Why Exxon Executives Deserve the Ultimate Punishment
By Paul Street
Source: Counterpunch
October 30, 2015
Exxon did not merely understand the science that contradicted its propaganda, it contributed to that science. Ever since the waning days of the Reagan administration Exxon has been actively undermining its own findings this even as the data has mounted on climate changes anthropogenic (capitalogenic) nature and lethality and while the scientific community has started speaking out on the supreme danger with rising urgency and even desperation. Along the way, it has set the climate-denial tone for the rest of the leading oil corporations and portrayed itself as a friend of the environment.
The evil involved in all this is almost beyond belief. As the Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes recently wrote in The New York Times, the rich and powerful firm Exxon not only denied its own findings but also set the deadly propaganda tone for the broader industry
Exxon had a choice. As one of the most profitable companies in the world, Exxon could have acted as a corporate leader, helping to explain to political leaders, to shareholders and institutional investors, and to the public what it knew about climate change. It could have begun to shift its business model, investing in renewables and biofuels or introducing a major research and development initiative in carbon capture. It could have endorsed sensible policies to foster a profitable transition to a 21st-century energy economy .Instead like the tobacco industry Exxon chose the path of disinformation, denial and delay. More damagingly, the company set a model for the rest of the industry. More than 30 years ago, Exxon scientists acknowledged in internal company memos that climate change could be catastrophic. Today, scientists who say the exact same thing are ridiculed in the business community and on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/why-exxon-executives-deserve-the-ultimate-punishment/
Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago
By Shannon Hall | October 26, 2015
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The companys knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977, when its senior scientist James Black delivered a sobering message on the topic. Credit: Getty Images/MARS
Experts, however, arent terribly surprised. Its never been remotely plausible that they did not understand the science, says Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University. But as it turns out, Exxon didnt just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the time, meaning that Exxon was truly conducting unprecedented research.
In their eight-month-long investigation, reporters at InsideClimate News interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists and federal officials and analyzed hundreds of pages of internal documents. They found that the companys knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977, when its senior scientist James Black delivered a sobering message on the topic. In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxons management committee. A year later he warned Exxon that doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degreesa number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today. He continued to warn that present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." In other words, Exxon needed to act.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
Judi Lynn
(160,621 posts)The second article mentions paying tens of thousands to anti-climate change think tanks.
There's a war going on regarding either vomiting my guts out, or dissolving into a puddle of rage and tears.
Who ARE these people?
Clearly their only goal in life, their life's work, is focused upon living it up as if there's no tomorrow right now, then trying to sneak off peacefully, to die in their sleep, without ever having to face the consequences of their actions, or having to look anyone in the eye who clearly sees right through them.
Everyone in the world needs to know who these people are. EVERYONE. Faces on billboards, tv shows, post office walls. Who am I kidding? They bought our government a long time ago.
Thanks for the articles, for the information.