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21 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Big Oil has known its products could cause climate collapse since at least 1959, when physicist Edward Teller warned the American Petroleum Institute of global warming due to fossil fuel burning "sufficient to melt the icecap & submerge New York". Happy #ShowYourStripes Day! 1/n
2/n: For more on Teller's warning to API, see @BenFranta: theguardian.com/environment/cl…
3/n: To learn more about Big Oil's history of climate deception, here's a thread with links to scholarship, reports, journalism, legal briefs, podcasts, cartoons, and more Twitter threads!:
4/n: For more info on #ShowYourStripes Day today, check out @ed_hawkins's timeline and visit: showyourstripes.info

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More from @GeoffreySupran

Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
2 Jun
When we learned in 2019 that @MIT might rename its climate science lecture hall the *Shell* Auditorium in exchange for $3m, we raised the alarm. It made the front page of the @BostonGlobe. Today, in a win of sorts, MIT announced a "course-correct". 1/n
2/n: The auditorium will instead be named the "Dixie Lee Bryant(1891) Lecture Hall", after the first woman to receive a BSc in Geology at MIT. This, as MIT rightly acknowledges, is a wonderful & "overdue recognition of women in science at MIT". eapsweb.mit.edu/sites/default/…
3/n: I am sad to say, however that this remains a greenwashing win for Shell, & yet another case of what @BenFranta & I term Big Oil's "colonization of academia".
theguardian.com/environment/cl…
Read 13 tweets
Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
28 May
Of Wednesday's 3 big blows to Big Oil, Shell losing in court strikes me as most immediately impactful because it ORDERS a fossil fuel firm to align with Paris Agreement, effective at once, & establishes legal precedents up the wazoo. Do others agree? 1/n
2/n: The Exxon and Chevron shareholder wins are, of course, also seismic in terms of political momentum-building towards further (shareholder) activism, but that's partly because shareholder engagement has literally yielded nothing for the past 25 years.
3/n: @GernotWagner seems to concur, noting that "Only one of these events [Shell's court loss] is bound up with measurable, concrete steps towards decarbonization." Regarding the shareholder wins at Chevron and Exxon, "what comes next is more open ended."bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Read 12 tweets
Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
27 May
For those claiming yesterday's (genuinely brilliant) Exxon/Chevron shareholder climate victories are an argument against fossil fuel divestment, remember that shareholder engagement with Big Oil achieved precisely nothing for 25 years. 1/n
insideclimatenews.org/news/16112015/…
2/n: Then divestment came along. As did #KeepItInTheGround & #Blockadia. As did grassroots organizing @350, @sunrisemvmt, @ExtinctionR, @GretaThunberg @Fridays4future et al. As did a collapsing climate & shifting energy econ. As did #ExxonKnew journalism.blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/t…
3/n: (@_aploy and I wrote about those dynamics in @sciam ⬆️.)

Only after all that - i.e. now - have shareholders made progress. This isn't an argument against shareholder activism per se; indeed, divestment campaigns generally propose an explicit "grace period" for engagement.
Read 5 tweets
Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
13 May
NEW: Our latest peer-reviewed research, out today, shows that ExxonMobil uses Big Tobacco's propaganda tactics to blame individuals for the climate change it has caused. THREAD.

📰 No pay wall: bit.ly/ExxonPropaganda Image
2/n: This is the first quantitative, academic analysis of how ExxonMobil has used language to subtly yet systematically shape public discourse about climate change in misleading ways. It's published by me and @NaomiOreskes in the journal @OneEarth_CP.
3/n: Specifically, our computational analysis of 212 ExxonMobil documents spanning 1972-2019 shows that the company has publicly emphasised certain terms & topics, while avoiding others. This selective rhetoric mimics the tobacco industry in 3 key ways.

Let me count the ways... Image
Read 28 tweets
Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
22 Feb
In 1966, Shell asked scientist James Lovelock "to consider the possible global consequences of air pollution from...the ever-increasing rate of combustion of fossil fuels."

It's an early example of how Big Oil studied climate, colonised academia, & invented climate denial 1/n
2/n: This "prehistory of climate change denialism" is captured by @leaharonowsky's terrific essay last year, which you can read open-access here: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/71…
3/n: So in 1966 Lovelock, wrote a report called 'Combustion of Fossil Fuels: Large Scale Atmospheric Effects', which, as @leaharonowsky observes, "brought Shell up to speed on the latest fossil-fuel climate research".
Read 18 tweets
Geoffrey Supran Profile picture
30 Oct 20
TODAY, in our peer-reviewed follow-up analysis putting to bed ExxonMobil's attacks on our work, I & @NaomiOreskes delineate "three distinct ways in which the data demonstrate [they] misled the public" about climate change: bit.ly/ExxonAddendum

Let me count the ways...THREAD
2/n: TLDR:

Both Exxon & Mobil variously engaged in both climate science & in climate denial, & continued to do so after they merged to become ExxonMobil.

"We now conclude with even greater confidence that Exxon, Mobil, & ExxonMobil Corp misled the public about climate change."
3/n: WAY1⃣: "From a statistical standpoint it is essentially certain" that "Exxon+ExxonMobil's private+academic documents predominantly acknowledge" climate science while ExxonMobil's ads "overwhelmingly promote doubt".

"This unambiguously reaffirms our original conclusion."
Read 15 tweets

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