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posted by janrinok on Thursday July 09 2015, @10:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the cloudy-outlook dept.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a report entitled The Climate Deception Dossiers.

For nearly three decades, many of the world's largest fossil fuel companies have knowingly worked to deceive the public about the realities and risks of climate change.

Their deceptive tactics are now highlighted in this set of seven "deception dossiers"—collections of internal company and trade association documents that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.

So now we have some idea of "What fossil fuel companies knew and when they knew it". Full report available here [pdf].


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Thursday July 09 2015, @11:08PM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday July 09 2015, @11:08PM (#207181)

    Transparency

    I just need to take a second to be very grateful that the same privacy eroding technology and policies that ruin my freedom and life, are apparently equally applying to those in power. It seems like no system is safe, and no collection of dark and scandalous information can remain hidden forever.

    Wish I could say I was shocked, but my cynicism and disillusionment with my country well prepared me for this day. 3 decades? I've heard that story before, with a much longer record. Keyhoe [wikipedia.org], that truly worthless piece of shit, slowly rotting away in hell, spent his entire life doing exactly what is claimed the fossil fuel companies are doing. We needed to make it to the 80's before corruption could be fought to the point where we could remove the chemicals from our gasoline that were invented and introduced in the early 20's. Keyhoe was aware of the negative health effects well before Paterson ever proved that lead levels world wide were not normal, and had risen significantly. In addition to the millions upon millions of people affected negatively with their health, Keyhoe is directly and personally responsible for scores of deaths in the workplace. It's truly and tragically ironic that he is credited with increasing workplace safety, although I sincerely doubt anyone with a brain believes in the Keyhoe Paradigm anymore except wealthy executives and industry leaders. His willful disregard for the facts and the truths because they were inconvenient to his patron, is parroted by many scientists today who abrogate their intellectual responsibilities for a steady paycheck. It's always disgusting and unconscionable.

    Just exchange Kettering [wikipedia.org] with any executive in the fossil fuels industry and you have pretty much the same thing. A complete willful disregard for science, public safety, and humanity for the endless search for greater profits at all costs. At least Hitler is dead though. It's not like any modern Kettering is actively selling out his country to hostile foreign interests like he did with the Nazis. That would make for quite a story.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @12:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @12:15AM (#207198)

    Hmm, so we can do nothing different unless we prove it causes no harm first.

    Proving it causes no harm may cause harm.

    Looks like we need some sort of time-travel device and/or precognition or we shall be forced to quiver in a pile awaiting your post facto judgement.

    No thanks, I'll stick with give it your best shot, try to be unbiased, try to have others review and oversee your work, screw up anyway, learn from mistakes, ignore the trolls. That's for me.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday July 10 2015, @01:42PM

      by sjames (2882) on Friday July 10 2015, @01:42PM (#207427) Journal
      The post you replied to was talking abouyt people who were WILLFULLY ignorant of the damage they were doing.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @03:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @03:39PM (#207490)

        As determined by post facto judgement, they were willfully ignorant. Check.

        In their time, they were (well, the lead gas guy anyhow) the acknowledged expert, so perhaps "willfully negligent" should be the post facto judgement.

        Or rather, anything should be the post facto judgement.
        Yes, lead in gas was bad.
        Yes, someone should be tarred, feathered, beaten, shot, reviled, stuck in the same pile as Hitler, and shat upon,
        because it makes us better people to do so, and makes the world a better place?

        Large things make large messes when they go wrong. Gas was large (and is, even if you somehow think that stuff you put in your tank every week is now "perfectly safe, except for global warming").
        Lead issue addressed, followup continues, please continue, next issue.
        But the next issue should not be forming a random linkage between all the random people who are generally acknowledged as evil, with the people who are suspected of evil (with some sure they were), with anyone involved with the other side of whatever discussion is currently being shat upon?

        At best, this was in instance of Historian's fallacy
        at worst, I fear it included half of the other fallacies. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:56AM

          by sjames (2882) on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:56AM (#207718) Journal

          Naturally it was post-facto. You can't fairly judge someone's behavior before they do it!

          It is not an example of historian's fallacy, there is good reason to believe that they knew or should have known about the danger. Perhaps not right at the beginning, but certainly after a few years.

          Meanwhile, the lead issue is far from remediated. We're not putting more into the environment but there's an awful lot of contaminated soil.