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Post 22 Apr 2016, 3:44 pm

freeman3 wrote:Well, I think you are taking it to an extreme position. Why would they think most life would perish? In the next 100 years some coastal cities would be flooded, huge amount of property damage, dislocation of people, there would be more extreme weather, etc. , but it's not going to threaten the existence of human beings. It's pretty hard for people to think on that kind of time frame, assess the probability of it happening, assess the consequences in 100 years (almost impossible to do), and assess the cost of covering it up. Compare that to Tobacco company executives knowing that a large amount of smokers would have their lifes shortened due to tobacco use--that is a much more certain calculation.


Oh, sorry. I guess I was taking it as seriously as Bernie Sanders. I listen to Democrats and what they want to do and all I can think is:

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Post 22 Apr 2016, 3:53 pm

You know, I kind of liked that movie...anyway, I am too fair-skinned to live in a water world so we better get this this thing solved...
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Post 23 Apr 2016, 12:18 am

Doctor Fate wrote:
freeman3 wrote:Well, I do agree that electric lines should be put underground. That's just a matter of money, right? No one is in against them put underground.


And yet, with all the money frittered away, it's not been done. In fact, I don't believe there is a serious program to do this anywhere.
Depends what you mean by that. The UK and Germany both have programmes for undergrounding. If by "anywhere" you just meant the USA, then California has a long term programme which is not very quick but has, for example, allowed half of SF's cables to be buried.
http://abc7news.com/news/efforts-to-bur ... e-/486804/
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Post 23 Apr 2016, 8:07 am

danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:
freeman3 wrote:Well, I do agree that electric lines should be put underground. That's just a matter of money, right? No one is in against them put underground.


And yet, with all the money frittered away, it's not been done. In fact, I don't believe there is a serious program to do this anywhere.
Depends what you mean by that. The UK and Germany both have programmes for undergrounding. If by "anywhere" you just meant the USA, then California has a long term programme which is not very quick but has, for example, allowed half of SF's cables to be buried.
http://abc7news.com/news/efforts-to-bur ... e-/486804/


Good, but I was specifically referring to the Northeastern US where the lines are knocked down fairly regularly.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 3:27 am

Doctor Fate wrote:
danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:
freeman3 wrote:Well, I do agree that electric lines should be put underground. That's just a matter of money, right? No one is in against them put underground.


And yet, with all the money frittered away, it's not been done. In fact, I don't believe there is a serious program to do this anywhere.
Depends what you mean by that. The UK and Germany both have programmes for undergrounding. If by "anywhere" you just meant the USA, then California has a long term programme which is not very quick but has, for example, allowed half of SF's cables to be buried.
http://abc7news.com/news/efforts-to-bur ... e-/486804/


Good, but I was specifically referring to the Northeastern US where the lines are knocked down fairly regularly.
That is an interesting definition of "anywhere", and more parochial than your usual one. Bravo.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 11:06 am

danivon wrote:That is an interesting definition of "anywhere", and more parochial than your usual one. Bravo.


I knew it would confuse you because you are easily (and intentionally) confused. I should have attached a map to my initial mention. Of course, that would have received some other dribble from you.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 11:19 am

freeman3
Good point about the difference between tobacco executives and oil executives--the oil executives would feel the impact of what they are doing while tobacco execs could avoid it. However, with regard to the morality of it, tobacco executives would have known with certainty that they were causing harm to people in a relatively close time frame--the effects of global warming would have been far less certain and in a much longer time frame.


I don't know why you are arguing with Fate about the motives of Exxon...
If there's a smoking gun, and the accussed was fund standing over the victim the motive hardly matters..

As it was, the evidence for Exxon's knowledge and its rationale for changing its stance are known.
Duane LeVine, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy development, gave a primer to the company’s board of directors in 1989, noting that scientists generally agreed gases released by burning fossil fuels could raise global temperatures significantly by the middle of the 21st century — between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit — causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise, “with generally negative consequences.”

But he also made it clear the company was facing another threat as well — from public policymakers.

“Arguments that we can’t tolerate delay and must act now can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps,” LeVine said.


Brian Flannery, Exxon’s longtime in-house climate expert, outlined the threat in a note to his colleagues in an internal company newsletter in 1989.

Government and regulatory efforts to reduce the risk of climate change, Flannery wrote, would “alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry.” And he warned that the impact on the company from those efforts “will come sooner … than from climate change itself.”


I'm sure you'll read the source. .
http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-research/

I'm sure Fate won't.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 11:30 am

rickyp wrote:freeman3
Good point about the difference between tobacco executives and oil executives--the oil executives would feel the impact of what they are doing while tobacco execs could avoid it. However, with regard to the morality of it, tobacco executives would have known with certainty that they were causing harm to people in a relatively close time frame--the effects of global warming would have been far less certain and in a much longer time frame.


I don't know why you are arguing with Fate about the motives of Exxon...
If there's a smoking gun, and the accussed was fund standing over the victim the motive hardly matters..

As it was, the evidence for Exxon's knowledge and its rationale for changing its stance are known.
Duane LeVine, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy development, gave a primer to the company’s board of directors in 1989, noting that scientists generally agreed gases released by burning fossil fuels could raise global temperatures significantly by the middle of the 21st century — between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit — causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise, “with generally negative consequences.”

But he also made it clear the company was facing another threat as well — from public policymakers.

“Arguments that we can’t tolerate delay and must act now can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps,” LeVine said.


Brian Flannery, Exxon’s longtime in-house climate expert, outlined the threat in a note to his colleagues in an internal company newsletter in 1989.

Government and regulatory efforts to reduce the risk of climate change, Flannery wrote, would “alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry.” And he warned that the impact on the company from those efforts “will come sooner … than from climate change itself.”


I'm sure you'll read the source. .
http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-research/

I'm sure Fate won't.


I read enough of it to see that it is based, in part, on recollections of former employees.

How is that Exxon "knew" all about global warming before it was "settled science?" How have they kept "the truth" buried?
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 11:33 am

Btw, your "smoking gun" article also cites a drought in the late 80's as evidence.

Such local phenomena are not "proof" any more than the record snowfall in Boston in 2015 was proof of the opposite.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 11:53 am

It does seem clear that Exxon changed its position on global warming for financial reasons--they believed in it until they thought it was going to cost them. But I didn't see much evidence they were hiding evidence--it looks like their engineers were basing their projections on the prevailing science. Also, these internal reports were made about the time that Exxon was transitioning from believing in global warming to being in opposition to the theory, so it's not surprising that there would be contradictory stances within the company until they got their position straight regarding global warming. It's not exactly shocking news that oil companies'opposition to global warming is based on financial reasons, but it's good to see that with Exxon their opposition to global warming is so clearly based on financial reasons since they changed their position on it for no reason related to the scientific research.
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 12:31 pm

Doctor Fate wrote:
danivon wrote:That is an interesting definition of "anywhere", and more parochial than your usual one. Bravo.


I knew it would confuse you because you are easily (and intentionally) confused. I should have attached a map to my initial mention. Of course, that would have received some other dribble from you.

Or instead of using the fairly well defined word "anywhere" you could have used the (admittedly longer and so, so much harder to type) equally clear and understandable, "in the Northeastern US" and you would then have been saying what you claim to have meant.

Nothing in freeman's post or your reply mentioned what you say you "specifically" meant. Maybe you are trying to be more like Ricky?
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 12:38 pm

danivon wrote:
Doctor Fate wrote:
danivon wrote:That is an interesting definition of "anywhere", and more parochial than your usual one. Bravo.


I knew it would confuse you because you are easily (and intentionally) confused. I should have attached a map to my initial mention. Of course, that would have received some other dribble from you.

Or instead of using the fairly well defined word "anywhere" you could have used the (admittedly longer and so, so much harder to type) equally clear and understandable, "in the Northeastern US" and you would then have been saying what you claim to have meant.

Nothing in freeman's post or your reply mentioned what you say you "specifically" meant. Maybe you are trying to be more like Ricky?


I'll leave you to reenacting rickyp's nearly-unique combination of incoherence and smugness. You nearly pull it off. Nicely tried!
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Post 24 Apr 2016, 1:09 pm

Doctor Fate wrote:Btw, your "smoking gun" article also cites a drought in the late 80's as evidence.

Such local phenomena are not "proof" any more than the record snowfall in Boston in 2015 was proof of the opposite.

Well, the US drought of 1988-9 affected a far larger area for longer, and was part of a longer pattern in the Western US that lasted 5 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2 ... an_drought The point of it in the article is not that it "proves" anything, but that a costly weather pattern which led to the deaths of thousands of Americans prompted calls for explanation. In the course of that, it became clearer what climate science was telling us.

We now understand the El Nino / La Nina cycle was in play at the time.
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Post 25 Apr 2016, 5:32 am

Freeman3
But I didn't see much evidence they were hiding evidence--it looks like their engineers were basing their projections on the prevailing science


Look further ... They funded data collection on the oceans, and funded some of the earliest modelling teams.

Once it became clear that what they'd been working on was about to have financial ramifications they began to fund the denial propoganda..Is that hiding evidence? Or more like lieing about what they'd learned?

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092 ... al-warming
This untold chapter in Exxon's history, when one of the world's largest energy companies worked to understand the damage caused by fossil fuels, stems from an eight-month investigation by InsideClimate News. ICN's reporters interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists, and federal officials, and consulted hundreds of pages of internal Exxon documents, many of them written between 1977 and 1986, during the heyday of Exxon's innovative climate research program. ICN combed through thousands of documents from archives including those held at the University of Texas-Austin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The documents record budget requests, research priorities, and debates over findings, and reveal the arc of Exxon's internal attitudes and work on climate and how much attention the results received.
Of particular significance was a project launched in August 1979, when the company outfitted a supertanker with custom-made instruments. The project's mission was to sample carbon dioxide in the air and ocean along a route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf.
In 1980, Exxon assembled a team of climate modelers who investigated fundamental questions about the climate's sensitivity to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the air. Working with university scientists and the U.S. Department of Energy, Exxon strove to be on the cutting edge of inquiry into what was then called the greenhouse effect.
Exxon's early determination to understand rising carbon dioxide levels grew out of a corporate culture of farsightedness, former employees said. They described a company that continuously examined risks to its bottom line, including environmental factors. In the 1970s, Exxon modeled its research division after Bell Labs, staffing it with highly accomplished scientists and engineers.
In written responses to questions about the history of its research, ExxonMobil spokesman Richard D. Keil said that "from the time that climate change first emerged as a topic for scientific study and analysis in the late 1970s, ExxonMobil has committed itself to scientific, fact-based analysis of this important issue.
" Much more follows...

Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate," declared the headline of a June 1988 New York Times article describing the Congressional testimony of NASA's James Hansen, a leading climate expert. Hansen's statements compelled Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) to declare during the hearing that "Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend."
With alarm bells suddenly ringing, Exxon started financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of climate science.
Exxon helped to found and lead the Global Climate Coalition, an alliance of some of the world's largest companies seeking to halt government efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. Exxon used the American Petroleum Institute, right-wing think tanks, campaign contributions and its own lobbying to push a narrative that climate science was too uncertain to necessitate cuts in fossil fuel emissions
.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092 ... s-business
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Post 25 Apr 2016, 5:41 am

fate
I read enough of it to see that it is based, in part, on recollections of former employees


Yes. And memos within the company. And published research reports. And reports to the board and shareholders. And audits of Exxon budgets and expenditures...
ExxonMobil scientists have been involved in climate research and related policy analysis for more than 30 years, yielding more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed publications."


And, oh stuff like actually physical evidence...like the size of a super tanker...

Outfitting its biggest supertanker to measure the ocean's absorption of carbon dioxide was a crown jewel in Exxon's research program.


http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092 ... s-business