The Climate Deception Dossiers

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July 10, 2015 at 12:42 pm #27155
zn
Moderator
The Climate Deception Dossiers

Go to the link for the full report:

http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VZ_0g7WsR1h

For nearly three decades, many of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies have knowingly worked to deceive the public about the realities and risks of climate change.

Their deceptive tactics are now highlighted in this set of seven “deception dossiers”—collections of internal company and trade association documents that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.

Each collection provides an illuminating inside look at this coordinated campaign of deception, an effort underwritten by ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, Peabody Energy, and other members of the fossil fuel industry.

The climate deception dossiers

Containing 85 internal memos totaling more than 330 pages, the seven dossiers reveal a range of deceptive tactics deployed by the fossil fuel industry. These include forged letters to Congress, secret funding of a supposedly independent scientist, the creation of fake grassroots organizations, multiple efforts to deliberately manufacture uncertainty about climate science, and more.

The documents clearly show that:

Fossil fuel companies have intentionally spread climate disinformation for decades.
Fossil fuel company leaders knew that their products were harmful to people and the planet but still chose to actively deceive the public and deny this harm.
The campaign of deception continues today.

Download the full report for in-depth information on each of the seven dossiers.
he climate deception dossiers

Containing 85 internal memos totaling more than 330 pages, the seven dossiers reveal a range of deceptive tactics deployed by the fossil fuel industry. These include forged letters to Congress, secret funding of a supposedly independent scientist, the creation of fake grassroots organizations, multiple efforts to deliberately manufacture uncertainty about climate science, and more.

The documents clearly show that:

Fossil fuel companies have intentionally spread climate disinformation for decades.
Fossil fuel company leaders knew that their products were harmful to people and the planet but still chose to actively deceive the public and deny this harm.
The campaign of deception continues today.

Download the full report for in-depth information on each of the seven dossiers. The complete collection of documents is available in the sources and resources section below.
What fossil fuel companies knew and when they knew it

The fundamentals of global warming have been well established for generations. Fossil fuel companies have almost certainly been aware of the underlying climate science for decades.

By 1988, climate change was a well-established scientific fact and widely acknowledged in the public sphere, as exemplified by this front page story in the New York Times. Enlarge image.

As early as 1977, representatives from major fossil fuel companies attended dozens of congressional hearings in which the contribution of carbon emissions to the greenhouse effect was discussed. By 1981 at least one company (Exxon) was already considering the climate implications of a large fossil fuel extraction project.

In 1988, the issue moved beyond the scientific community and onto the national stage. James Hansen, a leading NASA climate scientist, testified before Congress that scientific data had confirmed that industrial activities were causing climate change. It was also in 1988 that the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Congress introduced the National Energy Policy Act in an effort to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

It is difficult to imagine that executives, lobbyists, and scientists at major fossil companies were by this time unaware of the robust scientific evidence of the risks associated with the continued burning of their products.

More than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released since 1988—after major fossil fuel companies knew about the harm their products were causing. Enlarge image.

Indeed, one of the key documents highlighted in the deception dossiers is a 1995 internal memo written by a team headed by a Mobil Corporation scientist and distributed to many major fossil fuel companies. The internal report warned unequivocally that burning the companies’ products was causing climate change and that the relevant science “is well established and cannot be denied.”

How did fossil fuel companies respond? They embarked on a series of campaigns to deliberately deceive the public about the reality of climate change and block any actions that might curb carbon emissions.

The result? More than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released since 1988 and there is still no comprehensive U.S. federal policy to address the problem.
Holding fossil fuel companies accountable

As the picture of fossil fuel companies’ efforts to deceive the public comes into clear view, the time is ripe to hold these companies accountable for their actions and responsible for the harm they have caused.

TAKE ACTION: Join the call to stop climate deception by telling one or more of these companies that the decades of deception must stop.

So how should the American public expect fossil fuel companies to behave? At a minimum, society should expect them to:

Stop disseminating misinformation about climate change. It is unacceptable for fossil fuel companies to deny established climate science. It is also unacceptable for companies to publicly accept the science while funding climate contrarian scientists or front groups that distort or deny the science.

Support fair and cost-effective policies to reduce global warming emissions. It is time for the industry to identify and publicly support policies that will lead to the reduction of emissions at a scale needed to reduce the worst effects of global warming.

Reduce emissions from current operations and update their business models to prepare for future global limits on emissions. Companies should take immediate action to cut emissions from their current operations, update their business models to reflect the risks of unabated burning of fossil fuels, and map out the pathway they plan to take in the next 20 years to ensure we achieve a low-carbon energy future.

Pay for their share of the costs of climate damages and preparedness. Communities around the world are already facing and paying for damages from rising seas, extreme heat, more frequent droughts, and other climate-related impacts. Today and in the future, fossil fuel companies should pay a fair share of the costs.

Fully disclose the financial and physical risks of climate change to their business operations. As is required by law, fossil fuel companies are required to discuss risks—including climate change—that might materially affect their business in their annual SEC filings. Today, compliance with this requirement is not consistent.
- This topic was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by zn.
July 10, 2015 at 12:42 pm #27156

zn
Moderator

UPDATE (July 9, 2015): As this report went to press, a newly discovered email from a former Exxon employee revealed that the company was already factoring climate change into decisions about new fossil fuel extraction as early as 1981.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/fossil-fuel-company-deception-climate-warming-exxon-0511#.VZ_05bWsR1g

Former Exxon Employee Says Company Considered Climate Risks as Early as 1981
New Report Finds that Despite Decades of Scientific Warnings, Fossil Fuel Companies Continued to Mislead Public, Policymakers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (July 8, 2015)—Exxon employees considered how climate change should factor into decisions about new fossil fuel extraction as early as 1981, according to a former employee’s email the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reviewed while researching a new report on fossil energy company lobbying campaigns.

Yet as the new report, The Climate Deception Dossiers, chronicles, Exxon and other major fossil fuel companies did not take action to disclose or reduce climate risks in the ensuing years, but instead actively misled the public and policymakers about them.

The new report reviews internal documents related to some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, including BP, Chevron, Conoco, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, Phillips, and Shell, spanning the course of 27 years—memos that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The documents show that:

Companies have directly or indirectly spread climate disinformation for decades;
Corporate leaders knew the realities of climate science—that their products were harmful to people and the planet—but still actively deceived the public and denied this harm;
The campaign of deception continues, with some of the documents having surfaced as recently as in 2014 and 2015.

UCS has made the complete collection of 85 internal memos—totaling more than 330 pages—available online.

In the email, the employee explains that, “Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia.” He said the company knew the field was rich in carbon dioxide and that it could become the “largest point source of CO2 in the world,” accounting for 1 percent of projected global CO2 emissions.

It is not clear that any other companies were considering the climate effects of projects at such an early time.

Despite these internal deliberations as well as warnings from scientists, the report finds that company lobbyists continued to fight climate rules and spread misinformation about climate science. In 1995, the same former employee helped author one of the key documents highlighted in the report when he later worked for Mobil: a memo sent to the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a fossil fuel lobbying group. The memo, which was distributed to representatives from member companies, warned unequivocally twenty years agothat burning the companies’ products was causing climate change and that the relevant science “is well established and cannot be denied.”

Writing in 2014, the former employee, who also served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, lamented that he was unsuccessful in “trying to get them to recognize scientific reality.”

The email was sent in response to an inquiry from Ohio University’s Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics about how companies often fail to account for “un-priced externalities,” such as climate change. It was first published online (see item 3) in October of 2014, but has not received any outside notice until now.

UCS president Ken Kimmell, a former attorney and head of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, wrote in a blog post about the report that companies missed an opportunity to lead on climate change.

“Many fossil fuel companies haven’t been honest about the harms they have caused by extracting and selling products that place our climate in grave danger,” he wrote. “Instead of taking responsibility, they have either directly—or indirectly through trade and industry groups—sown doubt about the science of climate change and fought efforts to cut emissions.”

Indeed many of those same companies – including BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Mobil, Phillips, and Shell – were members of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in 1998 when the trade group drafted a plan to secretly support “independent” researchers who would publicly dispute established climate science. The trade group’s memo claimed that “victory” would be achieved when “average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”

As the UCS report chronicles, member companies continued to implement API’s plans even after they were exposed. For instance, freedom of information requests from Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center yielded documents earlier this year that showed how API, ExxonMobil and Southern Company, a utility, continued to fund at least one contrarian researcher – aerospace engineer Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon – for more than a decade through grants to the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian responded to these revelations by promising to revisit policies governing outside research funding.

Other documents in the report highlight deceptive strategies fossil fuel companies have used to undermine climate policy, including forging documents and funding California groups that purport to advocate on behalf of drivers and taxpayers rather than oil companies.

The report’s release comes at a time of increased scrutiny on major fossil fuel companies. In response to shareholder pressure, Shell and BP have called for placing a price on carbon and supported resolutions that would require the companies to reexamine their business models to account for climate policy and to embrace greater transparency on climate lobbying. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil continues to reject such resolutions. At a May shareholder meeting, CEO Rex Tillerson also publicly criticized climate models and suggested that humans will simply adapt to climate change.

Fossil fuel companies’ support for trade and advocacy groups that dispute and distort climate science has also come under fire. UCS and ShareAction recently called on Shell to follow BP’s lead in leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council, a lobbying group highlighted in the report that routinely disseminates misinformation about climate science and policy to state legislators.

The UCS report calls on companies to stop supporting campaigns that spread misinformation about climate science and to end efforts to undermine climate policy. Nancy Cole, a report author and UCS’s campaign director for climate and energy, said companies should find more constructive paths forward.

“These companies aren’t just trying to block new polices, they’re trying to roll back clean energy and climate laws that are working and are widely supported by the public,” she said. “Climate change is already underway – and many communities are struggling to protect their residents and prepare for future changes. The deception simply must stop. It’s time for major carbon companies to become part of the solution.”

All the documents associated with the report are available online, along with a slideshow and related video.

The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet’s most pressing problems. Joining with citizens across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.

July 10, 2015 at 12:49 pm #27158

zn
Moderator

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding

A newly unearthed missive from Lenny Bernstein, a climate expert with the oil firm for 30 years, shows concerns over high presence of carbon dioxide in enormous gas field in south-east Asia factored into decision not to tap it
Tugboats tow the oil tanker Exxon Valdez off Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound 05 April 1989

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.

The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.
Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change
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However, Exxon’s public position was marked by continued refusal to acknowledge the dangers of climate change, even in response to appeals from the Rockefellers, its founding family, and its continued financial support for climate denial. Over the years, Exxon spent more than $30m on thinktanks and researchers that promoted climate denial, according to Greenpeace.
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Exxon said on Wednesday that it now acknowledges the risk of climate change and does not fund climate change denial groups.

Some climate campaigners have likened the industry to the conduct of the tobacco industry which for decades resisted the evidence that smoking causes cancer.

In the email Bernstein, a chemical engineer and climate expert who spent 30 years at Exxon and Mobil and was a lead author on two of the United Nations’ blockbuster IPCC climate science reports, said climate change first emerged on the company’s radar in 1981, when the company was considering the development of south-east Asia’s biggest gas field, off Indonesia.

That was seven years ahead of other oil companies and the public, according to Bernstein’s account.

Climate change was largely confined to the realm of science until 1988, when the climate scientist James Hansen told Congress that global warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due to the burning of fossil fuels.

By that time, it was clear that developing the Natuna site would set off a huge amount of climate change pollution – effectively a “carbon bomb”, according to Bernstein.

“When I first learned about the project in 1989, the projections were that if Natuna were developed and its CO2 vented to the atmosphere, it would be the largest point source of CO2 in the world and account for about 1% of projected global CO2 emissions. I’m sure that it would still be the largest point source of CO2, but since CO2 emissions have grown faster than projected in 1989, it would probably account for a smaller fraction of global CO2 emissions,” Bernstein wrote.

The email was written in response to an inquiry on business ethics from the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University.

“What it shows is that Exxon knew years earlier than James Hansen’s testimony to Congress that climate change was a reality; that it accepted the reality, instead of denying the reality as they have done publicly, and to such an extent that it took it into account in their decision making, in making their economic calculation,” the director of the institute, Alyssa Bernstein (no relation), told the Guardian.

“One thing that occurs to me is the behavior of the tobacco companies denying the connection between smoking and lung cancer for the sake of profits, but this is an order of magnitude greater moral offence, in my opinion, because what is at stake is the fate of the planet, humanity, and the future of civilisation, not to be melodramatic.”

Bernstein’s response, first posted on the institute’s website last October, was released by the Union of Concerned Scientists on Wednesday as part of a report on climate disinformation promoted by companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Peabody Energy, called the Climate Deception Dossiers.

Asked about Bernstein’s comments, Exxon said climate science in the early 1980s was at a preliminary stage, but the company now saw climate change as a risk.

“The science in 1981 on this subject was in the very, very early days and there was considerable division of opinion,” Richard Keil, an Exxon spokesman, said. “There was nobody you could have gone to in 1981 or 1984 who would have said whether it was real or not. Nobody could provide a definitive answer.”

He rejected the idea that Exxon had funded groups promoting climate denial. “I am here to talk to you about the present,” he said. “We have been factoring the likelihood of some kind of carbon tax into our business planning since 2007. We do not fund or support those who deny the reality of climate change.”

Exxon, unlike other companies and the public at large in the early 1980s, was already aware of climate change – and the prospect of regulations to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, according to Bernstein’s account.

“In the 1980s, Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects. They were well ahead of the rest of industry in this awareness. Other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988, when it first became a political issue,” he wrote.

“Natural resource companies – oil, coal, minerals – have to make investments that have lifetimes of 50-100 years. Whatever their public stance, internally they make very careful assessments of the potential for regulation, including the scientific basis for those regulations,” Bernstein wrote in the email.

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor who researches the history of climate science, said it was unsurprising Exxon would have factored climate change in its plans in the early 1980s – but she disputed Bernstein’s suggestion that other companies were not. She also took issue with Exxon’s assertion of uncertainty about the science in the 1980s, noting the National Academy of Science describing a consensus on climate change from the 1970s.

The White House and the National Academy of Sciences came out with reports on climate change in the 1970s, and government scientific agencies were studying climate change in the 1960s, she said. There were also a number of major scientific meetings on climate change in the 1970s.

“I find it difficult to believe that an industry whose business model depends on fossil fuels could have been completely ignoring major environmental reports, major environmental meetings taken place in which carbon dioxide and climate change were talked about,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

The East Natuna gas field, about 140 miles north-east of the Natuna islands in the South China Sea and 700 miles north of Jakarta, is the biggest in south-east Asia, with about 46tn cubic ft (1.3tn cubic metres) of recoverable reserves.

Bernstein writes in his email to Ohio University: “Corporations are interested in environmental impacts only to the extent that they affect profits, either current or future. They may take what appears to be altruistic positions to improve their public image, but the assumption underlying those actions is that they will increase future profits. ExxonMobil is an interesting case in point.”

Bernstein, who is now in his mid-70s, spent 20 years as a scientist at Exxon and 10 years at Mobil. During the 1990s he headed the science and technology advisory committee of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group that lobbied aggressively against the scientific consensus around the causes of climate change.

However, GCC climate experts accepted the impact of human activity on climate change in their internal communications as early as 1995, according to a document filed in a 2009 lawsuit and included in the UCS dossier.
Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry
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The document, a 17-page primer on climate science produced by Bernstein’s advisory committee, discounts the alternate theories about the causes of climate change promoted by climate contrarian researchers such as Willie Soon, who was partly funded by Exxon.

“The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change,” the advisory committee said.

The 1995 primer was never released for publication. A subsequent version, which was publicly distributed in 1998, removed the reference to “contrarian theories”, and continued to dispute the science underlying climate change.

Kenneth Kimmel, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said ExxonMobil and the other companies profiled in its report had failed to take responsibility about the danger to the public of producing fossil fuels.
US taxpayers subsidising world’s biggest fossil fuel companies
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“Instead of taking responsibility, they have either directly – or indirectly through trade and industry groups – sown doubt about the science of climate change and fought efforts to cut emissions,” he wrote in a blogpost. “I believe that the conduct outlined in the UCS report puts the fossil fuel companies’ social license at risk. And once that social license is gone, it is very hard to get it back. Just look at what happened to tobacco companies after litigation finally pried open the documents that exposed decades of misinformation and deception.”

Keil, the ExxonMobil spokesman, confirmed that the company had decided not to develop Natuna, but would not comment on the reasons. “There could be a huge range of reasons why we don’t develop projects,” he said.
Full text of scientist’s email

Below is the text of an email from Lenny Bernstein to the director of the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University, Alyssa Bernstein (no relation), who had asked for ideas to stimulate students for an ethics day announced by the Carnegie Council.

Alyssa’s right. Feel free to share this e-mail with her. Corporations are interested in environmental impacts only to the extent that they affect profits, either current or future. They may take what appears to be altruistic positions to improve their public image, but the assumption underlying those actions is that they will increase future profits. ExxonMobil is an interesting case in point.

Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia. This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2. That CO2 would have to be separated to make the natural gas usable. Natural gas often contains CO2 and the technology for removing CO2 is well known. In 1981 (and now) the usual practice was to vent the CO2 to the atmosphere. When I first learned about the project in 1989, the projections were that if Natuna were developed and its CO2 vented to the atmosphere, it would be the largest point source of CO2 in the world and account for about 1% of projected global CO2 emissions. I’m sure that it would still be the largest point source of CO2, but since CO2 emissions have grown faster than projected in 1989, it would probably account for a smaller fraction of global CO2 emissions.

The alternative to venting CO2 to the atmosphere is to inject it into ground. This technology was also well known, since the oil industry had been injecting limited quantities of CO2 to enhance oil recovery. There were many questions about whether the CO2 would remain in the ground, some of which have been answered by Statoil’s now almost 20 years of experience injecting CO2 in the North Sea. Statoil did this because the Norwegian government placed a tax on vented CO2. It was cheaper for Statoil to inject CO2 than pay the tax. Of course, Statoil has touted how much CO2 it has prevented from being emitted.

In the 1980s, Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects. They were well ahead of the rest of industry in this awareness. Other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988, when it first became a political issue. Natural resource companies – oil, coal, minerals – have to make investments that have lifetimes of 50-100 years. Whatever their public stance, internally they make very careful assessments of the potential for regulation, including the scientific basis for those regulations. Exxon NEVER denied the potential for humans to impact the climate system. It did question – legitimately, in my opinion – the validity of some of the science.

Political battles need to personify the enemy. This is why liberals spend so much time vilifying the Koch brothers – who are hardly the only big money supporters of conservative ideas. In climate change, the first villain was a man named Donald Pearlman, who was a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. (In another life, he was instrumental in getting the US Holocaust Museum funded and built.) Pearlman’s usefulness as a villain ended when he died of lung cancer – he was a heavy smoker to the end.

Then the villain was the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a trade organization of energy producers and large energy users. I was involved in GCC for a while, unsuccessfully trying to get them to recognize scientific reality. (That effort got me on to the front page of the New York Times, but that’s another story.) Environmental group pressure was successful in putting GCC out of business, but they also lost their villain. They needed one which wouldn’t die and wouldn’t go out of business. Exxon, and after its merger with Mobil ExxonMobil, fit the bill, especially under its former CEO, Lee Raymond, who was vocally opposed to climate change regulation. ExxonMobil’s current CEO, Rex Tillerson, has taken a much softer line, but ExxonMobil has not lost its position as the personification of corporate, and especially climate change, evil. It is the only company mentioned in Alyssa’s e-mail, even though, in my opinion, it is far more ethical that many other large corporations.

Having spent twenty years working for Exxon and ten working for Mobil, I know that much of that ethical behavior comes from a business calculation that it is cheaper in the long run to be ethical than unethical. Safety is the clearest example of this. ExxonMobil knows all too well the cost of poor safety practices. The Exxon Valdez is the most public, but far from the only, example of the high cost of unsafe operations. The value of good environmental practices are more subtle, but a facility that does a good job of controlling emission and waste is a well run facility, that is probably maximizing profit. All major companies will tell you that they are trying to minimize their internal CO2 emissions. Mostly, they are doing this by improving energy efficiency and reducing cost. The same is true for internal recycling, again a practice most companies follow. Its [sic] just good engineering.

I could go on, but this e-mail is long enough.

July 14, 2015 at 7:07 pm #27274

TSRF
Participant

I can’t speak for anybody else, but this just confirmed (in my reality tunnel) what I always suspected.

The way I see it, it was very similar to the way Big Tobacco reacted to the cancer risk.

Yes, I’m outraged, yes, it pisses me off, but instead of a “Grab the pitchforks” reaction, I just kind of went, “Yep, that’s what the fuckers do.”

July 15, 2015 at 8:26 am #27280

wv
Participant

Well yeah, Corporations lie.

The bigger question is
about the system that spawned them – Capitalism.

Is it possible to have a living, thriving, Biosphere
on a planet with 7 billion humans and Capitalism ?

I think everyone knows my own
answer to that one.

w
v

July 15, 2015 at 8:40 am #27281

zn
Moderator

I don’t think of this kind of thing as “revelations.”

I think of it as evidence for discussions.

So it’s useful to say to the neutrals who are hearing what deniers say, that we know for a fact oil companies were planning future policies around global warming as early as 1981, even while funding denier campaigns.

So among us it’s not a case of “can you BELIEVE it? Did you see THIS?!”

July 15, 2015 at 12:01 pm #27284

Zooey
Moderator

zn wrote:

I don’t think of this kind of thing as “revelations.”

I think of it as evidence for discussions.

So it’s useful to say to the neutrals who are hearing what deniers say, that we know for a fact oil companies were planning future policies around global warming as early as 1981, even while funding denier campaigns.

So among us it’s not a case of “can you BELIEVE it? Did you see THIS?!”

To me discussion isn’t really necessary. At this point, I don’t think it matters that neutrals become convinced. The evidence is already in, and it is overwhelming, and the real issue is that Capitol Hill and Wall Street both know it, regardless of what they say.

So the issue isn’t convincing more humans. It’s convincing the humans who do know to do something, and that’s a different battle altogether.

July 16, 2015 at 12:47 am #27303

zn
Moderator

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

I don’t think of this kind of thing as “revelations.”

I think of it as evidence for discussions.

So it’s useful to say to the neutrals who are hearing what deniers say, that we know for a fact oil companies were planning future policies around global warming as early as 1981, even while funding denier campaigns.

So among us it’s not a case of “can you BELIEVE it? Did you see THIS?!”

To me discussion isn’t really necessary. At this point, I don’t think it matters that neutrals become convinced. The evidence is already in, and it is overwhelming, and the real issue is that Capitol Hill and Wall Street both know it, regardless of what they say.

So the issue isn’t convincing more humans. It’s convincing the humans who do know to do something, and that’s a different battle altogether.

We have a different view of all that I think. I personally think discussion is always necessary. Deniers would gain no ground if they weren’t in accord with some deep-set ideological assumptions. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—this particular one is just an example. If you get more people to be aware of those kinds of assumptions, I think that’s beneficial in its own right.

And yes part of it is to get the people who can do something, to do it. But being cognizant of that doesn’t contradict being interested in THIS too (ie. the discussion).

To me that doesn’t exclude always getting ideas out there, and of course also being a constant learner too.

July 16, 2015 at 11:20 am #27306

Zooey
Moderator

I understand your point, and I agree with it. I didn’t mean to be entirely dismissive of it. I was speaking in terms of the end game of actually taking action on greenhouse emissions, and not the less measurable, but still valid exercise of eradicating ignorance.

The two are certainly not mutually exclusive, anyway. So carry on, by all means. I enjoyed the read.

July 18, 2015 at 12:11 am #27350

Mackeyser
Moderator

What worries me is the coincidence is the solar minimums coming along with the increased CO2. Deniers will say, “see, it’s keeping us warm instead of actually having the mini Ice Age like they had in 1700.”

Problem is that it will stem any conservation efforts (we may see consumption increase) and she we exit the solar minimum phase and see increased solar activity it will be like putting the earth in a microwave.

Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
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