Even if you took all the oil industry executives and board members and brutally murdered them on live television, leaving their corpses to hang from trees by their disemboweled entrails, it would not change anything. Others would take their place, doing the same thing. We all enable this by creating the demand.
Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
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Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#12> When do we hold someone responsible for a harm? What if the harm is climate change? We all burned oil in our cars. We didn't make an effort to carpool because it wasn't convenient. Skipped days riding our bike to work because it's too cold, etc. To me holding the blame entirely on the oil industry is akin to persecuting prostitutes for sex crime.
Did you deliberately obfuscate, falsify documents, spend millions on misleading advertising, attempt to buy off critics or fund massive lobbying of law makers to make legislation become more favourable to yourself and increase your profitability?
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#13Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#14Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#15Even if you took all the oil industry executives and board members and brutally murdered them on live television, leaving their corpses to hang from trees by their disemboweled entrails, it would not change anything. Others would take their place, doing the same thing. We all enable this by creating the demand.
Yeah, that's a pretty inappropriate reaction!
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#16The key document given in this article is the Robinson report of 1968. Looking at the excerpts given, this report made a prediction for CO2 level rise that can be tested: it predicted about 400 ppm by the year 2000 (from a value of about 320 in 1968). This was an overestimate: the actual level in 2000 (using the Mauna Loa measurements, which seem to be the key reference relied on in the report) was about 375.
This enables us to test a second prediction made by the report: the temperature increase caused by C02 level rise. The report gives a very wide range for this: 1.1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the humidity change. The usual baseline assumption about humidity is that relative humidity will remain constant, and the report notes that that assumption leads to the larger prediction--7 degrees F--for temperature rise by the year 2000. That is about 4 degrees Celsius.
Even if we correct for the actual CO2 level rise vs. predicted--about a 20% increase vs. 25% predicted--that still gives about a 3 degree Celsius predicted temperature rise by the year 2000, as compared to 1968. The actual rise was about 0.5 degrees Celsius.
The report does say that the estimating method it uses likely overestimates temperature rise; but it does not, as far as I can see, consider the possibility that it might overestimate temperature rise by so much. So as far as I can see, the oil industry's decision to treat this information as much more uncertain than its authors claimed was reasonable.
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#17Easily solved -- let's all stop using petrochemicals of all kinds.
That would devastate the global economy.
Using petrochemicals has already devastated the global economy. We will spend trillions to attempt to fix the damage that has already been caused, when exactly $0 is what we should have to spend. We are causing a mass extinction event on the planet and will never be able to undo all the physical damage done. We will spend a huge amount of the world's money, resources and time to do our best to fix it, and all that is wasted because it could have been used to move forward sustainably rather than make a few people obscenely rich at the expense of most life on Earth.
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#18> When do we hold someone responsible for a harm? What if the harm is climate change? We all burned oil in our cars. We didn't make an effort to carpool because it wasn't convenient. Skipped days riding our bike to work because it's too cold, etc. To me holding the blame entirely on the oil industry is akin to persecuting prostitutes for sex crime.
Did you deliberately obfuscate, falsify documents, spend millions on misleading advertising, attempt to buy off critics or fund massive lobbying of law makers to make legislation become more favourable to yourself and increase your profitability?
Combining the two, would still have done this:
"We didn't make an effort to carpool because it wasn't convenient."
if the oil companies had not done this:
"deliberately obfuscate, falsify documents, spend millions on misleading advertising, attempt to buy off critics or fund massive lobbying of law makers"
If you think the answer is obviously yes, then also please think about the dramatic turn in smoking statistics since it was revealed that the cigarette companies were acting in the same manner.
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#19Outrage is not the answer, if you live in OECD countries you have a massive footprint that rivals villages of developing countries. So do something about it. No, your pre-order of Model 3 that is going to come 3 years down the pike, does not put a dent in your carbon footprint. It is one small step, the roads your Tesla drives on needs petro-chemicals, so do those perfectly manicured french fries. Oil industry is gre…
Outrage is a tool that could do one useful thing - exclude a group of disingenuous people entirely from the discussion.
You have a powerful, organized group that have worked to obstruct discussion on the crucial topic of how to solve this problem for a while. Punishing them harshly would serve the important purpose of preventing their obstruction.
Figuring out how to deal with the climate change problem would be hard if everyone was negotiating in good faith. If we can exclude those who have polluted discussion entirely, so much the better.
And of course the power of individual choice to solve is minimal, rhetoric like "you can do something to stop global warming" is exactly ridiculous greenwashing. Broad state policy is needed. And said policy has to be formulated from enlightened self-interest - sure the solar industry is as self-serving as the oil industry but if we can use their self-interest, so much the better.
Edit: Suppose you had a company with ten divisions. The head of one division pursued a project that made the company a bunch of money but which that head knew would result in the company ultimately loosing even more. When that came to light, would not the sensible thing be to demote the head down to dog catcher and consult with everyone else how to change course? Does this kind of reasoning require that the other divisions head be saints or something? No.
Re: Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change
#20Outrage is not the answer, if you live in OECD countries you have a massive footprint that rivals villages of developing countries. So do something about it. No, your pre-order of Model 3 that is going to come 3 years down the pike, does not put a dent in your carbon footprint. It is one small step, the roads your Tesla drives on needs petro-chemicals, so do those perfectly manicured french fries. Oil industry is gre…
Do you have any practical suggestions or did you just want to poke fun at EV drivers?
BTW, Asphalt is 99% recycled (yes, even the binder). http://www.asphaltpavement.org/index.php?option=com_content&...