While many Americans are stocking up on guns and ammunition to kill
other Americans of the “wrong” religion, or the “wrong” sexual
orientation, or “all the wrong” races, they are sleeping through the
second greatest threat to their existence after the Republican cabal. Of
course, part and parcel of Americans’ ignorance of and opposition to
four decades-old data warning that man-made carbon emissions pose the
greatest economic and national security threat to Americans is the oil
industry’s deceit in pursuit of profits. A significant reason Americans
dismiss the impending climate catastrophe is due to being cognitively
incapable of connecting historic droughts, severe storms, deadly
flooding, and wildfires to climate scientists warnings about historic
droughts, severe storms, deadly flooding and increasingly intense
wildfires due to carbon emissions. To make matters worse, there has been
a four-plus decade-long oil industry crusade to portray global warming
as a nasty liberal hoax to destroy America.
Chief among the groups that learned in the 1970s that man-made carbon emissions would have “
catastrophic” effects on the Earth’s climate was ExxonMobil. Instead of warning Americans, ExxonMobil took
the lead
in funding massive misinformation campaigns and attacking climate
scientists. Then the Koch brothers got serious and began issuing
monumentally-large checks for Republican science deniers and oil
industry ‘experts’ to contradict climate scientists empirical data and
research.
It is important to reiterate that besides real independent climate scientists’ research in the 70s, it was ExxonMobil’s
own scientists’
data and research warning the oil giant that climate change was
“anthropomorphic” (man-caused), and that without immediate government
intervention global temperatures “
will reach catastrophic levels”
and threaten the Earth’s population. Obviously, ExxonMobil, like the
Kochs a couple of decades later, concealed the 1970’s science warning
the climate is doomed; it is likely why today there are only 10 or 11
people among 300 million aware that climate scientists were screaming
about global climate catastrophe over forty years ago.
Now though, in a break with the Koch brothers and all but a literal
handful of Republicans, ExxonMobil’s scientists warned the Washington
Post that
“with no government action, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius (9-degrees Fahrenheit
) with rises of 6, 7 (12, 13 F
) or even more quite possible.”
Climate scientists, even those denying anthropomorphic global warming,
have predicted for a couple of decades, and issued dire warnings, that a
rise in Earth’s temperature of 2 degrees Celsius is the deadly tipping
point and “
game over for the climate.”
It is certain that the Kochs, whose own scientists’ research agrees
with climate scientists and ExxonMobil’s, and their dirt-stupid puppets
in Congress and state legislatures nearly fainted when ExxonMobil used
science to prophecy the climate’s demise. However, it is more likely
that their heads exploded and their bowels emptied when ExxonMobil
counseled what the government should initiate immediately to save the
climate and billions of human lives.
According to the Washington Post’s “
centrist” editorial page editor seeking some means of alerting Americans to just how “
dangerously extreme the Republican cabal has become on climate change,” Fred Hiatt
wrote that “
Republicans’ ideologically based denial is dangerous and cowardly.”
Hiatt then noted that ExxonMobil is the polar opposite of an
environmental group like Greenpeace, but unlike the national cabal
leadership, congressional Republicans and pretender candidates, “
ExxonMobil
believes climate change is real, that governments should take action to
combat it, and that the most sensible action would be a revenue-neutral
tax on carbon that taxes fossil fuels like coal and oil and returns the
money to taxpayers.”
Although ExxonMobil just advised the federal government to take action to save the climate with a tax on carbon, the “
carbon tax” was preemptively blocked
by Grover Norquist and Koch brother Republicans in the Senate last
March. There is no way in hell Norquist, or the Kochs, will allow
Republicans to aid in saving the climate or Americans with any kind of
tax, but particularly a tax on anything related to the cabal’s precious “
fossil fuels;” materials that are as sacrosanct to Republicans as their devotion to fascist oligarchy and guns.
ExxonMobil is the second leading oil corporation to finally admit, in
public, that climate change is real. So real, in fact, that last
March Shell Oil admitted the climate is doomed and the company is
planning for a 4-degree C rise in the Earth’s temperature. Shell also
acknowledged that the
4-degree C rise eclipses the climate-killing 2C threshold and certain disaster. The oil giant began planning for a “
planet-wide catastrophe replete with massive flooding, global famines, and desertification” in previously temperate zones. The “
massive flooding” Shell is planning for is “
sea
water as sea levels will rise between 2.5 and 3.5 feet leading to
widespread coastal flooding, animal and plant extinctions, and the
near-decimation of global agriculture.”
Shell’s planning document, similar to ExxonMobil, did not waste time
advising any government solutions because the corporation’s leaders
accept the reality that Republicans will block any government effort to
curb carbon emissions. Shell’s internal document said what a few Americans already know; “
We do not see government taking any steps now that are consistent with 2 degrees C threshold scenario,” the tipping point of game over for the climate.
An optimist may believe that after two giant oil corporations weighed
in, albeit too late, on the catastrophic temperature rise from carbon
emissions, Republicans would give attention to an existential threat to
Americans. However, despite pleas from the Vatican to address climate
change as a humanitarian issue and 200 world leaders gathering to devise
a planet-wide solution, Republicans remain steadfast in willful denial.
And it appears that no amount of devastating weather events, droughts,
wildfires, or flooding creating economic and national security havoc
will affect Republicans. Despite mounting threats to civilization and
corporate acknowledgment that action is required immediately,
Republicans have ramped up their assault on President Obama’s efforts to
address climate change.
It is a travesty, but as Paul Krugman noted last week, “
the
awesome, terrifying reality is that we’re looking at a party that has
turned its back on science at a time when doing so puts the very future
of civilization at risk. That’s the truth, and it needs to be faced
head-on.” On the other side of the political spectrum, a member of
the right wing anti-science echo chamber, opinion columnist David
Brooks, made a different argument to come to the same conclusion as
Krugman. Brooks
explained that Republicans’ problem with climate change is that,
“
The republican cabal has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast
majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know
about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought
police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio
interrogation.”
That “
commie dictatorship and thought police interrogation”
will come down from the Koch brothers and their substantial corporate
media sycophants, not oil industry giants. Still, even though ExxonMobil
and Shell Oil are predicting a planet-wide climate catastrophe without
concerted government intervention, Republicans will continue doing the
Koch’s bidding and as Paul Krugman said last week; doom the Earth’s
population.
