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Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

theguardian.com

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Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#61

Post by acdha »

nickersonm wrote: post #40
mschuster91 wrote: post #14

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 grandchildr…

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?

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.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#62

Post by mardifoufs »

suprjami wrote: post #53
leeroyjenkins11 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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).

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#63

Post by lasfter »

adam_arthur wrote: post #57
lasfter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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 na…

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.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#64

Post by sokoloff »

lasfter wrote: post #59
sokoloff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#65

Post by klyrs »

melling wrote: post #46
agentultra wrote: post #41

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…

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

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_73079...

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#66

Post by satvikpendem »

lasfter wrote: post #21
whatever1 wrote: post #5

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.

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 n…

> 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.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#67

Post by acdha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4
thatguy0900 wrote: post #3

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.

> 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?

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.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#68

Post by lasfter »

sokoloff wrote: post #64
lasfter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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?

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#70

Post by voisin »

whatever1 wrote: post #5

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.

> 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.

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