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Its so dumb that everyone is looking for someone else to blame, except themselves. Just to live in the Western world you're creating CO2 every day. Exxon might

by rr888 4y ago

Its so dumb that everyone is looking for someone else to blame, except themselves. Just to live in the Western world you're creating CO2 every day. Exxon might have known something but would it make a difference? We all know now about global warming but there are hundreds of coal stations being built right now.

ceejayoz 4y ago
> Exxon might have known something but would it make a difference? They did more than know; while knowing, they pretended not to, and cast doubt on research confirming what they internally knew. If I make knowingly false representations to sell something, that's generally considered fraud.
MailleQuiMaille 4y ago
So the « …and yet you live in society » meme ? You don’t see how a company responsible for one of the most potent use case of global warming, knowing about this for 50 years and hiding the truth is more responsible than the average joe just trying to live by ?
resoluteteeth 4y ago
> We all know now about global warming but there are hundreds of coal stations being built right now. There are still people denying it, they are literally funded by companies like Exxon, and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. So, yeah, if Exxon had just announced their results 50 years ago rather than spending tons of money denying them it would have made a huge difference.
- rr888 4y ago
  > There are still people denying it, Only a few crackpots > and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. No I dont believe this at all.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Only a few crackpots That's overly dismissive. They might be crackpots, but they're sometimes powerful crackpots. Like US Senators: https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowball-climate-change/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowbal...
    - rr888 4y ago
      His last day in the senate was last week.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Do you think he's the only legislator with these views?
        rr888 4y ago
        do you think there is a majority of legislators with these views? There might still be some around but they are crackpots. Stop looking for scapegoats.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        I believe the majority of the Republican Party has espoused these views - evolving slightly from "climate change doesn't exist" to "it's not a big deal" to "it's not humans" to "we can't do anything to fix it".
plorg 4y ago
The personal carbon footprint was also a public relations invention of fossil companies. The whole point is to blame individuals for the systems they were dependent on that created by extractive industry in order to make some people fabulously rich, and to forestall changes in law and culture that would upend those business models.
- myrmidon 4y ago
  I strongly disagree here. How are individuals not to blame if they refuse to bear the costs for all the negative externalities they cause? We still live in a democracy, and have known about climate change for over 40 years- the central problem is just that people are (still) NOT willing to pay the price to avoid/mitigate emissions. Because the options are plentiful, like just taxing CO2 emissions and imports, throwing massive funds at low-CO2 energy sources + storage, but taxpayers are simply unwilling- blaming corporations and politicians NOW is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
  - plorg 4y ago
    The point of the personal carbon footprint was to convince people that they could individually make the world less bad by making choices within the existing system and didn't need to change anything (hence that paying for it was unnecessary). It's an influence tactic. I do not think it's hypocrisy to say this. My goal in bringing it up is to note to whoever is reading it that you have better options than just eating Impossible burgers or paying some huckster for a paper that says someone in the Amazon didn't cut down a tree every time you fly on a plane. You can demand that the system change, that you have better options. That probably means that Exxon should stop existing. If you're worried about it costing you more now, it might, but it probably won't in the long run.
- makomk 4y ago
  Talking about personal carbon footprints gets in the way of the narrative that fossil fuel companies were the main beneficaries of the fossil fuel era and they were the ones who'd lose out if fossil fuels weren't available, that much is true. The trouble is, the "personal carbon footprint" narrative is much closer to the truth than the "fossil fuel companies benefit" narrative. I actually had a look at some of the leaked internal documents and even internally they couldn't figure out a way to meet consumer energy demand without fossil fuels on the timescales needed if global warming was as bad as forecast - renewables would take about as long to be in widespread use as they ended up taking in the real world, and the only feasible alternative was nuclear which ran headlong into a bunch of difficulties in reality. (I also read the press release by the showboating US prosecutor characterising this as proof they secretly knew the world needed to switch to renewables much sooner in order to prevent global warming.)
kodyo 4y ago
Is Western CO2 worse than Eastern CO2 somehow?
timeon 4y ago
"Thus, even if solar or nuclear technologies were to be considered viable alternatives, they would not really displace fossil fuel energy for next 40 to 50 years, and CO2 growth would have to be estimated based on realistic market displacement of the fossil fuel technologies." [0] 40-50 years from 1982 starts about now. So tell me, would it make a difference if we have started 40 years ago? Or should we wait another 40 since "everyone in western world is creating CO2 anyway"? [0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-Memo-to-Management-About-CO2 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-M... page 24

by rr888 4y ago

ceejayoz 4y ago

> Exxon might have known something but would it make a difference? They did more than know; while knowing, they pretended not to, and cast doubt on research confirming what they internally knew. If I make knowingly false representations to sell something, that's generally considered fraud.

MailleQuiMaille 4y ago

So the « …and yet you live in society » meme ? You don’t see how a company responsible for one of the most potent use case of global warming, knowing about this for 50 years and hiding the truth is more responsible than the average joe just trying to live by ?

resoluteteeth 4y ago

> We all know now about global warming but there are hundreds of coal stations being built right now. There are still people denying it, they are literally funded by companies like Exxon, and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. So, yeah, if Exxon had just announced their results 50 years ago rather than spending tons of money denying them it would have made a huge difference.

rr888 4y ago
> There are still people denying it, Only a few crackpots > and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. No I dont believe this at all.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Only a few crackpots That's overly dismissive. They might be crackpots, but they're sometimes powerful crackpots. Like US Senators: https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowball-climate-change/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowbal...
  - rr888 4y ago
    His last day in the senate was last week.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Do you think he's the only legislator with these views?
      - rr888 4y ago
        do you think there is a majority of legislators with these views? There might still be some around but they are crackpots. Stop looking for scapegoats.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        I believe the majority of the Republican Party has espoused these views - evolving slightly from "climate change doesn't exist" to "it's not a big deal" to "it's not humans" to "we can't do anything to fix it".

plorg 4y ago

The personal carbon footprint was also a public relations invention of fossil companies. The whole point is to blame individuals for the systems they were dependent on that created by extractive industry in order to make some people fabulously rich, and to forestall changes in law and culture that would upend those business models.

myrmidon 4y ago
I strongly disagree here. How are individuals not to blame if they refuse to bear the costs for all the negative externalities they cause? We still live in a democracy, and have known about climate change for over 40 years- the central problem is just that people are (still) NOT willing to pay the price to avoid/mitigate emissions. Because the options are plentiful, like just taxing CO2 emissions and imports, throwing massive funds at low-CO2 energy sources + storage, but taxpayers are simply unwilling- blaming corporations and politicians NOW is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
- plorg 4y ago
  The point of the personal carbon footprint was to convince people that they could individually make the world less bad by making choices within the existing system and didn't need to change anything (hence that paying for it was unnecessary). It's an influence tactic. I do not think it's hypocrisy to say this. My goal in bringing it up is to note to whoever is reading it that you have better options than just eating Impossible burgers or paying some huckster for a paper that says someone in the Amazon didn't cut down a tree every time you fly on a plane. You can demand that the system change, that you have better options. That probably means that Exxon should stop existing. If you're worried about it costing you more now, it might, but it probably won't in the long run.
makomk 4y ago
Talking about personal carbon footprints gets in the way of the narrative that fossil fuel companies were the main beneficaries of the fossil fuel era and they were the ones who'd lose out if fossil fuels weren't available, that much is true. The trouble is, the "personal carbon footprint" narrative is much closer to the truth than the "fossil fuel companies benefit" narrative. I actually had a look at some of the leaked internal documents and even internally they couldn't figure out a way to meet consumer energy demand without fossil fuels on the timescales needed if global warming was as bad as forecast - renewables would take about as long to be in widespread use as they ended up taking in the real world, and the only feasible alternative was nuclear which ran headlong into a bunch of difficulties in reality. (I also read the press release by the showboating US prosecutor characterising this as proof they secretly knew the world needed to switch to renewables much sooner in order to prevent global warming.)

kodyo 4y ago

Is Western CO2 worse than Eastern CO2 somehow?

timeon 4y ago

"Thus, even if solar or nuclear technologies were to be considered viable alternatives, they would not really displace fossil fuel energy for next 40 to 50 years, and CO2 growth would have to be estimated based on realistic market displacement of the fossil fuel technologies." [0] 40-50 years from 1982 starts about now. So tell me, would it make a difference if we have started 40 years ago? Or should we wait another 40 since "everyone in western world is creating CO2 anyway"? [0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-Memo-to-Management-About-CO2 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-M... page 24