101–110 of 123 posts
Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors ?
The sad irony is that the pattern of - knowing the science enough to know they're contributing to others suffering - knowing what might happen with reasonable certainty - but compartmentalizing that awareness internally to avoid acting - hiding it externally - and keeping doing what they were doing describes the reactions of most individuals about climate change.
It's not that simple and my guess is that the AG wont win it (neither do they care to) Unless it can be demonstrated scientifically that humans are the primary cause of climate change (despite what you hear that causality is not established) I don't think there is any case what so ever unless some weird inconsequential settlement. Also A life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live. So sure there…
This is downright silly. Sure I have a cellphone, car but I don't live for those things. I live for the people around me, and they are not made of fossil fuel.
Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors ?
Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors ?
The law doesn't really subscribe to the theory of exclusive victimhood any more than it does to the theory (also popular in internet discussion groups) of exclusive responsibility; for any individual act the law has no problem with their being a number of different responsible parties (and even different classes of responsibile parties) and/or a number of different (classes of) victims.
>Exxon and other energy companies knew as long ago as 30 years that carbon emissions were becoming perilous to the planet. This is ridiculous. No one knew about climate change 30 years ago. A small number of scientists were aware of the possibility of climate change - it took some 30 years of research, heavily dependent on modeling capability which was only really unlocked in the last decade or so, to come to any sor…
>This is ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. I was taught about the carbon cycle, greenhouse gasses, and climate change in a United States public high school in 1993. 26 years ago. >Meanwhile let's ignore that society, globally, has advanced - technologically and socially - on the back of petroleum fuel. Sure, but society has provided massive subsidies (both direct and indirect) to carbon-based fuels. Had we not provide…
Climate is a complex, chaotic system. Again, there was no certainty regarding warming without the decades of research, data gathering, and modeling that followed. Knowledge of the carbon cycle and greenhouse potential is not enough alone to prove that the planet is warming from human activities. And, again, 20 years ago the consensus was that of global cooling, to emphasize the degree of uncertainty in the historic consensus. You're underestimating the gravity of the notion that we are terraforming, modifying global climate, which normally changes over 10^4-10^6 years, on the scale of 10^2, 2-4 orders of magnitude difference. No time in history have humans even been able to do such a thing, let alone had they reason to believe that it were even possible.
>Sure, but society has provided massive subsidies (both direct and indirect) to carbon-based fuels. Had we not provided those subsidies, society would be much better off.
Much better off without fuel for local and global shipping and power generation and raw material for plastics?
So it's not that they've endangered the public, or maybe even the environment. It's that they deceived shareholders.
Shareholders are the public, it's a public company.
Yes, they are a subset of the broader public, but it's unlikely they are a representative sample of the whole. In fact, being shareholders immediately bakes a bias into their thoughts and actions. That bias alone separates them from The Public.
Yes, they are members of the public. No, they are not synonymous with The Public.
I hate fossil fuels as the next guy, but a. we need them as there are no alternatives currently b. everybody with just a little gray matter under their skull knew that burning fossil fuels is not good for the environment, and our health.
That being said, I do think one could make a strong argument that Exxon lied to investors through omittance of a truth that they new. Not that they were harming the environment, but that they misrepresented risk to the business due to environmental harm.
The sad irony is that the pattern of - knowing the science enough to know they're contributing to others suffering - knowing what might happen with reasonable certainty - but compartmentalizing that awareness internally to avoid acting - hiding it externally - and keeping doing what they were doing describes the reactions of most individuals about climate change.
It's like we never learn and then those who are in charge made rules to make it even harder to learn as we went forward.
Also that humans are terrible at existential threats.
>Exxon and other energy companies knew as long ago as 30 years that carbon emissions were becoming perilous to the planet. This is ridiculous. No one knew about climate change 30 years ago. A small number of scientists were aware of the possibility of climate change - it took some 30 years of research, heavily dependent on modeling capability which was only really unlocked in the last decade or so, to come to any sor…
Fourier was already warning about climate change in the 19th century.
Science is far more than theoretical speculation. Grand claims require development of supporting theory and evidence. Even the consensus regarding climate change has been rather quick to form considering the enormity of the claims and how young the field of modern science is.
>Exxon and other energy companies knew as long ago as 30 years that carbon emissions were becoming perilous to the planet. This is ridiculous. No one knew about climate change 30 years ago. A small number of scientists were aware of the possibility of climate change - it took some 30 years of research, heavily dependent on modeling capability which was only really unlocked in the last decade or so, to come to any sor…
You really should read through Exxons internal documents that have been disclosed as part of this process. They far exceed what you are describing in terms of uncertainty. Not only did they conduct a mini IPCC to evaluate the public science they conducted their own original research. Then based on all of this they drew up operational plans for the effect on their Arctic operations.
The historic certainty of climate change is being vastly overstated, neglecting the critical role that petroleum has played in the development of modern infrastructure and society in a blind rush to find some evil to blame. Science is built on skepticism.