Industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy.
So why would the oil industry want to stack the negotiarions - following the money - what is it worth them them. Well in a recent article in the Economist magazine (about peak oil) there was this:
The IEA reckons that co-ordinated action to restrict the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC will restrict global demand for oil to 89m b/d in 2030, compared with 105m b/d if no action is taken.
So there is a difference of 16million b/d (that is Barrels Per Day) so given the cost of a barrel is currently around $70, so you can see that it represents $1120 million dollars per day in difference. So event mitigating the supply a bit - by obfuscating the science and promoting uncertainty is worth $millions per day.
That's why denial has been so well funded.
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Schnews DIY Guide
4 comments:
Compared with how much being spent on prooving it ?
Sure that must have cost a bit, a denialist site speculated a stupid figure of $79 billion spent on climate research - stupid because most countries spend around 1% of their GDP on science (all of it) - so this figures seems vastly inflated. The US GDP in 2008 was 1.4 trillion, so 1% is 14 billion - which is years worth of the total budget for science? Come on, get real...
Anyway...even if you accept it - that's only 71 days worth of the oil money figure I quote.
Put simply the biggest inflated figure for the cost of proving it still is tiny next to the oil money at stake...
It's encouraging that industry leaders are acknowledging these scientific complexities.
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