Global Climate Changes
- Thread starter Beatle Bum
- Start date
Record is 90 days with temps +100°F back during summer, 2011. We're on day 73. One of driest summers on record. Could argue for second-hottest.
I think that would be a big mistake for dems. NY may be a blue state, but I'm pretty confident close to half of us are just not gonna go back to masks and booster shots. If people thought repubs were pissed about this 2 yesrs ago, they are in for it now. And if they tank the economy anymore with lock downs and scare tactics, then the middle of the political spectrum is gonna start to vote with their pockets.
People are just not going back to 2020.
They wouldn't. Would be discrimination. OK to force whites & fine them though.
You are absolutely correct that catastrophe and disaster insurance coverage availability has been on the decline and typically has not been included in general homeowners policies. There were usually separate policies or add-ons, when available, but that is getting much tougher. The reason I shared the post is that it appears the trend is accelerating and one cannot help but feel for homeowners without the opportunity for affordable coverage, if any at all. I found it sad and alarming ... and certainly noteworthy.
Last edited:
In the Keys you can’t get a home loan for a ground floor house without flood insurance which was basically the same as your mortgage. So you would basically pay double unless you had cash for the whole house.
And flood insurance was separate from hurricane insurance which is almost pointless.
And flood insurance was separate from hurricane insurance which is almost pointless.
The reason that's happening has nothing directly to do with disasters. In Florida, which everyone points to, it was because the industry of "public adjusters" were obliterating the insurance industry.
Before the recent law changes, a property owner could hire a public adjuster to vastly inflate the value of their damage and the insurance company had no real way to fight it under the old law. That drove prices through the roof and ended with most well known insurers just leaving the state. Their legislature changed that law and many are already coming back.
In other states, like Kentucky, the insurance companies are legally restricted to a profit margin because they have to refund premiums if they don't pay out enough claims. Irc it's 10% or something very low. That's the real reason everyone got refunds during covid, despite their attempts at a pr spin.
Insurance companies are evil bastards to be sure, but they're also a necessary evil. They will make their money one way or another, or they will just leave. Who can blame them on those grounds? No one wants to work for free. So if there is an unusual bad weather event or if cities just decide to stop policing or prosecuting auto thefts; shifted must be made to recoup losses.
As usual the real villain of this story is the incompetent fools in legislatures across the land (including DC). Not some make believe fanatical climate change
We had 63 days over 100 in 2011 and 24 in 2012. Then, for the next 9 years a cooling trend with the most being 9 one year until last year when we had 24 and 15 so far this year. It is cyclical and normal imo for the earth rotations of weather in these parts. Many years ago they had as many as 55 or more in a year and then back down again.
Last edited:
That's unknown at best. If it was true, you'd be able to clearly show it from the very beginning of carbon emission. Raw data doesn't show it at all.
It isn't good and should be minimalized as much as reasonably possible; but at best it's a theory and not even a provable one. It certainly isn't the law no matter how many people say it nor how many times it's said
I talked with a lifelong friend today who lives in Naples in a condominium community-complex that is six (6) miles inland and a ways from any canals, fortunately. The HOA pays the premium for property insurance for the "walls-out, roof and common grounds" and he is responsible for homeowners insurance on his unit under a "walls-in" arrangement. He said both the HOA policy and his homeowners policy currently have hurricane and/or flood coverage ... and premiums on both have been rising since 2015.
He said his agent called him last year and advised that his homeowners carrier had gone "belly-up" and he needed to absorb a 50% increase in premium to continue coverage with the new insurance company. Of course, he agreed. Furthermore, his monthly HOA fees have increased because of increased cost of property insurance coverage. He said the agent mentioned that companies were leaving the state and said shopping for and maintaining coverage could be an issue down the road. He is not worried right now, however, and does not expect it be a problem anytime soon.
His complex is a group of buildings, each with units on three (3) floors, that form a small community around a small lake. His is second-floor. So far, the complex has not suffered any significant damage during storms over the years, no flooding, thankfully. Being inland definitely has its advantages, he said.
fwiw ...
Last edited:
Yeah I mean if I’m an insurance company I don’t want to be in Florida. On good years you make a mint, on bad years you pay it all back or go bankrupt.
That being said, I’ll still prefer living there than in KY where winter sucks and there’s nothing to do for 4 months besides live in dark and cold.
That being said, I’ll still prefer living there than in KY where winter sucks and there’s nothing to do for 4 months besides live in dark and cold.
How much, and to what effect? What are the long term symptoms? Time frame?
Thought this was interesting.
When did home insurance become common?
September 1950
The first homeowner's policy per se in the United States was introduced in September 1950, but similar policies had already existed in Great Britain and certain areas of the United States.
It’s official. UN says the world just endured its hottest summer on record
PUBLISHED WED, SEP 6 20237:37 AM- The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July this year.
- “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.
The world just experienced its hottest three months on record by a substantial margin, according to the UN weather agency, prompting the UN chief to call for world leaders to take urgent climate action.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization and European climate service Copernicus on Wednesday announced that the June to August season of 2023 was the warmest such period in records that began in 1940.
The average temperature for those three months was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 degrees Fahrenheit), which was 0.66 degrees Celsius above average for the period.
The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July 2023.
The global average surface air temperature of 16.82 degrees Celsius for August was 0.71 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average for the month, and 0.31 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous hottest August, logged in 2016.
It comes after a series of extreme weather events across the Northern Hemisphere, with repeated heatwaves fueling devastating wildfires.
“Climate breakdown has begun,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
“Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash,” Guterres said, adding that “surging temperatures demand a surge in action.”
The UN chief said that this latest global heat record must coincide with world leaders urgently pursuing climate solutions. “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” Guterres said.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
El Niño — or “the little boy” in Spanish — is widely recognized as the warming of the sea surface temperature, a naturally occurring climate pattern which happens on average every two to seven years.
The effects of El Niño tend to peak during December, but the impact typically takes time to spread across the globe. This lagged effect is why forecasters believe 2024 could be the first year that humanity surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
This photograph taken on August 22, 2023, shows burnt sunflowers in a field during a heatwave in the suburbs of Puy Saint Martin village, southeastern France, on August 22, 2023, where the temperature reached 43°centigrade.
Jeff Pachoud | Afp | Getty Images
The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is the aspirational global temperature limit set in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Beyond this level it is more likely to experience so-called tipping points — thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life-support system.
“Eight months into 2023, so far we are experiencing the second warmest year to date, only fractionally cooler than 2016, and August was estimated to be around 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF.
“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” Buontempo added.
The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
Time to spring into action! We can still save the planet if you do what we say right now!!!It’s official. UN says the world just endured its hottest summer on record
PUBLISHED WED, SEP 6 20237:37 AM
- The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July this year.
- “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.
The world just experienced its hottest three months on record by a substantial margin, according to the UN weather agency, prompting the UN chief to call for world leaders to take urgent climate action.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization and European climate service Copernicus on Wednesday announced that the June to August season of 2023 was the warmest such period in records that began in 1940.
The average temperature for those three months was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 degrees Fahrenheit), which was 0.66 degrees Celsius above average for the period.
The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July 2023.
The global average surface air temperature of 16.82 degrees Celsius for August was 0.71 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average for the month, and 0.31 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous hottest August, logged in 2016.
It comes after a series of extreme weather events across the Northern Hemisphere, with repeated heatwaves fueling devastating wildfires.
“Climate breakdown has begun,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
“Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash,” Guterres said, adding that “surging temperatures demand a surge in action.”
The UN chief said that this latest global heat record must coincide with world leaders urgently pursuing climate solutions. “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” Guterres said.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
El Niño — or “the little boy” in Spanish — is widely recognized as the warming of the sea surface temperature, a naturally occurring climate pattern which happens on average every two to seven years.
The effects of El Niño tend to peak during December, but the impact typically takes time to spread across the globe. This lagged effect is why forecasters believe 2024 could be the first year that humanity surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
This photograph taken on August 22, 2023, shows burnt sunflowers in a field during a heatwave in the suburbs of Puy Saint Martin village, southeastern France, on August 22, 2023, where the temperature reached 43°centigrade.
Jeff Pachoud | Afp | Getty Images
The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is the aspirational global temperature limit set in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Beyond this level it is more likely to experience so-called tipping points — thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life-support system.
“Eight months into 2023, so far we are experiencing the second warmest year to date, only fractionally cooler than 2016, and August was estimated to be around 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF.
“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” Buontempo added.
The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
Meanwhile, August in Louisville was cooler than the average. So, I might be living in the right spot!
So when is the UN shutting down China's coal-fired power plants?
| Amount of CO2 in the atmosphere currently (400ppm) | 0.0004 | |
| Human caused CO2 (3.2%) | 0.032 | |
| Total | 0.0000128 | |
| US Caused CO2 (21%) | 0.21 | 0.000002688 |
Causes and Impact of US Caused CO2
| Breakout of US Caused CO2 by Source | % of US CO2 | Resulting % of total Human Caused CO2 | Total Global CO2 by Source | Total Global CO2 by Source as % |
| Transportation (28%) | 0.28 | 0.0588 | 0.0000001580544 | 0.000016% |
| Electric Power (25%) | 0.25 | 0.0525 | 0.0000001411200 | 0.000014% |
| Industry (23%) | 0.23 | 0.0483 | 0.0000001298304 | 0.000013% |
| Agriculture (10%) | 0.1 | 0.021 | 0.0000000564480 | 0.000006% |
| Commercial & Residential (13%) | 0.13 | 0.0273 | 0.0000000733824 | 0.000007% |
So if every single car, bus, boat, plane, train, etc in the US was 100% carbon neutral they would improve the overall atmosphere by 0.0000001580544 parts per hundred or .000016%. Help me understand where it makes sense to spend the money we are spending? Any rate of change in CO2 is driven by earth itself at a much higher rate than human cause.
^^^^the liberal tin foil hat wearing tree huggers wouldn't have anything to preach to us about. However, they would probably divert the billions to saving the spotted green fruit flies of the amazon rain forest.
The UN is known to be a trustworthy organization and an objective one too. 
Plus, the UN is largely funded by the US government. No bias there.
Plus, the UN is largely funded by the US government. No bias there.China’s EV strategy architect sees future for hydrogen vehicles
Wan Gang during the Munich Motor Show on Wednesday | BLOOMBERG
BY WILFRIED ECKL-DORNA
BLOOMBERG
SHARE
Sep 7, 2023
The architect of China’s world-leading electric-car push is convinced hydrogen vehicles will play an important role in the world’s biggest auto market.
Fuel-cell vehicles will be key especially in China’s northwest, where distances between cities are long and electric-car adoption remains low, Wan Gang said Wednesday in Munich.
"First we need to build a green hydrogen system,” Wan said at a German-Chinese conference on the sidelines of the IAA car show. In some regions, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen cars could even be more prevalent than fully electric models, he said.
A former Audi executive who went on to become China’s science-and-technology minister, Wan convinced leaders two decades ago to bet on vehicle electrification, selling it not only as a way to boost economic growth but also to tackle China’s dependence on oil imports and pollution. His strategy — using government subsidies to bring carmakers and drivers on board — made China the dominant market for EVs.
Promoting hydrogen is "very beneficial” as the fuel can also be used in maritime and rail transport, said Wan, a mechanical engineer trained in Germany. Especially China’s commercial-vehicle fleet could benefit from hydrogen drivetrains, he added.
A BMW AG iX5 Hydrogen vehicle on the opening day of the Munich Motor Show (IAA) ion Tuesday. Europe's automakers are showing off their latest battery-powered vehicles at the car show this week as they try to challenge Tesla and fend off growing competition from China. | BLOOMBERG
The comments are poised to please Germany’s main backer of the technology. BMW has built dozens of hydrogen test vehicles in the past years and is open to putting the drivetrain also in its "Neue Klasse” vehicles due around mid-decade, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Zipse said at the same event. The company this weekend unveiled the first prototype for its next-generation EVs at the IAA.
"For us talking about zero-emission vehicles always means talking about hydrogen as well,” Zipse said, adding that China should add more refueling stations near urban centers to bolster the technology’s relevance for private customers.
Hydrogen vehicles are struggling to take off because of high costs and a fledgling fueling infrastructure.
Mercedes-Benz Group has phased out the hydrogen-powered variant of its GLC SUV it built in small batches. While Honda stopped production of its Clarity hydrogen model in 2021, it has announced plans to start production of a fuel-cell vehicle in the U.S. in 2024.
BMW operates a test fleet of 80 hydrogen-powered iX5 sport utility vehicles and is shipping them to several countries for test drives. The company will decide on potential serial production in the second half of this decade.
Keep your head buried in 1942 sand. You’re Probably still slicing the ball after playing golf for 60 years^^^coming to you in the year 2359.
Well then it’s a damn good thing golf courses are cutting all the trees down now like Bill Gates. Opens things up and has the added benefit of apparently saving the environment.
OOOOOOOooooooooo! A golf slam!!! We know the elitist mean business when they attack someone’s golf game!! It will really get rough if he demeans your sailing!! Yikes! Game on!!
Golf courses offend my environmental sensibilities. I care about our environment. Sailing is for pussies.
High of 80 tomorrow. 70s next week in Louisville. That is great weather for ocean front property.
And, it is still summer until 21 Sept. We will hit 75 as a high sometime next week and this area gets hot...normally.
I am waiting for some numb nuts in here to remind me that the narrative now calls it climate change since the global warming cry has not panned out as much as they had hoped.
Have you not seen?!! There are tropical storms out there!
Have you not seen?!! There are tropical storms out there!
It’s official. UN says the world just endured its hottest summer on record
PUBLISHED WED, SEP 6 20237:37 AM
- The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July this year.
- “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.
The world just experienced its hottest three months on record by a substantial margin, according to the UN weather agency, prompting the UN chief to call for world leaders to take urgent climate action.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization and European climate service Copernicus on Wednesday announced that the June to August season of 2023 was the warmest such period in records that began in 1940.
The average temperature for those three months was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 degrees Fahrenheit), which was 0.66 degrees Celsius above average for the period.
The month of August was found to be the hottest on record by a large margin and the second hottest month after July 2023.
The global average surface air temperature of 16.82 degrees Celsius for August was 0.71 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average for the month, and 0.31 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous hottest August, logged in 2016.
It comes after a series of extreme weather events across the Northern Hemisphere, with repeated heatwaves fueling devastating wildfires.
“Climate breakdown has begun,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
“Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash,” Guterres said, adding that “surging temperatures demand a surge in action.”
The UN chief said that this latest global heat record must coincide with world leaders urgently pursuing climate solutions. “We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose,” Guterres said.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
El Niño — or “the little boy” in Spanish — is widely recognized as the warming of the sea surface temperature, a naturally occurring climate pattern which happens on average every two to seven years.
The effects of El Niño tend to peak during December, but the impact typically takes time to spread across the globe. This lagged effect is why forecasters believe 2024 could be the first year that humanity surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
This photograph taken on August 22, 2023, shows burnt sunflowers in a field during a heatwave in the suburbs of Puy Saint Martin village, southeastern France, on August 22, 2023, where the temperature reached 43°centigrade.
Jeff Pachoud | Afp | Getty Images
The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is the aspirational global temperature limit set in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Beyond this level it is more likely to experience so-called tipping points — thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life-support system.
“Eight months into 2023, so far we are experiencing the second warmest year to date, only fractionally cooler than 2016, and August was estimated to be around 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF.
“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” Buontempo added.
The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
It isn't even summer all over the world at the same time. If they want to limit it to the three months span, we know for sure they lied about June and July and had to quietly retract the claim. So I assume this is based on those lies.
I am surprised to see mention of el nino. Until the last 8-10 years, el nino and la Nina were commonly known regularly occurring phenomenas which caused weather variation. Nowadays, those terms are practically deleted from the public lexicon and replaced with "climate change" to explain every weather variation.
TWO LEADING PRINCETON, MIT SCIENTISTS SAY EPA CLIMATE REGULATIONS BASED ON A ‘HOAX’: "William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations aren’t based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong. “The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen wrote. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule. “All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data. The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.” Climate models such as the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes. To illustrate his point, he presented the EPA with a table showing the difference between those models’ predictions and the observed data."
Link to this
I skimmed most of it because it's a lot. Found this part to be eerily similar to another completely overblown thing we just went through.
The Scientific ‘Consensus’ for Climate Change
Proponents of the global warming narrative often state that it is “settled science” and that nearly all scientists agree that global warming is real and the result of human activity.
According to an official NASA statement, “the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists—97 percent—agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world.”
A report by Cornell University states that “more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.”
But Mr. Happer argues that consensus is not science, citing a lecture on the scientific method by renowned physicist Richard Feynman, who said, “if it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
“Science has never been made by consensus,” Mr. Happer said. “The way you decide something is true in science is you compare it with experiment or observations.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s a consensus; it doesn’t matter if a Nobel Prize winner says it’s true, if it disagrees with observations, it’s wrong,” he said. “And that’s the situation with climate models. They are clearly wrong because they don’t agree with observations.”
The National Library of Medicine cites a speech by physician and author Michael Crichton at the California Institute of Technology in 2003 in which he said, “consensus is the business of politics.”
“Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world,” Dr. Crichton said. “In science, consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results.”
“The initial predictions of climate disasters had New York flooded by now, no ice left at the North Pole, England would be like Siberia by now,” Mr. Happer said. “Nothing that they predicted actually came true. You have to do something to keep the money coming in, so they changed ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change.’”
The Price of Dissent
Regarding the consensus in published literature cited by Cornell University, some experts counter that academic publications routinely reject any submissions that question the global warming narrative.
“I’m lucky because I didn’t really start pushing back on this until I was close to retirement,” Mr. Happer said. He had already established himself at that point as a tenured professor at Princeton, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.
“If I’d been much younger, they could have made sure I never got tenure, that my papers would never get published,” he said. “They can keep me from publishing papers now, but it doesn’t matter because I already have status. But it would matter a lot if I were younger and I had a career that I was trying to make.”
In an interview with John Stossel, climate scientist Judith Curry said she paid the price for contradicting the narrative and called the global warming consensus “a manufactured consensus.”
Ms. Curry, the former chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said that when she published a study that claimed hurricanes were increasing in intensity, “I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star; I was flown all over the place to meet with politicians and to give these talks, and lots of media attention.”
When several researchers questioned her findings, she investigated their claims and concluded that her critics were correct.
“Part of it was bad data; part of it was natural climate variability,” she said. But when she went public with that fact, she was shunned, she said and pushed out of academia.
On an EV road trip to promote green tech, the US Energy Secretary and her entourage couldn't find enough electric vehicle chargers
The scarcity of chargers was such an issue for Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her team that the police got involved at one point, NPR reported.
The caravan of electric vehicles heading from Charlotte to Memphis over the course of four days hit a snag in Grovestown, Georgia. The group was planning a quick charge when they realized there wouldn't be enough electric vehicle chargers to go around since one was broken and the others were in use, NPR reported.
So an employee from the Department of Energy tried to save one of the spots using a gas-powered car.
It was a sweltering day and the move didn't go over well with a family that was also waiting for a charging spot. The situation escalated to the point that the family, driving with a baby in their car, called the police, who didn't have the authority to act because blocking an EV charging spot with a gas-power car isn't illegal in Georgia, NPR reported.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ene...ind-enough-ev-chargers-green-tech-trip-2023-9
So how much of China's coal-fired energy will be shut down because of this?China’s EV strategy architect sees future for hydrogen vehicles
Wan Gang during the Munich Motor Show on Wednesday | BLOOMBERG
BY WILFRIED ECKL-DORNA
BLOOMBERG
SHARE
Sep 7, 2023
The architect of China’s world-leading electric-car push is convinced hydrogen vehicles will play an important role in the world’s biggest auto market.
Fuel-cell vehicles will be key especially in China’s northwest, where distances between cities are long and electric-car adoption remains low, Wan Gang said Wednesday in Munich.
"First we need to build a green hydrogen system,” Wan said at a German-Chinese conference on the sidelines of the IAA car show. In some regions, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen cars could even be more prevalent than fully electric models, he said.
A former Audi executive who went on to become China’s science-and-technology minister, Wan convinced leaders two decades ago to bet on vehicle electrification, selling it not only as a way to boost economic growth but also to tackle China’s dependence on oil imports and pollution. His strategy — using government subsidies to bring carmakers and drivers on board — made China the dominant market for EVs.
Promoting hydrogen is "very beneficial” as the fuel can also be used in maritime and rail transport, said Wan, a mechanical engineer trained in Germany. Especially China’s commercial-vehicle fleet could benefit from hydrogen drivetrains, he added.
A BMW AG iX5 Hydrogen vehicle on the opening day of the Munich Motor Show (IAA) ion Tuesday. Europe's automakers are showing off their latest battery-powered vehicles at the car show this week as they try to challenge Tesla and fend off growing competition from China. | BLOOMBERG
The comments are poised to please Germany’s main backer of the technology. BMW has built dozens of hydrogen test vehicles in the past years and is open to putting the drivetrain also in its "Neue Klasse” vehicles due around mid-decade, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Zipse said at the same event. The company this weekend unveiled the first prototype for its next-generation EVs at the IAA.
"For us talking about zero-emission vehicles always means talking about hydrogen as well,” Zipse said, adding that China should add more refueling stations near urban centers to bolster the technology’s relevance for private customers.
Hydrogen vehicles are struggling to take off because of high costs and a fledgling fueling infrastructure.
Mercedes-Benz Group has phased out the hydrogen-powered variant of its GLC SUV it built in small batches. While Honda stopped production of its Clarity hydrogen model in 2021, it has announced plans to start production of a fuel-cell vehicle in the U.S. in 2024.
BMW operates a test fleet of 80 hydrogen-powered iX5 sport utility vehicles and is shipping them to several countries for test drives. The company will decide on potential serial production in the second half of this decade.
Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change
Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately
An Exxon Mobil plant in Baytown, Texas Sept. 14, 2023 at 5:30 am ET
Mobil issued its first public statement that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change in 2006, following years of denial. In public forums, the company argued that the risk of serious impact on the environment justified global action.
Yet behind closed doors, Exxon took a very different tack: Its executives strategized over how to diminish concerns about warming temperatures, and they sought to muddle scientific findings that might hurt its oil-and-gas business, according to internal Exxon documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former executives.
Exxon’s public acceptance in 2006 of the risks posed by climate change was an early act of Rex Tillerson, an Exxon lifer who became CEO that year. Some viewed him as a moderating force who brought Exxon in line with the scientific consensus.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/central...ion-sept-19243b7e?mod=article_whats_news_pos2
The documents reviewed by the Journal, which haven’t been previously reported, cast Tillerson’s decadelong tenure in a different light. They show that Tillerson, as well as some of Exxon’s board directors and other top executives, sought to cast doubt on the severity of climate change’s impacts. Exxon scientists supported research that questioned the findings of mainstream climate science, even after the company said it would stop funding think tanks and others that promoted climate-change denial.
ADVERTISEMENT
Exxon is now a defendant in dozens of lawsuits around the U.S. that accuse it and other oil companies of deception over climate change and that aim to collect billions of dollars in damages. Prosecutors and attorneys involved in some of the cases are seeking some of the documents reviewed by the Journal, which were part of a previous investigation by New York’s attorney general but never made public.
One of the lawsuits is from Hawaii’s Maui County, where wildfires killed more than 100 people in August. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleged the island faced increased climate-related risks, including more dangerous wildfires, caused by fossil-fuel companies. Some of the lawsuits may go to trial as soon as next year.
“I know how this information looks—when taken out of context, it seems bad,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in response to the Journal’s inquiry about the documents. “But having worked with some of these colleagues earlier in my career, I have the benefit of knowing they are people of good intent. None of these old emails and notes matter though. All that does is that we’re building an entire business dedicated to reducing emissions—both our own and others—and spending billions of dollars on solutions that have a real, sustainable impact.”
Under Woods, who became CEO in 2017, Exxon has committed to spend $17 billion over five years on emissions-reducing technologies. Exxon didn’t address detailed questions sent by the Journal.
Tillerson declined to comment through a representative.
Exxon turned millions of pages of documents over to the New York attorney general during that office’s yearslong investigation, announced in 2015, into whether the company misled investors about the impact of climate regulation on its business. The Journal reviewed summaries of the documents that Exxon’s lawyers had determined were the most significant. After the attorney general narrowed the focus of the case, the documents weren’t made public.
The documents summarize emails between top executives, board meetings and Tillerson’s edits of speeches, among other things.
After a nearly three-week trial in 2019, Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York State Supreme Court ruled the New York attorney general failed to prove its case.
“Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve Exxon Mobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change,” Ostrager wrote.
Throughout Tillerson’s tenure between 2006 and 2016, Exxon executives in their internal communications attempted to push back against the notion that humans needed to curtail oil and gas use to help the planet—despite the company’s public statements that action was needed.
In 2012, after the pre-eminent scientific authority on climate change warned of global calamity if carbon emissions continued unabated, Tillerson disagreed and directed Exxon researchers to “influence” the group.
As pressure mounted to stop drilling in the Arctic due to rapid glacial melting and other environmental impacts, Exxon fretted about a key project in Russia’s far north and worked to “de-couple climate change and the Arctic.”
July 2013
Exxon’s deal to explore the Arctic with
Russia’s Rosneft came amid growing
public concern about melting polar ice
caps. In an email discussion with other
executives about how to protect the
project, a corporate issues
adviser wrote:
“
As this shapes up, part of the moral
argument for leaving the Arctic alone
will be based on this notion that it is
fundamentally unjust for the people
who prompted the ice melt to then
profit from development. It’s one
reason I think we will need to push
back hard- albeit in a nuanced way-
against this notion that the whole area
is ‘pristine’ and untouched by the hand
of man.”
“The general perception is that Tillerson was softer and stopped funding the bad guys” that were espousing climate change denial, said Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a charity that partly focuses on environmental issues. “This is the first X-ray into Tillerson’s head and shows he wanted to throw climate mitigation off the rails. It’s obituary-changing.”
The fund has issued grants financing litigation and other support for around two dozen cases against Exxon, whose predecessor, Standard Oil, was founded by family patriarch John D. Rockefeller. The fund has invested millions of dollars in a broader campaign against big oil companies.
Seminal warning
A study published earlier this year in the journal Science determined Exxon’s climate modelers had predicted warming temperatures with precision since the 1970s, in line with the scientific consensus. The study was funded, in part, by a grant from the Rockefeller Family Fund.In the summer of 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen issued what’s now seen as a seminal warning on climate change when he testified before Congress that Earth was warming dangerously and humans were causing it.
Frank Sprow, then Exxon’s head of corporate research, sent a memo to colleagues a few months later articulating what would become a central pillar of Exxon’s strategy.
“If a worldwide consensus emerges that action is needed to mitigate against Greenhouse gas effects, substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur,” wrote Sprow. “Any additional R&D efforts within Corporate Research on Greenhouse should have two primary purposes: 1. Protect the value of our resources (oil, gas, coal). 2. Preserve Exxon’s business options.”
Sprow’s memo was adopted by Exxon as policy, he said in a recent interview.
Exxon stopped most internal climate research, instead funding it through university and research organizations, Sprow said. Exxon’s corporate research division was redirected from broader scientific study to focus on “science to support our business.”
Sprow said he and former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond acknowledged the climate was changing but questioned to what extent human activity was causing it and how serious and rapid the impacts would be. The January study in Science said that Exxon’s climate modelers mostly attributed the changes to humans.
Martin Hoffert, who worked as a consultant to Exxon on climate science in the 1980s, said Sprow’s memo sent another message: “It’s an oblique way of saying we’re in the oil business and we’re not going to get out of the oil business, and we’ll do everything we can to make money on the oil business.”
By the time Tillerson became CEO in 2006, Exxon’s positions on climate change had become a public-relations nightmare, according to Sprow, who retired from the company in 2005.
ADVERTISEMENT
Public shift
Exxon’s public shift on climate change came after the Royal Society, a British scientific academy, criticized the company for spreading “inaccurate and misleading” views on climate science in 2006. Exxon responded in a letter that it recognized “the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems.”An Eagle Scout and a civil engineer by training, Tillerson spent his entire career at Exxon before becoming CEO in 2006. He left in 2017 to become then-President Trump’s Secretary of State.
His views on climate change were influenced by the previous generation of Exxon executives, said former company executives who worked with him. During his tenure, Tillerson took little action to curb the company’s emissions and instead believed the onus was on governments to push companies to address climate change, they said.