[HN Gopher] Revealed: Exxon made 'breathtakingly' accurate clima...
___________________________________________________________________
Revealed: Exxon made 'breathtakingly' accurate climate predictions
in 70s & 80s
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-01-12 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| kingstoned wrote:
| It reminds me of tobacco industry. Check out this article:
|
| https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| American propagandist and inventor of "PR", Edward Bernays, is
| infamous for convincing American women to smoke cigarettes. But
| privately, he wanted his own wife to quit.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Tobacco is a good one actually. A legendary statistician, IIRC
| Fisher(?), came up with a bunch of reasons why the statistics
| might not show causality. As in, how do we know it isn't just
| people who were at higher risk of dying that smoked? He had a
| whole bunch of these statistical critical thinking type
| objections that are all very valid from an epistemological
| point of view.
|
| Climate change actually has the same. There's a bunch of stats
| and a bunch of "yeah but what if" things that have been dealt
| with over the years.
| nunez wrote:
| Wow; this is insane.
| acdha wrote:
| It's an apt comparison because many of the science deniers
| started their careers with the tobacco industry. For example,
| this guy is on Fox News a lot -- he started with tobacco but
| moved on to things like claiming banning DDT killed people
| (funded as part of the tobacco industry's opposition to public
| health agencies in Africa whose anti-smoking campaigns were
| cutting into sales), climate change denial, and COVID-19
| misinformation and skepticism about vaccines:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _skepticism_
|
| This whole picture some will read as an invitation to
| skepticism. <<Science>> does not exist in a vacuum - as this
| very submission re-shows.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Oh great, we're at the "pretend we didn't know and blame the
| people who sold us the gun" stage of refusing to admit we don't
| actually care.
|
| Let's all comment about how bad OTHER people are for letting us
| be so shitty to show how moral we are in theory while continuing
| inexcusable and intentional behaviour in practice.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Surprise, surprise. And yet, Big Oil continued to launch
| campaigns designed to deflect responsibility from companies and
| governments away to individual consumers, like BP's "carbon
| footprint" [1].
|
| When will those responsible be held accountable for helping to
| advance the destruction of climate and the immense loss of life
| and property that climate change has brought?
|
| How can we explain to our children and grandchildren why we did
| nothing to hold them accountable?
|
| [1] https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-
| sh...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >When will those responsible be held accountable
|
| You have sown the revolving door and now you reap its harvest.
|
| Nobody will be held to account so long as the institutions that
| would be doing the holding have a massive overlap in relevant
| skills, subject matter and therefore, personnel (especially at
| the management levels where these sorts of decisions get made).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| "You"? I was born in 1991, my generation certainly didn't
| invent that crap, that was all during the reign of the
| Boomers - who, to add insult to injury, keep occupying
| positions of power instead of resigning and retiring to let
| those rise who will actually have to live on this wreck of a
| planet the next fifty to seventy years (assuming no major war
| gets us all killed).
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a similar subset within the younger
| generations will end up doing the same.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I was born in 1991, my generation certainly didn't invent
| that crap, that was all during the reign of the Boomers
|
| The described problem is _much_ older than the Boomers
| period of political dominance. For some reason, Millenials
| seem to think that "Boomers" are "everyone who existed
| before the Millenials".
| TinyRick wrote:
| > When will those responsible be held accountable for helping
| to advance the destruction of climate and the immense loss of
| life and property that climate change has brought?
|
| When it is no longer profitable to destroy the climate.
| nickersonm wrote:
| Yet these companies aren't the ones actually burning the oil,
| are they? They merely sell the product which others then burn.
| How can you hold only them responsible but excuse the parties
| further downstream?
| acdha wrote:
| Because those aren't unrelated: it'd be one thing if they
| just sold oil, but they're behind campaigns deceiving the
| public about the true cost of using it and encouraging
| additional consumption. People today are buying new trucks
| and SUVs which get worse mileage than the 1980s did in part
| because there's been this well-funded anti-science propaganda
| campaign and many efforts to hide the true costs.
|
| Put more succinctly, they deserve blame because they chose
| lies when confronted with an inconvenient truth.
| nickersonm wrote:
| If oil companies have been campaigning specifically to
| deceive customers about the potential harms those customers
| may cause, then that should be what they are "held
| responsible" for. Trying to make them responsible for harms
| others caused using their products is rather orthogonal to
| that, and doesn't bolster arguments criticizing them.
|
| Tangentially, while some vehicles presumably have worse
| mileage than a comparably-sized vehicle from the 1980s,
| fuel efficiency has significantly increased since 2005
| (after a small decrease from 1985-2005) while supporting
| continuously increasing power and weight [0]:
|
| _In the two decades prior to 2004, technology innovation
| and market trends generally resulted in increased vehicle
| power and weight (due to increasing vehicle size and
| content) while average new vehicle fuel economy steadily
| decreased and CO2 emissions correspondingly increased.
| Since model year 2004, the combination of technology
| innovation and market trends have resulted in average new
| vehicle fuel economy increasing 32%, horsepower increasing
| 20%, and weight increasing 4%._
|
| [0] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-
| automotive-...
| acdha wrote:
| > Tangentially, while some vehicles presumably have worse
| mileage than a comparably-sized vehicle from the 1980s,
|
| There's a challenge here: people have been encouraged to
| buy larger vehicles. A small car will have better mileage
| now but the kind of vehicle the average person is
| commuting to work in now is much larger than it was three
| decades ago. I would argue that this is in part due to
| the successful campaign which fossil fuel companies
| funded to reverse conservation wins of the late 70s &
| early 80s. It wasn't just them but they had a significant
| role in shaping the political and social discourse (e.g.
| promoting gas guzzling as a macho thing).
| nickersonm wrote:
| Thanks for your civil engagement on what is often a
| contentious topic.
|
| While not a perfect representation of purchases, I
| believe the EPA chart (Fig. ES-3) I referred to shows the
| average of all for-sale models for a given year, so this
| should capture the increasing preference for larger
| vehicles. Indeed, the horsepower and curb weight are
| shown as significant increases, _even while fuel
| efficiency is improving_ (>=2005). It looks to me like
| the average fuel efficiency passed the 1985 peak
| (presumably driven by the 1970s oil crises) around 2007.
|
| Clearly two decades of _decreasing_ efficiency was not
| ideal, but I posit it may be the 1985-2005 period which
| you are mostly remembering. Going by the chart there was
| a fast shift to smaller and 'weaker' cars for highly
| increased efficiency 1970-1975, after which there was a
| slow continuous increase of power and weight - first
| occasioning a slow but relatively small decline in
| efficiency (compared to the 1970-1975 increase), but then
| changing to increasing efficiency as that became a more
| important factor for consumers.
|
| Relatedly, while I am certainly not the target audience
| for the kind of advertisements that may encourage people
| to purchase more oil-based products, I cannot recall
| seeing any automotive advertising that wasn't clearly
| produced by a specific vehicle manufacturer. It sounds
| like you are suggesting 2nd and 3rd tier advertising by
| fuel companies for reversing the 1970-1975 reduction in
| consumption, but I'm not familiar with that space - I
| would appreciate it if you could direct me to any
| resources you have about that.
| V__ wrote:
| I don't want to wish someone the worst. But I wouldn't loose one
| second of sleep if all those people involved in delaying climate
| action got some karmic justice.
| ars wrote:
| The only kind of climate action possible in those days was
| nuclear power.
|
| If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you
| will discover it was environmentalists.
| anakaine wrote:
| So because alternative technology didn't exist there was no
| case to have the discussion and invest more heavily in
| alternative green tech research, shortening the time frame to
| action and reducing dependence on fossil fuels earlier?
|
| This isn't about what occurred then, it's about the time and
| opportunity cost of inaction that was fostered by rubbishing
| climate science and hiding the research.
| ars wrote:
| You can certainly have the discussion, but it would not
| have helped. We are still having discussion _TODAY_ and it
| 's doing nothing of any consequence.
|
| The only thing that matters for actual deployment is how
| much the energy source costs. Nuclear power costs were
| dramatically increased due to unnecessary fear.
|
| For example solar power needs inverters - but those didn't
| work well back then. It just so happens to right now
| technology has finally reached the point that alternate
| power actually is cheap enough to deploy.
|
| So we are deploying it.
|
| All the "climate talk" is doing nothing, what actually
| matters is the money.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Nah, we had wind power available since at least 50s, and
| hydropower could be used too. Hoover dam is pretty old...
| ars wrote:
| All hydropower that can be used is already used, and
| without neodymium magnets (which were commercialized in
| 1982) wind power doesn't work well.
| _visgean wrote:
| There was plenty of action possible; building more railways,
| different city design less dependent on car travel and maybe
| publishing their own research instead of burying it for 40
| years...
| ars wrote:
| Cars are around 10% of total energy usage, this would have
| only minimal impact.
|
| I agree about the research, but that's unrelated to the
| point I was making.
| kodyo wrote:
| This is a common feeling among collectivists.
| pstuart wrote:
| Not at all shocking but still absolutely disgusting.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| In any just world the company would be dissolved and all of its
| resources taken and put towards fixing the problems it
| intentionally created, and the people that knew about this be
| held personally liable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the company would be dissolved and all of its resources
| taken and put towards fixing the problems it intentionally
| created, and the people that knew about this be held personally
| liable_
|
| I get the second part. But what's the utility of the first over
| a fine? Are you suggesting nationalizing Exxon? Or liquidating
| it?
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| Without defending their wording, I think the absolute best
| case for nationalizing a firm is one where the industry is
| based off of natural resources, vital to the public in the
| short term, and detrimental to the public in the long term.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Without oil things would be pretty bad around here, to say
| the least.
| acdha wrote:
| Maybe not dissolved but fines aren't enough: if they're not
| big enough or likely enough, companies may take their chances
| and if they don't apply personally to the C-level some
| fraction of people will try to see if they can get rich and
| leave before the fine arrives.
|
| Perhaps that's something along the lines of turning them into
| highly-regulated public utilities. The big thing I'd focus on
| is basically real auditing & accountability: serious
| environmental assessments with full public disclosure, a
| blanket ban on political involvement so you avoid the case we
| have currently where someone [not inaccurately] thinks it's
| cheaper to give lobbyists $10M to avoid regulation which will
| cost them $100M, and criminal liability for anyone who
| knowingly tries to hide information or mislead the public.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think actually liquidating isn't so bad. Now and again
| nature strikes down a giant and a lot of other creatures
| benefit from it.
|
| It's actually a bit odd that when we invented corporations we
| didn't have some sort of catastrophe mechanism in there just
| to shake hands up now and again.
|
| I think society would find ways to become more resilient if
| we lived with possible corporate sudden death.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _liquidating isn 't so bad_
|
| You're guaranteeing either consolidation in an already
| oligopolistic sector, or a recession from the output drop
| caused by an inexperienced operator learning to scale to a
| major.
|
| > _we didn 't have some sort of catastrophe mechanism_
|
| We do. They're fines and license revocations. Companies
| that can't afford their fines go bankrupt. Government gets
| cash; the stakeholders' clean up the mess. "Corporate death
| penalty" and related talking points are almost all about
| dismissing talk about bigger fines.
| lordnacho wrote:
| You're also guaranteeing that people will be able to try
| new things where the giant once stood.
|
| The real challenge is how to regulate the death rate.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The corporate death penalty. It's reasonable that nobody
| came up with it at the invention of the corporation, but
| America should absolutely have implemented one along with
| Citizens United.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| We do, but corporations which are rich enough just bribe
| the government and gets bailouts or special treatments.
|
| If it was the people vs Exxon with private judges in
| private courts (judges which compete with one another on
| who's the best, not government officials with a comfy chair
| and a guaranteed lifetime of administering "justice"), it
| would be way harder to corrupt.
|
| That's why we need to decentralise our government power.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| "all of its resources taken" would seem to require
| liquidation or putting those resources under a different
| management structure, possibly government directly or
| government appointed.
|
| What would Exxon be able to do once all of its resources have
| been repurposed? The company would be effectively dissolved
| even if not explicitly dissolved.
| erulabs wrote:
| I've chatted with a few folks who have spent their entire lives
| working in climate science while being employed by the oil
| industry. They're some of the most moderate, intelligent,
| considered people I've ever talked to. And most people hear "a
| climate scientist who works for an oil company" and assumes
| they're the worst sort - a profiteer or a liar or a complicit
| drone. They're not leadership - they don't get to decide what is
| to be done with their conclusions - but they're not all evil.
|
| Now... the leadership folks who commissioned these predictions
| and then ignored them... That's another matter!
| fwungy wrote:
| International oil companies are a small piece of the production
| pie. Even if they all shut down it's the state oil companies
| that do the bulk of the production.
| shawnb576 wrote:
| OK well then, we'd better not do anything about it! <s/>
|
| I don't think this is strictly true. Oil production is not
| fully fungible due to all kinds of issues including sanctions
| and production capacity.
|
| But this is also a strawman - this isn't saying "we should
| shut them all down" or even begging that question.
|
| At a minimum it's saying "there were people and companies who
| intentionally chose to mislead the public on a potentially
| existential issue - perhaps there should be some reckoning
| for that?"
| fwungy wrote:
| https://www.aei.org/economics/environmental-energy-
| economics...
|
| I never said don't do anything.
|
| What I believe is that we need to balance carbon
| elimination w/ carbon mitigation and not put all our eggs
| in the elimination basket.
|
| We've got one chance to do this right.
| whatever1 wrote:
| I don't understand what was the expectation.
|
| For Big Oil to start campaigning against their own product?
|
| We have legislative bodies that we literally elect and pay to do
| this job.
|
| Let's stop the hypocrisy and look ourselves in the mirror.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Yes. Let's look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves why
| such corporate behavior is even legal in the first place.
|
| For-profit corporations--and really any kind of for-profit
| organization--should be made illegal. Through our legislative
| bodies.
|
| It's that or extinction.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It kind of smells of hypocrisy, it's comparable to when some
| italian authorities wanted to imprison scientists for not
| predicting earthquakes. Lots of scientists knew about it and
| didn't say anything, also earthquakes happen in earthquake
| zones.
| lasfter wrote:
| Just because it's in your best interest to fuck over the world
| doesn't mean it's morally justifiable. The fact is that the
| people profiting from Big Oil would have still been plenty rich
| enough if they _did_ campaign against their own product, so
| their choice to withhold this information can only be
| attributed to plain greed.
|
| We don't expect murderers to turn themselves in, we pay police
| forces to find them. But it's not hypocritical to call
| murderers evil, and it's not unreasonable to expect that people
| _should not murder_.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Oil and coal have lifted more out of poverty than possibly
| any other invention/discovery in the modern era.
|
| The key is not to villainize fossil fuels, but to recognize
| their benefits and costs and decide collectively via policy
| what tradeoffs we're willing to make.
|
| Think about how privileged you are in life that you can even
| consider not depending on fossil fuels. Hysterical takes like
| yours come across completely naive and uninformed.
| lasfter wrote:
| I'm not vilifying fossil fuels. I'm vilifying fossil fuel
| companies.
|
| > recognize their benefits and costs and decide
| collectively via policy what tradeoffs we're willing to
| make
|
| How can we do that when fossil fuel companies lie about the
| benefits and costs? How can we do that when they bribe
| politicians for favorable legislation? You are the naive
| one, and not particularly well-informed given you did not
| even read the article.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Why would you ask fossil fuel companies about the
| cost/benefit to begin with? They are a biased party
|
| It may feel cathartic to lash out at perceived "evil"
| entities but you accomplish nothing that way. Some prefer
| perception of justice to actual results though, so to
| each their own.
|
| I think you'd find a world without fossil fuels has quite
| a bit more misery than the one we have today. Green
| transition needs to be well thought out and planned for,
| not taken lightly
| lasfter wrote:
| > Why would you ask fossil fuel companies about the
| cost/benefit to begin with?
|
| Indeed, tell that to the politicians who made their
| energy policy decisions based on conversations with oil
| lobbies.
|
| I feel no catharsis from commenting, and I don't pretend
| that bad press is 'justice'. Justice would be prison time
| for the people in charge that suppressed this
| information. I have no way of working toward this vision
| of society other than bitching to politicians and peers
| about every individual company's moral fuck ups.
|
| What actual results are you working towards? What is your
| version of justice in this case?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _Just because it 's in your best interest to fuck over the
| world doesn't mean it's morally justifiable._
|
| When people talk about corporations and morality, I am
| reminded about the quip about Larry Ellison:
|
| > _You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a
| lawnmower. You don 't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the
| lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there
| and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the
| lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about
| you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the
| lawnmower._
|
| Think of a corporation like a function called `makeMoney`,
| which takes inputs like costs, advantages, benefits, and so
| on. Morality is not an input parameter at all, so why do
| people expect that it would be taken into account? If one
| wants morality to be taken into account, it should be
| explicitly done so, via some sort of input parameter, like
| legislation. Otherwise, don't expect anything to change.
| lasfter wrote:
| I agree, but plenty of people seem to think this excuses
| immoral behavior by corporations. You can even see a couple
| in this thread. We can't really get effective legislation
| passed until we can agree that it is indeed bad for a
| corporation to lie, cause harm, etc, and that misbehaving
| corporations (and more importantly, the people who lead
| them) should be punished.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Morality is not an input parameter at all, so why do
| people expect that it would be taken into account?
|
| Do people expect it or do they merely want to change things
| such that it _is_ an input parameter?
|
| Just because sociopaths are allowed to run rampant and fuck
| up everything for the rest of us doesn't mean we have to
| like it and it certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing
| something about it.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Reputation plays a role.
|
| Legislation can be bought.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Some of the people profiting from oil usage are you and me.
| We get (relatively) cheap transportation, cheap heating,
| cheap power, a huge variety of foods without regard to
| season, cheap vacations, etc, etc.
|
| IMO, it's less "all those other bad people are enjoying
| running fossil fuel companies" than it is "all of us people
| are enjoying the benefits of fossil fuel burning".
|
| (I daily an EV; I don't pretend that makes me any better than
| the average American, which is to say I am substantially
| worse than the average Earthling.)
| lasfter wrote:
| Are you saying Exxon is justified because people get to use
| oil?
|
| It's not about burning fossil fuels, it's about
| misinforming the public about the long-term dangers of your
| product. If I sell you a delicious candy while secretly
| knowing it will give you cancer in 10 years, I don't get to
| say "well you enjoyed the candy didn't you?" once I'm
| caught out.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm saying when we point a finger at the oil companies
| who sell us the oil that we demand and consume, we should
| recognize that there are three fingers pointing back at
| us.
|
| Are they blameless? Nope. Are they solely (or even
| primarily) to blame? Also nope.
| lasfter wrote:
| I don't know what argument you are trying to respond to.
| I'm saying it is an evil act to supply a product while
| withholding the knowledge that it will cause massive
| long-term harm to the entire world.
|
| How are consumers complicit? By wanting nice things?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes: consumers are complicit by demanding the oil. Don't
| want Exxon, Shell, BP, et al to dig up the oil? Don't do
| things that consume oil and they'll stop doing it for
| you.
|
| But that's inconvenient, so consumers keep demanding oil
| and then act shocked and tut-tut when oil companies
| provide it.
| lasfter wrote:
| What choice is there for consumers but to demand oil? If
| cities create suburban sprawl and inadequate public
| transportation, it's the consumer's fault for using a
| car? If every industry whose products I require to
| participate in society uses oil, how can I choose
| otherwise?
|
| I really don't understand your point and your smug
| judgements on consumers. Do you consume no oil products?
| Or are you just saying that you knew all along oil is bad
| so you're better than the 'naive masses'?
|
| I'm not shocked that oil companies provide oil, I'm
| shocked that many people don't want to take any action
| even when it comes out that the oil companies baldly lied
| about their role in climate change.
|
| I'm also baffled that some people want to shift the blame
| away from the oil companies.
| suprjami wrote:
| Knowingly cause millions or billions of deaths and destroy the
| planet, or not make as much money short-term and pivot the
| industry to something else.
|
| Yeah, tough choice.
| leeroyjenkins11 wrote:
| How many billions of lives have been saved by fossil fuels
| and technology though? From starvation, from extreme weather
| events, from exposure to heat and cold?
|
| Would we be here if not for modernization and fossil fuels?
| If we stopped in the 60s, would other nations have done the
| same? Or would they have advanced to dominance?
| suprjami wrote:
| Burn down your house. Yeah, your house is gone, but look
| how warm you are today!
|
| Fossil fuels are not the only form of energy. We could have
| put decades of technological effort into wind and solar and
| battery and waves and all the other options. We'd be so
| much further forward than we are today. Instead the
| industry just lobbied and lied.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| At the time when this research happened, so in the 1970 -
| 80s? Yes, they were the only viable form of energy for
| almost everything. Suggesting that we should've ditched
| fossil fuels in the 70s and 80s is a bit asinine and
| would've resulted in immense loss of lives, especially in
| less developed areas of the world. There weren't really
| any other alternatives. Electrification is only possible
| due to recent advancement in (battery, PV, electronics)
| technology. Your analogy does not make sense because
| abandoning fossil fuels back then was closer to the
| "house burning" move.
|
| (Yes, nuclear existed. But only in some countries, and it
| could only cover some parts of energy usage).
| MandieD wrote:
| Fun little anecdote:
|
| Jimmy Carter had solar panels put on the roof of the
| White House. Ronald Reagan had them removed.
|
| Hypothetical that makes me want to cry for all the wasted
| time and cumulative life years:
|
| What if Reagan had kept them instead, even promoting a
| nascent American PV industry in the 80s?
| suprjami wrote:
| Please quote the sentence where I allegedly said to drop
| fossil fuels in the 70s with no viable replacement,
| plunging the world into a dark age. I didn't say that.
|
| Yes, fossil fuels do seem to be an unavoidable evil on
| the path to technological advancement.
|
| However, the point is: There were no viable alternatives
| for the last 50 years because the fossil fuel industry
| did everything in their power to cover up the impending
| disaster and instead focused all efforts on lobbying to
| maintain their profits.
|
| Imagine if Exxon had made their findings public in 1973
| and had instead lobbied for renewables and moving away
| from fossil fuels. We'd be 50 years ahead of our current
| energy technology. We'd have a lot more options for
| generation and storage with a lot more density.
|
| The "recent advancements" are only recent because we've
| pissed the last 50 years against the wall so some asshole
| billionaires could afford more yachts.
|
| "What if someone else just kept polluting" isn't an
| argument. Fighting climate change is becoming a political
| necessity. The world has almost internationally
| eradicated many undesirable things like mass slavery and
| chemical weapons. These are also political necessities to
| run a successful country.
|
| In another 100 years, the idea of a country mass-burning
| fossil fuels will be akin to adding a Swastika to their
| national flag while adopting foreign policy of black
| slavery. Sure, they can try it, but it would be very
| politically and financially unpopular, and if they get
| too forceful then some superpower will interfere and stop
| them.
|
| We could be 50 years closer to that goal. But we aren't.
| And that's due to the fossil fuel industry's intentional
| deception of the entire world.
| jrgoff wrote:
| They could have pivoted to more climate-friendly energy
| production
| smolder wrote:
| > For Big Oil to start campaigning against their own product?
|
| I know people who prioritize ethics & morality tend not to get
| promoted too high, but that doesn't mean we should blanket
| forgive decision makers at oil companies for sweeping such a
| huge problem under the rug for as long as possible. The
| positive example of what to do instead would be to communicate
| the issue as soon as possible, not cover it up, and then pivot
| into the work of moving away from fossil fuel dependence.
| haxiomic wrote:
| > For Big Oil to start campaigning against their own product?
|
| Yes!
|
| Surely we all have a responsibility to our own _species_. If
| you're making something that you discover harms the species
| then you should change course. This company would have massive
| head start and could own the inevitable future of green energy
| if they took action then
|
| Laws are like the immune system for humanity, this is exactly
| the scenario it makes sense for laws to prevent
| scythe wrote:
| >We have legislative bodies that we literally elect and pay to
| do this job.
|
| >Let's stop the hypocrisy and look ourselves in the mirror.
|
| [Modern electoral] Democracy doesn't really work that way.
| About 2/3 of people vote in the general election. Around 1/5
| vote in the primaries. Maybe 1% actually sign petitions to put
| candidates in the primaries.
|
| "We the people" only _directly_ influence the last step of the
| process, in so doing contributing about one bit of information
| per candidate in a two-party system. Public perception and
| conversation is a key mediator between the public and
| everything else about the candidates who ultimately run for
| office. This kind of "outrage" is not contrary to the
| democratic process; it is _an essential part_ of the process.
| TinyRick wrote:
| Problem is that Big Oil pays those politicians more.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| that's not even remotely the issue. Money may buy you access
| but it doesn't magically buy you votes. People could easily
| kick every oil lobbyist out.
|
| The genuine reason is that citizens are not willing to
| internalize the costs of their pollution and change their
| habits. Cheap gas, big cars, big houses, cheap Big Macs,
| cheap plane tickets is what the people vote for. Big Oil just
| supplies the juice.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That sounds like what Nicolas Cage said in _Lord of War_.
| TinyRick wrote:
| > People could easily kick every oil lobbyist out.
|
| Please explain.
| whatever1 wrote:
| And all of the country elected to keep them in power
| danuker wrote:
| Here're the most-greased top 20.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=E01&c
| y...
| TinyRick wrote:
| The voters in the 70s and 80s did, sure. But as this
| article explains, those voters were withheld crucial
| information that could have informed their voting choices.
|
| 2010 was the first election I was eligible to vote in, and
| in the past decade+ I (and many others) have not voted for
| pro-oil/coal/fracking/etc candidates. Yet we're the ones
| that are (and will continue to) live with the consequences
| of Big Oil's actions from decades ago.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| they are still voting for them, for example the House of
| Representatives is now majority Republican who almost all
| don't believe in global warming or believe in it and
| believe "eh, whatever, I got mine". Are they not as
| guilty as Exxon? Are the people voting for them any less
| responsible than Exxon. If you participate in the modern
| economy, are you not also complicit?
| voisin wrote:
| > I don't understand what was the expectation. > For Big Oil to
| start campaigning against their own product?
|
| How about since they saw it coming to start investing in the
| transition to be ahead of the curve?
|
| What baffles me is that these people knew and presumably had
| children or grandchildren, presumably breathed the same air and
| had the same houses in areas prone to wildfires, etc. and yet
| they didn't take actions that would have been in their own
| interests other than financial.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| The expectation is that they would take the long view and start
| investing in alternatives that pay more instead of burning the
| planet to the ground.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thank you. I thought I was the only one disgusted by this.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| There was a time in the late 70s early 80s when oil companies
| sought to diversify into solar and other areas. Exxon bought
| Zilog to diversify into semiconductors... it didn't last long.
| When Reagan came to power Carter's emphasis on moving towards
| alternative energy and away from oil came to an end. The oil
| companies were happy to play along and go back to being oil
| companies instead of energy companies that started out in oil.
| peatmoss wrote:
| In (public) high school, I had a physics teacher who showed his
| conservative politics pretty prominently. He was a great
| instructor, but had conspicuously placed religious books around
| the class room. "Teaching your students about God" was one title
| that I remember.
|
| Another feature of this class was being shown The Greening of
| Planet Earth:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greening_of_Planet_Earth
| shmerl wrote:
| They should pay for the damage they caused.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| start by never using plastic.
| manv1 wrote:
| I really hate it how reporters are using "breathtaking" a
| superlative. It's like they're whipping out the thesaurus and
| finding the unused synonym.
|
| I know they're liberal arts majors and everything, but still.
| Have you ever lost your breath looking at data? If anything you
| yell, not lose your breath.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Sure after looking at data, I've lost my breath and felt my
| heart clench inside my chest like death itself reached in and
| grabbed hold. Mind you it wasn't climate data and more like
| "I've trashed the DB in prod" sort of thing.
| hansonkd wrote:
| If you look past your snide remarks, breathtaking was a quote
| from Geoffrey Supran who is a Research Fellow in the History of
| Science at Harvard and has a PhD in Materials Science &
| Engineering.
|
| So i think that says more about your biases than anything about
| the reporters who have liberal arts degrees.
| itsibitzi wrote:
| It's literally a quote in the article hence the quotation
| marks.
| turnsout wrote:
| Just a reminder that journalists typically don't write their
| own headlines. You can blame copy editors for the
| "breathtaking" liberties they often take with the source
| material.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The are also constantly jarred and shook.
| shakow wrote:
| Before going for the snark, you could have noticed that
| ``breathtakingly'' is in quotes, because it is part of a
| citation of the expert mentioned in the article.
|
| The only choice here has been to put it in the title.
| tobr wrote:
| Well, have _you_ ever tried to whip with a book as thick as a
| typical thesaurus?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I agree it's overused, but it might be early to jump on the
| reporter/journalist hate train on this particular issue, since
| it's extremely common for their critics to describe their
| reporting as "breathless", which is a nearly identical
| exaggeration.
| ktyckgch wrote:
| In this case the word is a direct quote from Geoffrey Supran.
| While the headline writer chose to emphasise it, the writer
| definitely didn't find it in a thesaurus.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| fwungy wrote:
| State oil companies dwarf the international producers like Exxon
| by a factor of 10-20, depending on how you count.
|
| All the wonderful carbon free schemes ignore the fact that these
| state owned oil companies hold trillions in oil wealth in
| reserves. How do you get these states (e.g. Putin/Russia) to walk
| away from that money?
|
| This is why we need to think about mitigation strategies a lot
| harder.
| agentultra wrote:
| The address Carl Sagan made in 1985 is well worth watching for
| those who remember those times and especially for those who
| weren't alive back then [0]
|
| People knew about this before you were born and decided their
| best interests were more important and they acted in wilful
| disregard for your life and the lives of everyone on this planet.
| They weren't ignorant. No facts were hidden from them that they
| could be forgiven for being misinformed. They knew with certainty
| what the science was revealing and spent money to discredit the
| science, cut funding to their own researchers, bought
| politicians, funded PR campaigns, and continued building their
| fossil fuel empires.
|
| Everything Carl Sagan said in that address has come to pass. It's
| wild to watch.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp-WiNXH6hI
| melling wrote:
| And Sagan knew coal usage would be a big problem, and yet it's
| still a huge problem almost 40 years later.
|
| People wouldn't know if coal power plants disappeared tomorrow,
| replaced by any other form of electricity
| klyrs wrote:
| Except for the ~40k employees of the coal industry[1], who
| are used as a scapegoat by the politicians (ahem, Manchin)
| who take the most ardent stands against modernization of our
| electrical infrastructure. And I'd bet that most of those
| employees' skills would transfer pretty directly to any other
| sort of mining. But it's just not that many people. We could
| cut them each a $1M check for the trouble, which is about 10
| years worth of coal subsidies[2].
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/215790/coal-
| miningemploy...
|
| [2] https://en.as.com/en/2022/03/29/latest_news/1648510535_73
| 079...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| It's easy to claim coal miners could transition to another
| mining industry, but what mining industry in those regions
| could absorb that many miners? None I think. It's not as
| though a secession of coal mining would create a boom in
| other mining industries.
|
| > _We could cut them each a $1M check for the trouble,
| which is about 10 years worth of coal subsidies[2]._
|
| Maybe if they were offered that deal for real, they'd take
| it. But without such a deal, can you really blame those
| workers for not wanting their careers erased in America of
| all places? Their families would become destitute and there
| would be little sympathy for them. Instead of a buyout,
| they'd receive little but _' learn to code'_ jeers. They'd
| be told they're expected to move away from the communities
| they've live in for generations, leave their families
| behind and scatter with the winds. I know this doesn't seem
| like a big deal to a forum full of rootless cosmopolitan
| tech workers who often live thousands of miles away from
| where they came from, myself included, but people don't
| often wish this sort of radical uncertainty and instability
| on themselves and their own families. So of course they
| elect politicians who advocate for their interests. If you
| think this is about politicians duping coal workers, you've
| got it backwards. The tail doesn't wag the dog.
| klyrs wrote:
| I don't think this is about politicians duping coal
| workers, no. And that $1M bonus idea is just a comparison
| of scale. It's a comparatively tiny industry, which is
| extremely harmful to the environment and its workers.
| There are certainly coal-mining towns that exist solely
| because of what's in the ground, and of course you can't
| just dig up something else there.
|
| I'm not a "rootless cosmopolitan tech worker," I'm one of
| the only cousins in my family who isn't blue-collar or in
| deep poverty. I don't expect this to be painless, but we
| need to get off of coal for the good of the species.
|
| I don't think the coal workers are being duped. I know
| that they're in a really tough spot. I think that the
| coal (and more generally fossil-fuel) executives are
| lobbying politicians hard, with complete disregard for
| the long-term impact that we've known very clearly for
| _decades_ now. Follow the money: politicians and
| executives are raking it in, and the small population of
| front-line workers' lives depend on it. Blame the
| politicians, blame the executives, who make their
| decisions for personal benefit at great cost to humanity.
|
| Quitting tobacco, as a person, is hard in part because of
| withdrawal symptoms. The analog for quitting coal, as a
| nation, is that an industry needs to die. We need good
| policies to take care of the people whose jobs are
| impacted, but we techies are in large part responsible
| for automating away entire industries -- way more than
| 40k jobs -- and who's there to take care of _those_
| workers?
| pschuegr wrote:
| First part is mostly explanation of greenhouse effect:
| predictions are here: https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?t=698
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