It’s been pretty hot lately. Scientists say July was the hottest month on record—likely by a “significant margin”—and may have been the most brutally steamy stretch in 120,000 years. And the reason is almost certainly—surprise, surprise!—human-caused climate change.
It’s been so hot, Madame Tussauds’ wax Donald Trump statue has melted to the point where it actually looks like him. It’s been so hot, the Jiffy Pop portion of Louie Gohmert’s brain has finally burst to life, boosting his IQ by at least 3.5 points. It’s so hot, Ted Cruz still wants to go to Cancun—because it’s cooler than Texas.
In other words—it’s been hot! But it didn’t have to be this way. While President Joe Biden’s green-energy infrastructure initiatives have been a step in the right direction, progressives had to fight tooth and nail to get them passed—and, hey, it would have been nice to start addressing the problem nearly 50 years ago when Exxon first became aware of its seriousness.
And if one meteorologist has his way, Exxon will get the credit it deserves for gradually turning our planet into an unlivable hellscape with very little fresh water and nearly unlimited plastic bottles to put it in.
RELATED STORY: It’s the hottest month ever recorded, but all Republicans can do is blow hot air
Forbes:
Is it time for someone to give each major heat wave a name like what’s been done with hurricanes and viral epidemics? Well, a meteorologist named Guy Walton has offered to be that guy. The 30-year veteran of The Weather Channel has come up with a heat wave-naming convention that may end up, ahem, fueling an interesting response. He’s been naming the major U.S. heat waves of 2023 after big petroleum companies, calling the first two Heat Wave Amoco and Heat Wave BP. And in July, the U.S. has been getting its fill of what Walton has dubbed Heat Wave Chevron.
Walton refined this whole petroleum company-naming convention in April 2023, when he wrote on
his Guy on Climate blog, “This year, as promised, we are going to poke a little fun at oil companies by using their names to name heatwaves.” Gee, why would anyone name a heatwave after an oil company? Walton explained, “Petroleum companies are a big reason why heatwaves have been getting worse year after year for the past forty years, at least, due to carbon pollution from the burning of their products.”
Oh, my, that’s delicious. Even more delicious than the platter of serendipitous fondue you found last month, after leaving your mom’s charcuterie board in the bed of your El Camino beyond the recommended two minutes.
Campaign Action
Of course, it would also be appropriate to name hurricanes after oil companies—or maybe after the GOP politicians who’ve done the most to block climate action over the past several decades—but the naming convention for storms has long been established, and there are a lot of perfectly suitable human names to choose from.
There are far fewer oil companies than people, of course, but since the Supreme Court long ago decided that corporations are people, it seems only fair to give them some of the same perks.
So Walton has complied an alphabetical list of 20 major oil companies—starting with Amoco and progressing to XTO—and plans to roll out them out as major heat waves develop. Walton has already “burned” through three of those names, which means ExxonMobil is just about ready for its close-up. Though given the company’s historic negligence, it might be far more appropriate to hold its name in reserve for the next mass extinction.
As The Guardian reported earlier this year:
A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.
A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.
Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.
Wait! Let’s take a closer look at that analysis. We need specifics about those “other oil industry bodies.”
Science:
In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s.
[...]
Our results show that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully. Using established statistical techniques, we find that 63 to 83% of the climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists were accurate in predicting subsequent global warming.
[...]
Today, dozens of cities, counties, and states are suing oil and gas companies for their “longstanding internal scientific knowledge of the causes and consequences of climate change and public deception campaigns.” The European Parliament and the US Congress have held hearings, US President Joe Biden has committed to holding fossil fuel companies accountable, and a grassroots social movement has arisen under the moniker #ExxonKnew. Our findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn’t just know “something” about global warming decades ago—they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew. But whereas those scientists worked to communicate what they knew, ExxonMobil worked to deny it—including overemphasizing uncertainties, denigrating climate models, mythologizing global cooling, feigning ignorance about the discernibility of human-caused warming, and staying silent about the possibility of stranded fossil fuel assets in a carbon-constrained world.
Oh, wow. Well, fuck off, Exxon. As much as we don’t need two more heat waves—high temperatures kill more people in the U.S. than any other weather event, after all—it’s hard not to hope Exxon really makes a name for itself. And soon.
RELATED STORY: It's hot as hell—and it's going to get worse
As for the rest of these companies, let’s hope they enjoy the attention—and blame—they’ve somehow been avoiding for lo these many decades.
