Climate Disinformation

The other day I tuned in the beginning of Today. The opening segment is where they tease their upcoming news stories, and that’s how I decide if any are worth watching. The new pope, political theater, foreign wars, British royalty, etc. … is fast-forward content.

But escaped elephants wandering through the streets of a town in Arizona? Now that’s must-see TV for me! True story.

However, I do take note of the increasing frequency of weather disasters showing up in that segment. Tornadoes, wildfires, mudslides, and floods are sadly becoming a staple in the lead-off position.

Near-daily reporting on those types of events wasn’t the case when I was growing up, but this is the norm for younger generations. To them, the climate is as it always was, and the need for remediation isn’t as obvious as it is to older generations.

Circa 1980, an impeccably-researched report came out on the effects of fossil-fuel burning. It was remarkably accurate in predicting the destructive weather events of today. The same organization that produced that study also happened to be the leading authority on solar panels. Do you know which organization that was?

It was Exxon!

Exxon was the richest company in the world, with resources that eclipsed most countries’. So with that information, and a giant head-start on renewable energy technology, the altruistic executives at this behemoth leveraged their financial and technological might to start the transition away from fossil fuels and toward a safer and healthier future … in another reality.

In our reality, their cost/benefit analysis suggested a better course. And thus the seeds for the Golden Age of Disinformation were sewn. They buried their own report in favor of flooding the media with willfully false claims about the safety of fossil-fuel use.

This climate disinformation strategy negated the need to embark on an expensive reinvention. It also preserved the prospect of trillions of dollars of profits that could still be pumped from the ground. The inevitable human misery from a more-volatile climate was deemed an acceptable side-effect.

Fossil-fuel interests have been cynically discrediting climate research for a couple of generations. Their fiscally-prudent campaign to disinform the public has succeeded in stopping – or, at least, delaying — efforts to mitigate further damage. This long-term strategy of climate  disinformation has resulted in today’s young adults finding the too-frequent list of weather disasters to be “normal.” That’s a huge “win” for the oil companies! Their disinformation strategy has worked so well that it has spawned imitators.

Nothing is too obvious to deny to the public. Thanks to the oil industries’ success, a disinformation network competes with legitimate discourse. Outlandish theories that would have been dismissed as ignorant hokum in earlier times, now gain followings:

• Staged mass shootings
• Faked Moon landings
• Flat Earth

Meanwhile, carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise as remediation efforts are implemented, and then reversed, depending on the political winds. It’s a frightening testament to the effectiveness of well-funded climate disinformation.

However, I believe the golden age of disinformation will eventually end, and will show up in history books as another Dark Age in human history. Sadly, it won’t be before some more human misery ensues; the kind of misery that the fossil-fuel lobby decided is acceptable.

The End

Didn’t get this article emailed to you?

Then you’re missing out on giveaways, sneak peeks and other amusing short articles as a Preferred Reader.

 So if you don’t mind a free short story hit the big red button at https://michaeljfoy.com to become a Preferred Reader.

You can unsubscribe at any time.