Sunday
Dec202009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tool of big oil
Dec 20, 2009 Climate Coincidences are funny things. Just hours after joking about my "connections" with the oil industry I got an email from Rob Schneider, the secretary of the Scottish Oil Club, wondering if I'd like to attend some of their meetings. (I always thought these approaches were meant to be accompanied by a large cheque, but what do I know?).
I've written a rather non-commital response explaining that I'm likely to be criticised if I do go, although Rob assures me that the club has as many (warmist) university types as it does sceptic oilmen. This is certainly borne out by the list of forthcoming speakers - I'd be interested to hear what Jeremy Leggett has to say at his talk in February, if only so I can ask him some difficult questions.
Reader Comments (9)
Thanks for the mention. We're proud of our Club--in existence for more than 30 years--which has the stated purpose "The Scottish Oil Club is a national forum for the presentation and discussion of views on the economic, industrial, technological and political aspects of petroleum and other energy resources." We've sometimes talked of changing the name; but the "brand" has become strong enough over the years to still be strongly associated with these goals.
We engage with people who are truly interested in these topics and they live and work in industry, academia, legal, financial, consulting, retired, and other worlds. We convene once a month to have our discussions. We're so diverse that the "warmists' (as you say) are not limited to academic institutions, and those who take a hard look at the data are also as diverse.
You'll surely enjoy the evenings best of you are able join us for dinner which is where the best conversations take place. Hope you are able to join us.
BH: Go, man. The warmists, whose credibility is slipping, will criticize you no matter where you show up. Send us the story, or your remarks.
...and your publisher ought to be happy to sponsor you up there to (pre)sell some books, no? For that purpose, as a former public relations man once advised me, "any publicity is good publicity."
Hi Bish,
You should go, you will be criticised whatever you do. Plus now we know how much Gore Jones etc make from AGW, frankly, no-one can be said to be "disinterested" on this.
The Scottish Oil Club is a great forum for discussion and conversation and nobody should be assuming, despite the name of the club, that the room is full of like-minded thinkers. All are competent thinkings, though.
I know Rob Schneider well (Hello Rob) and can vouch for his sense of perspective on AGW. You should go along Bish as climate realists have to start taking the argument to warmers if we want to get our questions over the lack of credible evidence across.
Here is a little background on Jeremy Leggett:
GOVERNING THE CLIMATE: Oil Companies, Environmental Groups, and the Public Sphere in the Multilateral Climate Negotiations Simone Pulver Department of Sociology University of California, Berkeley April 2003
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/evans/evans_pdf/Pulver_Governing%20the%20Climate.pdf
This document is no longer available but I have a copy if you are interested.
"The Greenpeace climate program dates back to 1989. In its early years, the campaign focus was to popularize the climate change issue and to build an understanding of climate. science among a broad public audience.
At that time, Dr. Jeremy Leggett was the director of the Greenpeace International climate team. Leggett came to Greenpeace from the Royal School of Mines ad Imperial College. He was trained as a petroleum geologist and his research focused on the geological history of oceans.
During his eleven years at Imperial he also worked as a consultant to the oil industry in the UK and Japan (Leggett 1999). The early science focus of the campaign traces back to Leggett’s involvement in the IPCC process. Leggett was frustrated with the political wrangling over wording in the Policy Maker’s Summary of the first IPCC Scientific Assessment Report. “Climate change is a difficult issue to campaign because we had to strike a balance between the dire threat and emphasizing the positive.
We ended up focusing on dire threat because science community pulled punches” (Interview ENGO:). In addition, there was a need to balance the public relations campaign of the climate skeptics. At that time, the Western Fuels Association, funded by US coal interests, had recruited and supported a handful of scientists skeptical of climate change to publicly oppose the emerging international scientific consensus. Therefore, in advance of the first IPCC Scientific Assessment Report, which was officially presented at the Second World Climate Conference in November of 1990, Greenpeace distributed Climate Change: The Greenpeace Report, as a “shadow” IPCC report.
The book was published by Oxford University Press and edited by Leggett.£
Impressive research on me. An American sociology faculty pamphlet from 2005, no longer available.
Why not try www.jeremyleggett.net, and all the links off there?
As President of the Scottish Oil Club (a key energy NGO and non-profit making, highly credible energy debating forum with significant membership across Scotland, the UK, Europe and indeed globally) I hope I speak for our members in saying that we are not interested in "publicity seeking". We have a most diverse membership drawn primarily from the energy industry and its supporting service companies and also including decision/policy makers, financial sector analysts, academics and consulting - a true breadth of experience and knowledge. We do value all opinions, and aim to facilitate discussion and debate for topical issues, research and projects across the whole energy spectrum for all those keen to deliver their views to our members, or wishing to challenge our collective experience. Our club also enables invaluable networking at the industry level, and across peer groups. All are welcome to hear the presentations, debate the discussion and learn more about the energy sector than they probably knew before. JK