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posted by on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the playing-both-sides-of-the-fence dept.

Common Dreams reports:

Oil giant Shell also knew of the dangers of climate change decades ago, while it continued to lobby against climate legislation and push for fossil fuel development, a joint investigation by The Guardian[1] and the Dutch newspaper The Correspondent revealed [February 28].

Shell created a confidential report in 1986 which found that the changes brought about by global warming could be "the greatest in recorded history", and warned of an impact "on the human environment, future living standards, and food supplies, [that] could have major social, economic, and political consequences".

The company also made a 28-minute educational film in 1991 titled Climate of Concern that warned oil extraction and use could lead to extreme weather, famines, and mass displacement, and noted that the dangers of climate change were "endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists". The film was developed for public viewing, particularly for schools.

[...] Despite its own warnings, Shell invested billions of dollars into tar sands operations and exploration in the Arctic. It has also devoted millions to lobbying against climate legislation.

The revelations about Shell come after a separate investigation into ExxonMobil revealed that [that] company had also been waging a climate science suppression campaign and burying its own reports on the global warming impacts of fossil fuel use for decades. Exxon, whose former CEO is now U.S. secretary of state, is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and state attorneys general for allegedly lying to investors about the risks of climate change.

In 2016, a group of lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to look into Shell's knowledge of global warming as well.

[1] Bogus link in TFA corrected.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 13 2017, @07:03AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 13 2017, @07:03AM (#478327) Journal

    Basically there has been more change in the last 20 years than in the previous 4000 years.

    No. Change in the last 20 years is roughly 0.3 C, maybe less, if there is exaggeration of recent data. Eyeballing the lines on the xkcd graph, it is claimed that global mean temperature went from roughly 0.2 C down to -0.5 C and then up to +0.5 C fully describing the amount of change since 2000 BC. That's 1.7 C of change. In car terms, it's like claiming someone who drives on a long, round trip never went anywhere, because they ended up where they started.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @02:24PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2017, @02:24PM (#478407)

    Yes. You're ignoring the significance of the size of the scale involved. Yup it shifted a lot over millennia, but there is a severe uptick right about the industrial revolution and it goes up at a steeper rate than the millennia before it. That graph starts 20000 years BCE or before the common era. The part we are responsible for is the half inch to an inch at the bottom. Or do you dispute the fact that the earth has been here for that long in the first place and that it should be BC?

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 13 2017, @03:05PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 13 2017, @03:05PM (#478424) Journal

      Yes. You're ignoring the significance of the size of the scale involved. Yup it shifted a lot over millennia, but there is a severe uptick right about the industrial revolution and it goes up at a steeper rate than the millennia before it.

      Change is not rate of change. And I do dispute xkcd's characterization of past climate variation. For example, what happened to the warming pulse [nasa.gov] around the time of the Second World War? Where's the enormous error bars on any estimate of global temperature before roughly 1850?