Thread by @BenFranta

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)

https://twitter.com/Oliver_Geden/status/1250143959445356544

Like all effective misleading frames, there IS some truth to it. Replacing fossil fuels is, of course, a technological process. But it's not JUST a technological process, nor is that necessarily the bottleneck to progress.

To make solutions, we should look at the WHOLE problem.

The authors name lots of reasons why climate action has been delayed for decades:

Benefits far-off, hard to define & mostly help poor people
Costs immediate, high & hurt powerful groups
World is "multipolar" & lacks "responsible hegemon"
Climate impacts "profound[ly] uncertain"

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.

In particular, it ignores the fact that the fossil fuel industry & the pro-corporate movement have spent hundreds of millions of dollars per year for decades to defeat solutions, at all levels of society.

It treats as shadowboxing what is actually a flesh & blood match.

The "wicked problem" framing also ignores the fact that humans developed a mechanism for solving collective action problems a long, long time ago - it's called government. And governments have tried to address global warming, yet have been stymied by the corporate opposition.

Even in 2020, the authors emphasize uncertainty in climate science, an old delay trick.

Uncertainty around climate disaster is like not knowing whether 1 billion or 2 billion people will die in a nuclear war. It's not a problem you finesse. It's a problem you AVOID.

Lots of misleading tropes here too. One: fossil gas is a climate solution.

The article says fossil gas is "much cleaner" than coal & that the US has "cut down on its emissions" thanks to fossil gas.

That's false or misleading at best, for at least three reasons.

First, carbon dioxide isn't the only form of "emissions." Methane matters too, & fossil gas emits a lot of it. When you take that into account, gas doesn't look so clean compared to oil or coal.

That alone makes it misleading to describe fossil gas as a "cleaner" fossil fuel.

As a point of rhetoric, calling fossil gas "cleaner" is like calling one poison "healthier" than another. No fossil fuel is clean.

Strychnine might kill you more slowly than cyanide, but that doesn't mean it's "healthier" for you.

Second, even if fossil gas didn't emit methane (which it does), its carbon dioxide intensity is still unsustainably high.

"We'll only use it for a short amount of time," we often hear.

But once gas infrastructure is built, it's used for decades.

Third, gas doesn't just compete with coal. It also competes with clean non-fossil energy sources, so it's misleading to consider its overall climate effect in comparison only to coal.

Comparing to coal alone might make sense if our ONLY choices were gas or coal, but they're not.

Finally, we often hear that fossil gas is needed to "back up" intermittent renewables. The problem is that the vast majority - 95% - of fossil gas used for electricity is not used for this purpose. And batteries are increasingly used instead.

In the end, the idea that fossil gas cuts "emissions" is misleading. There's no denying that gas emits less CO2 than coal when burned. But that's only half the truth. The other half of the truth doesn't look so good for gas & is swept under the rug.

Second misleading trope: carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) can save fossil fuels.

The authors say fossil fuels could become "nearly emission free."

First this is factually wrong because CCS is basically irrelevant to oil (& transportation fuels).

Second, the authors frame CCS as a "fledgling" technology. This is wrong because CCS is not new.

Here's Imperial Oil (a subsidiary of Exxon) in 1980: "Technology exists to remove CO2 from stack gases but removal of only 50% of the CO2 would double the cost of power generation."

And here's Exxon internally assessing the climate problem in 1981: "The cost of scrubbing large quantities of CO2 from flue gases is exorbitant ... energy conservation or shifting to renewable energy sources, represent the only options that might make sense."

In other words: the issue is not whether CCS exists as a technology. It does.

The issue is that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels plus CCS. And that's only becoming more true over time.

Yes, technology improves & costs can come down. But there's a limit, especially for mature technologies. & no matter what, CCS will be a cost-adding activity for fossil fuels, a form of on-site waste cleanup. It will only serve to make fossil fuels less competitive in the market.

Moreover, the fossil industry knew 40 yrs ago that CCS, if economical, could save it (one of the biggest & most profitable enterprises on Earth) from early shutdown. The problem was CCS wasn't economical. And the industry, with massive resources, hasn't been able to change that.

So I'm skeptical when industry points to a grad student or startup & says, "We're working on CCS!"

If an idea to save your multi-trillion dollar industry from its greatest threat were ACTUALLY promising, I presume you wouldn't be outsourcing your research to a few grad students.

Anyway, the authors frame CCS as a new, promising technology on the verge of transforming fossil fuels into a clean energy source.

This ignores the actual facts & history of CCS - and plays into the fossil industry's misleading efforts to frame itself as sustainable.

Another misleading trope: hydrogen is a clean energy source.

The authors mention it can be used "without producing any new emissions" & frame it as part of a "zero-emission economy".

Again, this is only half true.

In particular, the authors neglect to mention how the vast majority (95%) of hydrogen is produced: from fossil gas.

Fossil gas is chemically reformed to make hydrogen, in the process releasing CO2. & of course during production & transport that fossil gas also releases methane.

Hydrogen from fossil gas is a fossil fuel in disguise. But the authors don't mention this.

There are, of course, some truths here. But sometimes the greatest deceptions are half-truths: not only in what's said, but what isn't.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-…