Big carbon's strategic response to global warming, 1950-2020

"Big carbon's strategic response to global warming, 1950-2020" is a doctoral dissertation by Benjamin Andrew Franta of  Stanford University, California first published in 2022. The document is available here "https://purl.stanford.edu/hq437ph9153".  It is another important read that must be featured. 

Earlier blog posts like "The Weather Machine A Journey inside the forecast By Andrew Blum",  "A Ground Hog's Lament" and the book feature of  John Vaillant, "Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast" all dealt with climate change. There are many other such posts that discuss atmospheric carbon but these will suffice. 

I gave innumerable presentations as an Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) and then Environment Canada (EC) meteorologist starting in the mid-1980s. Over the years those PowerPoints became more elaborate and full of climate change facts and predicted impacts. Those lectures continued until around 2005 when I was seconded to produce meteorological training materials with COMET in Boulder, Colorado. School and environmental groups were the main audiences and the presentations were outside work hours using my own equipment. Conservative Prime Minister Harper forbade such activities when elected in 2006.

The cuts to environmental programs actually started under a Liberal government in the late 1980s. EC observational networks were compromised and environmental research was not adequately funded due to ongoing financial and staffing cuts (branded as Program Reviews but the goal was to remove scientists). Even the renowned AES Training Branch was shut down in the early 1990s. The story of political and bureaucratic interference with science can fill another book. Deeds speak louder than words.

The government's reactions to the existential threat of climate change baffled me … don’t teach, observe, research or talk about climate change… These were strange and inexplicable actions for a science and service-based department. 

I am retired now so the truth can be exposed, although any significant response to the climate catastrophe is too late. Franta's doctoral dissertation confirms all of the suspicions I harboured regarding the actions of the political and industrial elite. That's why I focussed on science rather than bureaucracy when employed. Science (and art) actually makes sense

"Big carbon's strategic response to global warming, 1950-2020" is a terrific summary for those who wish to be informed. Franta richly deserved his Doctor of Philosophy with this important research. Here is a very concise "Reader's Digest" version but I encourage you to read every word of his dissertation. 

• The Earth is a greenhouse. 
• The science of atmospheric carbon started in the early 1800s. 
• There are many greenhouse gases. 
• Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide was the result of the combustion of fossil fuels. 
• A warming of 2°C would be reached in the 21st century. 
• Climate and weather would change irreversibly making the Earth uninhabitable.

The following atmospheric carbon impact graphic from Franta's doctoral dissertation was presented to Big Oil by their own scientists in July 1977 just as I was starting my meteorological career. 

     James Black (1919-1988)    

James Black was the Scientific Advisor in the Products Research Division of Exxon Research & Engineering, and one of the top technical people at Exxon Research & Engineering until his retirement in 1983.

Big Oil was made aware of these facts and much more in the mid-20th century. They were faced with a simple ethical decision: 

• investigate alternative energy sources and leave the carbon in the ground or 
• escalate carbon extraction continuing business as usual. 

Big Oil clearly chose "business" and employed the same techniques as Big Tobacco, Asbestos and more recently Opioid. The simple playbook has not changed over the centuries:

• Lie, confuse, conceal, cheat, obfuscate, distract, divide and conquer.
• Employ lobby groups with opaque funding and influence politicians and governments while undermining facts about established science and disguising the reality of their motives. 

Dithering inaction results during which the business of accumulating wealth and power can continue unimpeded, "full steam ahead".

This is a very effective "war" campaign to achieve their business interests - more wealth and power. More and then even some more... and more is never enough. 

Further, Big Oil was and is fantastically rich and can easily afford to "invest" in those who will support their goals.  Pseudo-scientists and politicians violating their oath of office aided and abetted the Big Oil objectives. The extraction of carbon escalated almost exponentially starting in the 1970s. Carbon was mined from ever more challenging environments including the deep oceans, Canadian oil sands and fracking for natural gas. Madness!

Is a greater example of the absence of empathy even conceivable? Wealth and power for a narcissistic few at the expense of the planet and every species therein?  Do these entitled few believe that they might actually survive the climate apocalypse of their own creation? Insanity!

Captain Gilbert, an Army psychologist assigned to watch the defendants at the 1945-1949 Second World War Nuremberg Trials observed:

"Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

The following images of monthly average temperature deviation from the climate average are eerily similar to the early predictions I first saw as a meteorologist in the 1980's. It takes a few months to process the global observational data so July 2024 is the most recent data I have available at the moment. 

July 2024 was the 14th consecutive month of record-breaking global temperatures worldwide

The willful and deceitful obstructions by Big Oil were even financed by politicians around the world. In fact, Canada continues to heavily subsidize the oil industry. An article from March 26, 2024, indicates that over the last four years (since 2020), the total amount of financial support to the oil and gas sector from the federal government was at least $65 billion - a lot of tax dollars that could have been allocated to green energy and the environment.  Let that astronomical sum sink in and then consider that the current Canadian population is just 40 million. 

One quickly realizes where a significant portion of the "temporary taxes" first imposed 1917 were going. Recall that "The Income War Tax Act" received royal assent on September 20th, 1917 to pay for the efforts of the First Great War. Those taxes accelerated from zero to 50 percent in the next 100 years. Also see the scholarly Fraser Institute document published on April 6th, 2017, detailing Canada’s personal income tax (PIT) system.

Simply, the political and corporate elite have decided that personal taxes must support Big Oil, perhaps to even purchase votes. This funding continues to fire the exploitation of fossil fuels and the release of carbon into the ecosystems. Follow the money and one can quickly identify the political and business elite who play key roles in this travesty. 

Franta's doctoral dissertation is meticulously researched and well-written. It is an essential read if you wish to be informed. Sources of the information are painstakingly included. 

Politicians, lobbyists and climate deniers who might dispute the science and the facts as presented in this doctoral dissertation must have other motivations for their inexplicable reactions. Frankly, the laws of thermodynamics and physics hold sway over any man-made laws they may wish to exploit in their ongoing pursuit of wealth and power.  

The following chart summarizes atmospheric carbon back to 500,000 years ago. The science required to obtain these values would fill several books. The take-home message is that the atmospheric carbon concentration is at an obvious all-time high and accelerating out of control as fossil fuels continue to be exploited. This is very bad news for Greenhouse Earth.   

The current global average concentration
of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the
atmosphere is 421 ppm (0.04%)
as of May 2022. 

The Industrial Revolution has released eons of carbon back into the earth's ecosystem within an ecological heartbeat. Fossil fuels formed from ancient plants and organisms during the Carboniferous Period approximately 286 – 360 million years ago. That carbon is rapidly being returned to the atmosphere in the Industrial Age of humans. The rate of atmospheric carbon accumulation continues to accelerate. Even if fossil fuel exploitation ended today, the inertial momentum of the climate system will continue to change the globe making it uninhabitable for countless species including man. It is already too late for any meaningful response to this crisis. The 2015 Paris Agreement's "one-point-five Celsius" limit has likely already been surpassed but the data is still being processed.

Political and bureaucratic dithering under the "Net Zero by 2050" slogan permits a few more decades of wealth and power accumulation by Big Oil while the world burns in the 21st century of fire. Sadly, it is business as usual. 

The Big Oil war campaign for wealth and power continues as the world bakes with record-high temperatures. Consider the recent promotion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a cleaner-burning gas that Big Oil touts as an important “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution”. Really? 

The Canadian Federal government even bought into this new Big Oil deception by purchasing the Trans Mountain pipeline and expansion for $4.5 billion (full market value) in 2018. The Feds came to the rescue of Big Oil when Kinder Morgan threatened to abandon the project in light of justifiable and ongoing opposition in British Columbia. As of February 2023, the total costs for LNG Canada's Phase 1 were estimated to be at least $ 48.3 billion. That is an unfathomable amount of money for something worse than coal! Some of that cash is bound to originate from taxes and subsidies but the percentages are unknown. 

"Exported gas produces far worse emissions than coal, major study finds ; The greenhouse gas footprint of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported from the United States by Robert W. Howarth"

This peer-reviewed research, (yet another must-read) was published in October 2024  in the Energy Science & Engineering journal. The science challenges the rationale for a huge surge in LNG facilities along the US Gulf Coast dedicated to shipping gas in huge tankers to overseas markets (for big profits). The research has determined that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over 20 years compared with coal. Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas accounts for only about a third of the total emissions from this process. Those activities also leave behind a devastated environment.

“The idea that coal is worse for the climate is mistaken – LNG has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel,” said Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell University and author of the new paper.

“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong. It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”

There is “no need for LNG as an interim energy source”, the paper says, adding that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority”.

My own experiences within AES and EC and these LNG observations are all consistent with Big Oil pulling the strings of their politician puppets for profit and power. Let's not "beat around the Bushes", how many Presidents, Political Leaders and Prime Ministers around the world have had strong perhaps concealed ties to Big Oil?  Improper collusions for power and profit would constitute crimes against not just humanity, but Greenhouse Earth. Investigative reporters could turn that information into another best-selling book and another must-read.

A meteorologist friend reminded me that 

"we are wrong to expect any corporation to act for the good of the public.  It is always an unreasonable expectation. It is our governments that we should expect to act for the good of the public and it is to them that the harshest criticism should be levied."

Quite true and something to ponder. The goal of these blogs has always been to encourage people to read and be informed... and of course, vote wisely. 

To summarize, the world is going to exceed the 1.5°C target for global warming soon if it has not already. It takes time to process the voluminous amount of data that is currently available. Inertia in the climate system will carry the planet into uncharted weather and feedback mechanisms that can't be reversed. Global empathy is needed now more than ever! Leaders, scientists and people of the world need to work together using every innovative resource conceivable to solve the climate catastrophe. 

The September 2024 temperature at 2 metres deviation from climatic normals.
There is nothing normal about this!

As briefed to Big Oil by their own scientists in July 1977, Greenhouse Earth is entering "thousands of years" of a "super-interglacial" period as a result of "uncontrolled fossil fuel use". James Black's forecast was perfect. The red dashed line is mine for the intensity and duration of the predicted "super-interglacial" period. No one will remain alive to know for certain. Was James Black's abrupt downturn in temperature simply based on the extermination of humans? We will never know.

That Big Oil would deliberately take the path leading to the annihilation of the paradise of Greenhouse Earth and all therein is evil. That government would help fund these existentialist efforts is criminal. That these actions were taken in the pursuit of wealth and power is inconceivable. Shame is not enough. Vote wisely. 

Imagine instead if just some of those taxes used to prop up Big Oil were applied instead to energy research and creative and imaginative science during the dithering fostered by Big Oil and government inaction.  An entire Green Industry might have been created and implemented in those lost six decades of climate opportunity. Greenhouse Earth would be looking at a very different and positive future in 2024. 

Continued extraction and mining for rare earth minerals for batteries and EVs is as unsustainable as mining for carbon.  In sharp contrast, hydrogen fuel cells charged using solar energy might be the practical answer and could be the topic for another blog. 

The cost of solar energy continued to drop during the six decades of dithering. The future could have been bright and maybe still can be with government support. I prefer to end a post on a positive note!

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

PS: This effort has been weeks in the making ... I even hesitated to post about Big Oil and the government as I prefer to share only happy news. The doctoral dissertation by Benjamin Andrew Franta of Stanford University, California was published in 2022 but I only saw it this summer.

PSS: The sun is the source of all energy on Greenhouse Earth. We need to use it more directly and not through intermediaries like fossil fuels. A great start would be to install solar panels on every roof with exposure to the sun. There is also tidal energy available by harvesting energy from the gravitational pull of the moon.