Big Oil and Climate Change: Doubt (Part 2), Aired April 26, 2022...

This is my second post in the series following the PBS FRONTLINE program “The Power of Big Oil.”

In The Power of Big Oil, a new three-part documentary series, FRONTLINE examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting doubt and delaying action on climate change, tracing decades of missed opportunities and ongoing attempts to hold Big Oil to account.

The documentary series comes on the heels of a new report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying that rapid action is needed in order to reduce planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases and limit climate disaster, and outlining possible ways in which the world can take action to cut such emissions in half by 2030.

“We are at a crossroads,” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said in an announcement about the report. “The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.” FRONTLINE has been covering climate change and other environmental threats for years and across platforms. With the premiere of The Power of Big Oil, revisit more than a decade’s worth of reporting. By Patrice Taddonio, April 12, 2022, (PBS, 2022).

Part One: Denial, premiered April 19 and charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate change, investigating industry efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science. Part Two: Doubt aired April 26, and Part Three: Delay premieres May 3 (PBS, 2022).

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The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and publicly challenged the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry group active in climate policy and the most prominent industry advocate in international climate negotiations. The GCC was involved in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and played a role in blocking ratification by the United States. The coalition knew it could not deny the scientific consensus, but sought to sow doubt over the scientific consensus on climate change (New York Times, 2009).

Weblinks are provided to sort fact from fiction and to separate truth and what we know as reality from fear, doubt, and misinformation.
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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-power-of-big-oil/#video-2
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-power-of-big-oil/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/resources/press/press-release/
https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg1/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
https://www.climate.gov/
https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coalition
https://www.desmog.com/global-climate-coalition/
https://climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-industry-cli…
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html
https://www.energyandpolicy.org/global-climate-coalition-utilities/
https://www.pbs.org/show/climate-change-facts/
https://www.noaa.gov/climate
https://climate.nasa.gov/
https://www.wri.org/climate
https://public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate#:~:text=WMO%20supports%20….
https://unfccc.int/
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6-HphcS89…
https://climate.esa.int/en/esa-climate/esa-cci/climate-change-initiativ…
https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/space-daily/climate.asp
https://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gcom_c/
https://glad.umd.edu/
https://acespace.org/
https://www.fao.org/climate-change/our-work/what-we-do/en/