Oil Industry Executives Privately Contradicted Their Public Statements on Climate, Files Show (seattletimes.com) 146
"Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies' own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," reports the New York Times, "and weakened industrywide commitments to push for climate policies...."
At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell's president for the United States, said that the company's announcement of a pathway to "net zero" emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — "has nothing to do with our business plans."
These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry's efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link....
"It's well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who spearheaded the investigation with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who leads the House committee. "The problem is that they continue to mislead," Khanna said.
The article also points out that at a government hearing last year, oil industry executives "acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay."
These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry's efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link....
"It's well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who spearheaded the investigation with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who leads the House committee. "The problem is that they continue to mislead," Khanna said.
The article also points out that at a government hearing last year, oil industry executives "acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay."
"Privately contradicted" (Score:3)
Reminds me of the tobacco executives (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Reminds me of the tobacco executives (Score:5, Informative)
Reminds me of the tobacco executives
That's not a coincidence. The people that defended tobacco, pretending they didn't know it causes cancer and then that it's just a choice and so on are exactly the same people that have been defending fossil fuels.
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With the difference, that tobacco only kills individual that do not keep their distance, while fossiles are about to kill geographical regions and, worst case, all of them.
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Not only is it similar to tobacco, I thought it was common knowledge that the oil companies knew about global warming/climate change? This is the least surprising thing ever.
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You could argue they kinda knew already in the 1960's or whatever. So what? We all "knew" by the 90's and still did nothing for at least 30+ years, and still aren't doing much. So at most they are 'responsible' for us ignoring it for 30 years instead of 60+ years?
Yet nevertheless this tedious blame game will pl
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You could argue they kinda knew already in the 1960's or whatever. So what? We all "knew" by the 90's and still did nothing for at least 30+ years, and still aren't doing much. So at most they are 'responsible' for us ignoring it for 30 years instead of 60+ years?
The problem is that they knew it was causing climate change, and were bribing politicians to deny it.
Of course "we" didn't do anything, because the ruling class has been paid off to not do anything.
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And yet not 5 years ago we had cool aid drinkers here swearing blind that there was no global warming, then once that wore thin, that even if there is it's not man made. Let's hear from them (you know who you are).
Re:Reminds me of the tobacco executives (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil companies had pretty good models in the 1980's and knew all along what was coming. They decided that their bottom line was more important than preventing collapse of society or extinction of the human race back then and started a massive misinformation campaign. I would call them "traitors to the human race" and that is probably still to lenient for what they did and continue doing.
Some insider information (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at one of the companies named, and yeah they downplayed it but with good reason. We're an oil company. Our engineers specialise in oil extraction, R&D for getting oil out of the ground, identifying oil reserves. But Oil is a dirty word, so coming out publicly and saying "You're all oil dependent" "the future will definitely require oil" and "we'll do everything we can to decarbonise while still pumping out oil" is a politically toxic statement right now.
But ultimately it's the reality. The world will continue to require oil, if not for setting on fire in a compressed metal box, then for production of materials that the race has come to depend. Marketing departments and PR departments don't like giving people bad news, so yeah the green initiatives are held up high as examples of doing things people want to hear.
As to the downplaying internally, yeah no shit. Everyone is worried about their jobs. Everyone is distracted. So while our company heralds the CCS projects and the wind farms we are building (which we are, let's be clear about that), internally they are very clear: "the future still requires a shitton of oil, don't go running away looking for other jobs we still need you." I feel like much of TFA is taken out of this important context. Especially when quoting quips from private emails about people having a laugh. I very much quip with my colleagues like this too, while realising that the world is fucked (not just because of our slow action, but because of wide spread inaction).
There's a few variants of how companies are reacting:
Exxon - Fucking toxic climate denial arseholes who will get dragged kicking and screaming to the future.
Shell - Sort of in between. Publicly saving the world, privately continuing down the oil path.
BP - Their CEO has been clear they need oil revenue to finance any transition, they aren't sugar coating that they will continue oil and gas investments
Chevron - I actually have no idea, I don't know any Chevron employees and don't pay too much attention to them specifically.
Total - Very much like Shell, new public image focused heavily on being green but expanding oil in many cases.
But critically there's three things that are actually happening:
a) Continued investment in oil and gas production.
b) Heavy investment in the future of maintaining an oil and gas business (decarbonising the oil lifecycle, hydrogen, CCS, green jet fuel, all those good buzzwords to make oil "green")
c) Actual investments in green energy projects.
One shouldn't forget c. While the public message and the private message is different, wind farms are still being built, CCS projects are still being built, and best of all,... CCS can capture carbon and pump it underground! ... to increase well pressure and extract more oil.
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Other things that require oil: All those jets that preening politicians and celebrities take to the events where they decry climate change. Especially the private jets.
And don't get me started on "carbon offsets". Buying indulgences was bad in the Middle Ages, and it's bad now. It's great that they put some money towards mitigating the effects of pollution and other emissions. That doesn't mean they should only mitigate the pollution or emissions they personally cause -- or that they should keep polluting a
Re:Some insider information (Score:5, Informative)
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Oil as a chemistry feedstock would only make a tiny percentage of the industry viable.
Wind isn't really a danger to the oil industry. It has limited viability left for cost reduction, it's a dead end. Which is why the oil industry likes it. Net zero with hard targets are the real danger to the oil industry and will force the only viable way, hydrogen and solar/nuclear. Oh noes, round trip losses, oh noes liquid hydrogen is hard to handle, oh noes there is no alternatives with technical readiness to reach 20
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The problem is your boss (Score:2)
I'm not saying you're to blame per se. You're trapped in the same system all of us are. But as an engineer you have enough education to know what's coming. You should at least be pushing your gov't as much as you can (and I do mean as much as you can, don't try to do more tha
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How can the oil industry be doing everything they can to reach zero emissions and still make record profits?
If they really were interested in doing everything they can then most of those profits would be going into the transition and if they were they would no longer be listed as profits. So the fact that they are making record profits actually proves that they aren't doing everything they can to make the transition as quickly as possible. If they aren't trying to make the transition as quickly as possible
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Politics is just people agreeing on things that require or affect more than one person.
Rhetoric is what you're describing. Unfortunately we've come to accept rhetoric, rather than something like the scientific method, as the primary tool of politics.
Blame the Greeks.
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There is a difference between being dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and not working to change that and being dependent but also working towards limiting the need of fossil fuels. I would be surprised if you could find more than a handful of people that think that we can cut fossil fuel emissions to zero tomorrow.
What technological achievements have been undone (or are even being undone) by the transfer away from fossil fuels?
None of our electronics are dependent on fossil fuel generated
Shocked (Score:2)
Execs lied to protect their assets? (Score:3)
No, that can't be true. That has never happeend and it can't happen.
Re: Execs lied to protect their assets? (Score:2)
I also am profoundly shocked.
Line them against a wall (Score:2)
These people are the ultimate embodiment of evil. At this time there is no other action besides execution left that adequately rewards their service to the human race. Please include all former oil execs and all oil "scientists" that helped make climate change worse.
More information ... (Score:2)
Here is an extensive article from 2020 on how oil companies made us doubt climate change [bbc.com].
It details how it was known since ~ 1981 that emissions from burning carbon fuel will impact global climate.
And for over three decades:
"Here to stay?" (Score:2)
Yeah, they'll be here to stay ... until the climate finally kills off the last human and nobody'll be around to care about fossil fuels any more.
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P-1?
The most quietly diabolical award goes to Alberta (Score:2)
The process of upgrading oil sands bitumen to crude oil involves a vast amount of electricity, and produces a large quantity of leftover material, called petcoke. But even though they've been producing millions of barrels of oil daily for decades, you don't see heaping mounds of it stacked up like the slag at mining refineries. That's because petcoke can be burned as coal for electricity generation. Since the petcoke is produced exactly where there is great need for electricity, there will never ever be any
an easy way to help (Score:3)
Work from home. That was so effective at reducing oil use that oil prices went negative for a short time during the pandemic in spite of increased shipping of goods to the home. Demand work from home. Realize that bosses who are pushing for return to the office are ready to sell out the future just to get their ego stroked today.
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if true...
One of these paths definitely leads to ruin.
The other one? What harm can come of it making the human race live sustainably?
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What harm can come of it making the human race live sustainably?
Loss of short-term profitability for some.
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What harm can come of it making the human race live sustainably?
Loss of fossil fuel shareholder & investor profits. Rich people are happy to let the rest of us die of starvation. When has that not ever been the case?
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You want ruin?
Make massive changes to how power is consumed and generated in this country with NO allowances for why, where or how much power needs to be generated or consumed.
Just let people die, in other words.
This is the California solution.
"Buy this product that uses an assload of power! It'll save the planet!"
"Oh wait. DON'T use it! Because we can't actually support it!
It's basically GOVERNMENTAL levels of putting the cart before the horse.
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This is the California solution.
The current issues this year in California were exacerbated by climate change. In any case, just learn from California and introduce renewables in a better way. The UK has introduced lots and not had the same issues.
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd all get poorer in terms of material wealth.
It's only the oil industry that's saying that.
PS: Is your brain really so washed that you think climate change will be free of charge?
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:5, Informative)
> It's only the oil industry that's saying that.
Nah, it's physics:
Nah, it's the oil industry.
You know they get HUGE subsidies, right?
Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds [yale.edu]
Imagine if we could spend that $5.9 Trillion on a proper energy infrastructure instead. Would that make you poorer?
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Yes, I do know.
That it a very good question. The answer to which lies in, among many questions :
where would energy come from? Fusion? Nuclear? Solar/wind? Other?
Would that energy have a similar EROEI to fossil fuels?
And what about (from your link )
> [subsidies in the form of ] health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels,
How would An all electric/other civilization compare using that metric? (with all the mining required...)
The world would definitely be diff
Re: If you live in clownworld (Score:2)
I see talk about this a lot, and without fact checking, I am still willing to assume the subsidy thing is true. However, it is unclear to me how that balances against tax revenue. The government takes in a lot on taxes, raising total cost to the consumer. They channel some back to the industry, with a feasible outcome of reducing price at the pump. This probably has a positive impact on demand which might otherwise be lessened by the price.
If the taxes were not so high, would the subsidies be necessary? I h
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Simple fact, the government profits more in tax revenue than the oil company does on the sale of a gallon of gasoline at the pump.
Just like federal, state, and local gov't collect more in tax revenue from the sale of a pack of cigarettes than the cigarette manufacturer does from that same pack.
Yes, gasoline and cigarettes are bad, and politicians like to vilify both industries, but without either, a significant source of tax revenues would disappear - in the case of cigarettes, health insurance subsidies wo
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Simple fact, the government profits more in tax revenue than the oil company does on the sale of a gallon of gasoline at the pump.
How is this relevant? Governments can relatively easily, a vote and a stroke of a pen, change how they gather tax revenues to work around this to tax incomes or comments on Slashdot. It's much harder for an oil company.
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Imagine if we could spend that $5.9 Trillion on a proper energy infrastructure instead.
There is no $5.9trillion. Your own link says that direct subsidies only account for 8% of that figure.
But I also question how they come with that figure (though I don't doubt its accuracy). I just hope it's not like some boneheadded campaign like the one Greenpeace led against BP because "BP received more subsidies than any other oil company". Yeah no shit they did. That happens when you run in and offer to build wind farms, CCS, and whatever else governments are currently offering subsidies for.
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:4)
> It's only the oil industry that's saying that.
Nah, it's physics:
Nah, it's the oil industry.
You know they get HUGE subsidies, right?
Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds [yale.edu]
Imagine if we could spend that $5.9 Trillion on a proper energy infrastructure instead. Would that make you poorer?
You realize that $5.9 Trillion number is just a made-up number, right?
From your link:
Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.
Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.
And the form those subsidies take are as boring deductions for valid business expenses, just like EVERY OTHER business in the US enjoys.
Companies are taxed on profits, not revenues, and business expenses are subtracted from revenue when calculating income taxes.
The Government doesn't have $5.9 Trillion to spend on your "proper energy infrastructure", you have fallen for something I like to call AOC Economics, like when she kicked Amazon's east coast HQ out of Manhattan because she had a better idea how to spend that $2BN in tax credits in education... except she, the economics major, wrongly thought NYC was writing a $3BN check to Amazon.
https://nypost.com/2019/02/17/... [nypost.com]
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OK, so "only" 8% is direct subsidy... That's still like 500 billion, which would easily pay for the aerosol thing in TFA, and some new power stations, and some pumped hydro for storage, and some better public transport...
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Ok, life back in the 1700's was sustainable and you don't want to go back to those times (at least that was the tone I got from your comment), Guess what, life back in 10,00 BC was also sustainable but I think you would have to agree that there was at least some advances between 10,000BC and 1700AD. You don't have to sustainability to advance you just have to be willing to make a concerted effort to keep the two in balance.
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I counted in (average) efficiency gains. If we're down to personal attacks: reading skills aren't your strong point...
Using Public transport is by many viewed as a step down on the wealth ladder. A stand by my point in that case.
Energy source replacement: So far, historically, energy sources have only been piled on top of each other in terms of absolute kWh (percentages do indeed paint a different story). Renewables included. You're probably thinking about replacing electricity plants. This does have an imp
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Using Public transport is by many viewed as a step down on the wealth ladder.
People also viewed using public transport as a good way to catch diseases.
This view is going to be reinforced the longer people are seeing face masks worn. I've seen arguments for and against masks on airplanes. There's an "external cost" to mask mandates, just like an "external cost" to CO2 emissions. Public health experts are politicians by definition, they set policies. Part of the job of setting public health policy is taking into consideration what is beyond physical health, such as economic impact
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There is one of the little ironies of life. Covid did indeed cause significant damage to public transport world wide, which at the same time showing us how we could live without car transport. Subsequently, we have the war in Ukraine which shows us that dangerous of living in a fossil fuel dependent society and as a result, we are looking to dig up and drill out more fossil fuels.
Not sure about the former case, but in the latter the fossil fuel companies have jumped gleefully onto that band wagon. Happy, as
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Well, solar has *started* to replace things like coal. It's not proven that it can actually do so. There may in insuperable limits in supply of necessary materials. But it has started.
OTOH, it's also true that we can't go back to 1700. Too many people, the climate is different (and still changing), and many resources have been used up. (E.g. whale oil...though that was mainly later.)
I don't think a gradual return to a low-tech state is possible. It can only happen via a collapse of civilization, and a
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There may in insuperable limits in supply of necessary materials.
...such as?
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Any single one I name will probably be wrong. But there are a tremendous number of them. Possibly Lithium, though, or one of the rare earths. I don't KNOW that this is in the cards, but I also don't know that it isn't. So, as I indicated, it's an uncertainty.
OTOH, just because we run into the problem, doesn't mean we couldn't have avoided it. ISTM that the concentrated brine produced by desalinization plants could be mined for most of the elements in the periodic table. But it would be more expensive
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Any single one I name will probably be wrong. But there are a tremendous number of them. Possibly Lithium, though, or one of the rare earths.
Solar power requires neither lithium nor any of the rare earths, so that's definitely NOT going to be a problem for solar power.
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Solar CELLS don't require Lithium. Many of the uses of stored electricity do. There may well be alternatives in a sufficient number of cases, but we don't *know* that. Will the aluminum and sulfur batteries work? Well, they work in the lab. And they will handle many of the cases where we'd otherwise need to use lithium. In several other uses, other varieties could work. Vanadium flow batteries are good for storing a large charge over a long period of time, if you don't need it to be portable. Etc.
So
Re: If you live in clownworld (Score:4, Informative)
A degradation of civilization has already begun. The next generation will most likely be worse off that the current one due to these forces.
Yeah, right-wing assholes are always talking about the "degradation of civilization" and predicting the fall of civilization because of it. One of the great themes of Hitler was how German society was being degraded.
Hasn't happened.
There are many globalists that want to take the world backward and use the authoritarian states of North Korea as their model
Bullshit. Name one.
You know who admired North Korea? Donald Trump [independent.co.uk].
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Using Public transport is by many viewed as a step down on the wealth ladder. A stand by my point in that case.
Then maybe we should address that retarded view. Don't your trains have a first class carriage? Why not?
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That's unfortunately true, the wealthy fly in private jets while the rest of us take the airlines [wikipedia.org].
"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport." --Enrique Peñalosa
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Where I live, just about everyone uses trains, rich & poor, & just about everyone likes them. Because of rising petrol & energy prices, the govt has effectively made trains free for regular passengers for the next 4 months & it's been hugely popular. As a result, car use & therefore CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically.
Also, a comprehensive network of high speed trains
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:5, Interesting)
> The other one? What harm can come of it making the human race live sustainably?
We'd all get poorer in terms of material wealth. We -- those rich enough to comment on slashdot.
That's not to say it still isn't desirable, but today all accounting is done in terms of growing material wealth.
You do know that renewables are substantially cheaper than fossil fuels, right? How is cheaper, more secure energy going to make us all poorer? In addition, how about all the new jobs renewables are creating & all the investment opportunities that represents? Economics isn't your strong point, is it?
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That renewables are cheaper is a "probably true" statement. With all the subsidies, it's really hard to be sure. It definitely LOOKS like oil gets more subsidies, and by a large measure.
OTOH, current renewables depend on lots of scarce resources from all over the world. Are there enough of all of them to replace fossil fuels? Well, probably. How much is available is partially dependent on how much you're willing to pay. And that's with current technologies. I can imagine a technology that's based aro
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Did you mean the multi-step extraction process I outlined was in current practice for other than specialties like salt and bromine? If so, that's really good news. (If not, what getting cheaper now?)
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If the things you need to run your civilization run out, then you won't be able to keep your fission plants operating. And a high tech civilization needs a huge number of really specialized inputs. Look into the problems they had making reliable transistors back in the late 1950s. (Vacuum tubes are a lot easier, but they use more power and don't last as long, so forget personal computers, much less reliable automated controls.)
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OK, prove it - Three Mile Island generates 819 MW 24 hr/day, 365 days/year.
What would it take to replace that generation capacity (remember, nuclear is 24x7, wind and solar aren't, arguably hydro is.)?
Given that a 1,000 MW Nuclear plant requires approx 1 sq mile of land, to replace TMI would require between 75-360 sq miles of land to replace it, that's non-trivial, and likely doesn't even account for when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing, which will double space requirements and require massive i
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wind farm capacity factors range from 32 to 47 percent
Those include old wind farms. Current off-shore wind turbines from GE (why does it have to use land?) are 15MW with 64% capacity.
https://hornseaproject3.co.uk/about-the-project#project-timeline-december-2020. Hornsea 2 just came on line. It requires no land. It will use 696km^2 of sea, which is 200 square miles at the capacity you noted. Total generation capacity exceeds your But no land. Even if on land, the land is still usable underneath. You are looking at things the wrong way if you are looking at ju
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OTOH, current renewables depend on lots of scarce resources from all over the world.
Not really. The only really significant one is copper and even then providing current electricity generation entirely from wind is only about 2 years of world production. Batteries are the ones that require resources currently in short supply, but that's more a lack of mining capacity at present than genuine lack of resource. It is worth noting, though, that mining can be very messy. The main material resource for PV is still silicon (sand) and for wind it's concrete and steel, and the former lasts a long t
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If renewables are cheaper, then why do we need subsidies? Why wouldn't your local electric company switch over to your so-called "cheaper" source of energy en masse? Because it's not true, that's why.
AFTER subsidies, it may be cheaper, but not when you consider all the costs. We subsidize:
- basic research
- manufacturing plants
- training installers
- the purchase of renewable generators (turbines, solar cells, etc)
- the cost of installing those generators (see above)
And we force power utilities to pay a premi
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If renewables are cheaper, then why do we need subsidies?
Lack of pricing of externalities for carbon-based generation, requirement for speed of action.
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> The other one? What harm can come of it making the human race live sustainably?
We'd all get poorer in terms of material wealth. We -- those rich enough to comment on slashdot.
That's not to say it still isn't desirable, but today all accounting is done in terms of growing material wealth.
You do know that renewables are substantially cheaper than fossil fuels, right? How is cheaper, more secure energy going to make us all poorer? In addition, how about all the new jobs renewables are creating & all the investment opportunities that represents? Economics isn't your strong point, is it?
Wind power and oil serve different markets without electrified transport or a medium such as hydrogen.
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If it is cheaper than it will win out by market forces alone because consumers love cheaper.
It will and is doing so.
We do not need trillion dollar green new deals then, right?
It depends on how quickly you need it. If you imposed carbon taxes to price in externalities then a green deal would not be required. The UK dropped subsidy for wind entirely for a while and windfarms were still being built, just not fast enough to meet 2050 goals.
Re:If you live in clownworld (Score:5, Insightful)
Your belief that you're smart enough to tell those from reality is a fiction.
Thank you for smoking.
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And the climate research was?
I'm sure you will point to plenty of articles stating that there was but who is behind those articles? I will wager that those articles are backed by the oil industry (or at least those will a vested interest in the oil companies status quo).
There was plenty of "faked, manipulated, or measured with purposefully faulty instruments" research on tobacco, it was just on the side of the tobacco industry.
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And the climate research was?
Some was. That isn't a problem because when you have thousands of people investigating a global-scale phenomenon, some will make mistakes, some will cherry-pick data, and a tiny few will be outright frauds.
The problem was that climatologists acted tribally, rallying around their erroneous and misbehaving colleagues to defend them against the "other tribe" of evil denialists. By doing so, they forfeited their credibility in the eyes of the public.
It didn't have to be that way. As late as 2008, every Repub
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More than that. The amount of ground temperature stations in the US properly placed away from localized human heat island effects is woefully low. So in their reported numbers they 'adjust' the temps for the stations without explaining the methodology for doing so(assuming there even is one).
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More than that. The amount of ground temperature stations in the US properly placed away from localized human heat island effects is woefully low.
Research shows that if you remove the ones that have ended up near UHI effects out, the level of warming looks slightly higher. Also USA != world.
they 'adjust' the temps for the stations without explaining the methodology for doing so
No, they very much explain the methodology.
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"The people pushing climate change are also altering the temperature record to magnify it."
Valid references or it didn't happen.
"I don't even want to talk about the number of tipping points, last chances to save the world, predictions of hurricanes scouring the east coast to bedrock, or how anytime there is a warm day it's global warming."
You mean the tipping points that scientists say will wreak damage in the future because we've past them now? Them tipping points?
Hint, the future hasn't happened j
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It's exceptionally suspicious that the technically sweet and available solution is a complete non starter. I am of course speaking of nuclear power.
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Sorry, but that is properly blamed on the cold war and the bombs at the end of WWII. People living under the threat of "nuclear annihilation" tend to react adversely to anything referring to the word nuclear. So Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging got renamed to Magnetic Resonance Imaging. There are other examples. This kind of name magic is often used to avoid irrational fears. Consider "Freedom Fries".
So the proper answer would appear to be to come up with a new name for the energy source previously c
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The plant production was driven by the government and a few corporations. The resistance was driven by popular opinion. Those are separate causes. Both were going on. The government actions had quicker effect, but as the cold war dragged on, and especially after Russia got nuclear bombs, the popular opinion got stronger. Argue that it shouldn't have if you want to, but I grew up while it was happening, and got exposed to opinions from all over the country. If you want a glimpse of how people felt abo
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It's exceptionally suspicious that the technically sweet and available solution is a complete non starter. I am of course speaking of nuclear power.
Nope. It is just the "other" energy scam. Even a brief look at actual performance, cost and time to build shows that conclusively. But the nuclear morons (like you) are so deep in denial they could not see reality if it kicked them in the face. Which it is about to do.
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You seem quite reluctant to share your references for discussion. That is suspicious.
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True, but they are also quite reluctant to share their raw data for peer review.
In general, they are very keen to share their data for peer review. However, in some instances the data was collected by third parties that wish to make a profit by selling the data, and so the scientists are given access to it provided they do not share the raw data. You will find where the data was actually collected by scientists and not by third parties with commercial interests the data is both shared and required to be shared. There's huge amounts of raw data available, petabytes of climate records, y
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Do you accept that thermodynamics as an actual description of energy exchange or not?
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The hockey stick was bullshit.
Wrong
The people pushing climate change are also altering the temperature record to magnify it.
Wrong
I don't even want to talk about the number of tipping points, last chances to save the world,
Yes, poor communications there.
predictions of hurricanes scouring the east coast
The projections have so far been correct.
how anytime there is a warm day it's global warming.
People saying that won't be scientists.
A fricking tidal wave of B.S. designed to scare the gullible and soft headed.
Oh dear.
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Probably just pushing 60 and not willing to take any minor setbacks in their comfort to save a planet they won't need anymore in 20ish years, i.e. when the shit finally would hit the fan hard enough that they'd be affected.
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Only some people pay attention to news they don't like, and even those that do tend to be selective in what they notice (though not always in easily predictable ways). E.g. when I read news that there are dangers to space travel, I always assume that there are ways around those dangers. I may be right, and I may not, but the attitude is the result of my desires more than my priors. And I tend to go looking for information that will confirm my attitude, to set my priors in the desired direction.
This will
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If these ignorant "save the planet" types would just offer solutions that don't require impoverishing the world then they'd get unanimous support for CO2 emission reduction.
They do. They just don't always give the answer you want which is 'nuclear'
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We obviously do know that it lowers the lifestyle of common people because places with high renewables use have higher energy costs than those that do not.
Alternatively, we obviously do know that places with higher energy costs installed renewables earlier than places with lower energy costs because the early renewable units (already built) were more expensive than the future ones (that have to be built yet) and therefore only competitive in places where energy had already been expensive.
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We obviously do know that it lowers the lifestyle of common people because places with high renewables use have higher energy costs than those that do not.
You need to strip out end-user subsidies to determine this. For example, electricity is largely generated by nuclear in France but the domestic market is highly subsidised so you can't really compare. In some locations oil and gas are used, but where they are also large oil and gas producers it is also subsidised. Comparing domestic prices is thus a poor indicator. What you need to do is look at producer prices in each country.
Re:I am not seeing the evidence (Score:5, Informative)
You know why we don't need to try and dig out the internal briefings of Sinopec and China National? Because they aren't members of this group of motherfuckers [wikipedia.org] who utilize their profits to purchase legislation and misinformation to direct US consumer sentiment and government policy.
The uncertainty and doubt you speak of is bought and fucking paid for. Leaded gasoline. CFCs. Cigarettes. There will always be shitstains like you defending their manufactured plausible deniability.
My wish for you (Score:2)
May you get 100% of what you seem to wish for, immediately and irreversibly.
Just you though.
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You know why we don't need to try and dig out the internal briefings of Sinopec and China National? Because they aren't members of this group of motherfuckers [wikipedia.org] who utilize their profits to purchase legislation and misinformation to direct US consumer sentiment and government policy.
No. They utilize their profits to direct government policy of a far larger company who people in the USA love reminding the world has a higher total emissions.
No oil company is innocent. That said they don't all deserve equally bad rep. Some of them have required shareholders to drag them kicking and screaming to admit that they cause climate change. Others have invested (albeit poorly) in at least some alternatives.
And some are lead by vindictive arsholes who are fucking the planet for nothing, like Putin
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No. They utilize their profits to direct government policy of a far larger company who people in the USA love reminding the world has a higher total emissions.
That's fucking laughable.
The idea that any corporation directs government policy of the PRC is enough to make a rational person giggle.
No oil company is innocent. That said they don't all deserve equally bad rep. Some of them have required shareholders to drag them kicking and screaming to admit that they cause climate change. Others have invested (albeit poorly) in at least some alternatives.
The oil companies themselves engage in little evil. They pay the American Petroleum Institute for that work.
And yes- all US oil corporations are members.
And some are lead by vindictive arsholes who are fucking the planet for nothing, like Putin who directed Gazprom to shutdown pipelines to Europe while not actually directing any them to reduce production leading to huge pointless and unnecessary flaring at the entrance of the Nord Strem pipeline. Yeah, just because Europe isn't burning gas doesn't mean that very gas isn't being burnt. Russian production isn't down nearly as much as Russian exports and I don't think they suddenly increased their entire industry in the past few months.
The larger scale problem of world emissions doesn't concern me here. This is about US corporate malfeasance.
The world will have to account for the larger problems, for sure, but here- this problem is ours. The way our cor
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For fuel synthesis you need syngas. H2 is easy, CO is not once you stop burning fossil fuels.
Hydrogen is merely expensive to use, synthetic fuel from air captured carbon is ridiculously expensive.
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SpaceX is developing carbon neutral fuels. If this is a fuel that is not economically viable then I guess SpaceX will go out of business trying.
https://medium.com/predict/spa... [medium.com]
The article points out that SpaceX would not be truly carbon zero because of the carbon emitted in making their rockets. They neglect to point out that this is also true of hydrogen fuel rockets that get hydrogen from a carbon neutral source. That seems like a rather important detail to overlook.
There's many other companies that b
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TL;DR accountability to shareholders and having to make profits at any cost are the core problems of modern businesses. We're putting imaginary numbers ahead of the health of our planet. Dead planet means no more humans, no matter how big their bank accounts are.