Finally, evidence of something that all of us knew- Exxon executives knew that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas since the early 80s. Think of all of the progress in alternative and renewable energy sources that could have been made in three decades, using the money that Exxon and the other fossil fuel businesses used to fund climate change denialism, not to mention all of the money and (more importantly) lives thrown away in order to secure or steal fossil fuel sources.
Three decades of lost ground, lost momentum, and lost lives... let that sink in for a brief moment. Three decades of knowingly committing Gaiacide. I have often likened fossil fuels to "startup capital" to be used to kick off a mature energy economy based on a variety of safer renewable energy sources, but the short-term profits of the fossil fuel companies have long trumped the prospects of long-term human survival.
It's obvious that the oil and coal companies knew that continued burning of fossil fuels would be a problem, just like it's obvious that the tobacco companies knew that smoking caused lung cancer, it's pretty appalling to finally see one of the "smoking guns" exposed.
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Meh. I remember clearly learning about "the greenhouse effect" in junior high school earth science class. No one can claim they 'didn't know' that putting increasingly large concentrations of greenhouse gasses (and yes, they knew what comprised a 'greenhouse gas' forever) would cause the planet to warm and the climate to potentially change. On top of that, it is well documented that there were periods in ancient history when the earths atmospheric chemistry varied due to events like vulcanism, and that increased levels of greenhouse gasses were associated with a much warmer, wetter planet. No one ever felt it necessary to dispute those findings.
Also, too, one tiny nit to pick. Climate change in no way threatens human survival, in the long term or in any other term. What climate change, with rising sea levels and changes in agricultural productivity on a regional basis will do is reduce the human population the earth can support. Although one can make a solid case that we long ago passed any threshold for a sustainable population, the true effect of Climate Change in a hundred years will be to have reduced the human population to something on the order of 2 or 3 billion and changed their geographical distribution radically. But there will still be humans, and societies, and universities and technology. There are ways to wipe out humans, but climate change just isn't one of them...
We might have a nuclear war on the way to that less-populated planet, mikey.
Why let them go to waste, when the powers that be can rage against the dying of the light?
~
Yeah. Things are getting ugly in Eastern Europe on the western Russian frontier. I've got a whole series coming up on that...
I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you. Who would hide/obfuscate information that would destroy their business model?
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