Thread by @DoctorVive

I'm on my way to DC to watch the #SlipperySix fossil-fuel disinformation hearings with some fierce allies, and I plan to live-tweet the day.

Tonight I want to post some "pre-bunking" of a couple of talking points we're sure to see tomorrow.

THREAD

https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1453442837094227970

As exposed by @RBrulle @MichaelEMann @GeoffreySupran @BenFranta @NaomiOreskes and others, the cornerstone of the current fossil-fuel disinformation strategy is the rebranding of oil and gas companies as trustworthy partners in the clean-energy transition.

2/n

This rebranding has been achieved largely through false advertising & corporate sponsorship of academic programs, as well integration into scientific events & the COPs.

Hence the need for @cleancreatives and the @adsnotfit2print campaign.

adsnotfittoprint.com

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This rebranding enables a coordinated slight-of-hand, whereby the oil and gas companies represent themselves as committed to fighting #climatechange, while their trade groups lobby Congress and run social-media ads against climate policy.

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For example, a @nytclimate investigation by @HirokoTabuchi showed that this summer @APIenergy spent $500,000 in six weeks on Facebook ads attacking Biden's climate bill.

The ads targeted individual members of Congress & were viewed at least 21 m times.

nytimes.com/2021/09/30/cli…

The fossil-fuel execs testifying before the @OversightDems will claim that they've committed to net zero emissions, and they will imply that they lead the research program into clean energy technologies.

None of these messages are true.

6/n

The @IEA reports that 2020 clean energy investment by oil & gas cos accounted for only around 1% of the industry's total capital expenditure.

This means that they spend less on clean energy than they do on extracting new pockets of oil and gas.

7/n

iea.org/reports/world-…

According to the IEA, upstream oil and gas investment actually rose 6% in 2019 and is expected to rise by about 10% this year. (2020 was weird.)

In other words, instead of finding ways to replace fossil fuels, oil & gas companies are finding ways to extract more of them.

8/n

Yet the science shows, and the @IEA agrees, that in order to halt heating at 1.5°, fossil fuel companies cannot extract any new pockets of oil or gas.

Yet that is exactly what they are doing.

iea.org/reports/net-ze…

9/n

More receipts here:

nature.com/articles/s4158…

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

nature.com/articles/natur…

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For more details, see these panels from the 2021 Report of @TheLancet, "Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Code Red for a Healthy Future."

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So, to recap: these numbers demonstrate that oil and gas company pledges to reach net zero emissions are disinformation.

These pledges are false advertising: statements that misrepresent their business and their contribution to the accelerating climate crisis.

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And the amount of 💸 that the oil & gas trade groups spend on lobbying & advertising *against* climate policy demonstrate that the industry does not support the goals of the #ParisAgreement, but fully operates to take us to 3°C of warming by 2100 and more beyond.

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And, to be clear: the last time Earth was 3°C warmer—3 m years ago, before humans even existed—camels & alligators lived in the Arctic. The coastline of what would become the eastern US ended about 100 miles into what is now NC. And much of the planet was bare savannah.

14/n

If we allow our planet to heat up 3°C by 2100, its current configuration will break down and be rearranged into something much closer to that Pliocene system.

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But this breakdown & reconstitution won't happen in an orderly transformation over tens of thousands of years; it will happen in a geological instant, destabilizing the conditions of our current civilizations and potentially killing billions.

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Pace the @IPCC_CH: if the world heats up 3°C by 2100, changes in the hydrological cycle will make agriculture "unviable" in the equatorial region, most of Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, most of South Asia, the entire Mediterranean, as well as in the Great Planes & California.

That is a lot of territory suddenly struggling to grow food.

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All of which is to say that the oil and gas executives who are testifying tomorrow are lying to sustain a business that will lead unimaginable and irreversible death and destruction.

19/n

Let's do everything we can to make these Hearings a real step towards removing them from the pinnacle of global power.

/fin

#SlipperySix #EndClimateSilence