The New York Times, which is quickly becoming to print media what Fox is to television news, has done what no first year news stringer should do. It buried the lead.
It buried the lead on what is likely to become one of the most important stories of all time.
Hidden in the science section of its November 6th daily edition is this headline from a story by Clifford Kraus: More Oil Companies Could Join Exxon Mobil as Focus of Climate Investigations. Kraus’s lead is:
HOUSTON — The opening of an investigation of Exxon Mobil by the New York attorney general’s office into the company’s record on climate change may well spur legal inquiries into other oil companies, according to legal and climate experts, although successful prosecutions are far from assured.
The story goes on to describe the fraudulent activities undertaken by Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other oil majors from 1990 to 2001, using astroturf fronts with names like Global Climate Coalition and the American Legislative Exchange Council. The writer, and presumably the Times editorial team, assumes the reason NY Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating is because the companies spent millions or billions on a disinformation campaign, purchasing no fewer than four U.S. presidents and vast numbers of Congressmen and Senators. These disinformation campaigns cast doubt on climate science by parading shill pseudoscientists before legislative committees. The purchased politicians then went before the public and parroted the oil company line: “Climate Change? Nothing to see here, move along.”
The Times seems to think the NYAG is after some kind of conviction for perjury or advertising fraud.
By now this spin on the story is so old and been told so many times, we are surprised that it is still considered news. Maybe that is why it got bumped to the science page. Everyone knew, despite the feigned shock of Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and others, that Exxon had extensively researched the subject in the 1970s, concluded by the mid-80s that climate change was a serious threat, and then killed its own research program and financed opposition.
The real news story is something else. It is not what the investigation is but where it is. The New York Attorney General’s office peers from its eyrie in Albany down the Hudson River, across the white plains and palisades to lower Manhattan, but it is only one of two such offices that watches. The other is located closer to the action, in the Federal Courthouse just below Wall Street, where dwells the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a Mr. Preet Bharara. If you bike by there, however, you see that dog is chained by a very long chain that runs all the way to the back porch of a big white house in Washington. Lest we forget, the nation’s last Attorney General came from and went back to Wall Street’s Covington & Burling, after 6 years of hearing nothing, seeing nothing and saying nothing as the nation’s top law enforcer.
Why should Exxon and Chevron be worried? That would be because what is of interest to a NYAG watchdog is not about buying politicians or suborning perjury. It’s about stock manipulation. After a decade of pretty good in-house science, Exxon and the other majors knew by the 80s that the pace of global warming was accelerating and that very soon there would be a massive, increasingly desperate effort underway to shift from fossil fuels to carbon-free renewables in order to escape Cauldron Earth. The hotter it gets, the more frenzied this effort will become, and the less likely Exxon will be able to cash in its balance sheet of fossil assets.
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| Meadows, et al, 1971 Limits to Growth with overlay of Bates 1990, Climate in Crisis |
If you were a CEO of one of these companies, the math would trouble your mind. It would cloud your thinking as you set up for that long putt on the 8th green. It would creep into your internal dialog as you are eyeing that cocktail waitress at a swank restaurant. Your worth as a company, the basis for the company’s share price, and your own compensation and stock option packages, all depend on the estimated and proven reserves of oil and gas still in the ground. If, for some reason, those reserves could never be withdrawn – never be burned – then you have a serious problem. Your company is overvalued, and likewise the share price, and your own personal net worth. This is what interests the NY Attorney General. It’s the math. Its also the mens rea – your state of mind; what you knew and when you knew it.
It is one thing to have a company whose worth exceeds not only that of any company on Earth but also of any company in history. It is another entirely if that worth is overstated, perhaps by a factor of 100, 1000, or one million times. That becomes the biggest stock fraud in history. For a young or politically ambitious AG, it is a ticket to glory.
On Thursday the Times reported:
Attorneys general for other states could join in Mr. Schneiderman’s efforts, bringing far greater investigative and legal resources to bear on the issue. Some experts see the potential for a legal assault on fossil fuel companies similar to the lawsuits against tobacco companies in recent decades, which cost those companies tens of billions of dollars in penalties.
That whole shooting match in Syria, driving millions of refugees into Europe, is about whether Hassan Assad, an ally of Russia and Iran and a proponent of a gas pipeline from Iran across Kurdistan to the sea, will be deposed by ISIS terrorists trained by CIA in the Colonel Kurtz style of spectacular horror so that the US could instead build a pipeline to European markets through Syria from Iraq. The Russian Air Force, with a new generation of fighters that can fly circles around anything built by Lockheed Martin, is looking like it will decide that one. It is pulverizing ISIS.
You don’t need 100,000 marines to secure windmills in North Dakota.
That is the story the Times is missing.
In the Thursday story, the Times had a link to a 29-page Exxon report for its shareholders. The company essentially ruled out the possibility that governments would adopt climate policies stringent enough to force it to leave its reserves in the ground, saying that rising population and global energy demand would prevent that. “Meeting these needs will require all economic energy sources, especially oil and natural gas,” it said. Here is an image from that report. We especially enjoyed the absurdity of their idea of what better farming looks like.
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| World population is going to grow by 3 North Americas in 15 years. |
In their report, Exxon predicts that the world will add 2 billion more people in the next 15 years, or roughly four more North Americas if you include Mexico and Canada. This tracks similar assessments by the UN and the World Population Council. That increase is baked in the cake just from the number of adolescents reaching childbearing age in these coming years. Exxon believes GDP will grow at 3 times the rate of population if energy supply is adequate. “We see the world requiring 35 percent more energy in 2040 than it did in 2010.”
“In analyzing the evolution of the world’s energy mix, we anticipate renewables growing at the fastest pace among all sources through the Outlook period. However, because they make a relatively small contribution compared to other energy sources, renewables will continue to comprise about 5 percent of the total energy mix by 2040.”
While we don’t buy the whole package, we find ourselves agreeing with Exxon about one thing. Business as usual is not possible with an all-renewables portfolio. We wonder where even the finance for such a build-out would come from? More debt? The world financial system came with in a hair’s breadth of financial collapse in 2008. Since then the balloon has reinflated and stretched bigger. China just arrested its free-falling stock market by issuing even more debt. But sooner or later loans have to be repaid, with interest, and in a shrinking resource economy they cannot be. When the day of reckoning eventually arrives, our chances of avoiding collapse are very slim. Gail Tverberg says, “The change … is similar to losing the operating system on a computer, or unplugging a refrigerator from the wall.”
Where we part company with Exxon is that Exxon thinks governments will choose to keep heating the planet and we think they will dispense with business as usual. Only time will tell, although the issue will be up for serious debate this December in Paris.
Business as usual will not be an easy thing to give up.
In terms of energy conservation, the leaps made in energy efficiency by the infrastructure and devices we use to access the internet have allowed many online activities to be viewed as more sustainable than offline.
On the internet, however, advances in energy efficiency have a reverse effect: as the network becomes more energy efficient, its total energy use increases. This trend can only be stopped when we limit the demand for digital communication.
***In recent years, the focus has been mostly on the energy use of data centers, which host the computers (the “servers”) that store all information online. However, in comparison, more electricity is used by the combination of end-use devices (the “clients”, such as desktops, laptops and smartphones), the network infrastructure (which transmits digital information between servers and clients), and the manufacturing process of servers, end-use devices, and networking devices.
By 2017, the electricity use of the internet globally is expected to rise to between 2,547 teraWatt-hours (low case) and 3,422 tWh (high case). The high case is made more likely by underdeveloping nations bypassing wired communications to go directly to smart phones and other devices, which are increasingly dependent on cloud services. Under these circumstances electricity use for internet will likely double every 5 years, to 110000 tWh (110 petaWatt-hours) by 2040. This would add another USA in electricity consumers every 5 years three more USAs in 15 years. That, of course, assumes that cloud computing doesn’t follow the exponential growth its proponents seek.
Can renewables meet this demand? Right now in the US, renewables account for 13.2 percent of domestically produced electricity. Wind turbine capacity is 65 GWe installed (0.07 tWe), but because of wind and load intermittency, the mills only turn about 32% of the time, producing about 180 million kWh last year (180 GWhr, or 0.2 TWh). That was one ten-thousandth of what was used globally by the internet. To build out renewables to power just the internet by 2040 would require 110 pWh, or more than a million times all the renewable electricity produced by the USA today.
How probable is that? Exxon is completely accurate in labeling it fantasy.
And speaking of fantasy, imagine for a moment that Mr. Schneiderman gets his teeth into Exxon’s stock fraud and won’t stop shaking until the company restates its book value, sans proven reserves. There has been a recent fall in oil price (owing less to fracking, as the popular narrative has it, than to China’s deflationary spiral that has tanked world demand), but if you are a shareholder, this might be a good time to sell.
Or you could take your advice from the nation’s paper of record and assume everything is hunky dory.
eugene on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 10:15 am
I think it is silly to “blame” the oil companies for our predicament. The masses were more than willing, in fact begging, for a wonderland story. Anyone who spent, even a few minutes a day, researching knew the reality. But then one would have to miss minutes of football, survivor or whatever. We all played in this game. But we live in the land of personal responsibility avoidance or as my GS15, fifty yr old son in law says “I just want to have fun”.
At present, blogs are filled with fantasy solutions and outright lies about the real situation including climate change. This “information” is clung to like a drowning man to a straw. With our dying breath we will be saying “if only someone else would have done”.
paulo1 on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 11:20 am
You can get used to reductions now, or take a crash course, later. It will be mandatory.
Just checked the two week forecast for the coast. Supposed to be cold and wet, with daytime highs in the 2-3 degree range. It’s nice to have those new windows, extra insulation, and full firewood sheds. I just looked around the house and except for a fridge and outdoor freezer, there is no electricity draw at all. Planning for an energy constrained future means comfort and savings right now, regardless of how this unfolds. If solar worked here I would have installed it 5 years ago. To me, it just makes sense.
Mike616 on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:05 pm
DIVESTING from Carbon.
It’s not a left wing movement. It’s a financial movement to avoid the huge ignored risk in the market. These stocks are call going down. Some might say it’s too early. But if a stock is dead in 10 years, it’s dead today.
And the NYTimes burying the Led? It does that All The Time. The most pertinent facts are always at the end of the article.
Mike616 on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:17 pm
Paulo1, Great Leadership.
I just got an Energy Star oil boiler. Hope to cut my oil/gas usage more with a Plugin Hybrid.
Plugin’s:
1) First You Pay Exxon.
2) Then you pay your electric utility.
3) Then You Pay You, with Solar.
Mike616 on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:18 pm
But, the real Exxon story might be: Drunk CEOs hate to work. It takes a real expenditure of energy to be an innovation leader.
Plantagenet on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:20 pm
We live in the oil age. Its hard to see how to decarbonize the economy without killing the economy. I suspect the legal investigation of Exxon is likely to go the same way as the tobacco RICO investigations—pay big fines to the government and then the companies continue in operation with a warning label on the gas pump.
jjhman on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:41 pm
I find a kernel of truth in this story in that stock fraud is much more likely to get the attention of the legal system than the end of the world.
However the obvious anti-US govt bias of the author is a little creepy. I simply don’t believe that the horrors of ISIS are based on CIA training or that the Russian aircraft can fly circles around US hardware. Also the notion of 4 US president being “owned” by fossil fuel interests is an ugly distortion. The US govt is owned by BAU becausethe voting population is not willing to support anything else. There may be complex subversive reasons for that, maybe fossil fuel advertising has convinced everyone that this is all there is to life. But it’s not a simple case of writing a check and getting whatever you want regardless of the consequences. Get real.
ghung on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 12:43 pm
15 Years Later, Where Did All The Cigarette Money Go?
Dredd on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 3:49 pm
Let them eat jellyfish (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion – 3).
apneaman on Sun, 8th Nov 2015 10:01 pm
jjhman, maybe you don’t want to believe it. It would not be the first time – far from it.
“On September 20, 1996, under intense public pressure, the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals that were used at the School of the Americas for years. These manuals advocated torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations. A Washington Post article from 1996 by Dana Priest broke the story.
The release of these manuals proved what SOA Watch, thousands of Latin Americans and numerous human rights organizations had been saying for years: that U.S. taxpayer money had been used for the teaching of torture and repression.”
http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98
Thomas on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 3:23 am
Of course a (nearly) 100% renewable system providing a high living standard is possible, using todays technology. There are tons of scenarios described in tons of studies. This has nothing to do with “fantasy” but whith scientific calculation.
BTW: the 65 GW Wind in the US produce 180 TWh per year, not GWh. The difference is factor 1.000.
makati1 on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 6:43 am
Thomas, keep smoking that weed. Reality stays away as long as you inhale. LOL
Davy on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 7:05 am
Thomas, you are not going to convince me with a short little comment where you throw out a desperate little morsel on how everything will be OK from a green world of more growth and development. You should at least gives us some good links connected together by a focused comment. What you did was show just how desperate you greens really are.
Thomas you are in a green delusion and clearly suffering cognitive dissonance otherwise you would not be on a doomer site like PO dot com. If you stick around here your green cornucopian trash will be crushed. We here do not feel your greentopia is all bad. Renewables and green lifestyles are vital for adapting to descent. I want to clarify that statement by saying proper investment in renewables and green lifestyles. A tesla is not green. A huge wind farm that will be a stranded energy asset with a destabilized grid will not be a good investment.
The problem with your greentopian message is your claim all will be well if and only if we embrace the green way. You preach this as the ship sinks from growth, development, and pollution. Status quo green is all of the above of growth, development, and pollution. We cannot avoid descent green or brown. There is no level green or brown one can be solidly optimistic “NOTHING”.
Man up Thomas and face the thunder. There is a storm coming that will likely shorten your life and make you poor. You are likely going to suffer hunger and experience death of those close to you sooner and more painfully than anything we are used to today. The one consolation for you Thomas is you will not be alone. Quit contributing to the poor decisions and attitudes and start contributing ideas to allow us as a global people to adapt to a collapse
charmcitysking on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 7:48 am
“I simply don’t believe that the horrors of ISIS are based on CIA training ”
———-
Well, you’re simply delusional or wilfully ignorant. The CIA has stoked and antagonized Islamic extremism for decades in order to serve US geopolitical aims. It has been very well documented.
jjhman on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 12:01 pm
Apnea and Charm:
I understand the CIA has done a lot of really nasty things. But this assertion:
“…ISIS terrorists trained by CIA in the Colonel Kurtz style of spectacular horror so that the US could instead build a pipeline…”
is simply not based on any factual evidence rather it is a cheap shot by someone who wants to insult the US, nothing more.
On any moral plane the US is no worse, and often much better, than any powerful national entity. It’s fair to place blame where it is due in specific cases but the hysterical US bashing simply makes this story less credible.
Davy on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 12:16 pm
Yeap, JJ, extremism works both ways. Let’s be objective about blame and fair with the observation that all other major powers participate in these activities to varying degree. The U.S. just happens to be the biggest and worst.
Boat on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 12:45 pm
Davy,
You have been listening to Mak to long. Does the US as a policy throw acid in the face of girls for going to school or do they spend millions building schools.
Does the US train young children and throw them on the battlefield? Does the US try to kill opposing soldiers without killing the civilizations? Does the US spend 10’s of millions around the world helping the displaced populations many would consider the enemy?
You can be anti American all you want but the US is the most humane enemy you can have. We even want to save your museums and artifacts for the future generations of the enemy.
Davy on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 1:15 pm
Boat, you are the ugly American poster kid for the PO board. Keep it up so you can find your pecking order place. Doomers and anti-Americans love to spit on you and you love taking it. Funny. Ha ha ha.
You sure make my PO board life more difficult. I attempt to moderate US critics then you or planter open their mouths and I blush. Then people say I told you so and what am I to say? Right, fock.
apneaman on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 1:16 pm
sure boat
Babylon wrecked by war
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jan/15/iraq.arts1
Boat on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 2:24 pm
Davy,
Thanks for that description. Why would you want to moderate American critics? Hate and emotional outbursts are just a sign of immaturity and shallowness of character. One should follow the links to get a broader view anyway.
It is just fine to agree to disagree. BTW Plant and I dont agree on about anything political. But I don’t attack her like you doomers do as a unit. I can separate personalities from views. Some would call that compartmentalazation.
GregT on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 2:53 pm
“You can be anti American all you want but the US is the most humane enemy you can have.”
A quarter of a million Iraqis alone would disagree with you Boat. If they weren’t dead.
apneaman on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 3:30 pm
That’s right, boat. We all meet down at the Doomer Bar N Grill every Thursday night to coordinate our planty attacking strategy. Never discuss you though – we don’t like to pick on retards. We’re compassionate doomers.
Davy on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 3:42 pm
Nothing personal Boat. It is a free country you have a right to believe in the failed American Dream.
apneaman on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 3:59 pm
FOSSIL FUELS:
How a 2012 book helped two teams of journalists probe Exxon’s changing view of climate risks
“Last week, ClimateWire spoke to Steve Coll, author of “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power” and dean of the Columbia Journalism School, about his scrutiny of Exxon for the 2012 book and his later involvement with students at the school in the investigation of the company.
About halfway through reporting for what became a 600-page tome on Exxon’s extraordinary economic and political clout, Coll realized that a credible account of the massive company’s history couldn’t omit its early discoveries of the climate threat and its later bid to question the science that supports it.
While reporting on Exxon’s climate strategies for the book, Coll described how some people who were knowledgeable about the issue told him: “Don’t let them tell you they thought the science was uncertain, because the message that came into our department was, see how a warming Earth will create exploration opportunities.” The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist was thunderstruck.”
more
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060027682
Boat on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 4:31 pm
GregT
From 1990 to 1998 the Iraq and Iran war killed an estimated 1.25 million. Such a peaceful place. No need to look at other wars in the region that the US had no part of or how many that were killed over religion in the area. Or the constant battles between factions of Kurd’s, Sunnis, Shias etc
GregT on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 5:36 pm
Boat,
Please explain to everyone here why you think that the citizens of Iraq are enemies of the USA.
And, no matter how you try to justify it, murder is still murder.
Boat on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 7:05 pm
GregT,
In conflict is it better to kill than be killed. Kind of a simple concept. The US will fight along side those we handed off Iraq to. Kind of makes sense doesn’t it. Right or wrong the US had to pick shia or sunni because of the population breakdown. Unfortunately Malike blew the opportunity to include the Sunni after the US left.
ISIL, ISIS al-Qaeda, Hamas along with many other factions will be enemies no matter what country they are in.
One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. The winner gets to write history.
I don’t think citizens that are not involved in the conflict are enemies. GregT, are you not Canadian? Your guilty or innocent as any in the 60 country coalition involved.
If I had my way the wars in Iraq would never have happened. Asia needs the oil more than anybody else does. I am sure Japan, China, S Korea etc could have done a better job in the Middle East.
GregT on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 7:36 pm
You’re guilty. Not “your guilty”.
Good grief Boat, do you not understand how stupid you make yourself look by constantly using english skills at about the grade 4 level?
I do not believe in invading other nations Boat. I did not vote for the Harper government, and as was very apparent in our recent election here in Canada, the vast majority of Canadians did not support his war mongering either.
The US invaded Iraq on false pretences Boat. The US had no right to “hand off” Iraq to anyone. The US did not have to pick Shia or Sunni, it is not up to the US to install puppet governments in other peoples’ countries.
And, no matter how long you continue to try to justify it, murder is still murder.
Boat on Mon, 9th Nov 2015 11:52 pm
GregT,
Your as guilty as anyone.
http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/news/article.page?doc=the-canadian-forces-in-the-gulf-war-1990-1991/hnmx17y3
As the conflict progressed, the Canadian Air Task Group took on other combat roles, such as sweep and escort for coalition bombing missions and later, air-to-ground bombing missions. Canadian airmen were credited for partially destroying an Iraqi patrol boat in the Persian Gulf, and completed 56 CF-18 bombing sorties against Iraqi forces.
GregT on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 12:08 am
I don’t associate myself with the psychopaths in Ottawa Boat. I have no political affiliation. I did not vote for the Harper government, and I do not condone war, bloodshed, or murder.
Your a ideit Bote.
apneaman on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 1:15 am
boat, which part of the boat did they hurt, the bow, stern, port or starboard? How can they tell these things? Is there a special commendation for boat section destroying? Maybe one day Pentagon shot callers will be generous and let the Canuck top guns bomb a civilian hospital or a wedding party with kids and women so they can be real American heros too. Kick the tires and light the fires, ye haw! Cause napalm sticks to kids!