Guest ridicule by David Middleton
It just doesn’t get any more fracking stupid than this:
NEWS
06/04/2018 1:12 AM IST
In 1998, Shell Predicted It Would Be Sued Over Climate Crisis Someday
By Chris D’Angelo
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was well aware of the world-altering climate risks associated with carbon dioxide emissions by at least the mid-1980s, according to a trove of internal company documents recently uncovered by a European journalist.
In a confidential 1988 report titled “The Greenhouse Effect,” Shell researchers wrote that planetary warming largely driven by burning fossil fuels could “create significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather” — changes that they predicted would “impact on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies, and could have major social, economic and political consequences.”
[…]
(Blah, blah. blah… #ExxonKnew redux ad nauseum.)
The triple top secret 1988 evil oil industry secret science confidential report on “The Greenhouse Effect” is drawn from published scientific literature that was publicly available in 1988.
At least one of the sources had been publicly available since 1861.
The “Greenhouse Effect” wasn’t an industry secret in 1988. It was even mentioned in some of my Earth Science textbooks (albeit briefly and dismissively) in the 1970’s. My Historical Geology textbook even mentioned Tyndall.
Suggestion that changing carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere could be a major factor in climate change dates from 1861, when it was proposed by British physicist John Tyndall.
[…]
Unfortunately we cannot estimate accurately changes of past CO2 content of either atmosphere or oceans, nor is there any firm quantitative basis for estimating the the magnitude of drop in carbon dioxide content necessary to trigger glaciation. Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain.
Dott, Robert H. & Roger L. Batten. Evolution of the Earth. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Second Edition 1976.
“Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain”…
And… Notably not highlighted by the junk science journalists…
This is just a redux of the moronic #ExxonKnew crap. No secret science, no proprietary oil industry climate models… Just summaries of the publicly available publications on the state of the “science” and potential for future regulatory malfeasance.
The pièce de résistance idiotic babbling about Shell’s 1998 “prediction” that it could face a “climate crisis” lawsuit. This was cherry-picked from an internal publication: The Group of the Future and Group Scenarios 1998-2020.
The document laid out many (more than I have time to count) challenging scenarios that could occur from 1998-2020. These ranged from Gorebal Warming junk lawsuits, to Indian politics, to the Supercar…
No… Not that Supercar… This Supercar:
Technically Gerry Anderson and Reg Hill predicted the Supercar in 1961 and Stan Lee created Elon Musk Tony Stark in 1963.
So… There you have it. Shell didn’t know anything that the Climatariat didn’t already know in 1988.
‘The pièce de résistance idiotic babbling about Shell’s 1998 “prediction” that it could face a “climate crisis” lawsuit.’
So what Shell were in fact predicting was peak Eco-Nut.
Peak Eco-Nut was an overarching theme in many of the scenarios… LOL!
Not sure we’ve seen peak Eco-Nut yet.
The scenarios run till 2020.
Trump is in till at least 2021. Winning!
there will never be a shortage of eco-nut pique. it’s got electrolytes.
however if the demand should ever diminish, the supply would, too.
Sorry, but predicting a lawsuit in the United States is like predicting fish in a barrel.
Or something. Sometimes, even metaphors aren’t worth the effort.
ikr? up one side and down the other like a ton of bricks till the cows come home
How do fish get into barrels, never seen such a thing. Is this a modellers construct or some kind of unlikeliness euphemism that does not travel?
They’re pretty easy to shoot too (1000 herring per barrel).
https://sizes.com/units/barrel_herring.htm
That was a simile, but who’s watching?
…predicting fish in a barrel. LOL Good one!
Craig April 11, 2018 at 6:09 am “Not sure we’ve seen peak Eco-Nut yet.”
You’ll NEVER see peak Eco-Nut! However brain-damaged the latest eco scare is, someone somewhere will get a promotion, grant, or better job predicting something even more insane.
Absolutely. How could they possibly know something about the climate (not their business), that was not known and publicly published by climate researchers? And what about the governments? If they knew fossil fuels were hazardous to people, and they have the responsibility to keep up with the science they fund, they had the obligation to introduce legislation to protect people, as it was done with unleaded gas when it became clear that lead from fuel was a health hazard.
As you say “It just doesn’t get any more fracking stupid.” It is all money for lawyers.
In this regard it is analogous to “Big Tobacco”… Money for lawyers.
The oil companies had the best geologists in the world and were actually doing or funding most of the paleoclimate research throughout the 1970s and and 1980s.
Yep… Vail, Mitchum, etc.
Mitchum or Mitchell? I bet you knew Billy Mitcham. I miss that guy.
Peter Vail and Robert Mitchum were among the lead authors of Seismic Stratigraphy and Global Changes of Sea Level. It fills half of AAPG Memoir 26, Seismic Stratigraphy – Applications to Hydrocarbon Exploration. 1977.
https://www.amazon.com/Seismic-Stratigraphy-Applications-Hydrocarbon-Exploration/dp/0891813020
https://wiki.seg.org/wiki/Peter_Vail
I never personally met either of them. I have met Robert Sheriff and a few other “famous” geophysicists and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt.
Hagens Berman LLP for the plaintiffs in current #ExxonKnew case will be paid 23.5% of any net monetary recovery.
In 2006 Steve Berman (CEO) sued Apple Computer alleging that iPod music players could cause hearing loss if the volume were too high.
Only in the USA . . .
Actually they very easily could know far more about the climate and CO2 than was in the public domain. Shell employs chemists physicists and engineers who are (gasp!) paid to come up with the RIGHT answer in terms of truth content> rather than the right answer in terms of political correctness.
They knew from the get go that cliamte science was bunk…
They knew from the get go that renewable energy was a crock of …..
But it was not in their interest to say so.
In fact it was entirely in their interest to spend several billion on ‘green technology’ to make them look like the ‘good guys’.
Shell ultimately has but one incentive: to make money out of selling petrochemical based products.
All they had to do was look at climate stuff and assess whether it was a threat to their business or not.
They correctly assessed that the main threat to their business would be from environmentalists, not renewable energy, so they went to great lengths to present a ‘green’ spin without actually doing anything else.
In short Shell was fully aware from the start that the emperors new green clothes were non-existent. That this was not a war of substance, but of marketing perceptions alone.
With luck, they will have the guts to say so.
Radiation effects of H2O and CO2 were being quantified for designing “radiation boilers” at least as early as the ’50s (they’re in my Babcock & Wilcox steam-boiler book).
Are you sure that isn’t “radiant” boilers? That’s what’s in my 1978 version.
Quite right — radiant boilers.
If you want to know about radiation boilers, go talk to Retired Kit P.
I actually used to use those old Hottel charts, I think first published in 1949, for emissivity of CO2 and H2O to design fired heaters. I break into laughter when someone says there is no greenhouse back radiation effect due to CO2.
My point above was that radiation effects of H2O and CO2 were out in the public long before the 70s or whenever the fake-lawsuit stipulates. Anyone curious could have known that. But extrapolating that those particular facts would lead to CAGW or whatever disaster de jour is absurd — can’t even “prove” that now after trillions spent studying it.
Isn’t it the users that create the demand and in using fossil fuels create carbon dioxide? Why aren’t the users being sued?
I don’t remember the tobacco farmers being sued for the use of their product.
As with tobacco… The users don’t have “deep pockets.”
Government makes more money of the sale of oil products than any of the oil companies. They want more,
Yes they do. In 2009 ExxonMobil paid $25.9 billion in “sales-based taxes” and $34.8 billion in “other taxes and duties.” These taxes were accounted for as “Costs and Other Deductions” and subtracted from their gross revenues, leaving XOM with $34.8 billion worth of “Income before income taxes.” XOM paid $15.1 billion in income taxes on the $34.8 billion, leaving them with $19.7 billion in net income.
Out of XOM’s gross revenue of $301.5 billion, government entities received $75.8 billion. After expenses and taxes, XOM was left with $19.7 billion.
Government entities made $3.84 for every $1 XOM made… And XOM bore the full costs of generating that income.
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/11/115024/XOM_2009F&O.pdf
As with PETA….old ladies wearing fur don’t threaten to knock your teeth in like leather-wearing bikers would…
They don’t want to lose money on the onerous tobacco taxes either, hence why only half-solutions for quitting smoking are ever pushed and why one of the most effective quitting aids invented, e-cigarettes, are so demonized.
So they’re “aware of the world-altering climate risks associated with carbon dioxide emissions”?
Enhanced foodstuff production would be the biggest risk, as long as their nefarious plan is to control world population with famine.
These people are either useful tools or evil to the max.
The first red flag is “climate crisis”.
The only crisis I’m presently aware of is the one facing global socialist planners.
….and in 1998 we were supposed to do what?
Even today, no one can make this “new technology” work……….
Tyndall also measured the effects of water vapor and correctly judged it to have the greatest green house effect.
No one has measured the greenhouse effect of either water vapor or CO2. Everyone has speculated; no one has measured the actual alleged mechanism of greenhouse warming. There is no foundation to the theory.
That’s not totally true:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
The results a) were not scary enough, and b) did not include total radiation which, for all I know, could have stayed the same, so you don’t hear much about this study.
Yep. The “direct observation” of enhanced GHG forcing was about as scary as a puppy in a “safe space” on a college campus.
http://33ooeh42hzcia809132by241.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/graph-big-box-homepage-copy-copy.jpg
What was observed? A ~20 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 correlated with a 0.2 W/m^2 increase in radiative forcing at the Earth’s surface.
Total insolation at the Earth’s surface ranges from 40 to 340 W/m^2 per year.
Assuming a linear relationship of .01 W/m^2 per 1 ppmv CO2… A doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 560 ppmv will increase radiative forcing by 2.8 W/m^2. This is about 2/3 of the IPCC’s estimate.
The total warming since 1850 has been about 0.7°C. Over the same period, CO2 increased by about 120 ppmv (~1.2 W/m^2).
This means that a doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 can lead to a maximum warming of 1.68°C… less than half of the so-called consensus estimate.
Since my “back of the envelope” calculations assumed a linear, rather than logarithmic, relationship and that all of the warming since 1850 was GHG-driven, the actual climate sensitivity can be no more than half of my estimate… ~0.8°C per doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2.
This essentially means that the human impact on climate change is insignificant.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1
The above link contradicts the supposed radiation increase: “The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.”
We have to ask what are the alleged mechanisms for GHG warming. I find three:
1. LWIR backradiation/trapped radiation directly warms the surface, except that heat flows from warmer to cooler and in any case this mechanism has never been demonstrated. The Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer “trapped radiation” experiments are inconclusive, and in any case are basically backyard experiments.
2. LWIR radiation excites GHGs which in turn excite N2 and O2, warming these up; this warming inhibits atmospheric cooling. Two problems: a) this excitation of N2 and O2 by collisions with GHGs has never been demonstrated to result in a temperature increase and b) even if it were true, warming means rising and rising means cooling according the gas laws and the lapse rate, so how is convective flow inhibited? Demonstrate, please? No confirming experiment means this is just speculation.
3. CO2 raises the emissions height and we count down from there using the lapse rate to get surface temp. But the lapse rate isn’t determined by emission’s height; there is no term in the lapse rate for either radiative properties or for emissions height. This is last-resort hand waving. Furthermore, if there were no GHGs the dry lapse rate would still hold true and the atmosphere would still conduct heat from the surface warmed by the sun, except that there would be one less means of atmospheric cooling: no radiation from the atmosphere.
Tyndall measured the effects of carbon dioxide AND water vapor. Water vapor dominated the absorption based on energy.
The problem is understanding his language. Archaic chemistry plus Irish/English brogue confuses many. My parochial education via classical Irish nuns and fascination with medieval chemistry makes understanding easy. Plus I enjoy the occasional light wisp of Spirits of Hartshorn. I’m twisted a bit.
Keith J April 12, 2018 at 5:03 am
“Tyndall measured the effects of carbon dioxide AND water vapor. Water vapor dominated the absorption based on energy.”
Tyndall did not measure how the absorption of IR by CO2 and water vapor leads to a temperature change. We are assuming that radiative effects translate into temperature effects; nowhere that I know of has this actually been demonstrated.
For example, it’s asserted, without any proof that I know of, that IR activity on CO2 causes N2 and O2 to increase internal energy; one would assume that this same process applies to water vapor. It would seem to be a simple matter to demonstrate that this actually happens: IR action on GHGs affects non-radiative molecules such that the temperatures of the volume of gas within which these non-GHG molecules reside increases. That’s a wonderful theory and it may be true, but I don’t think it’s asking for too much for the physical demonstration that this is in fact true. I would also think that immediately someone would point out that I’m completely wrong, that in such-and-such year these people did this experiment that proved conclusively that this mechanism exists.
I admit that the more I ask for experiments, the more I’m baffled that no one can come up with any. Surely someone has tested whether or not what the theory predicts is true?? Any college lab in the country could do this.
“past CO2 content of either atmosphere ore oceans”
Is that geologist humor?
Geologist typo…
Fixed.
So Shell predicting junk climate lawsuits somehow makes those junk science lawsuits valid?
LOL!
Yeah, that was my thought too.
Mine too – circular reasoning is the true mark of the Eco-Fascists.
Perhaps Shell’s shareholders will sue them for not investing in junk science chasing lawyers when Shell knew.
I recall reading somewhere some of the papers in the literature by Exxon (Esso?) scientists were coauthored with academics and have been available for decades.
Yes, and yet there was no panic until they got money and propaganda behind it.
Consider the world without fossil fuels. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to live in it either. Although, I would always be receptive to something better, and a great deal of wealth will flow to those who can drive the evil oil companies out of business with something better.
Fossil fuels and hydrocarbon molecules make the world a much, much better place.
I think every zealot who tries to act like “climate change” is a human-induced “crisis” needs to be confronted with that consideration at every turn. At the end of the day, they’re all hypocrites who take EVERYTHING THEY HAVE for granted. Because ALL of it is thanks to fossil fuels.
The Merchants of Doubt stategy hatched under Naomi Oreskes tutiledge at Scripps La Jolla in 2012 is not ending well. That was foreseeable to everyone except the warmunists.
I’d much prefer being a “Merchant of Doubt” to being a “Merchant of Stupidity,” which is what Oreskes and her ilk are. The idiots that DENY that there is any uncertainty regarding what they laughingly call “science” are the TRUE “den!ers.”
“Industrial developments have increased the carbon dioxide concentration locally to a slight extent, but this has had no demonstrable effect on organisms. ……(recall that CO2 is a basic raw material in photosynthesis and that its concentration is very low, about 0.03 by volume.) Odum, E. P. 1953. FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY. This was ‘the’ college textbook, no greenhouse effect in the index, mentioned the positive experimental fertilization by CO2. Later editions would be interesting, got much fatter and expanded human effects. This one has a short chapter– “…. Controversy here simply indicates that we do not have the information needed for sound prediction.” It does have the usual population growth curves and a reference to Malthus.
Geology texts of the period did not even cover sea flood spreading as I recall, but it was an intense period of petroleum activity that helped confirm it.
There was a serious US drought in the 1950s, warming was the interest, changed rather soon to cooling. Scientific papers on climate and warming effects were old news.
It appears that John Ehrlichman knew about the risk(s) back in 1969!-
https://cliscep.com/2018/03/09/when-did-warming-change-from-good-to-bad/?c=23959#comment-23959
June 23, 1988. Dr. James Hansen from NASA GISS testifies to the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Thankfully, nothing happens in the Senate for thirty years in the “world’s greatest deliberative body” to enact a carbon tax or to regulate carbon dioxide as though it were a pollutant, even in 2009-2010. Now if only the endangerment finding can be unraveled.
“If” is the biggest word in the English language, David. You’re certain to win the Nobel for something if you can unravel your so-called “endangerment finding”.
However, for every dollar of endangerment you find, I can find double, perhaps triple, maybe even quadruple the enhancement.
Good luck.
What did Hollywood know in 1950? They knew it was coming.
David,
You geologists are heretics to the religion of global warming/climate change. Good example, friend of ours is a retired school teacher and due, I am sure, to the left wing drivel prominent in the educational college establishment, is a definite left leaner. I was discussing climate with her and she revealed that one of her sons was now a geologist and told her that this climate change stuff was bs and this had now upset her because, ” I just can’t not believe in climate change!”.
So, there you have it, Heresy. And it is spreading. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I really admire your posts! This one is so crazy… It’s as if they all knew but didn’t care. All about the money.
I just thought you might like this one:
They need to look again. There might be something in the Nostradamus files.
‘At the time, de Blasio said the world is facing a “painful, horrible reality” and the city will “no longer participate in a system that endangers our very own people.”’
They closed all the gas stations?
‘New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies, including Shell’
The height of decadence: suing the people who keep you alive.
I met with several Shell engineers and chemists around 1998 at an ‘alternative’ energy conference One thing they certainly knew was that ‘alternative’ energy (now ‘renewable’ energy) was completely non-commercial from the get-go and would only exist with massive subsidies, and wasn’t especially effective at reducing CO2 emissions or replacing fossil fuels, and was, therefore, not a commercial threat to Shell or any other oil company.
This is very important. It makes the claims that Big Oil is behind climate scepticism ridiculous. It isn’t and it never was. Because it had no reason to be. Renewable energy was never a threat to the oil industry and they knew that back in 1998.
It is an extremely stupid moved by the climate mythologists to move against Big Oil, because not only do they risk damaging their own climate mythology, they risk the inconvenient truth about renewable energy being revealed as part of Big Oil’s defence.
In this case the truth is extremely damaging to the whole green-spin industry. Not only is there no problem with CO2, the means proposed and implemented to reduce it actually don’t work either.
Bring in the lawsuits, and lets see the companies fighting back.
If the truth comes out, its the death knell for renewable energy and eco-warriors, both.
I can’t wait.
” It makes the claims that Big Oil is behind climate scepticism ridiculous. It isn’t and it never was.”
Original industry memos refute this directly.
Only in the greentard version of fantasy land.
which memos? the non existent one from “big oil”, where they push climate scepticism, which they never did?
Unless of course you include gas-company into “big Oil”. There, we have proof. We have Dana “nuts” Nuccitelli running a climate-scare blog, while being a gas-company employee.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/danas-dirty-little-secret/
oops…
C’mon, kristi, Just one cite. A real cite, not a huffpo allegation. Your “concern” trolling has become irritating. Not sure why you’re here, but it seems unlikely that you actually want to learn anything. I assume you’re a recent graduate with some sort of B.A. in something that sounds sciency. Speaking only for myself, your comments the last several months have not been impressive.
They don’t understand how scenario planning works. They think scenarios are forecasts, and that they are forecasts of known future events. This is so wildly wrong that its hard to believe they really think it. There are books on the Shell scenario planning methodology. They should read some of them.
Scenario planning works, not when any of the scenarios are right or wrong, but when the process leads the senior team to find and focus on what they think are the key drivers.
Kind of like running “table top” exercises for worst case scenarios… isn’t a prediction that such scenarios will occur, or are even likely to occur.
Yes, as a planner running the process, your aim is to get the top team and their senior reports to think about the drivers. You get to drivers which have a role in all of the scenarios, then you are collectively on to something. And the drivers that emerge come from debating, how if at all could this scenario emerge.
I recall a company going through a similar exercise about Internet connectivity demand, and running some scenarios in which piracy had different roles.
When they went in, the key drivers were not obvious, but when they got through it, it became clear to them that social acceptability of copyright restraint and breach was going to be a key driver. Also porn of course….
They know exactly how scenario planning works, which is why they are able to misrepresent it so effectively.
The crazy thing is that you include in scenario planning exactly those scenarios that you are not sure of. If you were sure of one of them, it would no longer be a scenario to be studied, it would be part of the background briefing, the starting point.
Actually what they cite as evidence that Shell knew in reality proves that Shell didn’t know and was trying to think its way through what was not at all clear or settled as far as top management were concerned.
Alarmists believe in fairies doing global warming. Apparently Shell also believes in the same fairies. Now the former are sueing the latter for not having done anything about those fairies.
More surreal it can’t get.
Many businesses thought it was cheaper to play along with environmental groups and their lawyers than it was to fight them.
UNEP FI, 2017
‘Principles for Positive Impact Finance’
Re: Sustainable Development financing.
Webpage has links to more information on this topic.
http://www.unepfi.org/positive-impact/positive-impact
UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), U.K., launched 2006
Webpage has links to more information and the Founding Signatories.
Also includes Sustainable Development Goals.
http://www.unpri.org/about-the-pri
UN Sustainable Development
Partnerships for the SDGs
Re: Sustainable Development
Webpage includes partners.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=11784
UNEP FI
‘Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure’, October 2006, 10 pages
Re: Corporate Disclosure
Began in May of 2005.
Steering Committee included in this report.
http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/global_framework.pdf
UN Sustainable Development
Partnerships for the SDGs
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
Re: Implementation and monitoring
Webpage has links and members.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=9691
UN Sustainable Development
Partnerships for the SDGs
SDG Compass
Partners:
GRI
UNGC
WBCSD
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=9856
Huff ‘n’ Puff published a piece consisting of falsehoods, deception an distortion? Not surprising. That’s what they traffic in.