The Cliff Edge at Beachy Head – Climate Tipping Points

My grandparents used to live nearby, so as a child I often visited the cliff at Beachy Head, going just close enough to look over the edge at the lighthouse so far below. As an innocent child I didn’t know that this was also an infamous spot for suicides.

This cliff edge is a perfect analogy to the dangers of climate tipping points. We are on a suicidal rush of increasing fossil fuel consumption, which is driving us at full speed towards a cliff. Our top scientists have been telling us for decades that we have to stay at a safe distance from the cliff. But those same scientists can’t tell us what a safe distance is – because they can’t know.

Do you see that piece of cliff where the grass is like a lower ledge? That is where the cliff has started to crumble. I remember those ledges and wanting to climb down onto them. My grandparents wouldn’t let me. My weight was small back then and I might have been safe, but my grandparents, being wiser, said to stay away from it. Climate tipping points are like that ledge. If they are crossed and fail, they will go quickly and catastrophically. Which is why we need to stay away from them by a safe distance. No one can predict when that ledge will collapse – because we can’t know.

Edit: I should have made it clearer that the higher temperatures get, the closer we are to edge. Net Zero means that we stay balancing along the very edge, halted at the highest temperature rise, jumping up and down on the ledges. Only Net Negative takes us further away from the edge and to safe and stable ground.

 

From: Big Oil CEO

To: Media Shaping Team

Climate Change Strategy – Strictly Secret – NDA Required Before Reading

Our industry faces an existential threat. Our fossil fuel extraction projects face being shut down or at least limited to a small percentage of current output. This will have a serious impact on our profits and so must be countered at all costs.

To investigate the impact on the world of burning increasing levels of fossil fuels we have hired some of the top scientists, (all have signed NDAs). The news is bad. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane will increase world average temperatures because of the greenhouse properties of these gases. This will change the climate of the world to be more chaotic, with longer and more frequent droughts, but also heavier infrequent rain causing flooding.

The good news is that these changes will happen slowly, so most people won’t notice. But eventually people will be so disturbed by the destruction of their homes by wildfires and food shortages causing starvation that politicians will be forced to act. Your task is to delay the inevitable measures for as long as possible so that business can continue as usual.

Delay – The overall strategy is to delay and postpone control measures: so we need to detail exactly what we most fear as an effective plan and so must stop happening. The most effective way of countering and reversing climate change will be to globally ration the extraction of fossil fuels down to well below the level of carbon naturally sequestered by absorption in oceans and land. The following steps will be followed to delay this happening.

Denial – Following the example of the tobacco industry the first obvious step is to deny that anything bad is happening. We have more money than our opponents and can fund research to confirm that everything is normal. The climate is easily confused with the weather by most people, and weather is far more variable than the initial climate changes, so this is an easy first step.

Doubt – The scientific evidence will grow that global heating is happening and even linked to climate changing. But although people think science is a certainty, our advisors tell us that there is always a level of uncertainty. This can be played on to cast doubt. Small discrepancies can be cherry-picked and used to cast doubt on all the science. We just need to shout loudest. Hurricane frequency is a good example of where particular geographical locations and time periods can be chosen to show nothing is changing.

Democracy – Politicians will be bought. Many have big fossil fuel industries in their constituencies and will support keeping those jobs and those votes without funding from us, but pay them anyway, to keep our options open. Note here that coal constituencies are most vulnerable to us because coal is the worst fossil fuel and the first to be rationed out of existence if we fail. In the USA we are lucky that the system is so easily rigged. We have successfully supported the candidates in primaries we prefer, which nearly always got them selected and elected. Political influence will also give us lobbying power which will enable us to shape even the personnel of the IPCC.

Duplicity – Don’t worry. No one cares about truth anymore. Alternative facts are all the rage, and you will use them prolifically. Shower the world with so many facts that no one will be able to tell truth from fiction. Now that we have replaced the difficult scientists writing IPCC reports with our own choices this is working well. AR5 contained dangerously available and visible information. AR6 is far more opaque and cluttered so that only specialists will see anything that might harm our cause. World leaders will be kept well in the dark.

Diversion – There are so many ways that we will divert attention, mostly covered below under disinformation, but the main thing is to shift the attention away from fossil fuel companies and our products. This is best done by concentrating on emissions. Since the greenhouse effect is caused by emitted gases, it’s easy to focus attention on emissions and the emitters. This nicely shifts the blame away from us suppliers to the consumers. Since there are billions of consumers who mostly cause emissions indirectly by everyday activities and purchases this will be an extremely effective strategy. The probability of the majority of individuals feeling guilty enough to change their purchasing choices to eliminate fossil fuels is vanishingly small and no real threat. And anyway the production and supply chain for all products is so scattered with fossil fuel use that individuals can’t have that choice. So always talk about emissions, never extraction. The Paris Agreement is an excellent example of this, where although greenhouse gases are mentioned there is not a single mention of fossil fuel, coal, oil or gas.

Division – Exploit it. Encourage it. We are stronger than the liberal greens because we have a united purpose – profit – and far more money than them. They have multiple organisations competing against each other for funding and supporters. Keep it that way, divided. Even encourage new organisations and groups so as to increase their division. Nations should also be kept divided. Nations naturally compete against each other and their governments are only interested in national advantage. This made it easy for us to ensure that every nation signing up to COP agreements decides their own targets and timescales, and that they can easily be reversed. No country will willingly let another gain economic advantage. This has been well exploited to ensure that no country will cut fossil fuel consumption faster than their competitors. Net Zero Carbon by 2060 for China has got many to question why their target dates are sooner. I expect many to change to 2060.

Deception – Net Zero Carbon was well done. It sounds like effective action but we know it means business as usual. We held off the danger of Net Negative Carbon very well. The unattainable CCS technology being held up as the Net Zero balancing force also plays into the general delay strategy. Keep on the good work of hiding the knowledge that about half our emissions are naturally sequestered. If that was well understood, and that Net Negative Carbon was easily achievable, we would be in serious trouble and extreme NDA sanctions will be applied to those who fail me.

Doomism – As things get worse and worse, as temperatures keep on rising, as droughts become more frequent and prolonged, as wildfires become more destructive, as floods become deeper and stronger, as food production fails and millions starve, many will give up. We will encourage this, since this sector of the population is no threat to us, and will even resist those who think they can defeat us and reverse climate change by limiting fossil fuels.

Disinformation – This is a very rich field of possibilities, closely linked to Diversion above. Social media opens opportunities to spread disinformation because there are very few checks. But even the conventional media will publish disinformation. Not only will the media we have direct influence over publish our version of information, media that might seem hostile to us is run by journalists with no scientific background – they are nearly innumerate. They are incapable of telling our misinformation from the truth and so will publish it, if we disguise the source, enough for it to look legitimate.

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While a satirical work of fiction, this also holds facts and well researched frauds. So how much is fiction?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0cgql8f/big-oil-v-the-world