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Politics of Global Warming

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Well that is at least an honest post and I appreciate honesty. I have personally come from the pro global warming opinion & only changed my opinions after being confronted with articles by what seemed to me vested interests. I still took the plunge & still read that article. Whether a person is bias is often mute, it what is being posted is of importance and whether that is right or wrong. I learned a long while ago that re-examining your opinions and perspectives on many issues is helpful, as often as you can do it.
 
Well that is at least an honest post and I appreciate honesty.
An honest post? I basically told you that you had not engaged the dialog. If you appreciate honesty, why not engage the dialog? We both know why - it's not really a dialog you're after.
I have personally come from the pro global warming opinion & only changed my opinions after being confronted with articles by what seemed to me vested interests.
Too nebulous. What article? What vested interests?
I still took the plunge & still read that article.
It was hardly a plunge but I did read the article. My summation of my impressions I gave.
Whether a person is biased is often mute, it what is being posted is of importance and whether that is right or wrong.
What are you referring to here - or who? Your sentence structure is difficult, making your meaning obscure (I did make one edit for clarity). I have to make a leap - are you saying my bias is mute? I am posting what interests me. Whether what I post is 'right' or 'wrong' is really not the issue - I am not dictating a pov, nor am I much interested in convincing anyone of anything. I am looking - on this thread, anyway - at the politics of Global Warming.
I learned a long while ago that re-examining your opinions and perspectives on many issues is helpful, as often as you can do it.
Sounds like a good policy. I trust you follow it. However, I will repeat what I said in my previous post: My advice is to spend one's valuable time reading the actual science, and the dialog amongst scientists, rather than opinion pieces that posit contentions, and confabulate set-ups, that do not exist. In short - draw your own conclusions from the scientists themselves rather than depend on the spin and secondary and tertiary interpretations of others of the scientific reports. You would be better served, and will be better able to spot the problems in the article you linked to.
 
Exxon Scientist Warned them 40 Years Ago they were Causing Global Warming: They Silenced Him
LINK: Exxon Scientist Warned them 40 Years Ago they were Causing Global Warming: They Silenced Him
TEXT: "Information has recently surfaced about Exxon-Mobil’s willingness to sacrifice humanity’s long-term survival for short-term profits. The first warnings came in the late 1970s from one of the company’s own scientists. For the next four decades, Exxon worked tirelessly to cover it up, confuse the issue, and deny it altogether.

"In July of 1977, senior Exxon scientist James Black gave a presentation before company executives titled “The Greenhouse Effect.” In a summary, Black warned:

" 'The earth’s atmosphere presently contains about 330 ppm of CO2. This gas does not absorb an appreciable amount of the incoming solar energy but it can absorb and return part of the infrared radiation which the earth radiates toward space. CO2, therefore, contributes to warming the lower atmosphere by what has been ca1led the Greenhouse Effect.'
"Black noted that “in 2075 A.D., CO2 concentration will peak at a level about twice what could be considered normal.” He also accurately predicted the effects on the Arctic: “It seems like1y that any general temperature increase would be accentuated ln the polar regions, possibly as much as two or three-fold.” At the time, Black warned that, based on the knowledge available at the time, humankind would have “a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

"When Exxon began to further its own research into the matter, its main concern was not the effect of fossil fuels on the planet, but rather the dangers to its own profits. In the late 1980s, Exxon put its resources into manufacturing doubt, suppressing scientific data, and giving out misinformation. In the 1990s, scientists confirmed James Black’s findings, and even concluded possible scenarios were more alarming than what he had predicted. Instead of taking or promoting action, however, Exxon did just the opposite. The company established the “Global Climate Coalition,” an oil industry organization dedicated to preventing government action on fossil fuel emission control. Exxon also worked with the American Petroleum Institute on propaganda campaigns designed to create doubt about the effects of fossil fuels on the world’s climate.

"Today, we are witnessing the consequences of Exxon-Mobil’s focus on short-term profits over our collective survival. Michael Mann, who heads up Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, told Inside Climate News:

" 'All it would’ve taken is for one prominent fossil fuel CEO to know this was about more than just shareholder profits, and a question about our legacy…But now, because of the cost of inaction – what I call the ‘procrastination penalty’ – we face a far more uphill battle.'
"That “uphill battle” will cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars. As a corporate “person,” Exxon-Mobil should by rights face criminal charges of depraved indifference, deadly assault, and attempted mass murder – and put on trial. If found guilty, Exxon-Mobil should face the death penalty – by being put out of business, its assets forfeited to United States taxpayers.

"Sadly, as we know, Corporate Personhood confers human privileges, but not human accountability."
Climate Change Deniers Should Be In Prison...
TEXT: "Published on Sep 21, 2015: Thom Hartmann asks climate change denier Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Analyst-Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)."
 
Progressive Roundtable - Jail The Climate Deniers!
TEXT: "Published on Sep 19, 2015: Another day, another warning sign that climate change could soon spin rapidly out of control. According to a new study out of Lund University in Sweden - the melting of arctic sea ice - which is now happening at an alarmingly fast rate - is increasing the release of methane into the atmosphere. So why is this such a big deal? Easy - Methane is one of the strongest of the natural greenhouse gases. It’s about 80 times more potent than CO2 - and while it may not get as much attention as its cousin CO2 - it certainly can do as much - if not more - damage to our planet. As my recent documentary "Last Hours" pointed out - a massive release of methane could produce a sudden global warming event that could lead to an extinction of species on a wide scale - including humans."
 
Scientist Richard Werthamer on Exxon and climate change | FRONTLINE
TEXT: "Published on Sep 15, 2015: Former Exxon scientist Richard Werthamer discusses the company's early research on climate change in this interview conducted in collaboration with InsideClimate News."
 
In the past four decades, the world has lost 50% of its vertebrate wildlife. But across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep decline in media coverage. In 2014, according to a study at Cardiff University, there were as many news stories broadcast by the BBC and ITV about Madeleine McCann (who went missing in 2007) as there were about the entire range of environmental issues.

Let the market decide: this is the way in which governments seek to resolve planetary destruction. Leave it to the conscience of consumers, while that conscience is muted and confused by advertising and corporate lies. In a near-vacuum of information, we are each left to decide what we should take from other species and other people, what we should allocate to ourselves or leave to succeeding generations.


Comment: There may be flowing water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth?


A new report suggests fish numbers have halved since 1970. Pacific bluefin tuna, which once roamed the seas in untold millions, have been reduced to an estimated 40,000, yet still they are pursued. Coral reefs are under such pressure that most could be gone by 2050. And in our own deep space, our desire for exotic fish rips through a world scarcely better known to us than the red planet’s surface. Trawlers are now working at depths of 2,000 metres. We can only guess at what they could be destroying.

Only 3% of the water on this planet is fresh; and of that, two-thirds is frozen. Yet we lay waste to the accessible portion. Sixty per cent of the water used in farming is needlessly piddled away by careless irrigation. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are sucked dry, while what remains is often so contaminated that it threatens the lives of those who drink it. In the UK, domestic demand is such that the upper reaches of many rivers disappear during the summer.


Every year, clever new ways of wasting stuff are devised, and every year we become more inured to the pointless consumption of the world’s precious resources. With each subtle intensification, the baseline of normality shifts. It should not be surprising to discover that the richer a country becomes, the less its people care about their impacts on the living planet.
Our alienation from the world of wonders, with which we evolved, has only intensified since David Bowie described a girl stumbling through a “sunken dream”, on her way to be “hooked to the silver screen”, where a long series of distractions diverts her from life’s great questions. The song, of course, was Life on Mars.
 
In the past four decades, the world has lost 50% of its vertebrate wildlife. But across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep decline in media coverage. In 2014, according to a study at Cardiff University, there were as many news stories broadcast by the BBC and ITV about Madeleine McCann (who went missing in 2007) as there were about the entire range of environmental issues.
Interesting study. Thanks for pointing it out.
Let the market decide
: this is the way in which governments seek to resolve planetary destruction. Leave it to the conscience of consumers, while that conscience is muted and confused by advertising and corporate lies. In a near-vacuum of information, we are each left to decide what we should take from other species and other people, what we should allocate to ourselves or leave to succeeding generations.
It's a paucity of philosophical thinking - or even (and you'll like this one, Mike) really understanding religious messages. ;) As Pope Francis is demonstrating. Jesus was a radical not a conservative. As was Buddha. JMO.
A new report suggests fish numbers have halved since 1970. Pacific bluefin tuna, which once roamed the seas in untold millions, have been reduced to an estimated 40,000, yet still they are pursued. Coral reefs are under such pressure that most could be gone by 2050. And in our own deep space, our desire for exotic fish rips through a world scarcely better known to us than the red planet’s surface. Trawlers are now working at depths of 2,000 metres. We can only guess at what they could be destroying.
Exactly so. :(
Only 3% of the water on this planet is fresh; and of that, two-thirds is frozen. Yet we lay waste to the accessible portion. Sixty per cent of the water used in farming is needlessly piddled away by careless irrigation. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are sucked dry, while what remains is often so contaminated that it threatens the lives of those who drink it. In the UK, domestic demand is such that the upper reaches of many rivers disappear during the summer.
Great points.
Every year, clever new ways of wasting stuff are devised, and every year we become more inured to the pointless consumption of the world’s precious resources. With each subtle intensification, the baseline of normality shifts. It should not be surprising to discover that the richer a country becomes, the less its people care about their impacts on the living planet.
True enough. In fact are any of us aware of what it 'costs' to save our countless e-mails, twitter posts and instagram pictures? The reality of that alone is sobering to the point of mental numbness.
Our alienation from the world of wonders, with which we evolved, has only intensified since David Bowie described a girl stumbling through a “sunken dream”, on her way to be “hooked to the silver screen”, where a long series of distractions diverts her from life’s great questions. The song, of course, was Life on Mars.
Great post, Mike. Took me a while to get to it. Well worth the re-reading. Thank you several times! :) Lots of food for thought.
 
New Hampshire State Supreme Court Upholds $236 Million Verdict Against Exxon-Mobil Over Pollution ~ October 3, 2015
LINK: NH State Supreme Court Upholds $236 Million Verdict Against Exxon-Mobil Over Pollution
TEXT: "New Hampshire’s highest court this week correctly upheld a $236 million judgment against Exxon-Mobil, one of the worst corporate polluters on the planet. The oil corporation that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars spreading lies regarding the global climate crisis will now hopefully have to take responsibility for cleaning up the mess created by a chemical additive in its gasoline, found in nearly 10% of the private wells in New Hampshire. Of course, Exxon-Mobil will now try to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

"The chemical at the heart of the litigation is known as methyl tert-butyl ether, or MTBE. Banned in New Hampshire since 2007, it is an oxygenate that reduces carbon dioxide emissions while raising octane levels. It is also highly toxic when spilled at filling stations or leaked from underground storage tanks. Removing it from soil and groundwater is costly. The EPA began phasing it out around the turn of the present century. In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act. Originally, Representatives Tom DeLay and Joe Barton of the oil-producing State of Texas attempted to include provisions shielding Exxon-Mobil and other petroleum companies from MTBE liability. However, those provisions were ultimately stripped from the bill before then-president George W. Bush signed it into law.

"New Hampshire is not the first place that the Exxon-Mobil has run into legal difficulties over MTBE contamination. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Geological Survey found elevated levels of MTBE in wells in Santa Monica, California. In 2009, after over a decade of legal battles, Exxon-Mobil – along with Chevron, BP and other major oil companies – settled the case for $423 million.

"Between 2004 and 2006, MTBE contamination was found in two Maryland communities. In 2009, a court ordered Exxon-Mobil to pay $150 million in compensatory damages to local residents.

"The current case in New Hampshire has been dragging on for well over a dozen years and has cost the state approximately $10 million. The complexity of the case required the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office to bring in outside counsel specializing in litigation between state and local government and corporate polluters. A founding partner of that firm, Vic Sher of San Francisco-based Sher-Leff, told PR Newswire,

Our goal is to ensure that the costs associated with the contamination of drinking water is paid for by those who are responsible for the pollution, not the citizens…Exxon-Mobil knew of the risks associated with adding MTBE to gasoline and failed to warn the State or the EPA about those dangers.

"Sher adds, “It sends a clear message to companies that they are responsible for the environmental consequences of their business decisions.”

"Exxon-Mobil is not taking it lying down. Todd Spitler, a spokesman for Exxon-Mobil argues that:

MTBE contamination has been found in New Hampshire because someone spilled gasoline in New Hampshire, not because it was added to gasoline in a refinery in another state…[New Hampshire] should have sued the parties responsible for spilling gasoline, not the refiners who were compelled by law to add oxygenates to gasoline.

"In a prepared statement, current New Hampshire Attorney General Joseph A. Foster (the fifth AG to work on this case since 2003) said: “This historic decision sends a clear message that New Hampshire will not permit polluters to endanger the health of its citizens and destroy its natural resources.”

"Exxon-Mobil is expected to appeal the ruling."
 
AP News Caves to Right-Wing: Will No Longer Use Term ‘Climate Change Denier’: Will Use ‘Climate Change Doubter’ ~ September 29, 2015
LINK: AP News Caves to Right-Wing: Will No Longer Use Term 'Climate Change Denier': Will Use 'Climate Change Doubter'
TEXT: "If readers had any doubt that the corporate “mainstream” media was any more than a puppet for Corporate America, doubt no longer. By pandering to whining climate change deniers, the Associated Press (AP) has taken a big step toward indicating that it no longer intends to present real, unbiased news. Instead of using the accurate description of “Climate Change Denier,” journalists in the corporate media will be expected to employ the Orwellian term, “Climate Change Doubter.”

"It may seem like a matter of semantics, but it is significant. It is the same difference as that between the words “atheist” and “agnostic.” Since the former denies the existence of a Deity altogether and the latter is still open to the possibility, the word “agnostic” is more palatable to religious conservatives. Likewise, the term “climate doubter” suggests that the denier isn’t necessarily a corporate stooge.

"It still amounts to putting lipstick on a pig.

"Since 1954, journalists have looked to the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, or simply, the “AP Stylebook,” as a guide to standard practices and principles when it comes to presenting news stories. Since then, it has also become the leading reference for magazines, public relations firms and corporate marketing departments. The AP Stylebook is updated annually. It is a style that – in theory, at least – is meant to present news and information in an unbiased, objective manner.

"That went out the window last week. On September 22nd, this short addendum was inserted into the AP Stylebook”: “To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters for those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers” (emphasis added).

"The change, oddly enough, came as the result of pressure from members of a committee at Center for Inquiry, a non-profit organization with the stated mission of “foster(ing) a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry and human values.” The organization counts many prominent scientists among its members. Members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry felt that “skeptic” was a more accurate term. Here is what they wrote in an open letter to the media:

Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.

"In the wake of this letter, the climate change advocacy organization ClimateTruth.org began petitioning the AP to stop giving climate deniers any credibility that the term “skeptic” might suggest. At the same time, Center for Inquiry president and CEO Ronald Lindsay stated that use of the term doubter “still imbues those who reject scientific fact with an intellectual legitimacy they have not earned.” Lindsay also expressed concern that the public “will still not get a clear picture of which public figures are basing their positions on reality, and which are not.”

"Kent Davies of the Climate Investigations Center added that the “change in terminology would give an increasingly marginalized minority of mostly non-scientists and crackpots new credibility.”

"That is just the way the fossil fuels industry would like it.

"The AP continues to draw fire. Ryan Grim, who heads up Huffington Post’s Washington Bureau, agrees: “To call them ‘doubters’… is almost always simply false. It presumes knowledge of somebody’s state of mind, but more often is just inaccurate.” Respected climate scientist Michael Mann wrote to ThinkProgress, stating that “to call them anything else, be it ‘skeptic’ or ‘doubter,’ is to grant an undeserved air of legitimacy to something that is simply not legitimate.” Dr. Joseph Romm, another scientist at the Center for American Progress, laid it on the line in no uncertain terms: “[It is] one of the most pointless, if not senseless moves in the storied history of the AP Stylebook.” He compared the issue to that of the tobacco industry, which continued to deny the connection between cigarettes and respiratory disease for at least three decades after medical science made the connection. Romm added:

The media doesn’t even pay attention to people who deny the health dangers of tobacco smoke anymore. So why treat those who deny the reality – and danger –of human-caused climate change any differently?

"Not surprisingly, climate science deniers are quite pleased with the new addition to the AP Stylebook. Oddly enough, the change was defended by science writer Seth Borenstein, who has reported extensively on the effects of global climate change and who has been attacked by right wingers on this issue. Recently, Borenstein was interviewed on National Public Radio. He said the decision was “all about precision” as well as an attempt to bring consistency: “We at the AP hadn’t used deniers, skeptics, or doubters in any regular way, there was no Stylebook entry there…one of the problems with denier is that it has a connotation….that is associated with the Holocaust in many ways.”

"Borenstein and the AP Stylebook editors may have had good intentions. But remember that old proverb about the road to hell. The unfortunate aspect of this change is that it is giving climate deniers more legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the low-information public. That is the last thing the conversation needs at this point.

"In the meantime, with all due respect to the venerable institution that is the Associated Press, we in the progressive media will continue to use the accurate label: climate change deniers."
 
Marsha Blackburn invents new way to deny global warming: Humans are not ‘the cause for carbon emissions’ ~ September 24, 2015
LINK: Marsha Blackburn invents new way to deny global warming: Humans are not ‘the cause for carbon emissions’
TEXT: "House energy committee Vice Chair Marsha Blackburn took global warming denial to the next level this week by suggesting that humans were not even causing carbon emissions.

"The same week that Pope Francis was scheduled to speak in Washington on the need to address climate change, Blackburn spoke to the BBC as part of a Radio 4 documentary, “Climate Change – Are we Feeling Lucky?”

"Blackburn declared to BBC Radio 4 that the “jury is still out saying man is the cause for global warming, after the earth started to cool 13 years ago.”

"After an interviewer pointed out that scientific data showed a substantial rise in temperature on the surface of the Earth, Blackburn countered that “we’ve cooled almost 1 degree (F)” in the last 13 years.

"Blackburn said that she based her arguments after speaking to “different researchers,” but she declined to name them.

“There are some that feel like human activity is the cause for carbon emissions and because of that we need to revert to where we were in the 1870s for carbon emissions,” she explained. “I just choose to disagree with that.”

"The BBC asked if there was any scientific evidence that could change the congresswoman’s mind. “I don’t think you will see me being persuaded,” she said.

"Blackburn also argued during the interview that the theory of evolution was false, the BBC reported.

"Scientists agree that human carbon emissions are dwarfed by natural carbon emissions. But as the New Scientist pointed out, an increase in emissions that started during the Industrial Age has thrown the Earth’s natural carbon cycle out of balance. “But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions,” the magazine explained in 2007. “Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon ‘sinks’.”

"Royal Society Professor Brian Hoskins called Blackburn’s views “absolutely staggering.” “It is nonsense to say the world has cooled,” Hoskins remarked. “If no evidence will persuade Ms. Blackburn of climate change, that shows how well-founded her views are.” "
 
Elon Musk says humanity is currently running 'the dumbest experiment in history' ~ Sep. 1, 2015
LINK: Elon Musk says humanity is currently running 'the dumbest experiment in history'
TEXT: "People are running "the dumbest experiment in history" by continuing to burn fossil fuels, Elon Musk said in an interview earlier this year with Wait But Why's Tim Urban. As Musk explained: "The greater the change to the chemical composition of the physical, chemical makeup of the oceans and atmosphere [due to increased carbon emissions], the greater the long-term effect will be. Given that at some point they'll run out anyway, why run this crazy experiment to see how bad it'll be? We know it's at least some bad, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it'll be really bad."

"Musk, a renewables entreprenuer who serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and chairman of SolarCity, has clear reasons for saying this, yet it's hard to deny his logic. Use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas will end either when we run out of them or when we do enough damage to the earth that we have to stop.

"If you use data from oil and gas giant BP, at present rates of extraction we'll be out of oil by 2067, natural gas by 2069, and coal by 2121. It's possible that we'll discover more oil trapped in tar sands or deep under the ocean, but it just gets more expensive and riskier to extract. And we'll still run out. What's more we don't even want to use all the fossil fuels we have. Burning nonrenewable fuels makes the atmosphere warmer, and burning coal is worse than using other energy sources. If we get to that point, the limiting factor won't be how many years of fossil fuels we have left, it will be how much more atmospheric change the planet can take. Some researchers already think we've reached the point where there's enough carbon in the atmosphere to causecatastrophic impacts to humanity.

"That's why video game designer/Iron Man-protagonist Musk (and yes, genius tech entrepreneur) got involved with and became the CEO of the electric car company that became Tesla. Tesla's official mission is "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible."

"If Tesla can convince the world that cars can run without oil, that would make a huge difference, as burning oil is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions, and getting electricity from a power plant through an electrical grid is more efficient than burning gas.

"Even in places in the US where coal provides a good proportion of electrical power, electric vehicles are still cleaner than gas-powered cars. But for true sustainability, electricity production needs to change too. In particular, countries need to stop using coal as soon as possible.

"Sustainable alternatives include renewables like hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal power. Nuclear power is also far cleaner than any sort of fossil fuel energy source. Musk's comment about a dangerous experiment echos what scientists have been saying for decades.

"In the 1950s, seminal global warming scientist Roger Revelle wrote about our industrial fuel consumption that "Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future." That line that would go on to be the most quoted statement in history of global warming, according to Daniel Yergin's "The Quest." It's just that now we're that much further along in that geophysical experiment, and if we don't put the brakes on it soon, we won't know how bad it'll be.

"Here's a Wait But Why chart that explains where we are:

fossil%20fuels%20timeline.png
Wait But Why



"Right now, we're just going along using fossil fuels, despite the fact that we know this is a bad idea and it has an endpoint. The sooner we get past that point and move to the next era in energy, the better."
 
The reality of climate change | David Puttnam | TEDxDublin
TEXT: "Published on Dec 1, 2014: This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. David Puttnam looks at Climate Change through different lenses, all of which reveal the unsustainable ways in which we are living. Climate Change is real, but throughout history humans have failed to set political and economic concerns aside for our greater good. Will we ignore this latest warning? Lord David Puttnam produced award-winning films including Chariots of Fire, Bugsy Malone, and The Mission. He now works at the intersection between education, media, and policy. In 2007 he was appointed Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill."
 
"When 9 million people lose their livelihood, a nation starts to break down."

Soil Not Oil Conference ~ Dr. Vandana Shiva Keynote Speaker

TEXT: "Published on Sep 13, 2015: Keynote Speech by Dr. Vandana Shiva at the Soil Not Oil International Conference Practicing Sustainable Agriculture to Restore Ecosystems and Mitigate Climate Change was held on September 4th & 5th, 2015 at the Memorial Civic Center Complex of Richmond California.

"Inspired by Dr. Vandana Shiva’s book, Soil Not Oil, the 2015 Soil Not Oil Conference examined the crisis on food security while highlighting the implications of oil-based agro-chemicals and fossil fuels in soil depletion and climate change. The first edition of this conference focused on educating, through national and international experiences, about the multiple problems and possible practical solutions that surround the profound consequences resulting from synthetic enhanced agriculture in industrialized nations.

"The conference organizer, Soil Not Oil Coalition, is a cross-sector, multi-level and inter-ethnic alliance of over 50 organizations, scientists, farmers, businesses and individuals coordinated by the Biosafety Alliance."
 
Congressmen want probe of Exxon Mobil 'failing to disclose' climate change data
LINK
: Congressmen want probe of Exxon Mobil 'failing to disclose' climate change data
TEXT: "Members of Congress are asking for a federal investigation into Exxon Mobil. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Walnut Creek) wrote a letter Wednesday to Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch asking the Department of Justice whether the company violated the law by “failing to disclose truthful information” regarding climate change.

"The letter cites recent investigations by the Los Angeles Times, Columbia University’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project, and Inside Climate News, which showed the company incorporated climate change research into its operations while publicly casting doubt on that very same science. “When I read the Times investigation it occurred to me that it is very similar to what the tobacco companies were doing decades ago,” Lieu said. “Evidence showed that what they were saying was incorrect and they kept spreading this disinformation campaign.” “We unequivocally reject allegations contained in the letter to Atty. Gen. Lynch from Reps. Lieu and DeSaulnier,” said Richard Keil, a spokesman for Exxon. “Suggestions that ExxonMobil suppressed its climate research are completely without merit.”

"The congressmen are asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether Exxon violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, as well as consumer protection, truth in advertising, public health, shareholder protection or other laws. RICO was the same law used to prosecute tobacco companies, which allows a company’s higher-ups to be held responsible for the actions of those they supervise. “Exxon’s situation is even worse,” said Lieu, comparing the company’s behavior with the tobacco industry. “It was taking advantage of the science … while denying the facts to the public.”

"David Levy, a management and marketing professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, agreed. “What has come out now is the clear evidence that they [Exxon] knew about it.” “If these allegations against Exxon are true, then Exxon’s actions were immoral,” Lieu and DeSaulnier wrote in the letter. “We request the [Department of Justice] investigate whether ExxonMobil’s actions were also illegal.” Representatives for the Department of Justice could not be reached for comment."
 
What Exxon knew about the Earth's melting Arctic
By SARA JERVING, KATIE JENNINGS, MASAKO MELISSA HIRSCH AND SUSANNE RUST OCT. 9, 2015
LINK: http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/
TEXT: "Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities. The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

"Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet. Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon’s Arctic operations and its bottom line. “Certainly any major development with a life span of say 30-40 years will need to assess the impacts of potential global warming,” Croasdale told an engineering conference in 1991. “This is particularly true of Arctic and offshore projects in Canada, where warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels.”

"Between 1986 and 1992, Croasdale’s team looked at both the positive and negative effects that a warming Arctic would have on oil operations, reporting its findings to Exxon headquarters in Houston and New Jersey. The good news for Exxon, he told an audience of academics and government researchers in 1992, was that “potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea.

"But, he added, it also posed hazards, including higher sea levels and bigger waves, which could damage the company’s existing and future coastal and offshore infrastructure, including drilling platforms, artificial islands, processing plants and pump stations. And a thawing earth could be troublesome for those facilities as well as pipelines.

"As Croasdale’s team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company’s operations, Exxon and its worldwide affiliates were crafting a public policy position that sought to downplay the certainty of global warming. The gulf between Exxon’s internal and external approach to climate change from the 1980s through the early 2000s was evident in a review of hundreds of internal documents, decades of peer-reviewed published material and dozens of interviews conducted by Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.

"Documents were obtained from the Imperial Oil collection at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and the Exxon Mobil Historical Collection at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History. “We considered climate change in a number of operational and planning issues,” said Brian Flannery, who was Exxon’s in-house climate science advisor from 1980 to 2011. In a recent interview, he described the company’s internal effort to study the effects of global warming as a competitive necessity: “If you don’t do it, and your competitors do, you’re at a loss.”

"The Arctic holds about one-third of the world’s untapped natural gas and roughly 13% of the planet’s undiscovered oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. More than three-quarters of Arctic deposits are offshore. Imperial Oil, about 70% of which is owned by Exxon Mobil, began drilling in the frigid Arctic waters of the Canadian Beaufort Sea in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, it had drilled two dozen exploratory wells. The exploration was expensive, due to bitter temperatures, wicked winds and thick sea ice. And when a worldwide oil slump drove petroleum prices down in the late 1980s, the company began scaling back those efforts.

"Changes in Arctic sea ice from 1984 to 2013


la-exxon-arctic-gallery-20151007-009
la-exxon-arctic-gallery-20151007-010

"Before: Arctic ice coverage in 1984. After: Receding coverage in 2013. But with mounting evidence the planet was warming, company scientists, including Croasdale, wondered whether climate change might alter the economic equation. Could it make Arctic oil exploration and production easier and cheaper? “The issue of CO2 emissions was certainly well-known at that time in the late 1980s,” Croasdale said in an interview.

"Since the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Exxon had been at the forefront of climate change research, funding its own internal science as well as research from outside experts at Columbia University and MIT. With company support, Croasdale spearheaded the company’s efforts to understand climate change’s effects on its Arctic operations. A company such as Exxon, he said, “should be a little bit ahead of the game trying to figure out what it was all about.”

"Exxon Mobil describes its efforts in those years as standard operating procedure. “Our researchers considered a wide range of potential scenarios, of which potential climate change impacts such as rising sea levels was just one,” said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil. The Arctic seemed an obvious region to study, Croasdale and other experts said, because it was likely to be most affected by global warming.

"That reasoning was backed by models built by Exxon scientists, including Flannery, as well as Marty Hoffert, a New York University physicist. Their work, published in 1984, showed that global warming would be most pronounced near the poles. Between 1986, when Croasdale took the reins of Imperial’s frontier research team, until 1992, when he left the company, his team of engineers and scientists used the global circulation models developed by the Canadian Climate Centre and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to anticipate how climate change could affect a variety of operations in the Arctic.

"These were the same models that — for the next two decades — Exxon’s executives publicly dismissed as unreliable and based on uncertain science. As Chief Executive Lee Raymond explained at an annual meeting in 1999, future climate “projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation.” One of the first areas the company looked at was how the Beaufort Sea could respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which the models predicted would happen by 2050. Greenhouse gases are rising “due to the burning of fossil fuels,” Croasdale told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. “Nobody disputes this fact,” he said, nor did anyone doubt those levels would double by the middle of the 21st century.

"Using the models and data from a climate change report issued by Environment Canada, Canada’s environmental agency, the team concluded that the Beaufort Sea’s open water season — when drilling and exploration occurred — would lengthen from two months to three and possibly five months.

"They were spot on.

"In the years following Croasdale’s conclusions, the Beaufort Sea has experienced some of the largest losses in sea ice in the Arctic and its open water season has increased significantly, according to Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. For instance, in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort, the season has been extended by 79 days since 1979, Serreze said. An extended open water season, Croasdale said in 1992, could potentially reduce exploratory drilling and construction costs by 30% to 50%.

"He did not recommend making investment decisions based on those scenarios, because he believed the science was still uncertain. However, he advised the company to consider and incorporate potential “negative outcomes,” including a rise in the sea level, which could threaten onshore infrastructure; bigger waves, which could damage offshore drilling structures; and thawing permafrost, which could make the earth buckle and slide under buildings and pipelines.

"The most pressing concerns for the company centered on a 540-mile pipeline that crossed the Northwest Territories into Alberta, its riverside processing facilities in the remote town of Norman Wells, and a proposed natural gas facility and pipeline in the Mackenzie River Delta, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

"The company hired Stephen Lonergan, a Canadian geographer from McMaster University, to study the effect of climate change there. Lonergan used several climate models in his analysis, including the NASA model. They all concluded that things would get warmer and wetter and that those effects “cannot be ignored,” he said in his report. As a result, the company should expect “maintenance and repair costs to roads, pipelines and other engineering structures” to be sizable in the future, he wrote.

"A warmer Arctic would threaten the stability of permafrost, he noted, potentially damaging the buildings, processing plants and pipelines that were built on the solid, frozen ground. In addition, the company should expect more flooding along its riverside facilities, an earlier spring breakup of the ice pack, and more-severe summer storms. But it was the increased variability and unpredictability of the weather that was going to be the company’s biggest challenge, he said.

"Record-breaking droughts, floods and extreme heat — the worst-case scenarios — were now events that not only were likely to happen, but could occur at any time, making planning for such scenarios difficult, Lonergan warned the company in his report. Extreme temperatures and precipitation “should be of greatest concern,” he wrote, “both in terms of future design and … expected impacts.”

"The fact that temperatures could rise above freezing on almost any day of the year got his superiors’ attention. That “was probably one of the biggest results of the study and that shocked a lot of people,” he said in a recent interview. Lonergan recalled that his report came as somewhat of a disappointment to Imperial’s management, which wanted specific advice on what action it should take to protect its operations. After presenting his findings, he remembered, one engineer said: “Look, all I want to know is: Tell me what impact this is going to have on permafrost in Norman Wells and our pipelines.”

"As it happened, J.F. “Derick” Nixon, a geotechnical engineer on Croasdale’s team, was studying that question. He looked at historical temperature data and concluded Norman Wells could grow about 0.2 degrees warmer every year. How would that, he wondered, affect the frozen ground underneath buildings and pipelines? “Although future structures may incorporate some consideration of climatic warming in their design,” he wrote in a technical paper delivered at a conference in Canada in 1991, “northern structures completed in the recent past do not have any allowance for climatic warming.” The result, he said, could be significant settling.

"Nixon said the work was done in his spare time and not commissioned by the company. However, Imperial “was certainly aware of my work and the potential effects on their buildings.” Exxon Mobil declined to respond to requests for comment on what steps it took as a result of its scientists’ warnings. According to Flannery, the company’s in-house climate expert, much of the work of shoring up support for the infrastructure was done as routine maintenance. “You build it into your ongoing system and it becomes a part of what you do,” he said.

"Today, as Exxon’s scientists predicted 25 years ago, Canada’s Northwest Territories has experienced some of the most dramatic effects of global warming. While the rest of the planet has seen an average increase of roughly 1.5 degrees in the last 100 years, the northern reaches of the province have warmed by 5.4 degrees and temperatures in central regions have increased by 3.6 degrees.

"Since 2012, Exxon Mobil and Imperial have held the rights to more than 1 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, for which they bid $1.7 billion in a joint venture with BP. Although the companies have not begun drilling, they requested a lease extension until 2028 from the Canadian government a few months ago. Exxon Mobil declined to comment on its plans there.

"Croasdale said the company could be “taking a gamble” the ice will break up soon, finally bringing about the day he predicted so long ago — when the costs would become low enough to make Arctic exploration economical."
 
Video is 8 months old but still has some good points -

Caller: Evolving out of Climate Change

TEXT: "Published on Feb 13, 2014"
 
The Relentless Attack on Climate Scientist Ben Santer - May 16, 2014
LINK: The Relentless Attack on Climate Scientist Ben Santer | BillMoyers.com
TEXT: "The following is an excerpt from Merchants of Doubt by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes.

"Ever since scientists first began to explain the evidence that our climate was warming — and that human activities were probably to blame — people have been questioning the data, doubting the evidence and attacking the scientists who collect and explain it. And no one has been more brutally — or more unfairly — attacked than Ben Santer.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s leading authority on climate issues. Established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, it was created in response to early warnings about global warming. Scientists had known for a long time that increased greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels could cause climate change — they had explained this to Lyndon Johnson in 1965 — but most thought that changes were far off in the future. It wasn’t until the 1980s that scientists started to worry — to think that the future was perhaps almost here — and a few mavericks began to argue that anthropogenic climate change was actually already underway. So the IPCC was created to evaluate the evidence and consider what the impacts would be if the mavericks were right.

"In 1995, the IPCC declared that the human impact on climate was now “discernible.” This wasn’t just a few individuals; by 1995 the IPCC had grown to include several hundred climate scientists from around the world. But how did they know that changes were under way, and how did they know they were caused by us? Those crucial questions were answered in Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change, the Second Assessment Report issued by the IPCC. Chapter 8 of this report, “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes,” summarized the evidence that global warming really was caused by greenhouse gases. Its author was Ben Santer.

"Ben Santer had impeccable scientific credentials, and he had never before been involved in even the suggestion of impropriety of any kind, but now a group of physicists tied to a think tank in Washington, DC, accused him of doctoring the report to make the science seem firmer than it really was. They wrote reports accusing him of “scientific cleansing” — expunging the views of those who did not agree. They wrote reports with titles like “Greenhouse Debate Continued” and “Doctoring the Documents,” published in places like Energy Daily and Investor’s Business Daily. They wrote letters to congressmen, to officials in the Department of Energy and to the editors of scientific journals, spreading the accusations high and wide. They pressured contacts in the Energy Department to get Santer fired from his job. Most public — and most publicized — was an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal, accusing Santer of making the alleged changes to “deceive policy makers and the public.” Santer had made changes to the report, but not to deceive anyone. The changes were made in response to review comments from fellow scientists.

"Every scientific paper and report has to go through the critical scrutiny of other experts: peer review. Scientific authors are required to take reviewers’ comments and criticisms seriously, and to fix any mistakes that may have been found. It’s a foundational ethic of scientific work: no claim can be considered valid — not even potentially valid — until it has passed peer review.

"Peer review is also used to help authors make their arguments clearer, and the IPCC has an exceptionally extensive and inclusive peer review process. It involves both scientific experts and representatives of the governments of the participating nations to ensure not only that factual errors are caught and corrected, but as well that all judgments and interpretations are adequately documented and supported, and that all interested parties have a chance to be heard. Authors are required either to make changes in response to the review comments, or to explain why those comments are irrelevant, invalid or just plain wrong. Santer had done just that. He had made changes in response to peer review. He had done what the IPCC rules required him to do. He had done what science requires him to do. Santer was being attacked for being a good scientist.

"Santer tried to defend himself in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal — a letter that was signed by 29 co-authors, distinguished scientists all, including the director of the US Global Change Research Program. The American Meteorological Society penned an open letter to Santer affirming that the attacks were entirely without merit. Bert Bolin, the founder and chairman of the IPCC, corroborated Santer’s account in a letter of his own to the Journal, pointing out that accusations were flying without a shred of evidence, and that the accusers had not contacted him, nor any IPCC officers, nor any of the scientists involved to check their facts. Had they “simply taken the time to familiarize [themselves] with IPCC rules of procedure,” he noted, they would have readily found out that no rules were violated, no procedures were transgressed and nothing wrong had happened. As later commentators have pointed out, no IPCC member nation ever seconded the complaint.

"But the Journal only published a portion of both Santer and Bolin’s letters, and two weeks later, they gave the accusers yet another opportunity to sling mud, publishing a letter declaring that the IPCC report had been “tampered with for political purposes.” The mud stuck, and the charges were widely echoed by industry groups, business-oriented newspapers and magazines and think tanks. They remain on the Internet today. If you Google “Santer IPCC,” you get not the chapter in question — much less the whole IPCC report — but instead a variety of sites that repeat the 1995 accusations. One site even asserts (falsely) that Santer admitted that he had “adjusted the data to make it fit with political policy,” as if the US government even had a climate policy to adjust the data to fit. (We didn’t in 1995, and we still don’t.)

"The experience was bitter for Santer, who spent enormous amounts of time and energy defending his scientific reputation and integrity, as well as trying to hold his marriage together through it all. (He didn’t.) Today, this normally mild-mannered man turns white with rage when he recalls these events. Because no scientist starts his or her career expecting things like this to happen.

"Why didn’t Santer’s accusers bother to find out the facts? Why did they continue to repeat charges long after they had been shown to be unfounded? The answer, of course, is that they were not interested in finding facts. They were interested in fighting them.

"A few years later, Santer was reading the morning paper and came across an article describing how some scientists had participated in a program, organized by the tobacco industry, to discredit scientific evidence linking tobacco to cancer. The idea, the article explained, was to “keep the controversy alive.” So long as there was doubt about the causal link, the tobacco industry would be safe from litigation and regulation. Santer thought the story seemed eerily familiar.

"He was right. But there was more. Not only were the tactics the same, the people were the same, too. The leaders of the attack on him were two retired physicists, both named Fred: Frederick Seitz and S. (Siegfried) Fred Singer. Seitz was a solid-state physicist who had risen to prominence during World War II, when he helped to build the atomic bomb; later he became president of the US National Academy of Sciences. Singer was a physicist — in fact, the proverbial rocket scientist — who became a leading figure in the development of Earth observation satellites, serving as the first director of the National Weather Satellite Service and later as chief scientist at the Department of Transportation in the Reagan administration.

"Both were extremely hawkish, having believed passionately in the gravity of the Soviet threat and the need to defend the United States from it with high-tech weaponry. Both were associated with a conservative think tank in Washington, DC, the George C. Marshall Institute, founded to defend Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star Wars”). And both had previously worked for the tobacco industry, helping to cast doubt on the scientific evidence linking smoking to death.

"From 1979 to 1985, Fred Seitz directed a program for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that distributed $45 million to scientists around the country for biomedical research that could generate evidence and cultivate experts to be used in court to defend the “product.” In the mid-1990s, Fred Singer coauthored a major report attacking the US Environmental Protection Agency over the health risks of secondhand smoke. Several years earlier, the US surgeon general had declared that secondhand smoke was hazardous not only to smokers’ health, but to anyone exposed to it. Singer attacked this finding, claiming the work was rigged, and that the EPA review of the science — done by leading experts from around the country — was distorted by a political agenda to expand government control over all aspects of our lives. Singer’s anti-EPA report was funded by a grant from the Tobacco Institute, channeled through a think tank, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.

"Millions of pages of documents released during tobacco litigation demonstrate these links. They show the crucial role that scientists played in sowing doubt about the links between smoking and health risks. These documents — which have scarcely been studied except by lawyers and a handful of academics — also show that the same strategy was applied not only to global warming, but to a laundry list of environmental and health concerns, including asbestos, secondhand smoke, acid rain and the ozone hole.

"Call it the “Tobacco Strategy.” Its target was science, and so it relied heavily on scientists — with guidance from industry lawyers and public relations experts — willing to hold the rifle and pull the trigger. Among the multitude of documents we found in writing this book were Bad Science: A Resource Book — a how-to handbook for fact fighters, providing example after example of successful strategies for undermining science, and a list of experts with scientific credentials available to comment on any issue about which a think tank or corporation needed a negative sound bite."
 
Neil and Bill Talk Climate Change | StarTalk
TEXT: "Published on Oct 23, 2015: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Clinton discuss the current perception of climate change versus the way the vast majority of scientists view it."
 
Climate Change with George Monbiot and George Marshall | Guardian Live
TEXT: "Published on May 14, 2015: Despite the overwhelming evidence, the majority of us have become increasingly adept at ignoring or side-lining climate change. Most of us recognise the danger is real and yet we do nothing to stop it. As the Guardian sets out on its own climate change journey, George Marshall, one of the most eminent thinkers in the world on climate change talks to George Monbiot at a sold-out Guardian Live event on 13 May 2015 about why we are in denial and what we can do to stop it before it's too late."
 
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