Guest essay by Eric Worrall
You have to wade through 5 paragraphs of “Harvard Research” before seeing “Naomi Oreskes”. Other outlets didn’t mention her name at all. I wonder why news outlets seem so shy about leading with her name?
Exxon Mobil’s Messaging Shifted Blame for Warming to Consumers
An analysis of the fossil fuel company’s documents also found it tried to downplay the dangers of climate change
By Maxine Joselow, E&E News on May 15, 2021
Exxon Mobil Corp. has used language to systematically shift blame for climate change from fossil fuel companies onto consumers, according to a new paper by Harvard University researchers.
The paper, published yesterday in the journal One Earth, could bolster efforts to hold the oil giant accountable in court for its alleged deception about global warming.
“This is the first computational assessment of how Exxon Mobil has used language in subtle yet systematic ways to shape the way the public talks about and thinks about climate change,” Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow at Harvard and co-author of the paper, said in an interview with E&E News.
“One of our overall findings is that Exxon Mobil has used rhetoric mimicking the tobacco industry to downplay the reality and seriousness of climate change and to shift responsibility for climate change away from itself and onto consumers,” he added.
A spokesperson for Exxon Mobil disputed the paper, calling it part of a coordinated legal campaign against the company.
Supran and co-author Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard (and Scientific American columnist), conducted a computational analysis of 180 Exxon Mobil documents from 1972 to 2019, including peer-reviewed publications, advertorials in The New York Times and internal memos.
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Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-mobils-messaging-shifted-blame-for-warming-to-consumers/
Seriously, are Scientific American and other outlets worried people wouldn’t read past the headline, if they saw Oreskes name?
I suspect the problem is Oreskes hasn’t said anything new in a long time, always banging the same drum. And she isn’t actually offering a solution.
The core problem, there is no serious alternative to fossil fuel. EVs are too expensive, and most of the world’s fossil fuel powered grids would buckle if more people decided to go electric.
There is no hope renewables will significantly replace fossil fuel infrastructure, they are simply too unreliable. Either people accept the misery of unreliable energy, or they pay for two sets of infrastructure – the virtue signalling renewable system, and the “backup” system, which has to be kept on hot rolling standby, in case a cloud covers the sun.
Nuclear power could replace fossil fuel – but as Willis’ superb analysis demonstrates, it would take decades of massive investment to replace fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear power stations. The money going full nuclear would cost, that is an awful lot of schools and hospitals which would not be built.
I’m no fan of breathing in exhaust smoke, as a severe asthma sufferer I’d love if there was an easy solution to eliminating fossil fuel pollution. But no such solution currently exists.
Naomi Oreskes, if you want people to start paying attention again, make an effort. Say something new. You don’t need to hide your name in the sixth paragraph, all you need to do is say something interesting. Come up with an idea for eliminating fossil fuel which does not require massive government intervention or exorbitant costs, or slamming fossil fuel companies with new burdens, the cost of which would inevitably be passed on to consumers in some form.
From the article: “I suspect the problem is Oreskes hasn’t said anything new in a long time, always banging the same drum. And she isn’t actually offering a solution.”
That’s what I thought when I saw this article: The alarmists are recycling old smears against the oil companies.
There is no evidence CO2 should be blamed for anything so, Exxon isn’t covering up anything if a CO2 problem doesn’t really exist.
Tha alarmists are running out of attack modes. This “Exxon Knew” mode is a dead end as far as going into court with it is concerned. They must be desperate to try to revive it. A judge isn’t going to go for unsubstantiated speculation. Judges are pretty good at discerning what is and is not evidence. The alarmist don’t have any evidence. They should not go into court and claim they do.
If only that were true in this era, in this post modern world we have millennials flooding through the establishments that we could all trust to be rational at one time.
Okay, I have the solution. It is simple, it is feasible, and the resources are right in front of us. In addition, the byproducts can be recycled to improve food production.
Go back to horse and ox-drawn vehicles.
Equines and bovines produce large piles of defecatory byproducts that can be utilized for food crops by those grow-house people. Mix it with enough straw and compost it over the winter and you also have a HUGE pile of very rich garden soil, which is a marketable product. Bag it and sell it.
In addition, the unemployed people in cities could be put to work cleaning up those defecatory byproducts and delivering them to local recycling facilities. Eliminate trains, too, by employing draft horses to pull commuter rail vehicles on the rails, as was done in the Regency Period. Yes, it was.
I’d much prefer having a horse again over a car. The cost of grain and hay and bedding is lower than vehicle fuels and maintenance, and a good blacksmith can shoe your horse (or oxen) for less than a new set of tires. Current per bushel price of oats is $3.5650. The current price for a large round of alfalfa is $190 to $215 per ton. The large rounds are for feed lots, so if you break that down to square baled hay, an alfala/clover mix will still be about the same. Bedding is straw, usually wheat straw, small bales go for $4.60 per bale and mixed with those defecatory byproducts I mentioned can be composted and sold as garden fertilizer. You would have to find a hen woman (someone who raises chickens to sell the eggs) but that isn’t all that difficult.
(Hat tip to Georgette Heyer’s thorough research of the Regency Period for some of the above.)
Yes, it would be a much more sedate and somewhat slower civilization, but would you rather walk? And other than the usual stuff, anyone have a better idea?
I have no qualms at all about cooking on a wood-fired stove or heating my home with a parlor stove. Even a Rumford fireplace, which provides an excellent draft for use as a cooking venue, isn’t all that hard to build. And since closed stoves, which we take for granted, weren’t developed until the late 18th century, people still cooked in the fireplace and built outdoor ovens if needed. Ice houses were common, and while kerosene lamps did replace whale oil, they give off perfectly good light. You just have to clean the chimneys regularly.
Any questions?
Sara: I have a question. Can you all go back to horses, but I still get driven around in an SUV to the airport for my charter flight to Davos? Your system is great, so long as there is a VIP/Celebrity exemption. Thanks, Naomi O.
Naaahhhh! You’ll have to walk, swim and paddle a small boat to get there. No celebrity exemptions allowed. in fact, the exemptions (in my view) will go to those who can produce a freshly-baked loaf of bread and a fresh pot of beans, all made from scratch.
So, can you name one Davos visitor who can do any of that……? Nah, me, neither.
So Exxon did nothing, this is all the same lies and sh!t spew from the same sh!t spewing liars, rinse and repeat.
“I’m no fan of breathing in exhaust smoke, as a severe asthma sufferer I’d love if there was an easy solution to eliminating fossil fuel pollution.”
Charles, I mean no disrespect, I’m very grateful for the time and effort you put in here at Watt’s Up With That, but modern internal combustion engines do not produce any “smoke”. Modern computer controlled engines in conjunction with catalytic exhausts produce only tiny amounts of anything besides CO2 and water.
Modern natural gas electric plants also only produce only CO2 and water as combustion products. Even modern coal fired plants produce very little particulates after “scrubbers” clean the exhaust.
Please don’t play into the hands of the people that are trying to label modern efficient fossil fuel energy as “dirty”.
From the article: “The core problem, there is no serious alternative to fossil fuel. EVs are too expensive, and most of the world’s fossil fuel powered grids would buckle if more people decided to go electric.”
That is the heart of the matter: There is no serious alternative to fossil fuels in the shortterm. The alarmists can try to force alternatives on us but it is a futile effort that will only end in disaster for millions of people.
Western Leaders are deranged by CO2 and are advocating all sorts of outlandish solutions to a problem they can’t even prove really exists.
The Madness of Crowds. Our Western leadership is suffering from a mass delusion all based on a bogus, computer-generated surface temperatue record that presents the false reality that humans are currently experiencing the warmest temperatures in human history.
This is all a Big Lie. Regional surface temperature charts from all over the world do *not* show we are experiencing unprecedented warming today. Instead, they show it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today, and this demonstrates that CO2 is not a major player in determining the Earth’s temperature.
Yet our Elites are fixated on CO2 control. To the detriment of the whole Western world.
” I wonder why news outlets seem so shy about leading with her name? ”
Because even they know she is an idiot, and a double bagger at that.
News outlets shy? Ba-hahahahahahaha!
The core problem, there is no serious alternative to fossil fuel.
The oil companies merely supplied a demand. Consumers demanded relatively inexpensive energy and the oil companies supplied it. The result is the modern world with all of it’s wonderful developments that make life so much easier and healthier for the common person. So much that we depend on in our everyday lives would not exist, or be so expensive that the common person could not afford it, if the most efficient forms of carbon based energy had never been tapped developed and utilized. .
Without oil and NG we would be mining and burning massive amounts of coal and wood, or IOW other carbon based fuel sources, all of which are forms of solar energy stored over the eons. Oil is just the most efficient form of stored solar energy for many modern applications.
Without oil and gas, there would be a lot less people.
Always keep one eye on the true goal.
Hockey stick graphs abound, real ones exist where you overlay population growth with energy usage, and therein lies the problem that the left is attempting to fix.
On my tiny phone screen – that looked like a Cuomo
Well it’s not CO2 from fossil fuels causing the problem infact CO2 is actually enhancing the natural growth of all plants which leads to cooling as it reduces the heat island effect.
We all know that Carbon Monoxide after a while when starts to oxidise that it then turns into Carbon Dioxide.
Carbon monoxide will be oxidized by air to carbon dioxide spontaneously in the presence of ultraviolet light or a transition metal catalyst.
Car engine exhaust contains a lot of CO. The catalytic converter box in the tailpipe contains palladium or other transition metals bound to ceramic beads. Air is bled into this box, where the oxygen oxidises CO to CO2 on the surface of the transition metal.
Sunlight catalyses this oxidation in the atmosphere, but more slowly.
It’s the Particulate matter is the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air many of which are hazardous.
The solution tho that is to have better burning engines and coupled with mass scrubber within the cities to reduce the PM2.5 and PM10
Particulate matter, also known as particle pollution or PM, is a term that describes extremely small solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in air. Particulate matter can be made up of a variety of components including nitrates, sulfates, organic chemicals, metals, soil or dust particles, and allergens (such as fragments of pollen or mould spores). Particle pollution mainly comes from motor vehicles, wood burning heaters and industry. During bushfires or dust storms, particle pollution can reach extremely high concentrations
The size of particles affects their potential to cause health problems:
Until people come to terms stop blaming CO2 for everything we will not be able to deal with the real pollution problems as we move on.
There are claims that PM2.5 is a problem, however much like global warming, the evidence is mostly computer models and faulty studies. There’s a reason why the EPA refuses to release the studies it used to justify the PM2.5 regulations.
On Oreskes, i would suggest similar to the joke Gallagher made about Joe Jackson; “does he HAVE to be in his own videos”?
And.
Logical inconsistency is a feature of the left, not a bug.
As i have pointed out here before, we have many wonderful canadian tourist jurisdictions like Whistler and Victoria in BC, Banff and Jasper in AB, etc etc ad nauseum, who proclaim climate emergencies and willingness to sue fossil fuel companies, and on the very same websites they proclaim how many tourists from all over the world visited the previous year and brag of how many millions they are spending to attract more in the future.
And they cannot see any inconsistency in these positions.
And so i fear that many modern humans are simply too stupid to live.
There should be a job description of a person that stands behind these people with a 2×4 and every time they say something utterly stupid they get a whack upside the head.
A great way to get in shape, if you need a job.
I volunteer.
You have to wade through 5 paragraphs of “Harvard Research” before seeing “Naomi Oreskes”. Other outlets didn’t mention her name at all. I wonder why news outlets seem so shy about leading with her name?
Lead with her name or lead with her photo – your call.
She is one of a large cadre of climate alarmists who have been spewing falsehoods for ~50 years about non-existent catastrophic human-made global warming – a politically-driven false alarm that has wasted trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Their political objective is now clear – the Great Reset – the end of capitalism and the takeover of the Western democracies by totalitarian dictators.
You won’t like it – Live like a Chinese peasant, lorded over by your political masters.
Well the truth is, it IS the consumers who demand the product.
I would rather look at the OTHER Naomi, the cute one!
These companies need to find a way to prevent those involved in these suits from using their products. Its past time to start playing hard ball and fighting back. They dont want them .. take them away.
Well of course! If there was no demand from consumers for fossil fuels, there would be no production and sales of fossil fuels by Exxon and the like. Harvard researchers ( including Oreskes) don’t comprehend that basic and simple fact???
I thought the Waxman-Markey carbon tax bill was all about pushing impact onto consumers without naming them.
I think she’s on to something but in the wrong case and it’s at MIT.
ObamaCare architect: ‘Stupidity’ of voters helped bill pass | TheHill
What’s in her wallet?
Hmmm . . . changing the meme from “Exxon knew” to “the public knew” (. . . and yet continued using fossil fuels) enables the AGW/CAGW-enabled law firms to now seek “penalty” payments from various governmental agencies representing the current populace.
You know, agencies like the White House, Congress, the EPA, the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce, etc., etc. With the Democrat Party’s recent philosophy (“explosion” is more fitting) of the concept of “free money for all” as the means to cure problems confronting the US, it is very likely these organizations will be all too happy to pay out transgenerational reparations (aka “other peoples money”, OPM) in the guise of righting these claimed wrongs.
You know . . . the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons . . . that kind of thinking.
Those lawyers mentioned in my first sentence stand to make $billions with this new approach.
Exxon Punch vs Exxon Judy
Welcome to clown world, keep a mask handy, you might need it.
How different her life might have been if only she had been born pretty.
Life isn’t fair.
Undoubtedly, at one time or another, to be blamed on climate change.
It’s not her appearance, it’s her actions and beliefs–what she would do if she had the power–that make her “scary beyond all reason”
Most people do not think that Mother Teresa was a looker. But most people have positive thoughts about her.
The dominance of the US or even the “western world” in nuclear power is over. If The US builds Nuclear it will be China doing the Design, Engineering and construction. Look at the Wikipedia “List of Nuclear reactors” and the number of decommissioning’s. Check out the number of prominent universities in the US, Western worlds, offering Nuclear Engineering courses. The majority, (all – almost) of the US builders of nuclear power plants have sold out everything offshore.
I know that I will not live long enough to see a significant increase of nuclear power in the US and it will continue decrease and to get decommissioned. Just as it did in the EU.
The first commercial NPPs in the US were built and sold to the utilities for $60 to $100 Million. None of them have had a dreaded meltdown. The newest ones built cost over $6 to $10 Billion. Are they over a million times safer? NO! ! If airplanes had the same “Oversight” as Nuclear Power Plants no one would be flying. More than half of that increase in cost goes to the banks.