THIS POST IS A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE CLIMATE DISINFORMATION PROBE BY CONGRESS

PART-1: THE CASE FOR A CLIMATE DISINFORMATION PROBE:

Oil Executives to Face Congress on Climate Disinformation. The heads of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and BP will testify Thursday in the first congressional inquiry into industry efforts to hinder action on climate change.

As in the tobacco hearings of the 1990s that exposed the lies pf tobacco companies about the health dangers of smoking and paved the way for tough nicotine regulations, executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell are set to appear before a congressional committee Thursday to address accusations that the industry spent millions of dollars to wage a decades-long disinformation campaign to cast doubt on the science of climate change and to derail action to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels.

This is the first time that oil executives will be pressed to answer questions, under oath, about whether their companies misled the public about the reality of climate change by obscuring the SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS that the burning of fossil fuels is raising Earth’s temperature and sea levels with devastating consequences worldwide including intensifying storms, worsening drought and deadlier wildfires.

BIG OIL WILL HAVE TO ANSWER TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC ON THEIR CLIMATE DISINFORMATION.

There is an ongoing climate crisis and tons of news about the climate crisis. Oil companies have denied lying to the public about climate change, and have said the industry is now taking bold steps to rein in emissions.

Shell oil has admitted that meeting the demand for reliable energy must simultaneously address climate change and that it is a huge undertaking and one of the defining challenges of our time.

Exxon’s position is that it has long acknowledged that climate change is real and poses serious risks.The company’s statements about climate science have been factual aqnd transparent and consistent with the broader mainstream scientific community and it evolved as the science evolved although back in the year 2000, Exxon’s position was that scientists have been unable to confirm that the burning of oil, gas and coal caused climate change.

Yet, in 1950, the IPCC had confirmed that the planet had warmed by 0.5C over the previous century because of fossil fuel-driven greenhouse gases. The American Petroleum Institute has taken a position in favor of climate change policies.

SO THEREFORE, THE STATED POSITION OF EXXON ON CLIMATE CHANGE IS DISINFORMATION BECAUSE IT CONTRADICTS THE 1950 IPCC REPORT.

PART-2: THE CASE FOR SCIENCE

The essence of the case presented above is that the climate science position on climate change is correct and that therefore any deviance from the climate science position on climate change is an evil and unscientific enterprise of the profit motivation of the oil industry that threatens human welfare in the USA as well as globally and that therefore the US govenrment must intervene on the side of climate science in this issue.

This argument is fatally flawed.

(1): First, it is not a governmental function to resolve scientitic disagreements.

(2): Secondly, if the government can and must intervene into this science discourse it must do so without taking a position on the issue before it carries out its investigation.

(3): That there is a role of the government to determine that the the climate science position is information and that the oil industry position is disinformation and to resolve the disinformation of the fossil fuel industry is based on the assumption that the government has determined that the climate science position on climate change is information and that the fossil fuel industry position on climate change is disinformation.

(4): This position of the government is illogical and indefensible if the issue is science.

(5): Yet another aspect of a role for the government of the USA is that climate change is a global issue with no role for nation states. This is why the UN is running the show and why we have COPs. The tobacco issue was a national issue that was resolved by national policies . These two issues are not comparable and nothing about either contains implications for the other.

(6): If the government has a role in resolving the climate issue it should address the points of disagreement and not use the tobacco issue as a blanket rationale to conclude that therefore the climate science position is correct and the oil industry position is wrong.

(7): For example, what is the government’s position on the climate sensitivity (ECS) uncertainty issue : LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/10/the-climate-sensitivity-issue/

(8): And what is the government positon on the use of the TCRE instead of ECS and the statistical errors in the construction of the TCRE parameter? LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/18/climate-science-vs-statistics/ ????

(9): The government also needs to explain the observation in the data that warming cycles of 100 to 1000 years are common in interglacials: Interglacials such as the Holocene that we are in, are never at constant temperature but consist entirely of chaotic and alternating warming and cooling cycles LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/11/09/the-issue-is-human-cause/ .

(10): If climate science can explain these temperature departures as cause and effect phenomena and the creation of changes in atmospheric composition, they should explain all of them in that way and not pick just one of them to explain. That kind of science suffers from a science fallacy called “DATA SELECTION BIAS”.

CONCLUSION

If the government wants to intervene in the climate change issue it must address the issues in the science instead of simply citing tobacco. The tobacco argument is nonsensical. It says in essence that since the tobacco industry was wrong in the tobacco issue therefore, the fossil fuel industry must be wrong in the climate issue. This logic is flawed. If the government wants a role in the climate science it must address the science issues at hand.

THE PROPOSITION THAT SINCE TOBACCO SCIENTISTS WERE RIGHT THEREFORE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS MUST ALSO BE RIGHT IS NOT SCIENCE.