Scientists Say They Can Calculate the Cost of Oil Giants' Role In Global Warming (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0177112999
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/04/23/2238225/scientists-say-they-can-calculate-the-cost-of-oil-giants-role-in-global-warming
- Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/04/23/climate-attribution-damages-lawsuit/
> Oil and gas companies are facing hundreds of lawsuits around the world testing whether they can be held responsible for their role in causing climate change. Now, two scientists say they've built a tool that [1]can calculate how much damage each company's planet-warming pollution has caused -- and how much money they could be forced to pay if they're successfully sued. Collectively, greenhouse emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies caused the world $28 trillion in damage from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020, according to a paper [2]published Wednesday in Nature . The new analysis could fuel an emerging legal fight.The authors, Dartmouth associate professor Justin Mankin and Chris Callahan, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, say their model can determine a specific company's share of responsibility over any time period. [...]
>
> Callahan and Mankin's work combines all of these steps -- estimating a company's historical emissions, figuring out how much those emissions contributed to climate change and calculating how much economic damage climate change has caused -- into one "end-to-end" model that links one polluter's emissions to a dollar amount of economic damage from extreme heat. By their calculation, Saudi Aramco is on the hook for $2.05 trillion in economic losses from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020. Russia's Gazprom is responsible for $2 trillion, Chevron for $1.98 trillion, ExxonMobil for $1.91 trillion and BP for $1.45 trillion. Industry groups and companies tend to object to the methodologies of attribution science. They could seek to contest the assumptions that went into each step of Mankin and Callahan's model.
>
> Indeed, every step in that process introduces some room for error, and stringing together all of those steps compounds the uncertainty in the model, according to Delta Merner, lead scientist at theScience Hub for Climate Litigation, which connects scientists and lawyers bringing climate lawsuits. She also mentioned that the researchers relied on a commonly used but simplified climate model known as the Finite Amplitude Impulse Response (FAIR) model. "It is robust for the purpose of what the study is doing," Merner said, "but these models do make assumptions about climate sensitivity, about carbon cycle behavior, energy balance, and all of the simplifications in there do introduce some uncertainty." The exact dollar figures in the paper aren't intended as gospel. But outside scientists said Mankin and Callahan use well-established, peer-reviewed datasets and climate models for every step in their process, and they are transparent about the uncertainty in the numbers.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/04/23/climate-attribution-damages-lawsuit/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08751-3
This is about money and nothing else (Score:1, Flamebait)
> ...and how much money they could be forced to pay.
A more accurate headline would be: "Climate activists devise a way to justify more taxes on the population by arbitrarily assigning blame on energy companies."
The end result will be more expensive energy costs and nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
> A more accurate headline would be: "Climate activists devise a way to justify more taxes on the population by arbitrarily assigning blame on energy companies."
Except it's not. If you want to rail against taxes, carbon taxes are pretty much the smallest of the taxes around. Go complain about sales tax; complain about property tax, complain about income tax; all of these are a hundred times larger. You're complaining about a flea while a wolf is chewing your arm.
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon taxes are the worst kind of taxes - they are regressive (i.e., poor impacted the most), they kill jobs (i.e., industry very sensitive to energy costs), and most importantly they do nothing to reduce global emissions as it just shifts production elsewhere. Just look at UK, Germany and so on - they committed economic suicide and achieved none of their stated goals.
Re: This is about money and nothing else (Score:2)
It's much better here.
Regressive [Re:This is about money and nothing...] (Score:2)
> Carbon taxes are the worst kind of taxes - they are regressive (i.e., poor impacted the most),
Show me where you have been arguing to increase the tax rate on rich people because you are in favor of progressive taxation.
Really, the only time you (and others pushing that line) have ever cared about whether a tax is regressive is when it's an argument to not tax fossil fuels. Who are the people saying that line "don't tax fossil fuels"? Oh, right: that's what the oil companies want.
You really think regressive taxes are the "worst", let's hear your proposal to repeal the tax cuts that dropped the maximu
Re: (Score:2)
> Really, the only time you (and others pushing that line) have ever cared about whether a tax is regressive is when it's an argument to not tax fossil fuels.
I am glad we have an expert on what I believe to clear the record.
For the record, I don't believe in intentionally creating or worsening poverty by any means, and that is includes taxation.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Really, the only time you (and others pushing that line) have ever cared about whether a tax is regressive is when it's an argument to not tax fossil fuels.
> I am glad we have an expert on what I believe to clear the record. For the record, I don't believe in intentionally creating or worsening poverty by any means, and that is includes taxation.
You had specifically stated that a regressive tax is "the worst." Go ahead, "for the record" show me where you have argued against regressive taxes in any context other than taxes on fossil fuels.
I'm waiting.
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Here [slashdot.org] for example.
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23655897&cid=65281839
Re: (Score:2)
What annoys me is they force people to spend limited funds on mitigation rather than resilience.
Government jacks up the taxes on fuel to try and force me to buy a heat pump or an BEV. With more frequent storms due to climate change I would like to replace my roof with a metal one. I can't afford both, and government is effectively trying to coerce me to spend money against my own interest. Fuck them.
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon taxes are also play heavily into housing construction, as both material costs and shipping of materials affected. This results in more expensive homes, which puts downwards pressure on quality of construction as people simply cannot afford to pay more for new homes. This results in cheaply built houses on cheap land (e.g., flood prone) that are a lot more vulnerable to various climate events. So yes, carbon taxes are about the worst thing a government could do to promote resilience.
Aside, when I wa
Re: (Score:2)
> Carbon taxes are also play heavily into housing construction, as both material costs and shipping of materials affected. This results in more expensive homes, which puts downwards pressure on quality of construction as people simply cannot afford to pay more for new homes.
There is a push here to increase the required energy efficiency of new homes through building codes. We also have a massive housing shortage and increasing the cost of new builds only makes it worse. Folks are going to have to choose which is the more pressing problem, and they seem ill-equipped for the task.
> Aside, when I was redoing roof on my house I specified high-wind resistance shingles. They cost only slightly more than regular shingles. While not as good as a metal roof, it does get you most of the way there in terms of storm resilience.
I'll check that out, thanks.
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> What annoys me is they force people to spend limited funds on mitigation rather than resilience.
It's not a binary choice. They are not mutually exclusive.
Re: (Score:2)
My discretionary funds are limited, and I could spend every penny I have and climate would not notice, it will continue to do its thing regardless. Money spent on adaptation gives instant, obvious results. Money spent on mitigation has no noticeable results. Sure, I'll make a contribution to the latter, but that is not where the majority of my money is going to go, regardless of what my stupid government wants.
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> Go complain about sales tax; complain about property tax, complain about income tax; all of these are a hundred times larger.
We do. Do you think adding more different taxes goes otherwise unnoticed?
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If they could raise prices, they would have done it already and pocketed the profits.
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> If they could raise prices, they would have done it already and pocketed the profits.
Even superficial look at historical oil prices debunks this view. In the past decade oil prices were anywhere between $30 to $200 per barrel, how would you justify the dips? Goodwill of oil companies?
Re: This is about money and nothing else (Score:2)
"They" will always maximize profits, and if you own stock... I heard one large US egg company tripled profit recently. Economy seems to need management, but humans can't seem to manage economies and/or the environment well, especially with equitable outcomes. I am not arguing for managed economies, but it seems inevitable to avoid collapse. I'm also not arguing for equitable outcomes.
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Supply and demand.
Let me save you some time (Score:2)
It's lower than China's coal usage
Re: Let me save you some time (Score:2)
Citation? But likely true. I saw a global emissions visualization once. China was an absolute disaster. And that was probably a decade ago. But again, who gets those goods? Who chooses to conduct those trades? Because money, and people really benefit from cheap manufactured goods. They also often buy things they don't need and are otherwise wasteful. Again, consumption is the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
That's just whataboutism...
Re: A few critical questions (Score:1)
Pedantic or myopic? I often get those words confused.
Re: (Score:2)
More like- are you being played by greedy people who want to take the earned money of others?
> A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.
> With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”
[1]https://heartland.org/opinion/... [heartland.org]
[1] https://heartland.org/opinion/media-advisory-96-of-us-climate-data-is-corrupted/
Re: (Score:2)
> said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts
That guy has been lying about this for decades, and the Heartland Institute is nothing but a shill for Big Fossil.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
> Is there even global warming? If you look at charts that go back to the beginning of the planet
You mean when the planet wouldn't have supported human life? Get a better argument, maybe one that wasn't already debunked in the last fucking millenium.
Re: (Score:3)
The Earth was warmer (and colder) than today during human history . We have historical and archeological [1]records of forests in Greenland [sciencedaily.com]. Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period are a thing. Pretending that we are currently at a threshold of some critical temperature or CO2 levels that exceeding would endanger life on Earth is unscientific catastrophizing.
Stop spreading FUD.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070705153019.htm
Re: (Score:3)
> The Earth was warmer (and colder) than today during human history.
Yes, briefly.
> Pretending that we are currently at a threshold of some critical temperature or CO2 levels that exceeding would endanger life on Earth is unscientific catastrophizing.
These CO2 levels are unprecedented — they are literally orders of magnitude greater than during the periods you're citing as a reason why they aren't a problem.
> Stop spreading FUD.
Stop downplaying a crisis.
Re: (Score:2)
> These CO2 levels are unprecedented — they are literally orders of magnitude greater than during the periods you're citing as a reason why they aren't a problem.
We have good understanding of CO2 levels on geological scale, there is nothing unprecedented about current CO2 levels. They are increasing from a historical minimum that was hit sometime during the last ice age.
Re: (Score:2)
> We have good understanding of CO2 levels on geological scale
No we don't. "The most distant period in time for which we have estimated CO2 levels is around the Ordovician period, 500 million years ago."
Accurate measurements from ice cores go back only about 800,000 years.
[1]https://earth.org/data_visuali... [earth.org]
Meanwhile the previous CO2 levels were reached via natural events such as volcanic eruptions and generally happened over the course of thousands or millions of years. What's happening now started at
[1] https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
Re: (Score:2)
Your own link, that cited Foster et al, shows that both temperature and CO2 was higher in the past, with CO2 @ 1000 ppm lasting for millions of years and intermittent peaks of 3000 to 9000 ppm lasting for tens of thousands of years. The only way to even attempt to make this comparable is with modeled worst-case extrapolations into year 2500.
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> The Earth was warmer (and colder) than today during human history .
No.
Most of these variations were local or regional, not global. And we have now vastly surpassed temperatures of the Medieval Warm period.
> We have historical and archeological [1]records of forests in Greenland [sciencedaily.com].
From that link,
" Eske Willerslev, a professor at Copenhagen University, has analysed the world's oldest DNA, preserved under the kilometre-thick [Greenland] icecap. The DNA is likely close to half a million years old,"
You'll be hard pressed to find historical records from half a million years ago. But, yes, long ago the Earth had significant variations in temperature comp
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070705153019.htm
Re: (Score:2)
> You'll be hard pressed to find historical records
Landnamabok (9th century) describes forests in Greenland, Landnama (12th century) mentions these forests in the past tense. My understanding that Greenland deforestation was the result of sheep grazing that viking settlers introduced to the area. That is, we don't even have to go to Iron Age to have a multi-source record of forests in Greenland.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is the speed of change. If it takes thousands of years we can adapt to it. If it takes decades you are going to see mass migration and resource wars, along with people dying from the heat, extreme weather, and crop failures.
Right now it's mostly other people feeling the pain, but yours is coming.
Re: A few critical questions (Score:2)
It kinda sucks for the people in really hot places that are getting hotter and drier though. I heard an estimate of 1B expected climate refugees in the next decade. World isn't ready for that.
Re: (Score:2)
> I heard an estimate of 1B expected climate refugees in the next decade.
Yep, a combination of people who are leaving a place that becomes uninhabitable, and those who are starving because their region has become incapable of producing food because weather has become too chaotic and you can't bring in a crop because of unseasonal hail, or rain, or drought, or any combination of these things following the others in any order.
> World isn't ready for that.
And their idea of getting ready is strengthening borders, not building more resilient systems, let alone fighting the actual problem.
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> Yep, a combination of people who are leaving a place that becomes uninhabitable, and those who are starving because their region has become incapable of producing food
A lot of places already import most of the food. What about people that are starving because fertilizer cost increases due to carbon taxes resulted in more expensive food costs? I read somewhere, I think UN, that today there is no starvation due to food shortage, the only famines are due to inability to afford food or malice (e.g., blocking of imports by warlords).
Oh Jesus fuck not this shit again (Score:2)
The problem with these oil company talking points is that it takes way too much effort to debunk them because you can spout bullshit faster than I can spout reality and facts.
Ignoring the fact that for centuries human beings would go through long periods of starvation and death during the times you're talking about, there's also the fact that it's climate fucking change bro.
The problem is we are seeing rapid change to the climate caused by burning fossil fuels. That rapid change is not going to give
Re:A few critical questions - big thumbs up (Score:2)
Not trying to earn anyone's ire, but this is indisputable fact. If climate activists want to make a profound impact on the future of humanity, they need to stick to fact and indisputable science, and not go back to scare tactics based on things that are simply not fact. I'm old and it is unlikely that climate change will significantly affect my life. I would like that to be true for all of you.
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> Is there even global warming? If you look at charts that go back to the beginning of the planet, it appears as though the global warming conspiracy theorists are rigging the charts by zooming in on the domain and range of the graph every time they post the "hockey stick" chart.
You mean, zooming in on the part that affects us?
Yes, because that's the part that affects us.
Yes, greenhouse effect warming exists, it's well understood. The oil company line has switched away from "question the science" because the questions have all been answered. Get with the times; the new oil company line is "it would be too expensive."
Funny! (Score:2)
"theScience Hub for Climate Litigation"
Finger pointing garbage. (Score:3)
We're so fixated on finding someone to blame that we're going to just keep doing the same shit until we literally make our only habitat unlivable for ourselves, while tossing around lawsuits trying to blame our suppliers for daring to give us what we all use. Not that I think oil companies are innocent snowflakes, but this is a society problem, and it's going to take society changing to fix it. Pointing fingers doesn't accomplish anything other than shuffling funds from one bank account to another, while lawyers soak up the fees in the transaction. How is that doing any good for anyone? Especially while so many of us are still depending on oil to survive and live?
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> Not that I think oil companies are innocent snowflakes, but this is a society problem, and it's going to take society changing to fix it.
And oil companies are outside society, right?
Right?
> Pointing fingers doesn't accomplish anything other than shuffling funds from one bank account to another
Yeah! Let's never figure out who is to blame, so we can never hold them accountable, and never change anything!
Re: (Score:2)
>> Not that I think oil companies are innocent snowflakes, but this is a society problem, and it's going to take society changing to fix it.
> And oil companies are outside society, right?
> Right?
>> Pointing fingers doesn't accomplish anything other than shuffling funds from one bank account to another
> Yeah! Let's never figure out who is to blame, so we can never hold them accountable, and never change anything!
We're all to blame. We all know it's crap, and we're all trapped inside this bubble that forces us to use the crap that's killing us or drop out and live in a cabin in the woods. Spending so much effort on blame-games without any attempt to change behavior is a bullshit game that distracts from making progress toward solutions. Changing *SHOULD* be the priority, but suing everybody in sight doesn't change anything. It just shuffles money around. Which, I get, is priority number one in the age of Greed as Go
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> so many of us are still depending on oil to survive and live?
What makes you think that's the case? Most oil gets burned into the atmosphere as transportation fuel, and that obviously can be replaced by electric vehicles.
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>> so many of us are still depending on oil to survive and live?
> What makes you think that's the case? Most oil gets burned into the atmosphere as transportation fuel, and that obviously can be replaced by electric vehicles.
I live in bumfuck SoDak. I depend on oil to survive. If someone wants to point me to the vehicle I can buy for under 10k today that is electric and will replace my gas guzzler, and actually fit my ape-sized body, great. I'd be all for it. Though I'm normally stuck buying used, and rarely have an extra big chunk of change to also buy a battery after buying a new car when the old one finally dies.
Even if true, entirely irrelevant (Score:2)
Even if they can make such a calculation - which is complete nonsense - it is irrelevant. Extracting and using oil is not in any way illegal, nor has it ever been. Oil products can be, and often are, subject to taxes. However, you cannot make taxes retroactive. So even if you could say that a liter of oil cause $xx in costs, you cannot go back in time to collect that.
But you cannot perform such a calculation anyway! There are far, far too many arbitrary assumptions that you have to make.Aside from the cli
Re: (Score:2)
> But you cannot perform such a calculation anyway! There are far, far too many arbitrary assumptions that you have to make.Aside from the climate hysterics, there is a lot of debate as to the amount of warming caused by CO2, and the extent to which this effect may have already effectively reached saturation.
This is not correct. You are repeating the oil company line from twenty years ago, "the science is all uncertain!". There are parts that are still uncertain-- the way you can tell real science from pseudoscience is to look for error bars-- but the overall story getting to be well understood, and the effect has not reached saturation.
> It is in any case a curve where the early increases had a lot more effect than later increases.
Yes, warming follows a logarithmic curve: delta-T is proportional to the log(base 2*) of CO2. That's been known for literally a hundred years. However, at the moment we are st
Fascinating (Score:2)
Seems to me like CVX and XOM are Strong Buys.Thanks for the stock tip.
Be fair (Score:1)
I bet their cost of contribution is no more than the cost that can be attributed to their customers. Make sure all of them get a bill too.
Also, don't forget to subtract the value of all the economic activity use of oil has enabled.
Winners and losers (Score:2)
I'll be checking their economic model for the benefit I've received due to lower heating bills. If I don't find it' I'll assume that the rest of their model is broken as well.
They sell the oil, not burn it. You burn it. (Score:1)
This is why capital-S Science is taking a catastrophic reputation hit in the US right now.
The choice to ascribe the blame for emissions to producers rather than consumers of petrochemical fuels is not a scientific one. It is a purely subjective political decision. Calling it scientific is a flat out lie. Period.
Liars see their reputations tarnished. Rightfully so. It serves no one to enlist all of the scientific enterprise in the service of this lie and see its collective reputation also tarnished.
Wait (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't consumption the problem, rather than production? As far as I can tell, basically all human systems across the globe now depend on oil. Doesn't that make us all complicit? And there is no way these oil companies will pay anything without passing that content on to the consumer. We're not going to get off oil, IMHO. Isn't it the most financially valuable resource on the planet (excluding real estate - maybe)? With water as the actual most valuable resource?
Re: (Score:3)
> Big Oil has spent a lot of money making us dependent on oil. Are we all complicit? Not those of us with little to no decision making power, and especially not if we voted for something better.
Come up with a way to go without everything you currently rely on oil for. Start with your computer and cell phone, where so many parts rely on plastics to make them work. Next, do the same with medications. The chemistry involved with creating and scaling these things from scratch just doesn't exist without oil. Recycling is improving these things, and thanks to the orange man's tariffs, the idea of recycling rare earth elements is finally being taken seriously, but you have to start from nothing to have s
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> Come up with a way to go without everything you currently rely on oil for.
Big Oil has been willfully suppressing that, too. Suggesting we never do anything to rein them in is planning to fail.
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> where so many parts rely on plastics to make them work
The article is about "greenhouse emissions from from 111 fossil fuel companies", not plastics or medicines. And in fact their methodology deducts the non-greenhouse uses of fossil fuels from the totals.
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Nobody is suggesting we cut off all oil tomorrow. They are suggesting that we accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, and punish companies that choose to resist those efforts instead of transitioning their businesses to other sources of revenue.
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There are substitutes to oil for most/all of the things you mention. However, oil subsidies and bought and paid for politicians keep these substitutes expensive and profit is more important than people.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Isn't consumption the problem, rather than production?
> Big Oil has spent a lot of money making us dependent on oil. Are we all complicit? Not those of us with little to no decision making power, and especially not if we voted for something better.
Nobody at Big Oil forced 100 million people to get up this morning and load a single-use plastic Keurig pod into their complex plastic-and-electronics Keurig.
Nobody at Big Oil forced 200 million people this afternoon to idle their cars in a line waiting to hand their plastic card over to a teenager who will swipe the plastic card in a plastic POS terminal, then hand it back along with a single-use bag containing further single-use plastic/styro containers containing food, and a stack of napkins which will be wadded up and thrown away with everything else.
Nobody at Big Oil forced 300 million people to buy a washing machine and dryer that rely on deeply complex rare-earth computer circuit boards (which will soon fail rendering the entire rest of the machine's metal/plastic useless waste) so SensoKleen technology can weigh each load and determine the precise agitator RPM for "Our Most Powerful Clean Ever!" and then use their WiFi card to play downloaded Lady Gaga ringtones when the spin cycle ends, instead of, you know, simple mechanical machines that already worked just fine 40 years ago. Congrats on getting your polyester clothing 12.73% cleaner than grandma, I guess.
Nobody at Big Oil forced 400 million people to buy cars that have electronically-controlled seats that require complex circuitry and motors and other doomed-to-fail parts, instead of just a couple basic handle/cranks that use ratcheting levers that were already known to the ancient world long before industrial petrochemistry.
Everyone who claims to have "little to no decision making power" sounds like a 5 year old kid saying, "Yeah but he hit me FIRST!" Corporations aren't burning/refining oil just for the sake of being evil. They are burning oil to give you things you want. You want fast, lightweight, low-effort, convenient, impermeable, microwaveable, durable stuff in all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors that absolutely do not exist in circle-of-life paint-with-all-the-colors-of-the-wind Nature.
Re: (Score:3)
> Nobody at Big Oil forced 400 million people to buy cars that have electronically-controlled seats that require complex circuitry and motors and other doomed-to-fail parts, instead of just a couple basic handle/cranks that use ratcheting levers that were already known to the ancient world long before industrial petrochemistry.
This is just one example of you being incorrect. Big Oil and Big Auto worked hand in hand to destroy public transportation in America so that you would have to buy cars, then the auto companies competed on the basis of content instead of efficiency and did everything they could to fight and dodge and cheat on emissions standards.
> Everyone who claims to have "little to no decision making power" sounds like a 5 year old kid saying, "Yeah but he hit me FIRST!" Corporations aren't burning/refining oil just for the sake of being evil.
Nobody said so. The claim is that they're evil because they did it for the sake of money, at any external cost which they don't have to care about because they expect to be dead bef
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> This is just one example of you being incorrect. Big Oil and Big Auto worked hand in hand to destroy public transportation in America so that you would have to buy cars
That's nonsense. If anyone destroyed "public transportation", it was the American voter. Because we love the freedom of having our own cars and resent it when some schmuck tells us we have to ride the bus. Any politician outside of Brooklyn or Berkeley that runs on making car ownership more restrictive in favor of forced public transport will be beaten so badly his own party will never let him sniff a nomination again.
American car culture is just that... a culture, beloved by Americans. There was never any
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> Big Oil and Big Auto worked hand in hand to destroy public transportation in America so that you would have to buy cars
The number of car drivers who wish they could ride a bus is probably smaller than the number of bus riders who wish they owned a car.
Big Oil and Big Auto did not have to conspire to sell the freedom to go anywhere, anytime. It is a pretty awesome thing of it's own accord.
Re: (Score:2)
>Nobody at Big Oil forced
I mean they kinda did , though over a century of thumb-on-scales political and economic pressure to entrench themselves into every aspect of our culture and society while also suppressing attempts to develop or transition to alternatives. Nobody's forcing you to eat that shit sandwich, you're just not going to get anything else...
As for the rest of your post: "Yet you participate in society... I am very intelligent!"
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
> >Nobody at Big Oil forced
> I mean they kinda did , though over a century of thumb-on-scales political and economic pressure to entrench themselves into every aspect of our culture and society while also suppressing attempts to develop or transition to alternatives. Nobody's forcing you to eat that shit sandwich, you're just not going to get anything else...
> As for the rest of your post: "Yet you participate in society... I am very intelligent!"
> =Smidge=
100 million Keurigs and WiFi washing machines weren't even "kinda" forced on people, either with a literal gun or with a century of gradual sneaky political and economic pressure. You can brew coffee (and with FAR superior flavor, not to mention easy composting afterward) in any tempered-glass or porcelain container, just like your great great great great grandpappy. You can use a mechanical timer (or just, like put down your Candy Crush and turn off your 70" 4K soon-to-be-obsolete-again-again wifi TV and p
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> 100 million Keurigs and WiFi washing machines weren't even "kinda" forced on people
You seem oddly focused on these talking points. Setting aside the hilariously wrong implications you're making, consider for even a moment what the actual environmental impact these things are compared to, say, a century of burning fossil fuels in inefficient engines and power plants around the world.
Let's take the coffee pods thing as an example (even though that's posed to be [1]even less of a problem [wired.com] going forward). I'm
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/keurig-k-rounds-coffee-pods-keurig-alta-coffee-maker/
Re: (Score:2)
add to this the implication of all these costs calculations is that somehow the collective "we" is owed something as result.
Pretty much the entirety of population growth and economic success mid-century on of the US anywhere south of the Mason Dixon can be ascribed to cheap energy, a lot of that was Oil&Gas. Autos and air-conditioners changed everything.
The post war industrial boom was going to happen no matter what, realistically it would have been almost entirely coal fired without the Big Oil! What
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TL/DR: Blame the consumer for products provided by industry. Products those same industries fought tooth-and-nail to protect from incursion by greener alternatives.
The main role (Score:4, Informative)
The main role of oil companies in global warming has been that they had set up a large and well-funded campaign to dismiss or discredit climate science, using lessons learned from the campaign by the tobacco industry decades earlier to attack the science showing the health effects of smoking. It's important to remember that the oil companies are not mere billion-dollar industries; they are a multi- trillion dollar industry, and even small changes in oil consumption represents billions and billions of dollars.
The worse problem here is that the campaign to attack the science has bled over into other areas; science denial is rampant in our society, from flat-Earthers to moon-landing deniers to pretty much all of modern science.
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If you put massive fines on the oil companies you need to be prepared for their obvious response. Because if you massively fine them for selling oil products the first thing they are going to do is stop selling those oil products into whatever state or country which enacts those fines. It only make sense, if you are incurring massive fines the very first thing you should do is to stop accruing even more fines from continued shipment.
This will stop the release of carbon in those countries and states, but you
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> If you put massive fines on the oil companies you need to be prepared for their obvious response.
Good point. We should nationalize them instead.
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>> If you put massive fines on the oil companies you need to be prepared for their obvious response.
> Good point. We should nationalize them instead.
Comrade dinkypoo, Venezuela tried that approach, it didn't work out well.
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Economic retaliation from the usa is kind of moot now because the usa is economically retaliating against its closest allies for no reason. Now is the perfect time to nationalize the oil, what are they gonna do.. tariff it?
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> Economic retaliation from the usa is kind of moot now because the usa is economically retaliating against its closest allies for no reason.
True.
> Now is the perfect time to nationalize the oil, what are they gonna do.. tariff it?
They're gonna fellate it and hope some money squirts out of the derricks, same as it ever was.
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> Comrade dinkypoo, Venezuela tried that approach, it didn't work out well.
So what you're saying is we're no more competent or reliable than Venezuela? I guess that's probably true, good on ya.
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No, I am saying that you are no more competent or reliable than Venezuelan politicians. The rest of us know better than to suggest nationalization of the oil industry.
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Counterpoint: Saudi Aramco, the 4th largest oil company in the world is majority state owned and has been for a long time.
Now I would say neither of those nations are idea models the USA should follow in how to nationalize nor examples of nations I want to emulate but there is nothing specific about nationalized industries that makes the by idea unworkable, it's all in the details and circumstances and what your goals are.
So no, no more just saying "VENEZUELA" and expecting that to do all the brainwork for
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They won't stop selling. Their obvious response is to bribe politicians, just like they always have. Why lose billions in sales when stuffing a few pockets with a million or two will do the trick.
Re: The main role (Score:2)
Stopping release in one country wouldn't stop that country from experiencing the result. It's the "prisoner's dilemma" that results in basically a race to the bottom. I am not denying climate science or saying we should do nothing. I just don't see a solution, especially without reductions in lifestyle, which is actually improving (until 2025 maybe). Asia is big too, and most of the people are even less informed on these issues than in the USA. They really don't have any choice anyway.
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> the solution is to work on developing better technologies.
By and large, those technologies exist already. But we need to have the will to adopt them, and say goodbye to less climate-friendly technologies. That is occurring, but not quickly enough.
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The oil companies can try crippling nation states if they want to, but I suspect that they will find the consequences rather severe.
The best way to do it would be some hefty fines now and a new tax regime that strongly encourages profits to be invested in reducing reliance on oil. The oil companies can then choose - no profits, or they invest in profitable alternatives and secure their futures.
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> the first thing they are going to do is stop selling those oil products
More than 65% of oil is used for transportation fuel, and that can largely be eliminated with electric vehicles. And then there's methane, which the oil companies routinely flare or dump into the atmosphere.
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> The main role of oil companies in global warming has been that they had set up a large and well-funded campaign to dismiss or discredit climate science
Are we not supposed to hear all sides of the argument and make up our own minds? It sounds like you're doing exactly what you're accusing the other side of, trying to suppress people from hearing arguments. If they're not afraid of the shakiness of their position, why not put all the information out there and let people decide? We'll be able to settle it for ourselves in our own minds hearing the full set of facts, not a cherry picked argument from one side.
Information is out there [Re:The main role] (Score:2)
> why not put all the information out there and let people decide? We'll be able to settle it for ourselves in our own minds hearing the full set of facts, not a cherry picked argument from one side.
All the information is out there. In massive amounts. I'll recommend starting with the IPCC-WG-1 report, " [1]The Physical Science Basis of climate change [www.ipcc.ch]", but there are plenty of other sources. The [2]Berkeley Earth [berkeleyearth.org] page is also good; try their " [3]Skeptic's Guide" [googleapis.com]
> not a cherry picked argument from one side.
Ah, that's the problem. If you have already decided to dismiss all the information without ever even reading it by saying "that's cherry picked!", you're not going to learn anything.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
[2] https://berkeleyearth.org/about/
[3] https://berkeley-earth-wp-offload.storage.googleapis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/03232411/skeptics-guide-to-climate-change-1.pdf
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> Isn't consumption the problem, rather than production? As far as I can tell, basically all human systems across the globe now depend on oil. Doesn't that make us all complicit?
Yes, came here to post this. It's a bit disingenuous to say that the oil companies are "responsible" for the environmental damage. And it's absurd to suggest that they might now be "sued" for that damage. It's as though I decided to sue In-N-Out Burger for giving me a dad bod. They made a legal product, and they sold it to me in a manner that was legal (and, in fact, heavily regulated and taxed). And, frankly, I did have some idea of the consequences when I ate that double cheeseburger; I'm not an idio
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> When we make statements like "Exxon Mobil is to blame for our current climate crisis, all $100 trillion of it, and they should be sued into oblivion"
I haven't seen anyone make statements like that. Sheer hyperbole.
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One person's hyperbole is another person's reading between the lines.
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Isn't consumption the problem, rather than production?
You'd think. I went looking for their methodology, but everything's behind paywalls. Are they calculating only the contribution from extraction, refining, etc., or are they also including the contribution from end users of their product?
Re: Wait (Score:2)
Good point. Did you see that recent video of the ocean (I think near Mexico...err, New South Trumpland) "on fire"? And I've heard that flaring is unnecessary, but there is a cost to containment.
No. Just now. Stop trying to shift blame. (Score:2)
Christ I hope you got paid for that. Because it's word for word oil company talking points and it would be sad if you're spreading them for free on your own time..
We have had the ability to switch off of oil for at least 15 years now. That's how long wind and solar power have been able to provide base power. Nuclear has also been an option but we do not regulate businesses strongly enough to make it safe and we're not willing to let the government publicly run our infrastructure so there you go.
The
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> Isn't consumption the problem, rather than production?
Keep in mind: oil/gas producers also are enormous consumers of the same energy, and there are lots of emissions from their operations. Drill rigs, pump jacks, refineries, pipelines, and tankers aren't powered by pixie dust. Depending on whose numbers, which fuel, and what country you're talking about, each unit of fossil fuel energy takes 0.02 to 0.50 units of energy to produce. Gas wells and pipelines leak methane. Gas flaring is not benign. Oil
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Yes, consumption generates the pollution and the producers are just doing what makes them money.
However, we shouldn't blame consumers when:
Most of the time they don't have a choice to not burn fossils.
EVs are cheaper to run but more expensive to build and the fossil industry has spent billions on buying politicians to keep EVs out of the hands of consumers. Same with heating your house (fossil NG vs. heat pumps).
Same with the electricity you buy (barriers to wind and solar PV vs electric utility lobbyists).