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.
• 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.
• 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]
As these impacts occur before our eyes, remember that Exxon was on notice over forty years ago, then covered it up.
Climate litigation is often compared to tobacco litigation (similar patterns of deception & harmful products) & people often ask why it's realistic to expect the fossil industry to contract substantially or completely, given the cigarette industry is still around & profitable 1/n
It's a good question! The first time I heard it, I didn't have a good answer.
But now I think there are a bunch of reasons why Big Carbon is in a WORSE position than Big Tobacco.
The first & probably most important is replacement. The fossil fuel industry is in competition - existential competition - w/ other sources of energy. Those sources of energy are ultimately going to replace the fossil industry, the questions are 1) how completely & 2) how quickly
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
This promotes intellectual and ideological homogeneity, often in the fossil fuel industry’s favor.
For instance, at Harvard, where I helped to teach the College’s primary climate change course twice, I (and countless other students) were taught that:
1) Climate change is a “wickedly complex” problem and essentially unsolvable
2) Solar and wind are incapable of replacing fossil fuels in the foreseeable future
3) Carbon pricing is the only policy that makes sense - and is unworkable at anything less than a global scale
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.
The key document is "Two Energy Futures: A National Choice for the 80s," a public policy book published by the American Petroleum Institute.
In it, the API argued to expand fossil production in the US, open federal lands for extraction, use coal-to-liquids technology & so on.
Of course, the policies advocated by the API would lead to a major increase in CO2 pollution, and by 1980 the dangers of global warming were of public concern.
So the API felt a need to reassure the public about CO2 and global warming.
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!
It's like critiquing a book you haven't completely read, which is one of my pet peeves in professional history. It's lazy and not very helpful...if going public with criticism, the least one can do is read the whole thing. (Obviously, that makes for a better critique too.)
Despite its informal nature, Twitter is still public, and professional standards apply. I tweeted some thoughts after reviewing the report for a few hours, but that wasn't sufficient - nor fair to the authors of the report.
At last spring's faculty discussion of fossil fuel divestment, the dean of the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences (who's also a former employee of both Exxon and Chevron) encouraged faculty to oppose divestment ...
There are at least 3 big problems with the reflexive call to "believe" science:
1) It isn't historically defensible. Sexism, racism, & eugenics were all scientific, as were a range of assuredly safe products & medical practices now known to be harmful. "Science" can be wrong.
Science & its institutions are powerful tools for finding truth. But ultimately we should believe things b/c they are true, not b/c "science said so."
There's a crucial difference between using science as evidence of truth vs. using it as an absolute, abstract authority.