The Power of Big Oil Part 1

June 14, 2026 - The Power of Big Oil Part 1: Denial

Opening Impressions:

Watching the opening minute of the documentary conveys an image of nature, the gods of a certain sort, being upset at man - putting man in their place- for the creation of the fossil fuels extraction process as a man-made blasphemy against the composition of the natural order, which sort of conflicts with the (correct) idea that fossil fuels are necessarily a part of human kind and in a convoluted way their consumption is part of a natural progression of human nature and its relationship with technology, yada yada yada cringe cringe cringe. That is completely fine, to think taking this vantage point for tackling the subject, which they might not have and i’m annoyingly attributing to them pre-emptively, nullifies the thesis of the docuseries is counter-productive to garnering a real understanding of the big picture by losing it in philosophical waxing. Have to not think i’m better than the person making a film every time I see one, thinking “this shit is for midwits” and then dismiss it - which is a really terrible comportment for me to have if my goal is to actually learn things and become a competent human being instead of a stuck up loser with good taste but bad communication skills, which is the thesis of this entire series of exercises. So we are off to a great start to the exercise.

Quotes:

“Mr Chairman, I want to draw three main conclusions:
1.) The earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
2.) The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
3.) Our computer climate simulations indicate that the GE is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.”
-Dr. James E. Hansen
(More or less this, in 1988, is when Climate Change entered public political discourse)

Annoying and sometimes evil thoughts:

They are playing the cumtown stock guitar intro 5 minutes into the movie which is funny.

Listening to professors on these documentaries makes me think about how school isn’t rigorous enough nowadays and I can’t really even shine the shoes of these people intellectually at all, and I need to shove my masters degree up my ass.

There is a guy with a PhD here saying he didn’t know what climate change was until 2010 and I knew what climate change was in 2010 - me me me me i’m smart.

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly communicate their findings

“The world is warmer at 1988 than it ever was since the history of recordings”

As I watch the woman wash away in the 2021 floods in central china I think about the peace that I will have to carry within myself to accept death in a natural disaster.

Takeaways:

• Exxon made its entry into the energy business in the 70s, of which my grandfather was a part of in the fossil fuels unit. They flirted with solar and nuclear energy projects back in the day and had very well funded projects - they used to have a project called BlueSky that used to fund scientists that worked on energy procurement. They used to make word processors and fax machines.

• NASA back in the day, during the mid-70s, sent probes into the solar system - ones that took temperature of other planets. The most plausible reason why Venus is so hot is because of the composition of CO2 that is has. GhG warming is caused by high concentrations of carbon dioxide. The increase can be attributed primarily to fossil fuel burning.

• At the time they knew the world would warm, but the idea of where it would be localized wasn’t really developed yet, research hadn’t progressed to that point yet in the mid-70s.

• Exxon wanted to do research to climate change but did not want anybody else to be able to do it and committed an oil tanker to a project that “assessed the possibility of a greenhouse effect on Exxon business” - so it’s the first gigantic piece of environmental consultancy for supply chain management lol.

• Unanimous agreement in scientific community that there would be warming and alterations in the biosphere.

• No difference in the uncertainties of Exxon and that of academia.

• In the 2000s, Exxon gave their documents to the University of Texas, and University staff ended up finding the evidence that Exxon was in a position of authority for climate change worldwide back in the mid 70s to early 80s, and none of this was communicated, results were publicly denied and later the business would fund misinformation campaigns about climate change.

• Exxon retrenched into the fossil fuel industry completely in 1982 rather than continuing any projects that were on alternative fuels.

• Exxon denies that any other alternative fuels would ever be more productive than fossil fuels. (Probably true?)

• Exxon with their knowledge beforehand, surmised when governments would start creating public policy related to climate change and intentionally wrote business legislation to make things incredibly complicated for policymakers to be able to limit them.

• In 1988 onwards for a time, there was the ability to work across the political isle - there was a spirit of bipartisanship when very important threats like climate change made news. There was a time of optimism for climate change research before the devastating counter-attacks from industry.

• There is a document drafted by Terry F. Yosie, vice president of health and environment from the American Petroleum Institute (API) that asserts: ‘There are three schools of thought that characterize the scientific and public debate over global warming.
  - The first is that a crisis exists and that immediate measures are needed to ameliorate it through strong government actions. There is a sense that the planet is endangered.
  - The second is that the problem will go away by itself.
  - The third school of thought is that ‘the ‘policies formed should be no more drastic than the science that it is based upon’ calling into question the security and validity of the science.
  “The Lukewarmer” - what’s the big deal? Let’s not make any big moves there! Let’s keep our dicks limp and never pull the trigger

• Strategy is to downplay the urgency of climate change going forward.

  • “Exxons long term public presence and contributions to public research gives them credibility, API position is Exxon position on climate change” - taking the position to downplay things
    • API responds to documentary to say that they deny to emphasize uncertainty and that old information is being cherrypicked, and that the industry has evolved as the problem has evolved.

• Al Gore and Climate Change, as Al Gore is a staunch environmentalist and his vice presidency under Clinton was a watershed moment for green policy implementation in American government. (Also back when things were more unipolar)

• Koch Industries:

  • Koch became the best in the world at refining oil. The two brothers were Charles and David Koch, they had their sights set on existential issues that threatened their industry through the thinktank the CATO institute.
  • CATO institute says that climate change is real but that the climate change that we see today is far less serious than that which their models say they should say, and that conventional wisdom says that over the course of millions of years there have been natural major shifts in temperature that were not necessarily anthropocentrically induced — Libertarian Thinktank

• BTU Tax:

  • Energy tax - in this context implemented on David Kock - but a BTU tax is an energy tax that aims to reduce pollution - weaknesses in this case is that they impose a burden in the form of reduced economic output and employment by emitting companies.
  • Proposed by Bill Clinton, is could have taxed all fuel sources based on their heat content except for wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
  • Passed by the house, rejected by the senate in light of a lobbying effort spearheaded by the Koch Brothers in light of its foundation.
    • This was largely also done by the API which wanted to kill it in its infancy.

• David Boren

  • Boren was the key interest, weak underbelly for the Koch brothers to lobby and strike down the BTU tax.
  • David Boren was a moderate democrat who chaired the relevant committee that would deal with the Clinton budget.
    • If they could get David Boren to flip they could destroy the BTU tax.
  • Koch funded grassroots campaigns, especially in the economically vulnerable Oklahoma, to campaign against the BTU tax.
  • David Boren folded to the pressure right away, more or less got harassed.
    • BTU tax was ruled to hurt middle-income americans
  • Proves to Koch that there is a guerilla warfare that he can wage against American politics with his own money, strike vulnerable load-bearing targets asymmetrically

• “The world is deficient in carbon dioxide and fossil fuels is actually filling the gap!”

• Koch was funding things, Exxon was funding things, Western Fuels Association, Global Climate Coalition (unintuitive name, they actually consist of every major manufacturing coalition that uses fossil fuels, and every fossil fuels major player)

• Patrick J. Michaels: worked with the GCC - the person that the GCC paid, a brilliant climatologist, to be a part of their scientific advisory board and apparently never had a meeting with them, didn’t change the way that they thought. Opinion is that they used him to further their position, they paid a scientist to be a contrarian voice

  • Meritocracy of science shattered in private realm

• GCC, Saudis, Kuwatis dominating plenary sessions in international cliamte governance

  • uncertainty is a part of climate science, but the uncertainty that exists within science meaning that you cannot take concrete conclusions from concrete science is horseshit

• The bottom line - The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence - Madrid conference was a triumph of science against industry (IPCC Plenary Session in Madrid).

  • Accusations that there was a purging of all uncertainties, ended up swaying public favour against science to insinuate that there is significant evidence that scientists pushing narrative forward
  • This documentary insinuates that the witch hunt against the lead scientist that wrote the chapters of the Plenary Session because of the omission of a chapter that had sections about scientific uncertainty.
    • Global Climate Coalition has a hand in this

• Kyoto Protocol

  • Impossible to get poor countries to accept the same conditions as wealthy countries with regards to development of industry
    • Idea of those who have contributed the most should step up to the plate for mitigating the effect of their emissions
    • Developing countries exempt
  • Because of this exclusion, energy companies able to spin this stuff as anti-american, develop economic political slant - “the only reason that countries were able to develop like us is because they emitted, so accepting emissions is just economically smart - feeds into the uncertainty…”
    • “US puts itself at a competitive disadvantage”
  • Kyoto protocol not a success mostly due to US

• Byrd-Hagel

  • A UNANIMOUS 1997 U.S. Senate Decision that the U.S. should not sign any international climate treaty that mandates greenhouse gas emission reductions (reminder that this was bipartisan and unanimous) for developed nations unless it imposes equal, binding commitments on developing nations, or if it risks serious harm to the U.S. economy. The resolution effectively killed the U.S.’s ability to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol.
  • API, etc. influence on Byrd-Hagel bill, money, etc.

• Clinton-Gore admin did not ultimately deliver on the promise of environmental leadership especially since Bush took over right after for two terms lol

Questions

• I want to know a lot of the most important models used to model climate change, their history, and which ones are the most relevant. Would like a more scientific documentary that has less social commentary - while it was nice to brush up on this, I knew the general gist of this - but knowing details is important and this was a great watch.
• What serious motive does science have to push climate change - some of it is obvious but to the extent that it has become an issue there is not really a motive that fits lol