:27

like a lot of Rush Limbaugh.

18:31

Everything in this country today seems to be crisis.

18:36

A lot of advertorials,

18:38

advertisements. The

18:43

fuels of the future debate has begun. We

18:46

can't do anything without it having

18:49

to face it as a crisis. We don't have any time to think about

18:51

it. Making people worry about

18:53

the economic impact, all of that stuff.

18:56

There's no way if what these people say is

18:58

true that we could solve these problems in 10

19:00

years anyway. Alternative fuels don't

19:02

provide a simple answer. You

19:05

know, really, again, underscoring

19:08

there's no need to be alarmists about this.

19:10

There are as many scientists, maybe

19:13

even more, on the opposite side of

19:15

all of these doomsday predictions. So

19:19

with Rush, they're not paying him.

19:21

Are they paying him? How does this message

19:24

get from Exxon to Rush? No,

19:26

it's mostly a PR campaign. So

19:31

there were a couple of different little PR

19:33

groups that were formed to kind of carry this

19:35

message to the media. And one of them was

19:38

called the Information Council for

19:40

the Environment. And

19:42

this one, it had groups like the

19:44

Edison Electric Institute, which represents utilities

19:46

in the US. So they pulled

19:49

together a lot of market research,

19:52

figuring out who to target. And

19:54

then they developed messaging and

19:56

they brought in experts. So

19:59

they went looking for scientists

20:02

that would be willing

20:04

to contradict the general

20:07

consensus on global warming as well.

20:09

And then they would do a

20:12

big press push. So they'd reach out to

20:14

not just Rush Limbaugh, but lots of other

20:16

outlets that they had pinpointed as good carriers

20:19

of their message. They would send

20:21

them a bunch of white papers

20:23

and positioning papers and things

20:25

like that. And then they would offer up these

20:28

experts for interviews. So

20:30

you're talking about other non Rush Limbaugh

20:32

outlets who got targeted here. Who are

20:35

we talking about? Who did the targeting? So

20:38

there's one guy in particular named Herb

20:40

Schmertz, who... Herb Schmertz? ...the best name

20:42

ever. Yeah. He

20:45

can't let that one just go by. I know.

20:48

He worked for Mobile Oil. He was

20:50

their VP of Public Affairs for a really long

20:53

time. And he starts

20:55

working at Mobile. And he's

20:57

like, why aren't you guys dealing

20:59

with the media the way that we do in

21:02

politics? You guys are being

21:05

too nice and you're also just

21:07

avoiding conflict and really you

21:10

need to be more aggressive. So he

21:12

starts to embrace what he goes on

21:14

to call creative confrontation. It's

21:19

basically like calling up

21:21

and yelling at any journalist that's like...

21:24

That's creative. It's

21:26

creative. That covers

21:29

mobile in sort of a negative light. It's

21:31

Mobile Oil, the nation's third largest

21:34

industrial corporation against the Wall Street

21:36

Journal, the world's most influential business

21:38

newspaper. Or

21:40

that covers environmental issues related

21:43

to oil and gas but

21:45

doesn't cover the benefits that

21:47

oil and gas bring into the economy.

21:49

Oil companies have fought with newspapers before,

21:51

but as Mike Jensen reports tonight, not

21:54

at this level or on these terms. So

21:57

like poking holes in their credibility or their narrative

21:59

a little bit? Yes, accusing

22:01

them of sort of leaving out the

22:04

industry's side of the story.

22:06

And this creates very

22:09

fertile ground for then when the climate issue

22:11

comes about to push journalists

22:13

to always include the quote unquote

22:16

other side of the debate. As

22:18

promised, we've been joined by two scientists.

22:20

You mentioned the climate change skeptic Professor

22:22

Fred Singer and Professor Bob

22:24

Watson is the Chief Scientific Advisor

22:26

at the Department of the Environment

22:28

and therefore not the skeptic. Which

22:31

we now understand to be a

22:33

false equivalence problem. Professor Singer, what

22:35

is the single biggest reason that

22:37

makes you think that this whole

22:39

business of CO2 and global warming isn't

22:41

true? You've got like,

22:43

you know, 95% plus of scientists

22:46

who all kind of agree on

22:48

how the carbon cycle

22:50

works and how climate change works and what's

22:52

happening and the greenhouse effect and you have

22:55

a very small minority

22:57

of scientists who disagree. So

22:59

John, it's like so much in this

23:01

environmental and climate change debate. It seems

23:03

that you ask two experts, you

23:06

get two very different answers. So

23:11

given that this was all written down

23:13

that, you know, it's publicly accessible, you

23:15

have this memo. Yeah. Does Exxon

23:17

deny it? Are they still doing it? They

23:19

did. Like at a certain point, they started

23:22

to say in public and in

23:24

some of the lawsuits that they're now kind

23:26

of embroiled in that delve into this stuff

23:28

too. They have said, look, as

23:31

soon as the scientific

23:33

community really stopped expressing any

23:36

uncertainty about climate change, you know,

23:38

we stopped expressing any uncertainty too.

23:40

But, you know, there's quite a

23:42

bit of evidence that says otherwise. And

23:44

then just recently you had the Wall

23:46

Street Journal published a whole other round

23:49

of internal documents from

23:52

Exxon much more recent under

23:54

Rex Tillerson, where they're doing

23:56

a lot of the same stuff. So it makes

23:58

it a lot easier. a lot harder for them

24:00

to kind of say, okay, maybe there

24:02

were some people in the past that said some

24:05

things they shouldn't have, but it wasn't like a

24:07

strategy and it, you know, it wasn't just us

24:09

and those kinds of things. I think that they're

24:12

just keep being more documents that come

24:15

out that say otherwise. So the narrative

24:17

is they've moved past this, but that

24:19

may not be so true. That's

24:22

right. And I mean, they have shifted

24:24

tactics, so they're no

24:26

longer saying it's not a problem,

24:29

but they are really still kind of saying

24:32

it's not a big enough problem to

24:35

make any big moves. So instead of

24:37

this isn't real, it's not

24:39

necessarily a big deal. Right, that's

24:42

right. It goes, it shifts from denial

24:44

to delay, really. You know, it

24:46

goes from, yeah, it's not a problem

24:49

or it's not happening or it's like a

24:51

natural phenomenon that we don't have anything to

24:53

do with to, it's not that

24:55

big of a deal. And anyway,

24:58

we're on it. But they

25:00

are investing in more sustainable projects

25:03

now, right, like EVs, solar. I

25:05

read they're making this big bet on

25:07

lithium batteries. Yes, but I mean, if

25:10

they had done this stuff in the 90s, then

25:13

we could have had this like very

25:15

smooth energy transition that they talk about

25:17

and a lot of other people talk

25:19

about. And it's because these guys prevented

25:21

that in the 90s when we

25:23

should have started, that now

25:26

them trying to do these things today feels

25:29

like doing nothing. Unfortunately,

25:32

I think sowing doubt

25:34

and kind of emphasizing

25:37

uncertainty is a lot easier

25:39

to do than really convincing

25:41

people to act. You know,

25:43

it's like convincing people not

25:46

to act turns out to

25:48

be a lot easier than convincing people

25:50

to act. The

25:56

whole time I was talking with Amy

25:58

about weaponizing uncertainty, I

26:00

was thinking about what that means for

26:02

our show in general. Like, we celebrate

26:05

blank spaces on Unexplainable. So

26:07

I wanted to ask Amy whether

26:09

it's possible to tell the difference between

26:12

uncertainty that's being weaponized and

26:14

uncertainty that's being used responsibly. Her

26:17

first idea was to look at funding. You've got

26:19

to follow the money and be skeptical if something

26:22

is heavily funded by industry and look at, you

26:24

know, what goals does

26:26

the message serve? But

26:29

I'm not really sure that works as a general

26:31

rule, because just look at what happened with

26:33

the COVID vaccines. There was some uncertainty

26:35

about how well the vaccines worked and about the

26:37

side effects. And that led

26:40

a lot of people to say, hey,

26:42

follow the money. Moderna can't be trustworthy.

26:44

In that case, we wanted people to

26:46

be taking the vaccines and there was

26:49

a ton of data that showed that

26:51

they were effective. So rather

26:53

than following the money, maybe

26:55

the move here is just to

26:57

trust in a certain amount of

26:59

scientific consensus. Maybe once we

27:02

get to a certain percentage of consensus, then

27:04

we can all agree that this is where

27:08

most things are indicating. Again, without throwing out

27:10

the sort of great thing about science, which

27:12

is that you're kind of always questioning the

27:14

things you think you know. But

27:16

that doesn't always work either. There are

27:18

tons of claims that large portions of

27:20

the scientific community have agreed on that

27:22

end up being a lot less certain

27:24

than they initially seem. Like

27:26

when our reporter, Bird Pinkerton, looked into Alzheimer's,

27:28

how scientists in that field might have been

27:31

too certain about some of their ideas and

27:34

that certainty might have prevented more solutions

27:36

from being looked into. Uncertainty

27:38

can be good sometimes, even

27:40

in the face of consensus. You know,

27:43

we don't want to say that

27:46

scientists need to stop communicating

27:48

uncertainty, right? That's

27:50

the last thing we want to say. Yeah. To

27:53

be honest, when we were talking about

27:55

the ending of this episode, we kept trying to

27:57

come up with rules we could use to say

27:59

whether using uncertainty. uncertainty could be responsible or

28:01

not. And we really struggled. Ultimately,

28:04

there might just not be a comprehensive

28:06

way to tell, which makes

28:09

science and reporting on it hard. And

28:12

maybe it's fitting that evaluating uncertainty in science

28:14

is a little uncertain,

28:17

but I do think a good place to start

28:20

might be trying to think of uncertainty not as

28:22

doubt, but as humility. Not

28:24

as something that prevents us from finding

28:27

new answers, but something that encourages us

28:29

to question ourselves, to question

28:31

others, and to keep pushing science

28:33

forward. We

28:42

reached out to ExxonMobil for comment on this story,

28:44

but they didn't respond by our deadline. If

28:47

you wanna hear more about this story or

28:49

more stories like this one, check out Amy

28:51

Westervelt's podcast, Drilled. You won't regret it. This

28:55

episode was produced by Byrd Pinkerton. We had

28:57

edits from Brian Resnick, with help from me

28:59

and Meredith Hodnot, who also manages our team.

29:02

I did the music, Christian Ayala did the mixing

29:04

and the sound design, Serena Singlin checked the facts,

29:07

and Manding Nguyen is exploring in the dark.

29:10

Again, she seems to do that a lot.

29:13

If you want a transcript for this episode, we've

29:15

got a link in the show notes. And if

29:18

you have thoughts about this episode or ideas for

29:20

the show, please email us. We're at unexplainable at

29:22

vox.com. We'd also love it

29:24

if you left us a review or a rating. This

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