7 ms·

How an early oil industry study became key in climate lawsuits

79 points by chmaynard 4y ago

MichaelBurge 4y ago
By the same argument, couldn't you make the State liable for all scientific research it's been funding? So if some researcher published an article 50 years ago predicting a climate disaster, and even 1 random legislator at any time since votes against oil industry regulation, then you can presume the State knowingly chose to trade off future flooding and wildfires for short-term benefit and dismiss their case. In general, this would be an incentive to never talk to scientists if you think you're doing something with negative consequences. Don't deploy any mitigations at all, because mitigations are evidence you think there's something to mitigate. Never read any scientific research, except for the minimum to accomplish specific tasks, because anything more is infohazardous. That seems worse than a world where they try to find a cheap solution that mitigates environmental damage, even if the search is unsuccessful and they decide to cause the same damage anyways.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Many nations are being sued for not living up to their responisibilities in regard to climate change, so yes.
- apocalypstyx 4y ago
  An interesting question might be perhaps --- when is there a dereliction of duty? We tend to think in terms of 'just vote them out', however, there is this category of active ignorance that can't truly be established as seemingly actively maliciousness, a category of behavior that ultimately undermines social structures such as government in a way we haven't accounted for prior. In North Carolina, for example, in 2012, a law was passed that sea level rise could only be predicted from historical trends and only projected within a 30 year period with regards to the coast development policy. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coastal-development-policy https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coas...
pasttense01 4y ago
This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. In fact the scientific community knew about it for a long time (even back to the 19th century...) but public policy makers ignored it. "How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming: Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries." https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Public policymakers initially worked to combat it. You can find Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush, Newt Gingrich etc. all taking a totally sensible view on it. Sometime around 1988-1992 some of them changed tack dramatically and started fighting against efforts to fight against it.
  - savanaly 4y ago
    I would be very interested to read more about this, and any explanations for it. I assume they're grounded in political science realities but I would love to know the details if you can remember a source.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I already linked a video that covers some of this history ("A CONSERVATIVE solution to global warming") in another comment, but basically the Koch brothers and a few other fossil fuel magnates freaked out when George H W Bush was going to commit to Kyoto, and started the long term suicide pact of the American right and climate change denial: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin... “Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial > The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.
nickphx 4y ago
How can one say for certain that the industrial activities of earth's occupants have any meaningful, measurable impact when we lack the complete historical picture of the planet's cycles over the millions of years?
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Well, the earth would be a frozen ball of ice if it weren’t for the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and over a period of a couple hundred years scientists figured out that the balance of carbon dioxide is critical to maintaining a certain average temperature of the planet. And then they started measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and they found it is rising annually in direct relation to human industrial activity. They further found that the average temperature of the earth was rising in exactly the amount we would expect when raising the carbon content of the atmosphere. Lots of scientists have looked for other explanations, and after doing tests and measurements they’ve found those factors not to be the cause. Basically, we’ve used the scientific method to examine the evidence and having done so it’s quite clear that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the cause of changes to the greenhouse effect. Here’s a great video on the history of this science which I just watched: https://youtu.be/GGtAilkWTtI https://youtu.be/GGtAilkWTtI
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    For those who are of a right-wing persuasion, this youtube channel, created by a right-wing geologist who used to work for oil companies is good, because it won't upset you by challenging any of your political beliefs, just the science related myths: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfH... The first video in the series is 14 years old.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Oh great thanks! I always need content to share with my Dad. I will say the video I linked is happily neutral. I felt like I could share it with my Tucker-Carlson loving Dad.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
I would say overall that oil and fossil fuels have done far more good for humanity than harm. They enable us to feed our population. The global trade network have lifted billions of people out of poverty. Global literacy is at the highest it has always been. Fossil fuels enable us to be able to accurately track and predict hurricanes. Basically, our whole modern economy is built on fossil fuels. The most valuable resource on earth is human knowledge and ingenuity. Thanks to our high population, reduction of poverty, and global education, that resource is the highest it has ever been.
- vc9999 4y ago
  That's not the point
- rybosworld 4y ago
  I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that fossil fuels have been anything less than instrumental in achieving our modern comforts. The issue is: 1. Oil companies knew about fossil fuel harm to the environment, and then lied about/tried to cover it up. They've directly played a role in climate misinformation. They've done that so well that we now have armies of people with no relevant knowledge on the topic arguing that climate change is a hoax. 2. If the danger of fossil fuels was acknowledged long ago, we could have prepared for it in advance. This would have eaten into profits, hence the motivation to deny it's a problem.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I’ve met very few people who believe climate change is a hoax. The belief is that the climate is not static and that it’s better for humans to adapt (as they always have) than to commit economic suicide. This is unpopular online, but is the actual view of a majority of Americans imo. The reason climate activists are not getting anywhere with these people is that they are having an argument with the climate denier in their head.
    - rybosworld 4y ago
      "The belief is that the climate is not static and that it’s better for humans to adapt (as they always have) than to commit economic suicide." Whose belief? I don't understand how belief is relevant. "This is unpopular online, but is the actual view of a majority of Americans imo" Not true. Most Americans accept the scientific consensus - that recent changes in temperature are driven by human activities: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/extreme-weather-poll-2022 https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/extreme-weather-poll-...

79 points by chmaynard 4y ago

By the same argument, couldn't you make the State liable for all scientific research it's been funding? So if some researcher published an article 50 years ago predicting a climate disaster, and even 1 random legislator at any time since votes against oil industry regulation, then you can presume the State knowingly chose to trade off future flooding and wildfires for short-term benefit and dismiss their case. In general, this would be an incentive to never talk to scientists if you think you're doing something with negative consequences. Don't deploy any mitigations at all, because mitigations are evidence you think there's something to mitigate. Never read any scientific research, except for the minimum to accomplish specific tasks, because anything more is infohazardous. That seems worse than a world where they try to find a cheap solution that mitigates environmental damage, even if the search is unsuccessful and they decide to cause the same damage anyways.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Many nations are being sued for not living up to their responisibilities in regard to climate change, so yes.
apocalypstyx 4y ago
An interesting question might be perhaps --- when is there a dereliction of duty? We tend to think in terms of 'just vote them out', however, there is this category of active ignorance that can't truly be established as seemingly actively maliciousness, a category of behavior that ultimately undermines social structures such as government in a way we haven't accounted for prior. In North Carolina, for example, in 2012, a law was passed that sea level rise could only be predicted from historical trends and only projected within a 30 year period with regards to the coast development policy. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coastal-development-policy https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647559482/north-carolina-coas...

pasttense01 4y ago

This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. In fact the scientific community knew about it for a long time (even back to the 19th century...) but public policy makers ignored it. "How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming: Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries." https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Public policymakers initially worked to combat it. You can find Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush, Newt Gingrich etc. all taking a totally sensible view on it. Sometime around 1988-1992 some of them changed tack dramatically and started fighting against efforts to fight against it.
- savanaly 4y ago
  I would be very interested to read more about this, and any explanations for it. I assume they're grounded in political science realities but I would love to know the details if you can remember a source.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I already linked a video that covers some of this history ("A CONSERVATIVE solution to global warming") in another comment, but basically the Koch brothers and a few other fossil fuel magnates freaked out when George H W Bush was going to commit to Kyoto, and started the long term suicide pact of the American right and climate change denial: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin... “Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial > The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.

nickphx 4y ago

How can one say for certain that the industrial activities of earth's occupants have any meaningful, measurable impact when we lack the complete historical picture of the planet's cycles over the millions of years?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Well, the earth would be a frozen ball of ice if it weren’t for the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and over a period of a couple hundred years scientists figured out that the balance of carbon dioxide is critical to maintaining a certain average temperature of the planet. And then they started measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and they found it is rising annually in direct relation to human industrial activity. They further found that the average temperature of the earth was rising in exactly the amount we would expect when raising the carbon content of the atmosphere. Lots of scientists have looked for other explanations, and after doing tests and measurements they’ve found those factors not to be the cause. Basically, we’ve used the scientific method to examine the evidence and having done so it’s quite clear that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the cause of changes to the greenhouse effect. Here’s a great video on the history of this science which I just watched: https://youtu.be/GGtAilkWTtI https://youtu.be/GGtAilkWTtI
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  For those who are of a right-wing persuasion, this youtube channel, created by a right-wing geologist who used to work for oil companies is good, because it won't upset you by challenging any of your political beliefs, just the science related myths: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfH... The first video in the series is 14 years old.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Oh great thanks! I always need content to share with my Dad. I will say the video I linked is happily neutral. I felt like I could share it with my Tucker-Carlson loving Dad.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

I would say overall that oil and fossil fuels have done far more good for humanity than harm. They enable us to feed our population. The global trade network have lifted billions of people out of poverty. Global literacy is at the highest it has always been. Fossil fuels enable us to be able to accurately track and predict hurricanes. Basically, our whole modern economy is built on fossil fuels. The most valuable resource on earth is human knowledge and ingenuity. Thanks to our high population, reduction of poverty, and global education, that resource is the highest it has ever been.

vc9999 4y ago
That's not the point
rybosworld 4y ago
I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that fossil fuels have been anything less than instrumental in achieving our modern comforts. The issue is: 1. Oil companies knew about fossil fuel harm to the environment, and then lied about/tried to cover it up. They've directly played a role in climate misinformation. They've done that so well that we now have armies of people with no relevant knowledge on the topic arguing that climate change is a hoax. 2. If the danger of fossil fuels was acknowledged long ago, we could have prepared for it in advance. This would have eaten into profits, hence the motivation to deny it's a problem.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I’ve met very few people who believe climate change is a hoax. The belief is that the climate is not static and that it’s better for humans to adapt (as they always have) than to commit economic suicide. This is unpopular online, but is the actual view of a majority of Americans imo. The reason climate activists are not getting anywhere with these people is that they are having an argument with the climate denier in their head.
  - rybosworld 4y ago
    "The belief is that the climate is not static and that it’s better for humans to adapt (as they always have) than to commit economic suicide." Whose belief? I don't understand how belief is relevant. "This is unpopular online, but is the actual view of a majority of Americans imo" Not true. Most Americans accept the scientific consensus - that recent changes in temperature are driven by human activities: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/extreme-weather-poll-2022 https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/extreme-weather-poll-...