Oil and gas companies will often claim to be partners in the clean energy transition, when it is politically expedient to do so, but new research finds their actual contributions are marginal:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/5ba8caec-61d3-4aa9-a877-9b200ef4b5b0 Will Jordan, chief legal and policy officer at EQT, a leading US gas producer, also thought that any glut would be temporary, and said US demand was also rising on the boom in power-hungry artificial intelligence data centres. Recommended Oil & Gas industry BP’s new chair signals more asset sales and demands faster restructuring “Supply leads demand — you put the supply on the market and demand gets created.,” he said. “Over the long term we’re very bullish.”
Please enjoy this executive at one of America's biggest gas companies openly admitting that expanding supply leads to increased demand for fossil fuels
He is not wrong: frantic expansion of fossil fuel supply worsens climate change. Tax it, cut subsidies, wind it down
www.ft.com/content/5ba8...
Thank you for all your brilliant work Alex, so sorry to hear about this, but can't wait to see what you do next.
WOW. The FBI is investigating an Exxon lobbyist for allegedly orchestrating the hacking & leaking of emails of 500+ environmentalists & their funders, colleagues & families in an ongoing effort to discredit lawsuits against the company for its climate deceit. www.reuters.com/business/ene...
Another job posting from the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami just dropped, this one in the psychology of climate change communication and psychological inoculation against misinformation...
More info and application form here: careers.miami.edu/us/en/job/R1...
7/n: Following up to announce another postdoc in the Climate Accountability Lab at UMiami, this one in the psychology of climate change communication and psychological inoculation against misinformation.
More info and application form here: careers.miami.edu/us/en/job/R1...
NEW #EnvHist via Last Chance Alliance: Western States Petroleum Assoc front groups spent nearly $32M in CA on influence spending over past 10 years since its slide deck exposing the groups it funds leaked to media, $18M in of it from Chevron (63% of total) lastchancealliance.org/decadeofdela...
If you missed this 🧵 on the "Koch & Climate Obstruction" report I wrote with Robert Brulle @climatessn.bsky.social, please read and share!
It unpacks what what Koch knew, and what Koch said.
Now, here's are new 🧵 on what Koch DID, starting with historic material from the 1990's.
NEW REPORT 🧵: Here's what Koch seemed to *know* about climate science, using documents from the 1970's, 80's and 90's
vs
what Koch *said* about climate science, and what Koch *did* to fight climate mitigation.
From Brown University Climate Social Science Network:
cssn.org/koch-and-cli...
"We, the undersigned...call on governments worldwide to take immediate and decisive action to address this crisis" of climate disinformation. Honoured to be a co-signatory on this open letter, thanks to @caadcoalition.bsky.social for coordinating.
In other news, the oily chucklefucks that designed Trump1.0's EPA transition have published their top10 wishlist for round 2.
6/n: More to come...watch this space!
5/n: Senior Software Engineer: Using computational social science to investigate climate narratives & social networks (same job description as postdoc but different pay grade depending on experience & qualifications).
More info and application form here: careers.miami.edu/us/en/job/R1...
4/n: Postdoc: Using computational social science to investigate climate change narratives and social networks.
More info and application form here: careers.miami.edu/us/en/job/R1...
3/n: PhD #2: Using mixed methods to investigate the corporate capture of academic research and government agencies by fossil fuel interests.
More info and application form here: graduate.earth.miami.edu/phd-and-ms-p...
2/n: PhD #1: Using computational social science to investigate climate change discourse on social media.
More info and application form here: graduate.earth.miami.edu/phd-and-ms-p...
🚨No better day to announce the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami is hiring for 4 new positions in computational social science (2xPhD, Postdoc, Software Engineer) to investigate disinformation & propaganda. Come help shape climate accountability for the next four years. ⬇️ 1/n
14/n: Our paper also encourages our colleagues "to go further than research": “to communicate their findings widely, to advocate for the policy implications of their work, and to support others in doing so.”
It's heartening that hundreds have already begun to do so ⬇️:
13/n: To be clear, we are not impugning the integrity of individual scholars. As I told The Guardian's Dharna Noor, “Our intention is to protect scientific integrity. We want to warn scholars & uni leaders that they can be pawns in a propaganda scheme." www.theguardian.com/business/art...
12/n: One of our coauthors, Emily Eaton, had to go so far as to take her own university *to court* to (successfully) compel her university to disclose its fossil fuel funders.
11/n: “Universities’ widespread lack of transparency on funding ties, amounts, and contract details” between themselves & fossil fuel companies is a major obstacle to tackling this problem, our study finds.
“The academic integrity of higher education is at risk.”
10/n: University leaders, for their part, have mostly failed to recognize, much less mitigate, this massive, multi-decadal elephant in the room. In many cases, they have done the opposite, actively soliciting & encouraging fossil fuel donations.
9/n: Out of ~14,000 peer-reviewed articles about sponsorship and conflicts of interest, we found only SEVEN mentioning fossil fuels.
Our paper is therefore also a call to action for scholars to “engage urgently” in a new research agenda focused on fossil fuel ties to academia.
8/n: “Nothing close to [the] concern or scrutiny or reform [that public health scientists have applied to tobacco or pharma funding] has been applied by climate & energy experts to oil industry funding," I told Miranda Green at Floodlight News/Louisiana Illuminator. lailluminator.com/2024/09/05/c...
7/n: Interestingly, we found that NGOs & students have been raising the alarm on this since at least 2003. Despite this, and despite the glaring historical parallels to the tactics of tobacco, pharma, & junk food industries, academic studies are only just starting to catch up.
6/n: "Fossil fuel companies have embedded themselves in unis across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and beyond," we conclude. This grants Big Oil substantial material & reputational benefits, incl. favorable research, training & recruitment, & the cred & public trust of academia.
5/n: Or as my coauthor Jennie Stephens told
@desmog.bsky.social's Geoff Dembicki, "When you pull it all together, you realize how pervasive a strategy this has been."
4/n: As I told the @financialtimes.com's Amanda Chu, “Everything that’s been done so far by researchers on this indicates an emerging consensus that this is a really serious & significant problem that needs to be taken a lot more seriously." www.ft.com/content/d0b6...
3/n: Our study uncovers hundreds of real or apparent conflicts of interest for researchers & unis, with oil & gas companies funding climate & energy research, sitting on uni governing boards, endowing academic posts, sponsoring scholarships & lectures, advising curricula, & more.