The Opinion Pages New York Times
Exxon’s Climate Concealment
By NAOMI ORESKES | OCT. 9, 2015
"The same thing has happened with climate change, as Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization, has been reporting in a series of articles based on internal documents from Exxon Mobil dating from the 1970s and interviews with former company scientists and employees.
Had Exxon been upfront at the time about the dangers of the greenhouse gases we were spewing into the atmosphere, we might have begun decades ago to develop a less carbon-intensive energy path to avert the worst impacts of a changing climate. Amazingly, politicians are still debating the reality of this threat, thanks in no small part to industry disinformation.
Government and academic scientists alerted policy makers to the potential threat of human-driven climate change in the 1960s and ’70s, but at that time climate change was still a prediction. By the late 1980s it had become an observed fact. …"
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One comment it received is worth mentioning over here: "Imagine that, pass thousands and thousands of regulations, make it so you have attorneys running the big business and the country. And you have a company that employees thousands of scientists and engineers covering up the truth. What the hell did you expect would happen? The lawyers to tell the truth and do what is morally right?"
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To which I responded:
What about the simple matter of scientists having a right to have their papers and information honestly represented?
My point is, it’s one thing to come up with every conceivable bias driven argument you can dream up to support one’s doubts.
It’s quite another to deliberately and repeatedly LIE about the work and information of bonafide experts
in critically important scientific fields.
Yet, today’s Republican/libertarian crowd seems to have adopted the strategy of complete disregard for integrity and the pursuit of, if not truth, an ever clearer understanding and appreciation of the ways of this marvelous Earth of ours.
Curiously about our one and only home-planet, desire to understand the web of complexities that she lives by, (yes our planet is a living organism, even if many can’t comprehend the concept).
Instead Republican/libertarian types offer us nothing but some self-certain God-given dogma, and to hell with everyone who doesn’t buy into their destructive self-indulgent pipe-dream.
Egomania rules.
Reminds me of a poem that nailed it:
Excerpted from 'The Drunken Driver Has The Right Of Way' by Ethan Coen.
Crown Publishing Group/Random House.
The loudest have the final say,
The wanton win, the rash hold sway,
The realist's rules of order say
The drunken driver has the right of way.
The Kubla Khan can butt in line;
The biggest brute can take what's mine;
When heavyweights break wind, that's fine;
No matter what a judge might say,
The drunken driver has the right of way.
The guiltiest feel free of guilt;
Who care not, bloom; who worry, wilt;
Plans better laid are rarely built
For forethought seldom wins the day;
The drunken driver has the right of way.
The most attentive and unfailing
Carefulness is unavailing
Wheresoever fools are flailing;
Wisdom there is held at bay;,
The drunken driver has the right of way.
De jure is de facto's slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high's grave;
When conscience leads you, it's astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.
It's only the naivest who'll
Deny this, that the reckless rule;
When facing an oncoming fool
The practiced and sagacious say
Watch out — one side — look sharp — gang way.
However much you plan and pray,
Alas, alack, tant pis, oy vey,
Now — heretofore — til Judgment Day,
The drunken driver has the right of way.
Excerpted from 'The Drunken Driver Has The Right Of Way'
by Ethan Coen.
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Globally we know weather is becoming ever more punishing. We The People didn't know (appreciate) what we had... now it's gone. Young people have a stark choice these days, pretend truth can be found in ancient books and dogmatic traditions - or get real about what's coming at us and a future nothing has prepared you for. The second choice will be whether you're committed to moving into that future, or too wedded to this global system that will be slowly, but relentlessly, crumbling before your eyes. Obviously, we old farts who managed nothing to slow the tempo of change won't be of any help in that brave new world… sorry kids, you're on your own.
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In response to the comment here's some more information on the deliberate campaign to attack and misrepresent climate science for pure self-interested personal gain.
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In response to the comment here's some more information on the deliberate campaign to attack and misrepresent climate science for pure self-interested personal gain.
2 comments:
But I worked in the wind business around 2000 and all the big players were oil companies who saw the politician's willingness to dump our money into wind as one big trough they were quite happy to sup at.
So, the idea that in general the Oil companies were against the global warming scam is utter bollocks.
Global warming "scam" - Sorry buddy sounds like you must be another Republican/libertarian zombie type. Always with the big shrill hateful attacks but empty when it comes to seriously follow up with substance.
Don't suppose you can explain what any of that has to do with deliberately and malicious lying about the science says and pulling dirty-tricks on professional scientists (yeah, yeah, I know you've like totally convinced yourself they are all in on some big scam to steal your guns and freedom or some whacked paranoia nonsense like that.).
It's such a challenge trying to comprehend what kind of mind-scape lies behind such clueless utterances. Where do you justify your own self-censorship that you can't even see what happening all around us, and with increasing tempo.
http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2013/December/Climate-Change/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/robert-brulle-inside-the-climate-change-countermovement/
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/25/fossil-fuel-firms-are-still-bankrolling-climate-denial-lobby-groups
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