Godalmighty, Exxon Knew Everything | Hacker News Reader

Godalmighty, Exxon Knew Everything

billmckibben.substack.com

52 pointskitkat_new25 comments

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Discussed previously today:

Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 70s & 80s

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34358759 (111 comments)

Great.

Dissolve Exxon..

What about the state oil companies of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, and others that produce the other 95% of the oil?

Climate Change is not a problem that can be unilaterally solved by the West. Saudi Arabia isnt going to agree to be a poor desert backwater again to protect beachfront property in Malibu.

Climate Change is a massively intractable problem. The fact that the West's favored solutions are Hail Mary bets on radically increased performance of batteries and renewable energy sources that are unlikely to be achieved at best, is highly disconcerting.

We've had a good 25 years to ramp up next gen nuclear, which can work at volume and much more safely, but it's been frittered away on the hope that renewables can function as baseload.

Perhaps this is just my ignorance showing, but wasn't the data that Exxon based its own modelling on more or less publicly available? It can't have been a secret how many barrels were being pulled out of the ground each year? What am I missing?

Far from wanting to defend Exxon, but regardless whether or not they knew; if the narrative is that the "world outside Exxon" didn't know, doesn't that in itself amount to wilful ignorance or negligence at best?

What data did they have that the rest of the academic/political world couldn't add up on its own without corporate cooperation?

Makes a lot of claims but doesn't link to any of what he's referencing.

The lack of references combined with the “I was arrested for pointless virtue signaling protest” lead in doesn't make for the effective argument the author thinks it does.

It's the release of a much-awaited study in Science today: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063

The authors have been doing work in this direction for several years. Since McKibben's substack is written for "insiders", I guess he assumed people would know where to look.

The "famous", at least in some circles, paper on climate change created in 1977. It has predicted our current actual temperature increases along with carbon emissions with startling accuracy:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

It's worth a read.

Can't believe they don't have any sources. Here's the recent paper the article is referring to: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063

So, now we know, Exxon has the best crack team of climate scientists. My question is, what are they predicting for the 2020s-2100s period (my lifetime)? If they're really so accurate then we could assume their future predictions are reasonably accurate as well.

Obligatory relevant Climate Town telling of history (with citations).

https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM

In China, the authorities would immediately send the police to arrest the entire corporate suite. They have even executed corrupt CEOs, for example in the tainted milk scandal.

In the United States, nothing will happen. No law was broken, you would say. Still. There should be consequences. There should have been consequences. In China, prosecutors would chalk it up to general charges of "corruption" or "public dishonesty" or whatever.

They also would not allow people like Jane Fonda to drive public opinion on critical infrastructure policy like Nuclear Power.

Ah yes, former energy secretary Jane Fonda. How could we forget.

> There should be consequences.

The public institutions should not punish or execute people who did not break a law.

Are we sure they did not? Let's examine their past Congressional testimony and see if it was honest or perjurious.

No, I’m not sure they did not. I disagree with the parent poster who praises a dictator regime for being able to dispose of people at will.

This assumption also seems un warranted. The history of legal thought in China dates back thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius

China strikes me as a somewhat oppressive society, whose norms and mores I would prefer not to live under. However, I do not have the impression that it is ruled by fiat. They have harsh laws against corruption, though my impression is that enforcement is uneven and many choose to gamble, on either not getting caught or being able to bribe their way out of trouble.

Isn't it possible that you're just defaulting to assuming business operators are generally innocent and public authorities generally dictatorial?

I don’t know what are you talking about and why are you arguing with me.

Read the original comment I replied to.

It’s along the lines of “It is bad that in US there are no consequences when no law is broken or when it cannot be proven. In China they can just charge you with corruption in general or whatever and hang you.”

I did read the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34363208

I felt you misrepresented it, and that you have done again here. It makes a simple policy argument that there should be sterner consequences for lying to the public, contrasting the US with some other countries. You have rewritten it to say something quite different.

What do you think 'No law was broken, you would say. Still. There should be consequences.' means?

What do you think 'In China, prosecutors would chalk it up to general charges of "corruption" or "public dishonesty" or whatever.' means?

It's simple; China has strong laws against self-dealing, and (in the poster's view) their legal code is not riddled with loopholes and getout clauses. We have the same concept in the USA, but it is rarely applies to financial crimes. It's called 'strict liability.'

And have you not noticed how people sometimes get longer prison terms for small crimes than large ones? As of 2021, the US incarcerates ~5x more people than China (per capita), but penalties for untoward business activity are generally light.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

GP did not misrepresent the comment. It’s clear as day. “We should look to China, where they executed a corrupt CEO.”

I can glean no other message from the comment. What you’re describing would require quite a bit of mental gymnastics on my part.

I think you’re ignoring what the comment says in clear plain English and interpreting it in a way you think is less controversial.

The point is that that country has strong general laws against corruption. The US does not; deceiving consumers is largely excused here, and stiff punishments are reserved for deceiving investors.

It's a position of honor and integrity that carries a burden of the public trust.

If people are exposed as underhanded scoundrels, they should be stripped of the privilege of being in c-suites.

We have rules by the SEC that do similar things for other crimes and analogous rules for other professions like law and medicine.

If someone abuses a child, they can't be around children anymore, if someone gets a restraining order because they're being harassed, the harasser is restricted as well.

When someone does egregious crimes while acting as an executive, they shouldn't be allowed to be an executive any more

China executing a person is not an example I’m interested in modeling anything after.

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