Global Climate Change Science News

[Animavore]

Yes. The young ones are left cleaning up the old ones' mess.

[pErvinalia]

To be clear, by "couldn't be bothered" I mean on this site. At least in my case.

[mistermack]

It's good to see that people pulling out of tar sands enterprises is due to their "consciences".

Nothing to do with over-production dragging the price of oil down to a third of it's previous value?

Naaaaah, it couldn't be that.

[Animavore]

No one anywhere said anything about people pulling out because of their conscience. I mean literally no where can you quote a line that said anything like that. In fact the corrupt oil industry clearly wants to extract but they're being blocked in every direction.

As we can clearly see, distortion is bred into the denialist mindset. This is why their credibility is shattered and trust at an all time low. Enjoy being on the wrong side of history.

[piscator]

No one anywhere said anything about people pulling out because of their conscience. I mean literally no where can you quote a line that said anything like that. In fact the corrupt oil industry clearly wants to extract but they're being blocked in every direction.

...

I don't think you understand oil companies. Governments don't control oil companies. Oil companies control governments.
They'd rather buy politicians, but they have mercenary armies if it comes to that. If it really comes to it, they'll have the American and British armed forces. The business of America is business. So too the UK and Norway, Mexico, and Venezuela...

[Animavore]

The bottom line is denialists have been lied to. We know they've been lied to, we have the leaked documents to prove it. We know who the liars are and we know which organisations front them. We know their techniques because the tobacco industry before them used the same ones. Some of the same people from those tobacco fights are even involved. We've looked at their bogus scientific papers and found them wanting, cherry picked, badly worded, unscientific and in some cases laughable. They are thoroughly discredited and disreputable and untrustworthy. They are the lowest of the low. A bunch of rich kids gambling with people's life's while they simply live away from the danger, or even protect their industry from the same climate change they're telling everyone else not to worry about. Yes, ExxonMobil, you actually did that you lying, hypocritical, corrupt fucks.

But look. I'm a reasonable person. I understand you have invested a lot of yourself into the denialist cult and you've painted yourself into a corner. You've been waiting around hoping for a quick, technological fix, by some miracle, while everything has slowly been getting worse. Admitting you are simply wrong is a bitter pill to swallow because it's Admitting you were a gullible turkey for all these years. Its realising that the industry which fed you the lies has fucked you raw and left a massive dump on your chest.

And I get that you're scared. You fear that making any type of change will change your cosy life as you know it. And you'd be partly right, but we've changed before. We've eradicated polio and banned CFCs when we needed to and nobody was out politicising these issues. No one was spreading campaigns of denial. We just did what was needed to and we can do that again. This time with fossil. And it will be done with or without the energy companies who can either adapt or die in the coming years.

[Animavore]

No one anywhere said anything about people pulling out because of their conscience. I mean literally no where can you quote a line that said anything like that. In fact the corrupt oil industry clearly wants to extract but they're being blocked in every direction.

...

I don't think you understand oil companies. Governments don't control oil companies. Oil companies control governments.
They'd rather buy politicians, but they have mercenary armies if it comes to that. If it really comes to it, they'll have the American and British armed forces. The business of America is business.

I don't think you understand what's going on. Legal battles are being won all over the place. The industry is leaking money. Other businesses also have power in government and they're beginning to protect their interests as climate change affects their production. Renewables are expanding rapidly. Trillions of dollars are divested or soon to be divested.

[piscator]

You talking to me? Not a climate denialist.

And come to Alaska if you want to see what oil companies are capable of. 27 years later, Exxon is still fighting to minimize their payouts from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, often buying businesses and liquidating or suing them rather than paying EVOS claims (whenever it is cheaper).

When you hire buildings full of highly skilled people and tell them their job is to fight or stall "claimants" (injured parties) by whatever methods result in the lowest possible expenditures of "Their employer's money", you're not really interested in righting your wrong as much as minimizing costs. A corporation is, after all, a mechanism to socialize liability...

[Animavore]

I never said you were a denialist. It's just, I don't really know what point you're trying to make or what an old oil spill has to do with the rapid change of investment from oil to renewables. Or how you think any army is of any use to the industry when people aren't buying any more. You seems to be talking at odds to me.

[piscator]

No one anywhere said anything about people pulling out because of their conscience. I mean literally no where can you quote a line that said anything like that. In fact the corrupt oil industry clearly wants to extract but they're being blocked in every direction.

...

I don't think you understand oil companies. Governments don't control oil companies. Oil companies control governments.
They'd rather buy politicians, but they have mercenary armies if it comes to that. If it really comes to it, they'll have the American and British armed forces. The business of America is business.

I don't think you understand what's going on. Legal battles are being won all over the place. The industry is leaking money. Other businesses also have power in government and they're beginning to protect their interests as climate change affects their production. Renewables are expanding rapidly. Trillions of dollars are divested or soon to be divested.

We'll see how the divestment thing goes. I've always invested in myself, my family, land, and people I know, but even I have to put $$ in the markets. Green funds are nice, but most people can't afford to specify those things with Individual Retirement Accounts. Institutional investors make most of the calls with most people's savings, and bear a fiduciary responsibility to maximize earnings.

The oil patch has always been boom & bust. This is not the end of it by a long shot.
I remember having the flip side of this conversation on Reddit a couple years ago with an unfortunate from Midland, Tx. He saw no end to the opportunities in the Permian Basin, and new skyscrapers going up in Midland/Odessa (a dusty shithole rivaling Saudi Arabia on some fronts). I told him to keep debt low and protect his downside, because as sure as the boom, there's going to be the bust. It's just wildlife population dynamics. He didn't understand.

Alaska where I live is in a serious economic predicament due to the price of oil and 14 years of unbroken Republican fiscal management well nigh appointed by the Oil Patch. We reap what we sow.
But my office in Anchorage is heated cheaply and I pay low electricity rates because our current mayor was prescient enough to lead an effort for the City of Anchorage to buy its own gas field in Cook Inlet, back 19 years ago when he was a staffer for the last Democrat mayor and the field was a bargain.

[mistermack]

The obvious fact that is being ignored, is that the price of oil governs all.

If it went back up to over a hundred dollars, all of the sanctimonious shite will melt away and be overruled.

People can bullshit all they like, but it's money that actually gets things done.
It's not just oil companies. Governments and local communities like money just as much.

When the oil price goes back up, it will all come back on line.

[Animavore]

Lol. Utter nonsense. The words of a person incapable of change.

I'm through even trying to reason with denialist clowns who just want to sneer and have no interest in learning anything. I'm going to reserve my posts to science reporting and documenting lies.

[Animavore]

Q. How can you tell a denialist is lying?
A. His lips are moving.

Here's a handy video which destroys John Christy's recent denialist arguments on satellite temperatures.

[Animavore]

I’ll feel empowered when ExxonMobil convenes its upcoming annual shareholders meeting. Oddly, that’s because I’ve sold all my stock in the company.

Shareholders like me and some major institutions, including New York State’s $178 billion pension fund, have urged the oil giant to change its business model for years. But the company shows no sign of listening.

Divesting my shares lifted a great burden. I’m both a direct descendent of one of the corporation’s early executives and an architect devoted to green building practices.

...


The Standard Oil stock my great-great grandfather bequeathed to his survivors appreciated tremendously for a century. Shares were handed down — at deaths, marriages, and births. We all benefited from this legacy. Indeed, those assets financed most of my education.

But I chose a different path.

I became an educator on environmentally responsible architecture. My home is run on a mix of vegetable oil, solar panels, and other renewable sources, and I drive the first Prius sold in Connecticut. Yet I hung onto my Exxon stock, figuring it was better to seek change from within.

I wrote letters to Exxon’s management team and consistently cast shareholder votes for greater transparency, better governance, and corporate environmental and social responsibility — such as addressing climate change.

Just like some descendants of Standard Oil founder Rockefeller himself, I saw little change after years of advocacy. Once revelations surfaced of the degree to which ExxonMobil suppressed its own evidence regarding the industry’s global-warming potential, it hit me:

What am I doing?

...

I sold all the shares belonging to my immediate family late last year. I’m now reinvesting that money into greener things, including small-scale hydropower at my home in an 18th-century grist mill.

With virtuous irony, the education paid for by the company that became ExxonMobil encouraged me to think, challenge, and discover. This source of wealth helped me become a discerning, rational person — and when necessary, an activist.

My great-great grandfather felt an obligation to ensure the well-being of his family’s next generations, so he left us valuable assets. One of my biggest family obligations is ensuring the well-being of future generations on a stable, fertile, and healthy planet.

I’m not trying to vilify my great-great grandfather for what ExxonMobil has done. But we can blame the people and companies who are now recklessly and knowingly ignoring our common peril. Whatever brings on your own epiphany, I hope you’ll see that it’s time to divest from fossil fuels and invest in a climate-friendly future.

Read full: http://otherwords.org/my-oily-heirloom/ ... ign=buffer

[Animavore]

If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared.

This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to what — that suddenly caused concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to spike, far higher than they are right now. The planet proceeded to warm rapidly, at least in geologic terms, and major die-offs of some marine organisms followed due to strong acidification of the oceans.

The cause of the PETM has been widely debated. Some think it was an explosion of carbon from thawing Arctic permafrost. Some think there was a huge release of subsea methane that somehow made its way to the atmosphere — and that the series of events might have been kickstarted by major volcanic eruptions.


In any case, the result was a hothouse world from pole to pole, some 5 degrees Celsius warmer overall. But now, new research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We’re putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then.

Read in full: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... tists-say/