Oil companies sold the public on a fake climate solution -- and swindled taxpayers out of billions

[Bundbuster]

The fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture bamboozle, explained.

https://www.vox.com/climate/363076/climate-change-solution-shell-exxon-mobil-carbon-capture

This spring, Democrats wrapped up a nearly three-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate disinformation, and asked the Department of Justice to pick up where they left off. In House and Senate Democrats’ final report and hearing, investigators concluded that major oil companies had not only misled the public on climate change for decades, but also were continuing to misinform them about the industry’s preferred climate “solutions”— particularly biofuels and carbon capture.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who spearheaded the investigation, also accused oil companies of “obstructing” the investigation, submitting few documents, and redacting much of what they did send. One ExxonMobil employee who spoke with Drilled and Vox under condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation described what the company sent as “a truly random assortment of unimportant documents.”

If you’ve read the New York Times recently, or seen this ad on Politico’s website or heard it on one of its podcasts, or listened to the Planet Money podcast, you may have noticed the industry’s relentlessly positive marketing of carbon capture, which aims to collect and store CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial and fossil fuel extraction facilities, so they don’t add to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said carbon capture might be necessary to reduce the emissions of certain “hard to abate” sectors like steel, concrete, and some chemical manufacturing, but noted that in the best-case scenario, with carbon capture technology working flawlessly and deployed at large scale, it could only account for a little over 2 percent of global carbon emissions reductions by 2030.

Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson said that because it also requires energy and materials to function, CCS attached to a fossil-fueled power plant is still worse for the climate than replacing fossil energy with renewables. “They actually increase carbon dioxide emissions by doing this, in addition to increasing air pollution,” he said, referencing a study he conducted in 2019 quantifying the lifecycle CO2 emissions of various carbon capture scenarios. Even when CCS is powered by wind, Jacobson said it’s not worth doing, from a climate perspective. “If you just used wind to replace coal in the first place, you’d get a higher reduction in CO2 emissions,” he said.

Much much more at link.

[Dave Bowman]

1. This is so infuriating. They should get a similar treatment as the tobacco companies but with a much higher price to pay

[Bundbuster]

3. A much higher price to pay indeed - they're not just killing people,

They're killing the planet.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. I'm sorry

When I hear about fines, I think, “OK, if that will make you feel better.” But I compare it to executing a murderer, it won’t bring the victim(s) back.

Fining the oil companies won’t save the planet. And honestly there’s plenty of blame to go around. You may have heard that burning fossil fuels leads to a buildup of greenhouse gases, which leads to warming (among other things.) Right? Is there anyone who hasn’t heard this? I think I first heard about it in the 1970’s. It wasn’t controversial. It was just science.

Perhaps you’ve heard that airlines contribute to this. We must be cutting down on unnecessary travel. Right?

https://www.flightglobal.com/airlines/airlines-set-for-record-passenger-numbers-and-revenues-in-2024/156121.article

Airlines set for record passenger numbers and revenues in 2024
By Graham Dunn and Geneva 6 December 2023

After several years of lost growth resulting from the Covid pandemic, airlines will finally surpass 2019 passenger traffic levels next year IATA projects in its latest outlook.

The airline association in its first forecast for 2024 issued today in Geneva expects scheduled airline passenger volumes to top 4.7 billion next year. That is growth of over 400 million on the 4.3 billion passengers airlines are set to carry this year and higher than the 4.5 billion flown in 2019 before the pandemic hit. Passenger volumes had dropped to under 1.8 billion in 2020 at the height of the pandemic.

…

Perhaps you’ve heard that cruise ships contribute to this. We must be cutting down on these monsters of the sea. Right?

https://www.planetattractions.com/news/Cruise-industry-on-target-for-record-year-as-passenger-numbers-set-for-all-time-high/3354

Cruise industry on target for record year as passenger numbers set for all-time high

Despite facing a number of global challenges, the cruise industry is on target to break a pre-pandemic record as nearly 35 million passengers are expected to take to the seas for a cruise vacation

Tom Anstey | Planet Attractions | 04 Jun 2024

The global cruise industry is booming, with projections suggesting nearly 35 million people will go on a cruise during 2024.

Last year 31.7 million people took a cruise, with that figure surpassing the 2019 pre-pandemic high by 7 percent. On target to break the record for most cruise passengers in a single year, figures in 2024 have increased 8 percent compared to 2023, all despite global inflation, geopolitical instability, environmental concerns and the continued fallout from Covid 19.

According to trade body Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), global passenger capacity is estimated to grow from 677,000 berths in 2024 to 745,000 by 2028.

…

Sue the oil companies all you want. It won’t accomplish anything, and they’re not the only criminals.

[progree]

7. And we're driving less, and smaller cars, even silly little beep beep cars, am I right?

Nope. Around here, I see more and more monster pickup trucks, and maybe 20% are used once or twice a year to haul something substantial. The rest of the time, and for the vast majority of the trucks, it's a "real man" status symbol thing. And protection in case of a collision, but of course a regular sized car is far more damaged in a truck-car collision than if it were a car-to-car collision.

And pedestrian death rates are far higher in encounters with real man trucks with their limited lower forward visibility and taller masses than with regular cars. (A regular car hits someone below the belt and tends to flip them onto the hood. A truck or SUV tends to hit someone chest-high or higher.

Regular car sales have long been exceeded by SUV and pickups and the gap is growing.

And people around here can't be bothered to use a fan to cut back on the amount of AC use. I hear AC's cranking away when it's in the 60's outside.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. You know, Detroit put a lot of R&D into making more efficient engines

So they could put them into “Muscle Cars” & SUV’s…

[Think. Again.]

2. And we subsidize this industry with BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars.

[Martin68]

4. The problem is obvious: oil companies will do anything to distract from the fact that extracting and burning

hydrocarbons is the the leading cause of climate change. The most important step would put them out of business.

[NNadir]

5. Don't worry. Be happy. Now they're rebranding fossil fuels as "hydrogen."

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

Exxon rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen:

The marketing is very cute, and slick. It often comes with pictures of vast stretches of wilderness industrialized as solar "farms" and pictures of electrolyzers, as if that was how hydrogen was really made on an industrial scale.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. As with many things, it's not quite that simple

Pedants love to point out that hydrogen is commonly produced by “reforming” methane. The picture is of a plant spewing out exhaust, while producing a token amount of hydrogen.

However, hydrogen is produced, by combining CH₄ + H₂O producing H₂ + CO₂ (which are mingled together.) To make a salable product, the H₂ must be “purified” (you don’t want to run a mixture of H₂ + CO₂ in a fuel cell.) Purifying the H₂ means separating the gases by one means or another.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming

At this point, it’s simply a matter of not releasing the CO₂. Half a century ago, the plants that generated hydrogen for NASA sold the CO₂ for use in carbonated beverages. Today, if we were smart, we would pump it into appropriate underground formations.

https://www.carbfix.com/how-it-works

(Naturally, the oil & gas people prefer to pump it into mostly played out “fields” to produce more oil & gas.)

[NNadir]

11. I understand the Haber Bosch process very, very, very well and have written on it extensively and accessed...

...hundreds if not thousands of primary scientific papers, on the topic over several decades.

I highly recommend the incomparable Vaclav Smil's book on the topic, which despite being decades old pretty much describes reality: Enriching the Earth.

I also have accessed a similar number of papers, and lectures on the topic of CCU (carbon capture and utilization) and have written on the topic here and elsewhere as well. I have no idea how many posts on this topic I've posted here in the last 21 years, but I think it must be a lot.

Some of these references, a tiny subset, actually, appear in the post I linked above and will link again:

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

Some of the calculations in that post, based on the data therein are my own.

I note that in many places in the world, hydrogen is not made by the steam reformation of dangerous natural gas, but as it was in Haber's day, by the steam reformation of coal.

Here's a graphic from another post I've written on the topic.

The caption:

Figure 1. Global current sources of H2 production (a), and H2 consumption sectors (b).

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

I referred to this graphic, and reproduced it, discussing a paper in the journal I discussed above here: The current sources and uses of hydrogen.

We have fossil fuel salespeople trying to sell us on the "bait and switch" solar hydrogen/electrolysis in China, but a very recent scientific publication by Chinese scientists shows this is a dangerous scam for making things worse, not better.

Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195

To me, it's very simple, if it's not simple to anyone else: Hydrogen is a filthy fuel promoted by people whose dishonest marketing depends on general public ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics.

Thank you for your comment, but it's not a subject on which I feel I need more education as I understand it very well both on a simple and a highly technical level.

For the record, I regard all sequestration schemes as being obscene beyond compare.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. I hate to break it to you, but...

Without “carbon sequestration,” we don’t have a chance. (“Net Zero” is not sufficient. We need “net negative” and that requires a “sequestration scheme” of some sort, whether you find it obscene or not.)

[NNadir]

13. Well, since it hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work, and is, in my view, just another fossil fuel marketing...

...scam, I guess I'll have to continue to understand that there are people who still believe this sort of thing.

Of course, there are still people who believe that a reactionary return to dependence on the weather for our energy supplies that we left in the 19th century will magically make everything all better. That's not working all that well either.

None of this is surprising to me of course.

People believe all sorts of things, everything from the belief that Donald Trump is preferred by Jesus to the idea that underground dumps for CO₂ are superior to the dump we've been using for more than a century, the planetary atmosphere.

In the last 21 years here, while I've been hearing here all about sequestration, solar, wind, hydrogen, batteries blah, blah, blah the rate of accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere, as measured by 52 week running averages of the weekly data in comparison to that from ten years hence at the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory, which can be calculated from the data found on the data pages at that website, has risen from 16.62 ppm/10 years to 25.16 ppm/10 years (last week's average). These are numbers; I track them closely, one might even say, religiously, even if I am an old atheist.

Update on the Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa

Some text I modify as required for update for each in this series reflecting reality:

There have been 2529 weekly data points such as that immediately above, recorded at the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory which are available on the data pages of the website which compare the value with the same week of the previous year. The reading above, for week 28 of 2024, shows an increase of 4.50 ppm over week 28 pf the previous year, 2023. Among all such increases for weekly data, again, 2529 of them, compared with the same week of the previous year, this is the 11th highest ever recorded. It is one of only 29 readings to exceed an increase of 4.00 ppm, eight of which took place in the current year, four of which exceed increases of 5.00 ppm, three of which were in 2024. Of the top 50 week to week/year to year comparators 16 have taken place in the last 5 years of which 10 occurred in 2024, 39 in the last 10 years, and 45 in this century. Of the five readings from the 20th century, four occurred in 1998, when huge stretches of the Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests caught fire when slash and burn fires went out of control. These fires were set deliberately, designed to add palm oil plantations to satisfy the demand for "renewable" biodiesel for German cars and trucks as part of their "renewable energy portfolio." The only other reading from the 20th century to appear in the top 50 occurred in the week beginning August 21, 1988, which was 3.91 ppm higher than the same week of the previous year. For about ten years, until July of 1998, it was the highest reading ever recorded. It is now the 34rd highest.

Numbers don't lie. People lie, to themselves and to each other, but numbers don't lie.

I've been hearing about sequestration for a very long time here and elsewhere. When is this sequestration miracle of dumping our waste, sweeping it under the crust, on future generations supposed to break out? It didn't break out "by 2000" or "by 2010" or "by 2020." When then? "By 2050?" Speaking only for myself, I'll be dead then, having left my wastes behind. Will it break out before or after the solar and wind miracle?

If one lives long enough, or even not very long at all, one will be "informed" about all sorts of things that one knows not to be true.

Now, I do credit some CCU schemes, but they will prove at best marginal. Here's an example of a cool one about which I wrote here some time ago:

Electrolysis of Lithium-Free Molten Carbonates

(Note that the paper refers, in the now de rigueur genuflection to solar and wind energy required to get grants, but it would easily be transferable to clean energy.) It is a paper that essentially reverses coal combustion, but it requires huge amounts of energy to operate.

To wit:

The removal of carbon dioxide from the planetary atmosphere strikes me as being just at the level of feasibility, hardly simple or easy, perhaps not subject to overcoming entrenched belief and cant. In order to recover CO₂ from the atmosphere, it is necessary to invest vast amounts of energy to overcome the entropy of mixing, and to reduce carbon dioxide to stable forms, all of the energy that was released to produce it and then some, must be reproduced. This is only possible - at the edge of possibility, hardly a sure thing - with the use of process intensification using clean high temperature energy of which there is one and only one form.

In the ethical universe in which I operate, our carbon dioxide dump (the planetary atmosphere} represents an obscene cost, a huge liability, we've dumped on future generations, and no, I don't believe that they'll be pleased to wonder about the stability of all the carbon dioxide dumps underground (if they're ever actually built - they won't be) we might in some fantasy universe plan to leave for them.

If we were ethical beings, we would proceed forthwith to stop using fossil fuels in their entirety, not propose Rube Goldberg band aids for continuing to use them, not an easy nor a cheap task, but nonetheless an essential task.

We are not ethical beings however. We couldn't care less about the future of humanity. It shows.

We lack even a mote of a sense of decency. History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Without carbon sequestration there will be no history to forgive us

That’s a simple fact.

I can’t see 350 ppm from up here, and we need to go lower than that.



https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/outreach/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Factsheet_CDR.pdf

CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL (CDR) refers to technologies, practices, and approaches that remove and durably store carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. CDR is required to achieve global and national targets of net zero CO₂ and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CDR cannot substitute for immediate and deep emissions reductions, but it is part of all modelled scenarios that limit global warming to 2°or lower by 2100. Implementation will require decisions regarding CDR methods, scale and timing of deployment, and how sustainability and feasibility constraints are managed.

…

[NNadir]

15. Thank you for restating your opinion.

Last edited Wed Jul 31, 2024, 06:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Nevertheless, to repeat my stance once again, on technical and scientific grounds, I reject it in its entirety.

Regrettably we will not have the opportunity for further discussion of your remarks, as I have precluded myself from any such further interactions.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. I cited the Scientific position of the IPCC

Last edited Wed Jul 31, 2024, 12:08 PM - Edit history (4)

i.e. not my opinion..

Your quarrel is not with me, it’s with reality.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_TechnicalSummary.pdf

…

Pathways limiting warming to 2°C (>67%) or 1.5°C (>50%) require some amount of CDR to compensate for residual GHG emissions, even alongside substantial direct emissions reductions are achieved in all sectors and regions (high confidence). CDR deployment in pathways serves multiple purposes: accelerating the pace of emissions reductions, offsetting residual emissions, and creating the option for net negative CO₂ emissions in case temperature reductions need to be achieved in the long term (high confidence). CDR options in pathways are mostly limited to BECCS, afforestation and direct air CO₂ capture and storage (DACCS). CDR through some measures in AFOLU can be maintained for decades but not over the very long term because these sinks will ultimately saturate (high confidence). {3.4}

…

Box TS.10 | Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is necessary to achieve net zero CO₂ and GHG emissions both globally and nationally, counterbalancing ‘hard-to-abate’ residual emissions. CDR is also an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5°C or below 2°C (>67%) by 2100, regardless of whether global emissions reach near zero, net zero or net negative levels. While national mitigation portfolios aiming at net zero emissions or lower will need to include some level of CDR, the choice of methods and the scale and timing of their deployment will depend on the achievement of gross emission reductions, and managing multiple sustainability and feasibility constraints, including political preferences and social acceptability.

CDR refers to anthropogenic activities removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products. It includes existing and potential anthropogenic enhancement of biological, geochemical or chemical CO₂ sinks, but excludes natural CO₂ uptake not directly caused by human activities (Annex I). Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) applied to fossil CO₂ do not count as removal technologies. CCS and CCU can only be part of CDR methods if the CO₂ is biogenic or directly captured from ambient air, and stored durably in geological reservoirs or products. {12.3}

There is a great variety of CDR methods and respective implementation options {Cross-Chapter Box 8, Figure 1 in Chapter 12}. Some of these methods (like afforestation and soil carbon sequestration) have been practiced for decades to millennia, although not necessarily with the intention to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Conversely, for methods such as DACCS and BECCS, experience is growing but still limited in scale. A categorisation of CDR methods can be based on several criteria, depending on the highlighted characteristics. In this report, the categorisation is focused on the role of CDR methods in the carbon cycle, that is on the removal process (land-based biological; ocean-based biological; geochemical; chemical) and on the time scale of storage (decades to centuries; centuries to millennia; 10,000 years or longer), the latter being closely linked to different carbon storage media. Within one category (e.g., ocean-based biological CDR) options often differ with respect to other dynamic or context-specific dimensions such as mitigation potential, cost, potential for co-benefits and adverse side effects, and technology readiness level. (Table TS.7, TS.5.6, TS. 5.7) {12.3}

It is useful to distinguish between CO₂ removal from the atmosphere as the outcome of deliberate activities implementing CDR options, and the net emissions outcome achieved with the help of CDR deployment (i.e., gross emissions minus gross removals). As part of ambitious mitigation strategies at global or national levels, gross CDR can fulfil three different roles in complementing emissions abatement: (i) lowering net CO₂ or GHG emissions in the near term; (ii) counterbalancing ‘hard-to-abate’ residual emissions such as CO₂ from industrial activities and long-distance transport, or CH₄ and nitrous oxide from agriculture, in order to help reach net zero CO₂ or GHG emissions in the mid-term; (iii) achieving net negative CO₂ or GHG emissions in the long term if deployed at levels exceeding annual residual emissions {2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5}. These roles of CDR are not mutually exclusive: for example, achieving net zero CO₂ or GHG emissions globally might involve individual developed countries attaining net negative CO₂ emissions at the time of global net zero, thereby allowing developing countries a smoother transition. {Cross-Chapter Box 8, Figure 2 in Chapter 12}

[progree]

17. Bookmarking /nt

[Brenda]

8. I've been saying CC was a distraction, a hoax for years.

Lots of people, including quite a few here at DU bought into it.

Propaganda works.

Maybe people should stop sitting back letting the "experts" and politicians come up with changes and actually listen to the climatologists and activists, especially the young ones who have been blaring the tornado sirens for years. But no, the complacent, the ignorant and what it really boils down to is the selfish ones would rather attack the protestors for the absolute HORROR, I tell you, the HORROR of throwing washable paint on artwork they know is protected by plexiglass, or onto Stonehenge rocks or possibly blocking the road to a concert or golf game.

If your response to those things was "oh my god they ruined a Monet" (big fat lie and shows ignorance or deception about how activism works) or a demand to jail them and call them stupid terrorists because "we already know about climate change!" -

Then you totally missed the point. You did not hear their message. Their target is TPTB who will eventually have to address the FF corruption that they've been involved with for decades. When enough of the masses want change they usually get it.

But I'm afraid it's probably too late now.