Everybody knows Big Oil has conspired to hide the fact that it knew decades ago that its product was causing global warming that puts all humanity at risk. Greens have been claiming that since the 1990s. AG's United for Clean Power endorsed the claim and initiated investigations and lawsuits. Except not. For years independent journalist Russell Cook has exposed the errors of the conspiracy claim. Now a federal judge in the ultra-liberal San Francisco circuit has rejected the claim, too. In … [Read more...]
Why do Bootleggers and Baptists Love Paris?
Huh? Does it even make sense to ask "Why?" if we don't know "if"? Do bootleggers and Baptists both love Paris? Well, yes---if "Paris" is the Paris climate accord, the "bootleggers" are industrial giants with a lot to gain from policies needed to implement the accord, and the "Baptists" are the environmentalists who support the accord because they think it'll save the planet. As I explained here and here: Corporations that stand to benefit from mandates and subsidies to renewable … [Read more...]
Why Does ExxonMobil Want the U.S. to Stay in the Paris Climate Accord?
The Financial Times reports that ExxonMobil "has written to the Trump administration urging it to keep the US in the Paris climate accord ...." Why? The main reason is that staying in the Paris accord offers "the opportunity to support greater use of natural gas, which creates lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal when burnt for power generation." But of course we only need to reduce CO2 emissions if harms arising from them outweigh benefits and benefits of reducing them outweigh harms. … [Read more...]
Fracking’s Safety
Ken Cohen at ExxonMobil has just published an article summarizing some of the basic things we know about the safety of "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing in drilling for oil and natural gas). The gist: It's not a significant source of either air or water pollution, and its record, good from the start, has been improving consistently. There will of course be those who write it off just because Cohen works for, and the article was published by, ExxonMobil. Sigh. Logical fallacies (genetic fallacy, … [Read more...]
