Big Oil and Climate Change Revisited...

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

Within this 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. This recent FRONTLINE series investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry.

Part One charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate change and investigates industry efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science. Part Two explores the industry’s efforts to stall climate policy, even as evidence about climate change grew more certain in the new millennium. And as leading climate scientists issue new warnings about climate change, Part Three examines how the fossil fuel industry worked to delay the transition to renewable energy sources — including by promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative (PBS, 2022).

This series comes shortly after the recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stating 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.”

In related matters, 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, myth, and misinformation.
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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/