Weaponizing uncertainty 25:21

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It's Unexplainable. I'm Noam Hassenfeld. And we talk a lot about uncertainty on this show. We celebrate it, actually, because when scientists admit they don't know things, that's good. That's science working the way it's supposed to. And it can feel like embracing uncertainty is just a fundamentally good thing.

But I was listening to this podcast recently that made me wonder about this idea. It's a show called Drilled. It's all about climate change. And the host of the show, Amy Westervelt, she doesn't think uncertainty in science is necessarily bad. But she does tell a compelling story about how it's been used against good science. How uncertainty has been weaponized by certain actors to prevent the world from acting on climate change.

So this week on the show, right in the middle of COP28, the biggest climate conference of the year, I wanted to talk to Amy about climate change and the downside of uncertainty. How uncertainty can be used against progress and what we can learn from a decades-long campaign to distort the truth. ♪

Amy, hello. Yes, hello. I think a pretty good place to start would just be to try and understand how we got to where we are today. Where you have climate skeptics on one side versus climate believers on the other side. You've got environmentalists pitted against oil companies.

Has it always been this way? No, that's what makes it so interesting and sort of troubling is that, in fact, the oil industry was one of the biggest funders of research into climate change or what they called the greenhouse effect industry.

At the time, ExxonMobil in particular had several scientists that were doing research on climate change and different types of renewable energy sources. So Exxon was actually funding research on...

Correct. The greenhouse effect on climate change? Yes. So Exxon at the time, this is like early 70s, Exxon wants to be what they describe as the Bell Labs of energy. Wow. So at the time, Bell Labs was this big telecommunications company. They invented cell phones and satellites and all kinds of things. So Exxon wanted to be that for energy. Wow.

And what did that look like in the company? Do you know? I talked to a guy named Ed Garvey who worked there in the 70s. He was sort of like a young, you know, postdoc, excited. Like for him, Exxon was the place that you wanted to get hired to do really interesting energy research. Yeah.

And he got put on a project where they were taking measurements to understand climate change. There was no questioning that the atmospheric carbon dioxide was increasing. He was like, yeah, it was like there was no question that this was real. It was something we were researching. The issue was not, were we going to have a problem? The issue was simply how soon and how fast and how bad was it going to be? Not if. Nobody at Exxon when I was there was discussing that.

I just can't. Exxon is the place for idealistic science postgrads to go work and solve the greenhouse effect or climate change. It's just kind of hard to put myself in that brain space. Yeah. So their big focus was on, you know, having a seat at the table when energy policy was being discussed. And this is like it's important to remember sort of the timeline that we're in here. Yeah.

Anger and bewilderment are growing as more and more Americans cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps. It's like early to mid-70s. You've got the OPEC oil embargo happening. Fuel for heating homes up 50% over last fall. You know, you've got these years where Americans are having to ration energy and line up at the gas station.

Gasoline up 26%. Jimmy Carter's like putting solar panels on the White House. Solar energy, of course, was already on its way to becoming a big thing even before President Carter got involved. But his actions have definitely heightened it all. There's all this talk of, you know, look, we have a limited amount of petroleum. We need to figure out other energy sources. And Exxon is like super embracing this and like, OK, well, we're going to be the ones that figure that out.

The major energy companies such as Mobil and Exxon are also getting into solar in a big way, buying up smaller companies and launching new research on their own. So that sounds just like an entirely different universe. How did you get from Exxon pushing alternative energies to Exxon just pushing oil?

So there are changes in the economy and geopolitics and all of that happening and also changes in Exxon's executive staff. So, you know, the oil embargo ends and the industry actually gets kind of all of its wish list of items, which includes being able to do more drilling of oil and gas. So all of a sudden, the economics of oil and gas have shifted dramatically.

We're now looking at, you know, a lot less per barrel than what we're used to getting. And in that context, you get a new head of Exxon who's like, what are we doing with all this stuff?

you know, batteries and solar panels. Like, we're an oil company and that's what we're going to do. So they shift from, hey, let's have a seat at the table and be part of the solution to let's convince people that this is not a problem that they need to be looking into. And at the time, Exxon had quite a bit of

sway within the industry at large. And it still does. It's a big oil major. So it wasn't just them making that decision for their company. They were also kind of encouraging other folks to do the same. So other energy companies were following Exxon's lead of...

not focusing on the alternative energies and focusing on the oil. Yeah. And you see this turn up in a lot of the trade group communications happening at the time. So there's multiple organizations where all of the companies kind of meet and talk about all these things. And you see sort of over and over again, Exxon being like, okay, guys, like, here's how we're going to handle this problem. So there's all these companies that are focusing on oil. They're getting together. They're coming up with this

new strategy, I guess. Was there a moment that they were all just like, we're going to see doubt about climate change? There were a few moments and there's one in particular where there was actually a document created at a meeting of all of these guys that ended up in the New York Times. It has since been called the victory memo, uh,

because it lays out what victory would mean for this coalition of industries. You're saying there's actually a memo, like a document, almost like a literal smoking gun that says what victory means for us is to confuse the public and make them think that climate change isn't real. Yes, that's right. That's nuts.

Yeah. What kind of, I mean, is there anything that you can kind of say that's actually in the memo? Yes. Hold on. Can I? Sorry, I'm just going to pull this up. I should have had it at my fingertips. You actually have it? Yep. It's, okay, so this is, it's in 1998 and they say victory will be achieved when...

Oh, wow.

Media, quote, understands slash recognizes uncertainties in climate science. Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current conventional wisdom. Oh, my God. And then, oh, it says industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy.

So this victory memo, it's pretty clear. Exxon had an explicit goal to increase uncertainty around climate change. But having a plan is one thing. Making it happen is way harder. So how did oil companies actually weaponize uncertainty to reshape the climate change conversation? It turns out they used climate scientists' own language against them. That's in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little...

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So Amy, you just mentioned this plan, this memo that explicitly laid out how Exxon wanted to weaponize uncertainty to get people to drag their feet on climate change. And it's interesting to me because we usually spend a lot of time on this show talking about how embracing unknowns in science is a good thing. Yeah, you're supposed to always be asking questions.

that's the whole point of the scientific method, you know? So you're supposed to always be

questioning and trying to learn new things and trying to understand things in greater detail. Right. Like even when we're pretty confident, we should still be honest about what we don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's in almost every peer-reviewed study you read. It will say, you know, we have a high degree of certainty that XYZ is happening, but more research is needed. And that is very common. And it does not mean that

that the scientists have no idea what's going on or have no faith in what they have found in this study. It's just sort of how they talk about it. And so Exxon actually took the way scientists talk and used it against scientists to slow things down? Yes, yes. So it was, again, it was like in the climate context in particular, any degree of uncertainty has been really sort of weaponized to argue that

In fact, scientists have no idea what's going on and they're very unsure about what's contributing to climate change and that therefore...

nothing should be done about it because most of the things that people suggest doing about it would create pretty significant changes in our energy system and our economy. And so the idea is, well, those changes are too big and the science isn't certain enough to warrant it. How does that actually happen? How do you implement a plan like that to sort of broadly increase uncertainty among quote-unquote average people? They figure out like what demographics are

are most open to the idea that this is not a real problem and that we shouldn't act on it. And they target those demographics with...

news stories. There is not a crisis. So like a lot of Rush Limbaugh segments. Everything in this country today seems to be a crisis. A lot of advertorials, advertisements. Exxon offers you Phase 4.

The fuels of the future debate has begun. We can't do anything without it being, having to face it as a crisis. We don't have any time to think about it. Making people worry about the economic impacts, all of that stuff. There's no way if what these people say is true that we can solve these problems in 10 years anyway. Alternative fuels don't provide a simple answer. You know, really, again, underscoring...

There's no need to be alarmist about this. There are as many scientists, maybe even more, on the opposite side of all of these doomsday predictions. So with Rush, they're not paying him, are they? Are they paying him? How does this message get from Exxon to Rush? No, it's mostly a PR campaign. So there were a couple of different little...

PR groups that were formed to kind of carry this message to the media. And one of them was called the Information Council for the Environment. And this one, it had groups like the Edison Electric Institute, which represents utilities in the U.S. So they pulled together a lot of market research, figuring out who to target. And then they developed messaging and they brought in experts

So they went looking for scientists that would be willing to kind of contradict the general consensus on global warming as well. And then they would do a big press push. So they'd reach out to not just Rush Limbaugh, but lots of other outlets that they had pinpointed as good experts.

carriers of their message. They would send them a bunch of white papers and positioning papers and things like that. And then they would offer up these experts for interviews. So you're talking about other non-Rush Limbaugh outlets who got targeted here.

Who are we talking about? Who did the targeting? So there's one guy in particular named Herb Schmertz, who... Herb Schmertz. Best name. The best name ever. Can't let that one just go by. I know. He worked for Mobile Oil. He was their VP of public affairs for a really long time. And he starts working at Mobile. And he's like, why aren't you guys...

you know, dealing with the media the way that we do in politics. Like you guys are, you know, being too nice and you're also just like avoiding conflict and really you need to be more aggressive. So he starts to embrace what he goes on to call creative confrontation. It's basically like calling up and yelling at any journalist that like... That's creative. It's creative.

It's creative. That covers mobile in sort of a negative light. It's mobile oil, the nation's third largest industrial corporation, against the Wall Street Journal, the world's most influential business newspaper. Or that, you know, covers like environmental issues related to oil and gas, but doesn't cover the benefits that oil and gas bring into the economy. Oil companies have fought with newspapers before, but as Mike Jensen reports tonight...

not at this level or on these terms. So like poking holes in their credibility or their narrative a little bit. Yes. Accusing them of sort of leaving out the industry's side of the story. And this creates very fertile ground for then when the climate issue comes about,

to push journalists to always include the quote-unquote other side of the debate. That is promised. We've been joined by two scientists you mentioned, the climate change skeptic Professor Fred Singer and Professor Bob Watson. He's the chief scientific advisor at the Department of the Environment and therefore not a skeptic. Which we now understand to be a false equivalence problem. Professor Singer, what is the single biggest reason that makes you think that

that this whole business of CO2 and global warming isn't true.

You've got like, you know, 95% plus of scientists who all kind of agree on how the carbon cycle works and how climate change works and what's happening and the greenhouse effect. And you have a very small minority of scientists who disagree. So, John, it's like so much in this environmental and climate change debate. It seems that you ask two experts, you get two very different answers.

So given that this was all written down, that, you know, it's publicly accessible, you have this memo. Yeah. Does Exxon deny it? Are they still doing it? They did. Like at a certain point, they started to say in public and in some of the lawsuits that they're now kind of embroiled in that delve into this stuff, too. They have said, look, as soon as...

The scientific community really stopped expressing any uncertainty about climate change. You know, we stopped expressing any uncertainty too. But, you know, there's quite a bit of evidence that says otherwise. And then just recently, you had the Wall Street Journal published a whole other round of, you know, internal documents from Exxon, much more recent under Rex Tillerson, where they're doing a lot of the same stuff. So...

it makes it a lot harder for them to kind of say, okay, maybe there were some people in the past that said some things they shouldn't have, but it wasn't like a strategy and it, you know, it wasn't just us and those kinds of things. I think the,

There just keeps being more documents that say otherwise. So the narrative is they've moved past this, but that may not be so true. That's right. And I mean, they have shifted tactics. So they're no longer saying it's not a problem, but they are really still kind of saying it's not a big enough problem to make any big moves. So instead of this isn't real, it's not necessarily a big deal.

Right. That's right. It goes, it shifts from denial to delay, really. You know, it's, it goes from, yeah, it's not a problem or it's not happening or it's like a natural phenomenon that we don't have anything to do with to, it's not that big of a deal. And anyway, we're on it.

But they are investing in more sustainable projects now, right? Like EVs, solar. I read they're making this big bet on lithium batteries. Yes. But I mean, if they had done this stuff in the 90s, then we could have had this like very smooth energy transition that they talk about and a lot of other people talk about. And it's because these guys prevented that in the 90s when we should have started that now them trying to do these things today is...

feels like doing nothing. Unfortunately, I think sowing doubt and kind of emphasizing uncertainty is a lot easier to do than really convincing people to act. You know, it's like convincing people not to act turns out to be a lot easier than convincing people to act. The whole time I was talking with Amy about weaponizing uncertainty,

I was thinking about what that means for our show in general. Like, we celebrate blank spaces on Unexplainable. So I wanted to ask Amy whether it's possible to tell the difference between uncertainty that's being weaponized and uncertainty that's being used responsibly. Her first idea was to look at funding. You've got to follow the money and be skeptical if something is heavily funded by industry and look at, you know, what goals does the message serve?

But I'm not really sure that works as a general rule, because just look at what happened with the COVID vaccines. There was some uncertainty about how well the vaccines worked and about the side effects. And that led a lot of people to say, "Hey, follow the money. Moderna can't be trustworthy." In that case, we wanted people to be taking the vaccines. And there was a ton of data that showed that they were effective. So rather than following the money,

Maybe the move here is just to trust in a certain amount of scientific consensus. Maybe once we get to a certain percentage of consensus, then we can all agree that this is where most things are indicating. Again, without throwing out the sort of great thing about science, which is that you're kind of always questioning the things you think you know.

But that doesn't always work either. There are tons of claims that large portions of the scientific community have agreed on that end up being a lot less certain than they initially seem. Like when our reporter Bird Pinkerton looked into Alzheimer's, how scientists in that field might have been too certain about some of their ideas, and that certainty might have prevented more solutions from being looked into. Uncertainty can be good sometimes, even in the face of consensus.

You know, we don't want to say that scientists need to stop communicating uncertainty, right? That's the last thing we want to say, yeah. To be honest, when we were talking about the ending of this episode, we kept trying to come up with rules we could use to say whether using uncertainty could be responsible or not. And we really struggled. Ultimately, there might just not be a comprehensive way to tell, which makes science and reporting on it hard.

And maybe it's fitting that evaluating uncertainty in science is a little uncertain. But I do think a good place to start might be trying to think of uncertainty not as doubt, but as humility. Not as something that prevents us from finding new answers, but something that encourages us to question ourselves, to question others, and to keep pushing science forward. We reached out to ExxonMobil for comment on this story, but they didn't respond by our deadline.

If you want to hear more about this story or more stories like this one, check out Amy Westervelt's podcast, Drilled. You won't regret it. This episode was produced by Bird Pinkerton. We had edits from Brian Resnick with help from me and Meredith Hodnot, who also manages our team. I did the music. Christian Ayala did the mixing and the sound design. Serena Solon checked the facts. And Manding Wynn is exploring in the dark. Again, she seems to do that a lot.

If you want a transcript for this episode, we've got a link in the show notes. And if you have thoughts about this episode or ideas for the show, please email us. We're at unexplainable at Vox.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review or a rating. This podcast and all of Vox is free in part because of gifts from our readers and listeners. You can go to Vox.com slash give to give today. And if you do give and you're giving because of our show, maybe let Vox know that you enjoy Unexplainable when you give.

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