Back-to-School Special: Critical Thinking Toolkit (Part II)
Sent on Friday, Sept 8, 2023
We hope you enjoyed our first installment of our “Critical Thinking Toolkit.”
Today we are sharing six peer-reviewed academic papers that provide a background to the issue of industry funding of academic research in general, and of fossil fuel funding of climate and sustainability research in particular. We hope you will read at least our summary of them, if not the entire papers. We highlighted three of these papers to prioritize as “must reads.”
Essential Background to Understanding Fossil Fuel Influence and Oily Thinking
First is a review that assesses how industry funding shapes the overall research agenda (as opposed to the outcomes of individual studies). This study is not specifically focused on fossil fuel influence, but, as reported by investigative journalists such as Amy Westervelt, Dharna Noor, and Oliver Milman, as well as academics such as Ben Franta, Geoffrey Supran, Naomi Oreskes, Jennifer Jacquet, today’s fossil fuel industry is using the same or similar tactics as those described by this review.
The influence of industry sponsorship on the research agenda: A scoping review. Fabbri, A., Lai, A., Grundy, Q. & Bero, L. A. Am J Public Health 108, e9–e6 (2018). [Must read]
Takeaway: “Our findings suggest that corporate funding of research with commercial implications drives the research agenda away from public health priorities.”
Prioritize marketability: Industry tended to prioritize lines of inquiry that focus on products, processes, or activities that can be commercialized and marketed
Prioritize high-income markets: In medical fields, this often meant prioritizing products and high-income markets over behavioral or policy changes and low-income markets
Prioritize industry-desired policy implications: One industry strategy found was to “establish priority research agendas that were favorable to industry’s legal and policy positions.” For example, “‘The ultimate aim of the [Sugar Research] Foundation in dental research has been to discover effective means of controlling tooth decay by methods other than restricting carbohydrate intake.’”
Fund research the industry wants. A second strategy found was to “strategically fund research along priority research agendas in a way that appeared scientifically credible.” For instance, despite making claims to the contrary, the tobacco industry preferentially funded studies recommended by industry executives and lawyers and were “goal oriented.”
Invite scientists to industry-sponsored events to gain credibility. A third strategy found was to “disseminate the industry’s research agenda by enrolling non-industry stakeholders through conferences, committees, and other joint initiatives.” For instance, Phillip Morris initiated a conference attended by all 6 major tobacco companies as well as prominent publicly- and industry-funded behavioral and social scientists, “lending scientific stature and credibility to the conference.”
Next is a historical investigation of how fossil fuel companies co-opted economists, representing a detailed example of the patterns described by the review above. Much of this should sound familiar, given the Stanford Natural Gas and Hydrogen Initiatives’ industry-funded and industry-slanted publications (for details, see here).
Franta, B. Weaponizing economics: Big Oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay. Env Polit 31, 555–575 (2021).
Takeaway: From the 1990s - 2010s (at least), economists were funded by the petroleum industry to estimate costs of climate policies. Their models inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored.
But what about today, and what about Stanford? A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change analyzed how favorable research centers are to natural gas as a function of fossil funding (remember: “natural” gas is a potent greenhouse gas and fossil fuel).
Almond, D., Du, X. & Papp, A. Favourability towards natural gas relates to funding source of university energy centres. Nature Climate Change 2022 12:12 12, 1122–1128 (2022). [Must read]
Takeaway: “We found that fossil-funded centres are more favourable in their reports towards natural gas than towards renewable energy, and tweets are more favourable when they mention funders by name. Centres less dependent on fossil funding show a reversed pattern with more neutral sentiment towards gas, and favour solar and hydro power.”
Positive toward gas: Energy centers heavily funded by the fossil industry write reports that are on average positive towards natural gas.
More positive towards gas than renewables: The Stanford’s Natural Gas Initiative, MIT’s Energy Institute, and Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy together are more positive towards natural gas than towards renewables, including solar and hydro.
Like gas trade associations: The magnitude of this positive sentiment is indistinguishable from that of the trade groups the American Gas Foundation and the American Gas Association
@StanfordEnergy is the worst: @StanfordEnergy has the starkest overall pro-funder sentiment of all analyzed and is the most negative to non-funders
Significant funder input: Funders are given significant input into the research agenda at the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative and other fossil-funded centers.
Author effect: Authors affiliated with natural gas-using/promoting companies are especially positive in how they write about natural gas in energy center reports, but overall center sentiment is not accounted nor confined to this author effect.
How does pro-fossil climate delay logic play out? Lamb et al. lay it out in a systematic, digestible way. Their graphic on “discourses of climate delay” (Figure 1, reproduced below) is invaluable for any students getting lectured by professors infected with oily thinking.
Lamb, W. F. et al. Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability 3, e17 (2020). [Must read]
Takeaway: Discourses of climate delay can be grouped into four categories: redirect responsibility, surrender, emphasize downsides of change, push non-transformative solutions.
Which of these have you noticed at Stanford?
This next paper quantifies the amount of oil, gas, and coal reserves that must be left in the ground in order to avoid 1.5C and 2C of warming. Why is this important? Since the study finds we must leave most known reserves in the ground in order to stay below 1.5C (and even 2C) of warming, any company exploring for new reserves is violating the Paris Agreement. To our knowledge, assessing each of Stanford’s fossil funders individually, all are exploring for new reserves.
Welsby, D., Price, J., Pye, S. & Ekins, P. Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world. Nature 2021 597:7875 597, 230–234 (2021).
Takeaway: “By 2050, we find that nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget. This implies that most regions must reach peak production now or during the next decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel projects unviable.”
Judging by advertising and the occasional headline, oil and gas companies are making major strides towards a renewable world. How do their actual plans stack up with their PR? This study quantitatively evaluates this question for 142 fossil fuel companies.
Rekker, S. et al. Evaluating fossil fuel companies’ alignment with 1.5 °C climate pathways. Nature Climate Change 2023 1–8 (2023) doi:10.1038/s41558-023-01734-0.
Takeaway: “Between 2014 and 2020, 64%, 63% and 70% of coal, oil and gas companies, respectively, produced more than their production budgets under the IPCC’s middle-of-the-road (SSP2-1.9) Paris Agreement-compliant scenario. In addition, if the 142 companies we examined continued their average growth rate trends from 2010 to 2018, they would produce up to 68%, 42% and 53% more than their cumulative production budgets for coal, oil and gas, respectively, by 2050. By providing such simple metrics, based on publicly available data, our method offers stakeholders a way of easily tracking and comparing the performance of different fossil fuel producers against climate goals.”
We hope these resources will be helpful in the new academic year.