‘Billionaire supports reported inquiry into possible ExxonMobil cover-up’:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/20/exxonmobil-possible-climate-change-coverup
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer spoke out on Wednesday in support of an unconfirmed investigation by California into allegations that ExxonMobil spent decades lying to investors and the public about its knowledge of climate change.
“We don’t have the facts yet, but I think that there is enough that has been revealed that it’s totally appropriate that (California) be conducting this investigation,” Steyer told the Guardian. “Anybody who puts out intentionally misleading information I think should be answering to us.”
Steyer’s comments came hours after the Los Angeles Times reported that California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, is looking into what ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew about climate change going as far back as the early 1980s.
Harris’s office declined to comment on the report, writing in an email: “We can’t comment on any ongoing or potential investigation,” according to press secretary Rachele Huennekens.
Previously published reports suggest ExxonMobil may have spent millions over 27 years to publicly promote opposition to climate change science while privately basing strategies and business models around it.
The Guardian reported in July on a company email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert that provided evidence that the company was aware, over a generation ago, of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line. It may have factored that knowledge into its decision about a large gas field in southeast Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.
New York’s attorney general is also conducting a similar probe into ExxonMobil based on previously published reports by the Los Angeles Times and the Columbia University Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship.
I firmly believe this needs to happen across the whole energy sector, as it is seemingly clear many of the big companies have contributed knowingly to the current crisis we are all facing, BP hid research (much related to green energy that could have been useful in the preceding decades, and even now) etc.
‘2015 was officially the hottest year on record’:
As record months piled up, it became clear a while ago that 2015 was going to be the hottest year on record. Now the final numbers are coming in—and like the official times from a race between me and Usain Bolt, they’re hardly a surprise.
Just as La Niñas hold down the global average temperature because of the cool ocean water rising to the surface in the eastern equatorial Pacific, El Niño conversely pushed the average temperature up. And 2015 saw a doozy of an El Niño that rivaled the monsters of 1997 and 1982. As the long-term trend of global warming continues, El Niño years are likely to be your record-setters.
The US saw the second-warmest year on record for the Lower 48 (2012 is still tops) and the third wettest year as Oklahoma and Texas set records. California, however, had its thirteenth-driest year, with the promise of El Niño rains yet to deliver. The UK had its sixth-wettest year on record, but not quite as warm—15 years have been warmer.
But globally, 2015 beat out 2014 to set the record for temperature by a country mile. It set the record in every dataset, including those run by NOAA, NASA, and the UK Met Office. The Berkeley Earth team has been reluctant to award a top ranking in the past, wary of overlapping error bars, but its release stated that “2015 set the record with 99.996 percent confidence." Preliminary data has it on top in the Japanese Meteorological Agency dataset, as well.
