Rob Rogers for July 04, 2023

It’s too late to get away without any negative consequences. By decades. But it’s not too late to save many of the humans IF we all get in motion… in the right direction!

nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the American public.

The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil fuel industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US history”. And now for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart a path toward public accountability that climate activists say has the potential to rival big tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the real dangers of smoking.

“We are at an inflection point,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.

“Things have to get worse for the oil companies,” he added. “Even if they’ve got a pretty good chance of winning the litigation in places, the discovery of pretty clearcut wrong doing – that they knew their product was bad and they were lying to the public – really weakens the industry’s ability to resist legislation and settlements.”

In 1979, an Exxon study said that burning fossil fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades.

“The potential problem is great and urgent,” it concluded.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment

89% Of Democrats, 42% Of Republicans Believe Big Oil To Blame For Climate Crisis

Oil companies last week stonewalled a House committee hearing investigating their responsibility for climate change.

Republicans on the committee endeared themselves to their constituents by questioning the need for the hearings in the first place, calling it a distraction from more important problems facing the nation — like drawing voting districts that deliberately dilute the voting power of anyone who is not a white male and devising new and creative ways of telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

They suggested that if the oil companies did in fact ever say that climate change is not happening, they were only exercising their right of free speech that they were born with as American citizens. What’s that? Corporations aren’t people? Don’t try telling Republicans that. The ones on the committee had the gall to suggest that we should all thank the oil companies for keeping our homes warm and the electricity on.

How Much the Oil and Gas Industry Paid Texas Republicans Who Are Lying About Wind Energy

Abbott and Patrick’s PACs share a bunch of big individual fossil fuel donors. Syed Javaid Anwar, the CEO of Midland Energy, was Abbott’s top donor between 2019 and 2020, giving a total of $1,617,500 to his PAC. The CEO also gave generously to Patrick, kicking his PAC just under $250,000 over that same time period. Douglas Scharbauer, an heir to a West Texas oil, ranching, and race horse fortune, gave a total of $350,000 to the lieutenant governor’s PAC in 2019, while another oil heir, Ray Lee Hunt, also pitched in generously with donations of $500,000 to the PACs of Abbott and $250,000 to Patrick. (Hunt also gave more than $63,000 to Cornyn’s PAC.) Not to be outdone, Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, kicked $500,000 to Abbott’s PAC and $200,000 to Patrick’s in the same time period. Warren’s firm is behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, and he has said talking about the pipeline is “like talking about my son.”

https://gizmodo.com/how-much-the-oil-and-gas-industry-paid-texas-republican-1846288505

Since the January 6 insurrection, six of the biggest fossil fuel companies in America have given nearly $700,000 to the campaign and leadership PACs of the Sedition Caucus, according to CREW’s ongoing tracking. They have also given more than $350,000 to the NRSC and NRCC which work to reelect congressional Republicans, a majority of whom voted against certifying the 2020 election, for a total of over $1 million to be potentially spent on keeping the Sedition Caucus in Congress.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/big-oil-has-given-1-million-to-fuel-seditionists/

As wildfire smoke fills the skies and record heat waves cook much of North America, Canadian climate activist Tzeporah Berman says governments need to be pushed to phase out fossil fuels more rapidly. “We need people to stand up to this industry. We need activism to protest in the streets, to demand our governments stand up to this industry. And we also need international cooperation,” says Berman. She also discusses Canada’s investment in the Trans Mountain Pipeline and how governments around the world are propping up the fossil fuel industry rather than embracing a transition to clean energy. Her recent article for The Guardian is headlined “Canada is on fire, and big oil is the arsonist.”

https://truthout.org/video/trudeau-lit-a-fuse-to-one-of-the-largest-carbon-bombs-on-earth-activist-says/?

Now when does the co2 ppm start the earth on fire and the seas boiling? According to the scientific research, in the Jurassic period, when life was abundant and the earth an seas were fine; not on fire or boiling, the co2 ppm were 1800 to 2000.

The planet is fine. The people are fornicated. I had to paraphrase St. George of Carlin. I’m glad I won’t be alive in a decade.

Too late is great news. At least we can forget about spending trillions thinking we can solve the problem.

Let’s just move on.

The fallacy and arrogance of some. “1800 was what the climate always was and should ever be. Never adapt!” Yup, we altered the climate, nothing we do will put it back. Yup, we can stop pushing it in that direction, it will take time to do that. It took over 100 years to get up to this speed and maybe 100 years to get back. Like losing weight, can’t drop 100 lbs. in a day, and the weight loss will not correct the damage done.

It makes me want to cry.

So much hand wringing.. but even those folk won’t do what is necessary to stop polluting our planet. It’s all the other guys fault.

Our species will cope, one way or another. There might well be a lot less of us.. reduced to hunters/gatherers/scavengers but life will survive.

Sorry, Kid. Money wins. Money always wins.

quite typical of humans- “let’s just wait until the last second and see what we can do!” it worked recently with the deficit calamity, why not wait on this as well??

Some people keep saying, “Well, the Earth has had worse climate before, and still survived!” Yep, the planet probably will, but I’m not putting any money on humans. Collectively, as a species, we are just dumb enough to eradicate ourselves.Studies claim the reason for the Fermi paradox, is that older civilizations advanced to the point that they destroyed themselves through technological advances that eventually “(led) to complete destruction and biological degeneration,” https://www.ign.com/articles/alien-civilizations-destroyed-themselves-through-progress-study-claims

Talking Heads had an interesting take on it !

♫♪ And as things fell apart…Nobody paid much attention! ♫♪

https://youtu.be/2twY8YQYDBE

Sure, the Earth will go on. Us? Debatable!

Hard to send this order back to the kitchen when WE are the chefs.

We don’t need no water let that MFr burn, burn MFr BURN!!!

I am sorry to write that at least 50 years ago most human animals living in the countries spewing the most pollution knew our life styles and overpopulation were damaging the whole planet, its nonhuman animals, plants, atmosphere. Too many politicians here and abroad poked their fingers in their ears and hollered “lalalalala”. Average folks were trapped.

We approach a demo point in finding an answer to the Fermi Paradox: Does intelligent life eventually evolve rational scientists capable of inventing weapons of mass destruction while simultaneously harboring irrational politicians willing to use them? Do we as a planet reach the point described for half a dozen small cultures in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse where we can see the end coming but still choose to do nothing about it?

Man made climate change Is BS read some real science