Subject:  What do YOU think?????.......
Date:     Mon, 27 Apr 1998 092151 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
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Hi everybody:

I invite all of you to send me your commentary on the following.....
Note:  The story originally was carried in the New York Times....

Roy Beavers (EMFguru)

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11:24 PM ET 04/25/98

Oil companies plan campaign on climate fears-paper

        
            NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil companies and conservative
policy research groups are planning a campaign to change public
perception about the fears of global warming, according to
Sunday's New York Times.
            The Times reported that an informal group of industry
representatives was drawing up a possible multi-million dollar
offensive to convince the public that fear of global warming and
the treaties to curb it are based on bad science.
            Meeting in the American Petroleum Institute's Washington
offices, the group has considered recruiting like-minded
scientists and training them in public relations to influence
the public, journalists and politicians, the paper said.
            Documents showed that representatives of Exxon Corp.,
Chevron Corp. and Southern Corp. were involved in the
discussions, the Times said.
            The paper said it obtained documents on the plan from an
environmental group, which said it hoped that early exposure of
the campaign would hamper fund-raising efforts.
            The leader of the project, Joe Walker, a public relations
representative of the API, said the plans had been under
consideration for two months and were ``very, very tentative.''
            The plan called for spending $5 million over two years to
''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours
on Congress, the media and other key audiences.''
            The plan earmarked $600,000 for media relations and called
for the creation of a ``one-stop resource on climate science for
members of Congress, the media, industry and all others
concerned,'' the Times said.
            The oil industry group also planned to ``identify, recruit
and train a team of five independent scientists to participate
in media outreach,'' the Times said.
            The group would measure its progress by counting the number
of news articles that questioned the popularly accepted views on
global warming, the Times said.
            The group had conducted a poll that found that Americans see
global warming as a serious problem but that ``public opinion is
open to change on climate science.''
        
 ^REUTERS@




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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html