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I'll bring it up because the article doesn't, but Exxon was active in climate research in the 70s and 80s, but when it became clear that politicians around the

I'll bring it up because the article doesn't, but Exxon was active in climate research in the 70s and 80s, but when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it, Exxon did a 180 and then stoked up the the doubt PR machine. https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.html https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Tens of thousands of scientist spend decades doing the hard work of collecting data, building models, testing hypotheses and on the other side some politician or talking head with a reach of millions says: "Fake news. Scientists say that because they are getting paid to toe the party line.", often paired with "It would cause immeasurable wealth to change things and destroy the economy" without doing one damn thing to quantify or prove their claims. And yet these thought leaders are treated with respect by the press. If a climate researcher is willing to sell their soul and lie about climate research for a $50K/year job, just imagine how much lying corporations are willing to do for tens of billions of dollars a year.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it I find it very hard to believe this was ever the case.
- jandrese 6y ago
  It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before this issue was politicized, and when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    With rare exceptions the things both political parties have been willing to work together on have been implementations of various forms of corporatist and imperialist policies. Fracking was cemented into place, and popular resistance to the DAPL was crushed, under an administration which was supposed to have all the right positions on the question of climate change. There was not some halcyon age in the 60s/70s/80s when the Republicans and the Democrats were ready to work together to dismantle the fossil fuel industry until it was all undone by a PR campaign.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      The government broke up AT&T. There was a time when politicians understood their role as being the servant of their constituents, at least to a degree. These days they don't even pretend, it's all corporations and special interest groups.
  - antisthenes 6y ago
    > when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically. Historically, an inability to work with the other side usually resulted in localized armed conflicts, or civil war. This has been true up until the middle of 20th century, when the relative abundance that was brought on by intense exploitation of fossil fuels (and globalization as a result) pacified political interests, as they were now beholden to global corporatism, rather than the support of the local militia or the army. Unfortunately for everyone involved, as we get off the fossil fuel needle, the political climate is only going to get worse, not better, unless we also manage to decouple prosperity from CO2 emissions at the same time.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  Here is a forceful talk by Margaret Thatcher to the UN General Assembly imploring world leaders to take seriously the threat of climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg That was 17 years before An Inconvenient Truth, and three years before the Kyoto Protocol was written up. Thatcher was a hard core conservative, who also happened to have a degree in Chemistry from Oxford.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    So, during Thatcher's administration then. Did she push any significant legislation or expend any political capital to pare down fossil fuel use at all? Militaries are some of the biggest fossil fuel consuming organizations, did she cut the UK's military budget or push for cuts to NATO or the U.S. military? Politicians are always happy to say one thing while doing another, a few examples of rhetorical opposition to climate change do not demonstrate that there was actual political will to do anything about it.
  - radicalriddler 6y ago
    I actually just heard this on the radio this morning. Here in Australia, the conservative government has a "we don't know if climate change is affected by humans" feel to it. We were all quite surprised by Boris Johnson's moves on renewable energy and climate action, but the conservative party in the U.K. has historically been strong supporters of climate action.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it I find it very hard to believe this was ever the case.

jandrese 6y ago
It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before this issue was politicized, and when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  With rare exceptions the things both political parties have been willing to work together on have been implementations of various forms of corporatist and imperialist policies. Fracking was cemented into place, and popular resistance to the DAPL was crushed, under an administration which was supposed to have all the right positions on the question of climate change. There was not some halcyon age in the 60s/70s/80s when the Republicans and the Democrats were ready to work together to dismantle the fossil fuel industry until it was all undone by a PR campaign.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    The government broke up AT&T. There was a time when politicians understood their role as being the servant of their constituents, at least to a degree. These days they don't even pretend, it's all corporations and special interest groups.
- antisthenes 6y ago
  > when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically. Historically, an inability to work with the other side usually resulted in localized armed conflicts, or civil war. This has been true up until the middle of 20th century, when the relative abundance that was brought on by intense exploitation of fossil fuels (and globalization as a result) pacified political interests, as they were now beholden to global corporatism, rather than the support of the local militia or the army. Unfortunately for everyone involved, as we get off the fossil fuel needle, the political climate is only going to get worse, not better, unless we also manage to decouple prosperity from CO2 emissions at the same time.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
Here is a forceful talk by Margaret Thatcher to the UN General Assembly imploring world leaders to take seriously the threat of climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg That was 17 years before An Inconvenient Truth, and three years before the Kyoto Protocol was written up. Thatcher was a hard core conservative, who also happened to have a degree in Chemistry from Oxford.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  So, during Thatcher's administration then. Did she push any significant legislation or expend any political capital to pare down fossil fuel use at all? Militaries are some of the biggest fossil fuel consuming organizations, did she cut the UK's military budget or push for cuts to NATO or the U.S. military? Politicians are always happy to say one thing while doing another, a few examples of rhetorical opposition to climate change do not demonstrate that there was actual political will to do anything about it.
- radicalriddler 6y ago
  I actually just heard this on the radio this morning. Here in Australia, the conservative government has a "we don't know if climate change is affected by humans" feel to it. We were all quite surprised by Boris Johnson's moves on renewable energy and climate action, but the conservative party in the U.K. has historically been strong supporters of climate action.