Back in 1991, Shell Oil released a public documentary video which raised serious concerns about anthropogenic global warming. This hasn’t prevented The Guardian from trying to claim it is all part of the oil industry coverup.
‘Shell knew’: oil giant’s 1991 film warned of climate change danger
Public information film unseen for years shows Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago but has not acted accordingly since, say critics.
The oil giant Shell issued a stark warning of the catastrophic risks of climate change more than a quarter of century ago in a prescient 1991 film that has been rediscovered.
However, since then the company has invested heavily in highly polluting oil reserves and helped lobby against climate action, leading to accusations that Shell knew the grave risks of global warming but did not act accordingly.
…
“They knew. Shell told the public the truth about climate change in 1991 and they clearly never got round to telling their own board of directors,” said Tom Burke at the green thinktank E3G, who was a member of Shell’s external review committee from 2012-14 and has also advised BP and the mining giant Rio Tinto. “Shell’s behaviour now is risky for the climate but it is also risky for their shareholders. It is very difficult to explain why they are continuing to explore and develop high-cost reserves.”
…
The video;
Shell also tried to contribute to the education of future climate researchers, by meeting representatives of the high profile British Climatic Research Unit;
Climategate email 0962818260.txt
To: ***@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: ***@uea.ac.uk
Cc: ***@uea.ac.uk, ***@uea.ac.uk
Mike [Hulme]
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell’s name came up at the TC meeting. I’m ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I’m talking to Shell International’s climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it’s only one step or so off
Shell’s equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it’s
within the remit.
Regards
Mick ††
______________________________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: *** Fax: ***
Email: ***@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________
Original source available from Wikileaks
What went wrong?
As the Guardian points out, Shell went on to fund Tar Sands in Canada and other carbon intensive industries, though as recently as May 2016, the Guardian were celebrating Shell’s ongoing commitment to renewables.
Shell’s firm interest in renewables suggests they would really like to find a renewable future for the world’s energy needs.
But that isn’t going to happen with current technology.
Leading greens such as James Hansen, David Attenborough and Bill Gates are aware of and have have publicly commented on the shortcomings of renewables.
The inescapable conclusion is current generation renewables are not fit for purpose. Only the engineering challenged think otherwise.
For now, we need oil – a commodity which Shell is providing.
One thing for sure – the attempt by Greens to paint the oil industry as the bad guys, covering up their historical concerns about climate issues, has descended into utter farce. I suggest releasing a public documentary about climate concerns is above and beyond, in terms of attempting to disseminate information to the public. The sooner The Guardian and other greens stop embarrassing themselves with their nonsense conspiracy theories, the better.
Oak Ridge NL authored the Billion Ton Study stating that by 2030 there would be 1 billion tons of biomass available for producing alternative fuels (Cellulosic Ethanol and corn ethanol mostly). Yield of ethanol from biomass is about 50 gal per ton (just over a barrel/ton). This would yield 2.7 million bbl/day (1 billion gal/yr) of ethanol which currently has no home. The 16 Billion gal/yr of ethanol already produced from corn has saturated the market with E10 (the blend wall) so there is no home for double that production of ethanol.
Not stated in the Billion Ton study is the cost of cellulosic ethanol (CE) plants. Multiple projects were started in the 2012 to 2015 time frame, but essentially no CE plants have produced fuel. Robert Rapier wrote a great summary of this issue in 2016 (http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2016/02/13/cellulosic-ethanol-falls-a-few-billion-gallons-short/). Basically, 5 plants with combined capacity of 90 million gal/year actually produced 2.2 million gal/year (143.5 bbl/day) for a total plant construction cost of ~$1B ($6.97 Million/barrel). Many of the CE plants and companies are now either closed or bankrupt. Abengoa is gone (along with Range Fuels, Cello Energy, Kior, and others). The other companies have closed or curtailed their CE efforts. Other alternative energy companies are nearly broke or have switched from fuel production to specialty chemical production as the market value of chemicals is much higher than fuel.
So, for a great many reason, we cannot grow our way out of either an energy issue or a GHG issue. There simply isn’t enough yield per acre of energy to justify the effort, and the environmental and social damage for energy crops is too great to pursue this route for future fuels.
The Guardian knows and it keeps using oil consuming automobiles and airplanes.
The Guardian continues the sin … and may they go straight to …
“Its narrator speaks of a ‘new sense of urgency’ driven by the ‘realization that our energy-consuming way of life MAY be causing climatic changes, with adverse consequences for us all’ — like famine, flooding, waves of climate refugees and extreme weather.”
“’We believe that climate change is real and we believe that action will be needed,’ Ben van Beurden, Shell’s CEO, told reporters on Feb. 2 during an annual earnings presentation.” The implication of this statement is that even in 2017 there is disagreement as to whether or not climate is changing. It is in no way an explicit endorsement of the hypothesis that humans are totally or even partially responsible for the alleged change. Most telling is a statement near the end of the video, “Whether or not the threat of global warming proves as great as the scientists predict, is it too much to hope that it might act as the stimulus…” In other words, it is not Shell’s scientists who are claiming climate change. Rather, Shell is relying on the work of climatologists and are accepting what they are claiming.
If, in 1991 and even in 2017, Shell has not developed any kind of in-house expertise in climatology, how reasonable is it to believe that Exxon had done so in the 1970s?
It looks to me like this video was developed to convince stockholders that investing in alternative energy sources was a good way to hedge their bets. The Guardian and Mashable have misrepresented the story behind the video.
How would a responsible Exxon behave?
1) Take a cue from BO and raise the price of fuel so high that only the rich could afford it.
2) Sell its now useless mineral rights at bargain basement prices to George Soros, designated keeper of the devil’s black gold.
3) Save a little money to build high walls… http://www.voanews.com/a/mexico-pemex-says-protests-cauce-critical-border-city-fuel-shortage/3671454.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/americas/mexico-protests-gas-price-hikes/index.html
…around Washington, London, etc. –AGF
Perhaps I should leave a comment here.
I am Dutch, originally, and I thought I could approach the top scientists there of Shell [in Dutch} when I started my own investigations, ca. 7 years ago,
I do remember some correspondence after I had asked them if they could explain to me how global warming works, exactly.My final evaluation on that correspondence: they are completely clueless, just like most of those ‘believing’ in AGW.
AGW is a belief system based on a false premise:’ what we do must be bad….’
Better to have ‘belief’ in something for the right reasons….
To use the same argument the global warming people do, science has marched forward and today the evidence is far LESS than in 1991. Shell is simply following the science.
A potentially larger threat to humanity than failing to recognize that CO2 has no significant effect on climate is failing to realize what actually does. Beware the still-rising water vapor. Its increasing influence is addressed at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
I am quite happy to take the risk in return for the dividend cheques they send me. I was more concerned when they got involved with dumb carbon capture stuff but thankfully as soon as the taxpayers’ cash stopped Shell the CCS project.
Re Dr. Bob: “So, for a great many reason, we cannot grow our way out of either an energy issue or a GHG issue. There simply isn’t enough yield per acre of energy to justify the effort, and the environmental and social damage for energy crops is too great to pursue this route for future fuels.”
Here is another thought about this option. I never hear anyone discuss this: How would we power the conversion plants that convert these fuels to something that can be used for generating electricity? Wouldn’t you have to use lots of “fossil fuels” to power those plants? Talk about inefficiency!
I keep wondering if this whole AGW myth wasn’t created to prop up the price of fossil fuels because it was becoming known that they can be found in many more places on the planet than we’ve always assumed. Yes, I’m talking about the abiotic oil concept. When I first heard of it, I wondered what would happen if oil became almost as widely available as water. Would it be like they say about diamonds: producers have cultivated the image of their being rare. Anyone else remember the 1970s, when they told people we were running out of oil and there were long lines at gas stations? Gee, I wonder whatever happened to those shortages? /sarc
You missed it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/oil-where-did-it-come-from/
Anyone who can successfully bring the Underpants Gnomes into a serious discussion gets my thumbs up.
(Hope I haven’t offended anybody with the term ‘serious.’)
The video fails to really explore the AGW conjecture. The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 affects climate. Furthermore, there is no evidence that a radiant greenhouse effect caused by LWIR absorbing and radiating gases exists anywhere in the solar system. Wthout such evicence the AGW conjecture is only science fiction.
Browne (Shell), as well as providing equivocal advice pivotal on UK higher education, gave an NERC lecture in which he parroted the AGW nonsense. I stand to be corrected if my memory serves me badly on the NERC lecture.
Dan
I don’t have a problem with your theory that water vapor is increasing due to human activities [especially due to nuclear energy]
but I don’t think anyone has established a clear balance, by experiment,
namely
a) how much outgoing radiation from earth is trapped [due to more clouds and water vapor] 24h/day
b) how much incoming radiation from the sun is deflected due to more clouds/more water vapor
I wonder if anyone can…..12h/day
sorry
that last comment should read
b) how much incoming radiation from the sun is deflected due to more clouds/water vapor ….12h/day
I WONDER IF ANYONE CAN ???
Henryp – The water vapor (WV) trend is still up as reported by NASA/RSS as shown in Fig 3 of that analysis.
I did some back-of-envelope calculations and found for the planet:
All energy, including all fossil fuels and all cooling towers about 2E13 kg WV/yr
Irrigation about 250E13 kg WV/yr
The increased WV should result in increased low altitude clouds countering the increased ‘greenhouse’ effect from the added WV. Sensitivity of average global temperature to clouds is calculated at http://lowaltitudeclouds.blogspot.com
Dan,
I had a look at it but I cannot go along with it.
Not with the results I got.
For example, on the drop in minima over past odd 40 years or so I have a perfect curve.
For the drop in maxima it is y=0.039 ln(x) – 0.1112, where x= rate in K/annum and y = years in the past, from Jan. 2015. rsquare= 0.9964.
You see what my problem is? There is no chaos there. Especially for the drop in minima you would expect to see chaos if indeed there is some man made warming. But there is no chaos. Hence [my conclusion] there is no man made global warming.
The drop in maximum T, globally, can be ascribed to the drop in the solar polar magnetic field strengths.
you can draw a binomial from 1971 -2014 to represent the average polar field strengths?
[the ‘double’ sc around 1971 and 2014 indicate dead end stops]
Must be that as the magnetic field is falling, more of the most energetic particles are able to escape from the sun, forming more ozone, peroxides and N-oxides, TOA. More of these substances, as you can imagine, divert more of the normal UV back to space. Hence, less energy [UV] actually goes into the oceans.
Most data sets [except my own] have not even picked on the fact that global cooling has already started, or are being manipulated to show otherwise.
Henryp – I don’t seem to grasp your work. Are you only using 4 data points? I have been misled in the past by small sample size.
Shell was and is very shrewd. By publicly disclosing the possibility (not probability) that AGW could in some part be caused by hydro-carbon fuel combustion leading to CO2, they effectively limited their liability in the court of public opinion and that of the investment community. They full well know that (nuclear fission aside) only hydro-carbon chemical fuels have high enough energy flux densities (or specific energy) to operate today’s transportation and heavy machinery plus baseload electricity production. They dabble in “renewables” to obtain tax credits and other preferential State treatments and to appeal to the public and investors that they are “looking” at alternatives. However they are only looking at these alternatives because they know they can not and will not lead to material energy production which further supports they need for their petrochemical products. Note they are silent on atomic power and have been since the days Gulf Oil company divested its ownership of General Atomics when Gulf was acquired by Texaco and Phillips 66 abandoned its internal fusion science research and development group after Carl Icahn acquired them. The petrochemical industry greatly benefits from the fact that today’s “renewables” don’t work and can not work. When fossil fuel reserves tighten to the point of significantly higher production costs, they will be looking at nuclear alternatives again. nuclear fission now as a practical solution and fusion on the horizon to counter the anti-fission groupies.
Generally true
I dont understand your last sentence?
henryp ^ Last sentence reads: ” nuclear fission now as a practical solution and fusion on the horizon to counter the anti-fission groupies.” By that I mean the petrochemical companies will have to transform themselves into energy companies and embrace nuclear energy. There is no other alternative. Nuclear fission exists today. Be it uranium, plutonium or advanced fuel cycles consisting of uranium and thorium. Lots of new nuclear reactor technology will surface once R&D can be paid for. There will be many nuclear detractors claiming its unsafe, has weapons black market potential, and the waste issue is not sustainable. These companies can say yes but we also support future scientific experimentation, research and development of fusion energy which addresses the “downsides” of fission. That gives them a fair amount of time before they have to get serious mastering fusion which is still decades away from commercial viability. In other words they can use the promise of future fusion to diffuse complaints about fission today and say that fusion is very difficult and is years away. Thus they are somewhat acknowledging the “downsides” of fission and say they have a future plan to replace that but in the interim fission is the only solution. The analogy is what they are doing today with petrochemicals and renewables. The difference, arguably, is that fusion may be a realistic solution but based on the scientific knowledge today and the state of the art in experiments, fusion is an illusion in many people’s mind. I hope this clears up the question.
nuclear fusion
you need to build a magnetic field as big as that of the sun and I do not see that happening yet.
btw
the current lower solar polar magnetic field strength is what causes a change in climate, mostly, as it allows more of the most energetic particles to leave the sun forming more ozone, peroxides and N-oxides, TOA
nuclear fission
what are we going to do with the waste?
If thorium has no radioactive waste, as claimed, why are we not using it already?
better to stick with fossil fuel as long as possible
[since I find that more CO2 is better]
Please note that I have built what has become “The world’s most comprehensive Fusion Energy website for fusion & plasma science, research, project management, academic journal articles, videos, fusion politics, news, and advocacy.” The website contains several years worth of fusion news articles, academic journal articles and an extensive science section. Also note the right hand sidebar with “featured articles.” I bring this to people’s attention rather than respond to categorical dismissals. Also if one reads my comments carefully and reviews our website, they see that we must use our rich hydro-carbon fossil fuel sources now followed by fission which works. As I have stressed, fusion is decades away. To do nothing and go decade after decade without developing new energy solutions to take over from petrochemicals is very irresponsible to say the least. Our fusion website is at: http://fusion4freedom.com
Part 2 of 2. Thorium has roughly the same actinide decay chain products as uranium. And, in fact, thorium has a bigger problem with waste than uranium in that it produces a very strong gamma ray producing component. Thorium is a “fertile element,” not a fissile element which means that thorium must be used in combination with uranium in a fuel cycle. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain