> Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be rather small and only accrue over the long term. It would therefore be of little use to, say, some PR ex

> Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be rather small and only accrue over the long term. It would therefore be of little use to, say, some PR executive at Shell. I'd argue that's pretty easy to refute. Just look how quickly the Q-Anon nonsense has spread. And they weren't even trying to pretend to be legitimate, they just kept making up crazier and crazier statements "for the lulz". > As for costs: the big one would be the damage to your reputation, as an individual, company, and industry, that would follow if the public found out. I'm having trouble imaging a scenario where you run such an operation, certainly involving a dozen people or so, without ever pissing one of them off sufficiently to see them calling a reporter. They were already caught funding the climate science denial reports despite knowing what was really going on. There was almost no backlash, why do you presume it would be any different this time? https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-scientist-oil-company-23022015/ https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-scientist-oil-com...