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Exxon Knew Everything There Was to Know About Climate Change by the Mid-1980s—and Denied It
So, just wanted to share this little juicy tidbit with the rest of the forumites. This is like the tobacco industry cover-up, where they knew cigarettes caused cancer and were addictive, but funded massive PR campaigns to cloud the issue.
Except, of course, everyone on earth is affected, not just smokers.
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Sadly this does not surprise me.
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DUH.
We've known about it since 1859.
Excuse me, just because one side denies it despite knowing about it, doesn't mean the other side isn't doing all it can to profit off it.
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The really damning bit is that Exxon was actually USING global warming models to map out their Arctic oil exploration strategy... at the same time they were paying to tell the public that climate models were useless and global warming a fraud.
Unfortunately, the RICO investigation against the tobacco companies was almost derailed (and the settlement scaled back to less than 10% of the original) by pressure from GOP congressmen and the Bush justice department. With the current greater GOP congressional representation it would be extremely difficult to pursue a case against the fossil fuel companies... and if the next president is a Republican you can pretty much forget about it.
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Excuse me, just because one side denies it despite knowing about it, doesn't mean the other side isn't doing all it can to profit off it.
I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.
"OK, so big oil knew about global warming and was doing a massive cover-up to keep themselves profitable. But climatologists are also bad because..." Why? They want government funding for studying the global warming that's actually happening? They want to make money on developing sustainable energy technology and installing solar panels? Why are these bad things?
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"OK, so big oil knew about global warming and was doing a massive cover-up to keep themselves profitable. But climatologists are also bad because..." Why?
They got FREE PEANUTS on the way to the arctic circle!
Real science can only be done by ascetic monks sleeping on a straw mat to the Gregorian chant of their student loan debt collectors hounding their work. Anything more ostentatious is the same exact sort of bribery that taints the process and makes them exactly the same as the oil companies spending billions of dollars.
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Exxonmobil makes trillions of dollars in profits over 30 years = not part of conspiracy
Scientists make hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits over 30 years = part of a conspiracy
"OK, so big oil knew about global warming and was doing a massive cover-up to keep themselves profitable. But climatologists are also bad because..." Why?
They got FREE PEANUTS on the way to the arctic circle!
Real science can only be done by ascetic monks sleeping on a straw mat to the Gregorian chant of their student loan debt collectors hounding their work. Anything more ostentatious is the same exact sort of bribery that taints the process and makes them exactly the same as the oil companies spending billions of dollars.
a good question/issue for the field.
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Exxonmobil makes trillions of dollars in profits over 30 years = not part of conspiracy
Scientists make hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits over 30 years = part of a conspiracy
Or as I once heard it: the global warming conspiracy would never have been uncovered if it weren't for that plucky upstart band of billionaires and oil companies!
The 5-part (so far) ICN report is worth reading itself.
Tell me thats not Bruce Banner from the TV show on the right.
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Nothing crazy about it. If the governments truly wanted to change things, why not actually suggest things that may be successful, instead of allowing the high priests of human sinfulness to bleat about reducing carbon emissions? So far, no real reduction has come about, despite a huge number of global meetings and a gnashing of teeth and a wringing of hands by the environmental lobby. And always, always with the follow up articles about how too little was done and how we are all doomed. In fifty years, counting from the current date (2060 by now, 2050 before the latest update 2010). And when years are hot, voila, evidence of global warming, when they are cold, ummmm, some metereological phenomenon sacrificed itself to save us (current death toll: el nino, la nina, the gulf stream, the NAO, and most recently, height differences in different parts of the Pacific ocean).
The climate science is probably correct. The media handling of it is an insult. The political handling is a joke. Letting Greenpeace and the WWF etc steer the ship is insane.
See if you can find a politician or two saying "never let a good crisis go to waste".
Actually, I'm pretty sure the argument is crazier than that. It's that climate change scientists are part of a conspiracy by governments to control the world, with fighting climate change as the pretense. Climate change being real doesn't really effect this theory one way or another.It sounds like Sissyl's argument is that Exxon Mobil was hiding the fact that it was working in collusion with climate scientists to fake a climate change crisis, that it denies existing in public.Excuse me, just because one side denies it despite knowing about it, doesn't mean the other side isn't doing all it can to profit off it.So what's your argument here, ExxonMobil knew it was real decades ago but the actual climate scientists are still just making up data to fake it? In what world does that even make sense?
Or is it that it is real and we have the evidence, but we should just ignore it because the "other side" isn't pure enough for you?
I thought the conspiracy was just that someone suggested that the oil companies might not be entirely truthful. The oil companies are both completely honest and omniscient, so anyone who suggests otherwise must be part of a conspiracy. There's no telling what the conspiracy is, but it's definitely a conspiracy. And the fact that we aren't sure what the conspiracy is is just another layer of the conspiracy!
The issue is really, if the politicians are not doing things that actually work, what ARE they doing? Capacity building is the term for building up massive funds - but under which leadership? Are they democratically governed? Greenpeace, which is an organization with a severe distaste for democracy, has provided a large part of the decision makers in the enviro-lobby, and it seems naive to think they would suddenly deviate from their authoritarian views just because they call the shots. "Let's suspend democracy until the crisis is over" is not a view that exactly invokes outrage in climate lobby circles, it seems to me. Further, Agenda 21 seems to still be going strong, with its complete absence of democratic considerations.
It is not insane to believe that authoritarian poiticians will use the crisis to push as much decision making as possible away from democratic bodies in favour of unelected international organs.
It is sad when people are unable to see that both sides of a conflict might be at fault. Because, of course, if someone is doing bad, then everyone that works against them is good. And not only that. Everything the good people do also is good, because it is done by people who oppose bad people. Then again, such an utterly simplistic level of analysis (four legs good, two legs bad) does explain quite a lot about certain countries.
Try "ExxonMobil bad, Greenpeace bad." But through the years we've been at this, I can't recall any of you understanding that that is my stance.
I don't think any of you are naive to the point that you assume power-hungry psychopaths won't take any available path to power, especially based on something as flimsy as "these guys are doing good, if I use them as a vehicle I may be hurting their good name". Remember, doomsday is currently set to 2060. In five years, it will be 2070. There is plenty of time before even an unscrupulous person will think twice about interrupting their work.
Try reading it. It takes a VERY cavalier attitude to saying things like maps for how much of Earth's land area should be used for what purposes, for example. It also doesn't discuss democracy at all. And of course, it was signed by some 160 countries' representatives.
Again, simplistic analysis. If Limbaugh doesn't like something, and Limbaugh is evil, something must be good. And thus, someone not liking something must also be evil. Right?
No wonder you guys have a two-party system.
Nothing crazy about it. If the governments truly wanted to change things, why not actually suggest things that may be successful, instead of allowing the high priests of human sinfulness to bleat about reducing carbon emissions?
Because one of the huge differences between your conspiracy theory and reality is that you think Greenpeace et all have any actual power and they don't. Exxon et all spend more money picking our politicians than than greenpeace has in its entire budget.
We're not doing anything because, as the articles make pretty clear, oil companies buy our politicians into not banning or reducing our consumption of their product and they have a huge public relations campaign, a lot of which you have internalized as the truth.
My beef with it is the crap that the climate lobby has produced. Media wise and decision wise. I suppose that output was put out by the oil lobby too?
I am sort of jealous of you guys. It must be such a calm existence to only need to know who is evil to know what to think about everything.
Try reading it.
If you have and found something objectionable, point to it. Not mentioning democracy is a non issue. You can use public policy to much of the same effect even in the US.
And that would be fine, if the climate lobby didn't keep referring to realizing Agenda 21. But it does, if you read the climate conference treaties. Boring reading, admittedly, but interesting every few hundred pages.
If a central plan says so and so many percents of Earth's surface area should be used for food production, realizing this will require some sort of buying land area, or appropriation of land area. Who actually owns that land should, to my thinking, factor into any such discussion.
It should discuss democracy, because otherwise, it is only going to be an authoritarian central plan, agreed to and stamped by an increasingly autonomous international elite. Or, of course, democratic countries should have nothing to do with it.
I decided I did not like the environmental groups because they do s%+# I don't like. You decided they are good because they fight the oil lobby which you don't like. There is a marked difference.
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If a central plan says so and so many percents of Earth's surface area should be used for food production, realizing this will require some sort of buying land area, or appropriation of land area. Who actually owns that land should, to my thinking, factor into any such discussion.
Or you can, you know, encourage farming through less totalitarian means like that new fangled idea of subsidizing farmers.
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And that would be fine, if the climate lobby didn't keep referring to realizing Agenda 21. But it does, if you read the climate conference treaties.
The "Agenda 21" of the United Nations is a vastly different thing than the 'Agenda 21' of right wing fantasy.
THAT is the primary difference between you and those who disagree with you... not that we don't look at all sides of the issue, but rather that we don't put any stock in 'sides' which aren't based in reality.
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Say my drinking water contains 0.001 mg/l arsenic, and 0.1 mg/l benzene.
Both of these are toxic to humans, therefore they are both bad!!!!!!!!!11!
However, the safe limit for arsenic is 0.01 mg/l, and the amount present is 10 times less than that. The safe limit for benzene is 0.005 mg/l, and the amount present is 20 times higher than that.
The real concern is the benzene, which represents a clear and present danger to people drinking the water. The arsenic, while also toxic in quantity, is not currently an issue.
So it is with Greenpeace and Exxon-Mobil.
"They're both bad!" is a seemingly nuanced view that is, in actuality, both erroneous and misleading.
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"They're both bad!" is a seemingly nuanced view that is, in actuality, both erroneous and misleading.
Its more like .5ppm of flourine. I mean why exactly is greenpeace a bad thing? Oh no, don't give us... clean air. And water. And woods....
Its more like .5ppm of flourine. I mean why exactly is greenpeace a bad thing? Oh no, don't give us... clean air. And water. And woods....
I'm actually working on a project right now that may involve potentially unsafe concentrations of fluoride migrating to surface water, so maybe that's not the best example...
Its more like .5ppm of flourine. I mean why exactly is greenpeace a bad thing? Oh no, don't give us... clean air. And water. And woods....I'm actually working on a project right now that may involve potentially unsafe concentrations of fluoride migrating to surface water, so maybe that's not the best example...
I'm sure there's a level of greenpeace running the government that would be problematic but its not remotely there yet.
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I mean why exactly is greenpeace a bad thing? Oh no, don't give us... clean air. And water. And woods....
Greenpeace sometimes glosses over nuances of environmental threats, promotes information which supports their causes without critically reviewing it, doesn't have a full understanding of the science behind an environmental issue, et cetera.
In short, they're an advocacy group... not a scientific research organization.
That isn't really 'bad', but it is enough for conspiracy theorists to point out that not everything they say is 100% accurate... so clearly they're lying... so clearly everyone who says anything similar to them is ALSO lying... so clearly it is all an Agenda 21 plot to destroy the global economy and impose sharia law from the secret Jade Helm Walmart detention centers!
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That isn't really 'bad', but it is enough for conspiracy theorists to point out that not everything they say is 100% accurate... so clearly they're lying... so clearly everyone who says anything similar to them is ALSO lying... so clearly it is all an Agenda 21 plot to destroy the global economy and impose sharia law from the secret Jade Helm Walmart detention centers!
The idea that you could say something 100% accurate and avoid this is the same mentality that says that bullies pick on you and will stop if you change your behavior. Its not true, its never going to happen, and you shouldn't advocate a rational course of action when dealing with irrational people, you KNOW thats not going to work.
this is the same mentality that says that bullies pick on you and will stop if you change your behavior.
Dunno -- changing my behavior sure worked for me. Sometime in junior high school I stopped trying to avoid fights and instead started appearing eager to get into them, and very soon all the bullies completely stopped targeting me.
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Greenpeace has little if any actual influence over major governments nor does it form a significant basis for funding of sciences. Complaining about the undue influence of Greenpeace while the Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions on US elections is just silly.
Also, I would argue that climate change is, for many people, far to esoteric a threat to push for increased governmental control of the populace. If that is an aim for any nefarious group, you would be better off selling stuff like terrorism, crime, or immigration if you want to rally people for freedom strangling regulations. Hell we can notice in the USA those fears being using to push several dodgy National Security bills through in recent memory, not to mention campaign promises from certain candidates for presidency.
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this is the same mentality that says that bullies pick on you and will stop if you change your behavior.Dunno -- changing my behavior sure worked for me. Sometime in junior high school I stopped trying to avoid fights and instead started appearing eager to get into them, and very soon all the bullies completely stopped targeting me.
Doing what I did to get the bullies to stop to Exxon CEos and conspiracy theorists is unfortunately, illegal in all 50 states and most of mexico.
And as we can't advocate illegal activities on the boards....