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Amusing that fossil fuel companies are now both - Acknowledging that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, and - Revealing that their confidence on its effects
by pnut 3y ago
Amusing that fossil fuel companies are now both
- Acknowledging that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, and
- Revealing that their confidence on its effects is so strong, they can publicly predict its impact on global climate decades into the future.
I guess from their perspective, in spite of all criticism, they are just accommodating the energy demands of the global market, which have been universally "more energy now" until very recently.
- fsloth 3y agoIt's a mess. Energy companies are both huge part of the problem - and at the same time the only reason modern civilization exists. Hydrocarbons are primary input still to most of the processes we have to exist above ... well, actually exist, because the alternative with this amount of people to hydrocarbon driven economy is mass starvation. The energy companies should be taken to court for the damage they have done to planet via their anti-climate-action PR. But, at the same time we need their product to live.
- avidphantasm 3y agoLarge energy companies should be nationalized and run rationally, i.e. in a way that acknowledges the extreme scarcity of waste absorption capacity we are faced with.
- 10u152 3y ago[flagged]
- remh 3y agoi recommend you open a dictionary and look for the definition of "nuance"
- kozak 3y agoNationalization is not a guaranteed solution because of the dangers of populism.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoVenezuela sheds a tear.
- tenpies 3y agoI think proponents of this should move to some of the beautiful utopias where the energy companies are already nationalized and through the magic of socialism, emissions will no doubt cease any day now: Venezuela, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, Kuwait, Nigeria, or China. My point here is that nationalization has nothing to do with climate change.
- breakyerself 3y agoNorway did it
- jaybrendansmith 3y agoNationalized industry sucks. Every time we try it, ultimately we get worse off. But if you're saying that we need to have a carbon trading market or some other such strong regulation that includes externalities, yes we definitely should. In the US, conservatives used to believe in market-based approaches to solving big problems. Now they just deny the problems exist. This is the mindset of a child, not an adult. Grown ups own their mistakes and solve the problems, they don't point fingers and deny they exist.
- fulafel 3y agoI think the more consistent counterfactual scenario without mass hydrocarbon extraction would be to consider that population would not have grown to the current level (instead of imagining the current population and a sudden disappearance of hydrocarbons).
- acdha 3y ago> But, at the same time we need their product to live. This isn’t a binary choice. Imagine how much better off we’d be now if they’d accepted their own scientists’ reports in the 1970s and tried to get in on greening the economy instead of funding decades of obstruction? Jimmy Carter could have gotten his nuclear power plants, the remaining ICE vehicles would use a fraction of the fuel as the average vehicle purchased in the United States today, and we’d be saving our carbon emissions for things which are harder to replace like industrial chemistry rather than literally heating the outdoors so someone doesn’t need to wear long sleeves to dinner.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> which have been universally "more energy now" until very recently They’re still that. The nature of competition suggests they’ll always be that. Trying to square the circle without acknowledging that led to a lot of failed environmental policy over the past decades.
- bratbag 3y agoThey have gone from denial to 'It's too late so don't bother to try stopping us' as a propaganda strategy. This is just part of that.
- gooseus 3y agoIt's not happening and there isn't anything to worry about... right up until the moment when it's already happened and there isn't anything that can be done. I recently heard it referred to as "The Slow Breakup" pattern[1] from a Youtuber who has done a great job (though tone is a little much sometimes) of breaking down alt-right propaganda and rhetoric, though these tactics can be used by any political movement. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUN0q35Lak&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ&index=19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUN0q35Lak&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
- Arnt 3y ago"Don't bother to try stopping us"? When you're the paying customer, it's easy for you to stop your vendor from selling to you.
- jfengel 3y agoNot when your vendor is part of a vast ecosystem that is nearly impossible to opt out of. Even aside from what you buy directly, this vendor's products is baked into every product you buy. The entire national infrastructure is designed with this vendor's goals in mind. The easiest way to see it would be to put a tax on the vendor's products, at the source. But they have lobbied specifically against that, as well as other any other approach that might cut into their profits.
- Arnt 3y agoI believe most of the sources do tax their products heavily. I'm Norwegian and we tax them at about 80%. Surely the Saudi princes' private airplanes were paid for with tax revenues, too. Maybe you mean that the consumers' countries should tax the fossil fuel sold to consumers. You're a voter in one of those, I bet, and probably one that taxes fossil fuel at a rate well below 80%.
- nightski 3y ago"Big bad energy companies" is tiring. We demand the energy. Sure they should be held liable for lying. But it would be hard to convince me that if they did tell the truth things would of played out any different. Energy is the life blood of our civilization.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoThey knew about CC 40 years ago. Their response was to do the same as tobacco industry did: resist all evidence and misinform the public in favour of profits. If that hadn't happened, we would absolutely have been sharper with our response.
- taylodl 3y agoNo. They knew about CC. in the 50's - their own engineers pointed out the problem and the dire repercussions it would have. Admittedly, those engineers had only just realized what physicists had known since the late 19th century. No matter how you slice it, as you point out, they've known about the problem, they've lied about the problem, they've spent millions of dollars in a public deception campaign - and they've been doing it for decades. Heck, we're still getting to the bottom of all the damage brought on by their adding tetraethyl lead to their gasoline. It's going to take even longer sorting out through all this mess. They'd just like us to forget about it and move along. That's not gonna happen.
- insanitybit 3y agoI think if disinformation about Global Warming hadn't been rampant since the 80s directly due to the actions of these companies, that would be great. We could have been talking about these goals decades ago, we wouldn't have presidents and other elected officials running on a campaign that it's fake and we shouldn't care. I think hell would be too good for the people who knew about this issue and lied for decades about it to try to turn a buck, instead of just doing the obvious thing and investing in new energy technologies.
- joker_minmax 3y agoYes, the same way America is outsourcing most of our carbon emissions whenever we claim to be reducing them, it is tiring. However the fact that they continue to also poison us directly by evading or influencing environmental regulations and lie about that stuff too - I wish I could see a beatdown.
- gcr 3y agoIs Exxon saying that? It sounds like this article is combining Exxon’s profit forecast of “the world will use 25 billion metric tons of oil in 2050” with the IPCC’s “that won’t be enough to keep below 2 degrees” report, whether or not Exxon actually acknowledges the latter
- joker_minmax 3y agoThey have now shifted to saying that they're part of the clean energy revolution or something of that sort. I started seeing commercials with this rhetoric a few years ago, but I see even more now.
- thelastgallon 3y agoIts more insidious. Give us hundreds of billions of dollars for carbon capture, we'll capture and ... use it for enhanced oil recovery. Shell Is Looking Forward The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change... Algorithm: 1) Give us trillions of dollars in subsidies[1] to extract oil, well, because, people need it 2) Give us billions of dollars now for carbon capture (and this will increase), shows Greta's picture, because, erm, we are taking action on climate change 3) We'll extract more oil [3] (enhanced oil recovery, EOR) using the captured carbon to increase both (1) and (2) Oil industry is exceptionally good at stealing everyone's money. Now there is some light on climate change, you can bet that oil industry will get hundreds of billions of dollars. The climate conversations are completely taken over by big oil: Sultan Al Jaber was named President-Designate of COP28 UAE in January of 2023. He is the chairman and a founder of the UAE's renewable energy company Masdar. Trillions will be spent worldwide on carbon capture (not just the plants, but infrastructure for EOR such as pipelines[4]), all of which directly goes into big oil pockets. [1] Worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels surged to a record $7-trillion in 2022, equal to 7.1% of the global gross domestic product, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-08-28-fossil-fuel-subsidies-soared-to-record-7-trillion-in-2022-imf/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-08-28-fossil-fu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Nations_Climate_Ch... [3] Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-capture-and-storage/ https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-ca... [4] CO2 pipelines: There are now about 5,300 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S., but in the next few decades, that number could grow to more than 65,000 miles [5]It Will Cost More Than Total Future Production to Clean Up California Oil Sites: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36182016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36182016
- BLanen 3y ago> In 2015, investigative journalists uncovered that ExxonMobil had known that burning fossil fuels would lead to potentially catastrophic climate impacts as early as the late 1970s. Subsequent reporting showed that the company, and its oil and gas industry peers, likely knew about these impacts as early as the 1950s. >This January, Harvard researchers published a new report that showed that not only did Exxon know about climate change, they were predicting the exact amount of global warming we’re now experiencing with remarkable accuracy. exxonknew.org (The website is now changed to an emberassing star wars theme sadly.) Shell also knew very early: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/shell-climate-coal https://www.ftm.eu/articles/shell-climate-coal > I guess from their perspective, in spite of all criticism, they are just accommodating the energy demands of the global market, which have been universally "more energy now" until very recently. Most comments here comes down to 'that's just humanity man' while these are people that spend millions if not billions on manipulating public perception of fossil fuels even though they knew they were lying and inflicting actual harm on the world. It would've cost the economy much much less if we had started transitioning in the 1970s instead of knowingly leaving externalized debt to the rest of humanity.