Ben Franta
@BenFranta
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Associate Professor of Climate Litigation @TheOxfordSLP @TheSmithSchool | Lawyer, historian, physicist, dreamer & doer
Oxford, England
Joined April 2014
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Want to know more about the historical evidence underlying California's major lawsuit against Big Oil?
For the first time, my doctoral dissertation on Big Carbon's history of climate deception is available to the public.
Read, share, and take action:
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In 1980, Exxon scientist Henry Shaw, in an internal company report, found that global warming was likely already occurring and that uncontrolled fossil fuel production would cause "serious global problems" in the 21st century.
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Compiled by
@VatanHuzeir
, the latest cache of internal documents describing Big Oil's concealed knowledge of global warming is a gold mine.
One bombshell is a confidential
@Shell
scenario report from 1989 which imagined two futures: SUSTAINABLE WORLD and GLOBAL MERCANTILISM 🧵
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Exxon is advertising "just how big" capturing 100 million tons of carbon dioxide is, by 2040.
Exxon forgot to mention that fossil fuels emit over 30 BILLION tons of CO2/year today.
So Exxon is advertising capturing <0.3% of today's emissions...by 2040.
Just how big? Not very.
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Today the Stanford faculty senate voted on whether to recommend divestment from fossil fuels to the board of trustees. They voted overwhelmingly to *keep* investing in fossils.
I watched the meeting. Three words to sum it up: ignorance, excuses, & cowardice.
Thread
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We often call what fossil fuel companies have done “denial.”
Denial is a psychological reaction where we can’t accept, and don’t believe, reality.
The fossil fuel companies haven’t been in denial. They’ve been lying.
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BREAKING: New study in Nature Climate Change shows that academic research funded by fossil fuel companies is biased.
Biased against renewables and toward promotion of fossil gas.
Given Big Carbon's big money in academia, this should raise alarm bells.
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Just saw
#DontLookUp
and personally thought it was genius!
As an historian, I couldn't help but notice a sobering message within the story's timeline.
If we were in the movie, how close would the comet be today? Here are some thoughts. 🧵
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COP26.
26.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.
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Sometimes a piece appears that is so juicily deceptive, so full of false and misleading information, that it cries out for a response, if only to study its ignorance-spreading mastery. Today's article in the
@nytimes
is just such a piece.
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Effects of increased CO2 on the American west, Exxon internal memo, 1979:
[quote]
• The southwest states would be hotter, probably by more than 3 °F, and drier.
• The flow of the Colorado River would diminish and the southwest water shortage would become much more acute.
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Carbon capture is like Exxon farting in your living room for decades, and then trying to sell you a fart sucking machine.
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This century, billions of people could be displaced due to global warming.
Surprised?
In 1982 Exxon discussed "climate related famine or migration." The doc was marked "restricted."
& in 1988 Shell predicted worldwide "migration." Marked "confidential."
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At Big Oil's hearing, Exxon CEO Darren Woods said the company’s statements about global warming “are and have always been truthful."
I study the history of climate science and Woods' statement was false.
Here's what the company's internal documents show.
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This piece by
@nfergus
in the
@BostonGlobe
is a great example of modern climate denialism. It also illustrates many of the logical fallacies that have come out of the economics profession in service of
#predatorydelay
. Let's take a look.
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In the film, eventually the comet is so close that it becomes visible from the ground. The opportunity to avoid disaster is rapidly closing.
That's us today with climate change.
We're not at the beginning of the movie, we're near the end.
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Could Big Oil be tried for crimes against humanity?
"Yes, they could. The law constantly evolves in light of changing historical conditions, and what might seem implausible today may become inevitable in time. So let’s look at the evidence."
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We have a choice about how our story - the real fate of the planet - ends.
We can wait passively until disaster strikes, as in the film, and realize too late what we've lost.
Or we can act NOW.
We need to stand up before it's too late. Will you?
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As world burns,
@nytimes
remains Big Fossil’s staunch defender, insisting we mustn’t “plac[e] the blame for..climate change..at the feet of the business community when the onus is on society as a whole.” Wonderful symbol of ignorance & corporate solidarity
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The founder of
@Harvard
's environmental & energy law program (and co-chair of Harvard's sustainability committee) is also paid $350,000 a year by
@conocophillips
to be on the oil company's board.
A flagrant violation of professional and human ethics.
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A good deal has been written about climate dread, but an under-appreciated angle is how fossil fuel companies' efforts to individualize the problem of climate change (blaming the consumer) have created widespread feelings of guilt, shame, and paralysis. 1/n
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American Petroleum Institute president's warning to the oil industry about global warming in 1965, new in
@NatureClimate
:
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Excited to present "The Long Game: How Big Oil Delayed Climate Action for Four Decades" at
@nyuniversity
in about 14 hours!
It's virtual so you can register here!
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And yet despite these predictions,
@Shell
chose to push the world into the high-carbon scenario it knew would be so disastrous.
The company spent the next decade denying the existence and severity of global warming through disinformation groups like the Global Climate Coalition.
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This article is a great example of framing climate change as primarily a technological problem, with studious ignorance of history/politics - a misdirecting frame helping Big Fossil.
This particular piece also has a number of misleading tropes. Worth analyzing in depth! (Thread)
Getting to 'net zero' emissions involves deploying lots of stuff many enviros don't like: CCS,
#hydrogen
, CDR,
#nuclear
.
Feel free to find feasible pathways where you don't need any of these
Great
@ForeignAffairs
piece by
@inesliaz
,
@JesseJenkins
et al.
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Our new paper about Total and global warming (with a cameo by Exxon) is now the top-trending geography article in the world.
Here's an explainer thread, including the backstory on these important new findings.
🧵👇👇
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What would the world be like under GLOBAL MERCANTILISM (the path we're on)?
According to
@Shell
, "There would be more violent weather - more storms, more droughts, more deluges. Mean sea level would rise at least 30 cm. Agricultural patterns would be most dramatically changed."
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This document underscores the fact that
@Shell
, the fossil fuel industry, and broader society had a choice, and they knowingly chose global disaster in exchange for short term profits.
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Dr. Martin Hoffert, former Exxon climate scientist, testifying under oath to the US House of Representatives today:
"I was greatly distressed by the climate science denial program -- campaign -- that Exxon's front office launched around the time I stopped working [there]. [cont]
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In SUSTAINABLE WORLD, greenhouse gas emissions would peak around the year 2000 and decline rapidly thereafter, and total CO2 concentrations would be limited to 400 ppm.
GLOBAL MERCANTILISM, on the other hand, would see emissions continue to rise (this is the path we're on)
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But, like in the film, these efforts have been derailed by corporate greed, hubris, and short-sightedness.
And here we are, 30 years later - and corporate efforts to delay action continue.
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Just like we feel the urge to tell those in the film, "You need to act NOW," we need to understand the urgency of our own situation.
All life on Earth, and countless beings yet to live, are depending on what we do NOW.
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Likely not intentional, but see this normalization of disaster:
1.5 C warming portrayed as safe
2 C warming portrayed as moderate
Only 3 C portrayed as truly bad
Like normalizing "small scale" nuclear war, this is a dangerous path.
The difference between 1.5°C, 2°C or 3-4°C average global warming can sound marginal.
In fact, they represent vastly different scenarios for the future of humanity.
(Thread 1/5)
#ClimateEmergency
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Early on, the film's scientists discover the comet and warn the government about it.
With climate, that happened all the way back in 1965.
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Here's a study from 1979 in the research journal Science.
In it, the author makes a simple observation: fossil fuels would cause disastrous global warming in the next 50 years, and it often takes about 50 years to replace one energy supply with another.
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It's usually not worth responding to these kinds of attacks on Twitter, but this seems to be a teachable moment for discussing the nature of historical research into efforts to obstruct fossil fuel controls. 🧵
@BenFranta
Is there convincing evidence that oil industry PR demonstrably prevented efficacious emissions reduction policy from being implemented?
Idk maybe.
But your work is the last place I would go to find out, since you claim to find such evidence everywhere you look.
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And then
@Shell
spent the last two decades giving false reassurances that it's moving away from fossil fuels, all while actually expanding its fossil fuel business and blocking the fossil fuel controls it knows are needed to avoid irreversible global damage.
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My tweet about many researchers in the climate space being "owned" by the fossil fuel industry is easily my most unpopular ever. My intent isn't to offend but to refer to an important issue that is too often ignored and censored. Let me offer some additional context. (thread)
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.
@Shell
realized that even in SUSTAINABLE WORLD, global temps could rise more than 1 deg C (what we see today). "SUSTAINABLE WORLD will not prevent the problem arising, but it could mitigate the problem."
GLOBAL MERCANTILISM, meanwhile, would cause "considerably more" warming.
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Other nuggets from
@Shell
's document:
- correctly admits the "principal source" of CO2 is "fossil fuel combustion"
- correctly notes methane a powerful greenhouse gas about 25 times more potent than CO2
- says global warming "could be most important issue for the energy industry"
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Increasingly, the scientists in the film warn that immediate action is necessary to avert disaster.
When did that happen with climate?
Wait for it: 1980.
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Harvard 2012: We'll never divest from fossil fuels
Harvard 2013: We'll never divest from fossil fuels
...
Harvard 2019: We'll never divest from fossil fuels
Harvard 2020: We'll never divest from fossil fuels
Harvard 2021: Look how responsible we are
BREAKING NEWS: President Bacow announces a near-total divestment from fossil-fuels, new investments such as
@enginexyz
, and the creation of a new post:
@Kennedy_School
professor
@jimstockmetrics
will be the new vice provost for climate and sustainability.
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The climate crisis and the world's inadequate responses to it were not just foreseen but actively engineered by
@Shell
and its many collaborators.
How much more until the we say enough is enough, hold the perpetrators accountable, and chart a healthier path?
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On the second point: numerous faculty voiced fear that if Stanford were to stop investing in fossil fuels, Big Oil would retaliate by pulling funding.
Researchers aren't even hiding that they've been bought. So long as they receive Big Fossil money, they won't take a stand.
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As these impacts occur before our eyes, remember that Exxon was on notice over forty years ago, then covered it up.
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For the last year, I've been working with illustrator
@MagninAlex
to create the world's first webcomic detailing the history of the oil industry's climate knowledge & obstruction. It took 3 episodes to tell the whole story, and it's now complete! Here it is in one handy thread:
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Exxon's response to this damning study is revealing.
In a feeble defense, Exxon cites a 2019 lawsuit. But that suit was on a different issue (impact of climate regs on share prices)
Faced with evidence of deception, Exxon's defense is yet more deception.
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"Something as simple as a moderate change in rainfall pattern disrupts eco-systems, and many species of trees, plants, animals and insects would not be able to move and adapt."
"The changes would, however, most impact on humans,"
@Shell
went on...
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I've published a new paper in
@Env_Pol
reporting what I believe is the earliest known example of climate deception from the fossil fuel industry, from all the way back in 1980.
In this thread, I'll explain this discovery & its significance 🧵
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I've seen countless climate-related classes at institutions like Stanford & Harvard.
All discuss the global failure to stop climate change.
Most present that failure as a mystery.
Almost none mention the fossil industry's campaign to block action.
Education?
Or miseducation?
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Wow. This is a huge, HUGE deal.
A Dutch court just ORDERED Shell to change its business plan and become Paris-aligned.
THIS will be a judgment heard round the world. A profound legal victory.
BREAKING In a historic VICTORY for
#Climate
, Dutch court orders
@Shell
to reduce its GHG emissions with 45% by 2030 and become
#ParisAgreement
aligned. Current plans are insufficient. Thank you
@milieudefensie
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The take-home message in 1979: to avoid disaster, immediate action was required.
Many other studies replicated this result; here's another from around the same time.
We also know from internal industry documents that Big Oil was aware of this research.
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"The potential refugee problem in GLOBAL MERCANTILISM could be unprecedented,"
@Shell
predicted. "Africans would push into Europe, Chinese into the Soviet Union, Latins into the United States, Indonesians into Australia."
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Something wildly under-appreciated is that climate is a tightly controlled field. A handful of “climate gurus,” often funded by the oil industry itself, dictate the climate education for many future leaders in elite universities. 1/n
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Rep.
@AOC
: Exxon accurately predicted future global warming in 1982, correct?
Former Exxon consultant turned whistleblower: “We were excellent scientists.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grills former Exxon scientists on oil giant's climate change denial
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Two big takeaways from the meeting:
1) Faculty at Stanford - one of the most prestigious universities in the US - remain ignorant of the basic realities of climate politics.
2) Fossil industry funding has bought off researchers.
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"In earlier times, man was able to respond with his feet. Today, there is no place to go because people already stand there. Perhaps those in industrial countries could cope with a rise in sea level (the Dutch example) but for poor countries such defences are not possible."
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"Boundaries would count for little - overwhelmed by the numbers. Conflicts would abound. Civilization could prove a fragile thing. The logic of SUSTAINABLE WORLD is a society choosing to channel some investments into environmental maintenance against this contingency."
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.
@ClimateHuman
nails it in exposing the dangers of "net zero by 2050."
"Just presuppose enough hypothetical carbon capture and you can pencil out a plan for meeting any climate goal, even while allowing the fossil fuel industry to keep growing...
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Eventually, the government in the film launches an effort to prevent disaster.
With climate, this happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the formation of international treaties and proposed laws to accelerate the replacement of fossil fuels.
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"An individual may be powerless to impose restraint under these circumstances"
@Shell
said, "but, collectively, society is not. Rules can be devised, agreed upon, and enforced so that the capacity of the commons is not exceeded and access to the commons is equitably distributed."
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Finally, the document foreshadows the use of (fake) offsets to enable more fossil fuel use:
"Don't just stand there. Plant a tree... Applied Energy Services of Arlington, Virginia, is helping to pay for the planting of 52 million trees on plantations and farm plots in Guatemala"
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"Not to get too tin-hat-y, but once you start to see these ads over and over again, you see the common elements arise."
Honored to join
@NaomiOreskes
,
@MichaelEMann
& others to inform this deep dive into Big Oil's deceptive blame-the-consumer narrative.
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40 years ago this year ⏳
Exxon scientist Roger Cohen notes internally that the company's long-term business plans may "produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth's population)."
Does Exxon need another 40 years? 🤥
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Here's to all those elite academic economists who said divestment would never be material 🥂
Divestment is kicking the oil industry in the nuts.
Here--via
@TheDailyPoster
--is the Dallas Federal Reserve Banks' report on how oil and gas companies literally can't find investors any more. Only one in 400 will give them $
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Big Oil's colonization of academia runs deep. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Why didn't Prof. Freeman's colleagues bring this to the public's attention before?
Because she's not the only one on the take.
🚨 A Harvard climate professor used her Ivy League connections to vouch for a giant oil and gas company currently trying to weaken new climate regulations
Jody Freeman, who earns $350,000 a year as a ConocoPhillips board member, lobbied the US regulator on their behalf
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Just in case you still weren’t sure who’s behind the “Climate Leadership Council”
@TheCLCouncil
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A legal drama of historic consequence unfolding before our eyes.
My statement in response to the end of the trial.
"Regardless of how this Chevron-funded prosecution plays out in the coming months with our appeal, ... Chevron remains liable for a $9.5 billion pollution judgment to Indigenous peoples in Ecuador."
Read:
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A few ways climate language has been corrupted:
Global warming -> climate change
Fossil fuels -> greenhouse gases
Fossil fuels -> human activity
Fossil fuels -> energy
Replacing fossil fuels -> climate change mitigation
Replacing fossil fuels -> emission reductions
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As someone who studies the industry for a living, I found it fascinating to see professor after professor taking the mic & speaking falsehoods with full confidence, even imperiousness.
Yet their main knowledge of the industry comes only from the fact that it
gives
them
money.
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Nice piece by
@KateAronoff
observing that calls to "believe" or "trust" science miss the target.
Instead of imperious instructions to believe science, a better approach is to expose the disinformation campaigns at their (usually corporate) source.
thread
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"That number of trees are claimed to be able to absorb as much CO2 as will be emitted by a new coal-fired generating plant AES is building in Connecticut. This 180 megawatt plant will emit an estimated 15 million tonnes of CO2 over its 40 year lifetime."
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It's easy to feel discouraged at such a display. But discouragement is the wrong response.
This level of self-serving ignorance and co-option was already there, doing its work. Now it's visible, thanks to the divestment campaign at Stanford.
And now it can be counteracted.
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Moreover, we must never do anything that might hurt Big Oil, like pointing out the fact that it has for decades orchestrated and poured vast sums of money into climate denial, disinformation, and delay, knowingly deceiving the American people and causing vast worldwide damages.
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For instance:
- Oil co's are good because they make hand sanitizer (really)
- Oil co's are leaders in developing clean energy (reality: 99% of the industry's capex is in fossil fuels)
- Less investment in fossil fuels could cause more fossils to be used (clue: makes no sense)
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This is what I call the "wicked problem" framing. And it too is misleading.
It blames the *problem itself* for not being solved. The implication is: humans have been doing their best but the problem is just too damn hard.
It IGNORES the humans who've BLOCKED solutions.
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Wow.
The hydrogen hype - long promoted by Big Oil to keep selling gas and building pipelines - is finally and swiftly crumbling.
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Powerful words from Governor Newsom of California
“The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. Everything else, you’re playing around the margins, playing around the edges. This is the cause, we’re experiencing the effect, now we seek remedy, & that's what this lawsuit's about."
The state of California is suing five major fossil fuel companies over their contribution to the climate crisis.
Just listen to these unflinching words by governor
@GavinNewsom
.
History in the making….
#EndFossilFuel
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What is incredible is not that funding has an effect - we know it does from lots of historical examples, industry's own documents, & ample psychological research - but rather that the faculty working in climate see *nothing wrong with being bought*. They see it as normal & fine.
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First, understand that the entire point of this deception campaign is to make people believe that Big Oil is indispensable for stopping climate change (that is, we need Big Oil's cooperation to save us from Big Oil). Thus, Big Oil needs to be the one writing climate policy.
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For years, fossil fuel divestment deniers claimed that divestment would have no effect on fossil fuel companies.
Now, research shows that divestment sends powerful signals to the market.
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Oil companies want us to believe that they’re passive suppliers of a product demanded by their addicted clientele. Tobacco companies argued the same thing. It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.
One of the main reasons why we get flooded with climate science denial and why greenhouse gas emissions keep rising: Oil And Gas Giants Spend Millions Lobbying To Block Climate Change Policies. A billion $ every five years from these five companies alone!
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This
@nytimes
piece alludes to this as "name-calling." We mustn't do that, we're told. Why? Because it's "polarizing," we're told. And that, apparently, is bad. We mustn't polarize with the truth.
Big Oil wants its feelings to come before both truth and law. Good luck with that.
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If anyone has any doubts whether Big Oil funding affects actual beliefs, decisions, & positions taken by researchers in the climate space, let today's display of selective ignorance & ethical vacuity, in one of the country's most elite institutions, put those doubts to rest.
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Huge news: federal appeals court rules that California climate cases against fossil fuel producers should proceed in state court, where they have a much better chance of winning.
Accountability is coming for Big Fossil.
California cities and counties can pursue climate litigation in state court, federal judges ruled in a serious setback for oil companies fending off the legal action 🎉
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I have to give a TWITTER APOLOGY to
@JesseJenkins
. I recently critiqued some work he was involved in on decarbonization on here, w/out reading the entire report. The more I think about that, the more it bothers me. It wasn't professional, & fwiw Jesse, I'm sorry for being hasty!
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• Most of the glaciers in the North Cascades and Glacier National Park would be melted. There would be less of a winter snow pack in the Cascades, Sierras, and Rockies, necessitating a major increase in storage reservoirs.
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Why climate suits against fossil producers will ultimately succeed:
1) Climate damages will only become worse
2) Evidence of industry malfeasance will only grow
3) Science linking climate damages to fossil products will only advance
This train’s getting to Chicago, fast or slow
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The API was warned of catastrophic global warming in 1959, commissioned its own study by 1968, and put together a task force to secretly monitor climate science by 1979. Then it became one of the leaders of climate denial and predatory delay from 1989 until today.
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According to InfluenceMap, in 2018 Exxon spent $56 million to brand itself as a climate leader (see p. 12):
Let that sink in. Exxon may be spending more trying to CONVINCE us of its "clean" activities than actually DOING them. There's a fun fact for you.
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• Marine life would be markedly changed. Maintaining runs of salmon and steelhead and other subarctic species in the Columbia River system would become increasingly difficult.
[endquote]
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The students understand: their futures are on the line, & they don't have the conflicts of interest their professors have indulgently normalized
The faculty are the ones who need to be educated - if they can be. Many, long on industry's payroll, have internalized its half-truths
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Bombshell exposé of oil money & corruption of researchers at Stanford.
Students are standing up for their futures & holding their "teachers" to account.
Excerpt thread
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Others like
@DoctorVive
have already pointed out the logical fallacies and outright falsehoods in this masterclass in shilling for Big Oil, written by the head of its policy trojan horse, the ironically named
@TheCLCouncil
. So I'll just note a few things.
Think of this OpEd as climate denial meets peak concern-trolling:
"There is a real danger that the climate debate is deteriorating into a game of name-calling, with oil and gas companies all too often portrayed as opponents of climate progress."
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And on and on.
Missing from many Stanford faculty's mental universe:
- The IPCC, International Energy Agency, & peer reviewed research all show that to meet Paris agreement, divestment from fossil fuel production is *necessary* - as a matter of fact.
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Worst birthday ever: Edward Teller warned the oil industry of global warming at its 100th-year celebration in 1959:
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