although a good point, there is obvious surface level nuance though; oil companies hid the research of climate change for a decade or two, they also lobbied (and still do) against subsidies for renewable energy and for oil and gas subsidies (in development in most countries, and even end customer price subsidies in others). and of course there's further nuance below the surface as well.

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IncreasePosts 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Once the hidden research was revealed to the public, we all started curbing our carbon emissions, right?

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yesfitz 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Have you not?

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scubbo 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I did. Didn't you?

	▲	IncreasePosts 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I did. Did 99% of the population of earth do the same thing?

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Theodores 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The research wasn't entirely hidden as they did not have a monopoly on it.

In the 1980s, as a child, I remember learning at school about the greenhouse effect, or whatever we called it then. It was not difficult to understand, and neither was the 'nuclear umbrella' that we also had to contend with.

In the mid 1990s I was working in TV weather. We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming, or whatever we called it then. None of us were paid by big oil.

The euphemisms for 'climate change' tell their own story, it seems we need to downgrade the wording for the inevitable catastrophe every decade or so, I think we are on 'climate emergency' now.

As a result of what I learned in school, I genuinely adopted a low-carbon lifestyle which was quite hard to do when everyone was going the other way. If you step inside a car (when you have chosen to not own one) then you are deemed a hypocrite. If you don't eat those cows that create so much methane then you will be called a hypocrite for owning a leather belt. If you read a book then you will be called a hypocrite since trees had to be pulped. Be green and those stuck in the past will get all passive aggressive on you even if you aren't preaching to others.

When all is done we could collectively blame the oil companies for obfuscating the evidence of climate change. Similarly, when all is done with the current genocides going on, we can blame the politicians or the media for not letting us know the truth. Yet we are all a few clicks away from seeing how our alleged enemies 'report our crimes'. Yet, consciously or unconsciously, we censor ourselves.

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1718627440 4 days ago | parent [-]

> We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming

Care to elaborate what you were doing?

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Theodores 4 days ago | parent [-]

I looked after the IRIX boxes. I made small talk with meteorologists and presenters whilst fixing their machines.

When the adverts that go with the weather are for the likes of Land Rover or British Airways, you know the deal.

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1718627440 4 days ago | parent [-]

So you were rounding down temperatures, or colouring maps deceivingly or what?

	▲	Theodores 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes! Actually, there are times when the data needs a manual hack, there are countless places next to a lake with a mountain behind where I would have to put in the hack so the place next to the lake wasn't rounded up to the mountain or rounded down to the lake. As for colours, we had those graphic designers that wanted to do their own 'mark' on the product, so the maps made by them were artist impressions with stupid colours such as blue for land and yellow for the sea. This makes things difficult if the animated gifs for the icons use yellow and blue, for things like the sun and the rain and it is your job to encode those gifs. That one was resolved by sacking the designer and making base maps the more scientific way, with AVHRR vegetation index, a bathymetry dataset and so on. You would not believe the battles that have to be had to have maps that are fit for purpose rather than 'graphic designed'. Other mundane tasks included setting the clocks at 2 a.m. twice a year, which would be easy, had it not been for the clocks costing £40k each, with them paired up for redundancy, and that pair paired-up for even more redundancy. The clocks worked fine, however,timings could move around during the changeover from summer time since the clocks try and correct themselves. Change one and the other clocks would gang up on it and it would acquiesce. Costing £40k the clocks obviously did not show the time as that would be too obvious, there was just the timecode on wires going around the building. Then the only way to adjust them was to solder your own lead, plug it into a laptop and then telnet in. As for deception, look at weather forecasting as more like gambling. Forecasters have gambling mentality and a very different way of understanding the weather to mere mortals. The behind the scenes chat on a daily basis is what you want, not the forecast. You get the bigger picture listening in to their chats.

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AlecSchueler 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

An interesting thing that happens here is also the conflation of company and country. You mention the oil companies blocking and obscuring the research, but GP was putting the blame on the shoulders of the "oil countries." Something to be aware of with the rise of weaponised xenophobia and general background islamophobia.

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daseiner1 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's hardly a "conflation". If you can meaningfully distinguish Aramco policy and Saudi policy, please do.

	▲	AlecSchueler 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I would more readily distinguish Aramco from the people who live under the Saudi regime, which was installed by outside forces. The country is not just it's government.

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tankenmate 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Corruption and undue political influence stemming from a large source of extractive income isn't a an issue particular to Islam as I can see it; in fact I'd say it's something endemic to the human condition.

But, when it comes to oil production what I would say is that due to the overlapping geography of the foundation and consequent spread of Islam and largest and easiest to extract oil resources in the world being very large combined with human tendency to overfit pattern matching that it is all too easy to see why some would conflate the two.

But Islamic majority nations aren't the only "oil countries", and not all "oil countries" are corrupt (but I'd guess the overwhelming majority of "oil countries" are corrupt, not least because of Dutch Disease).

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AlecSchueler 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your sentences are quite difficult to read so I apologise if I'm misunderstanding, but I think it's good to remember cases like Saudi where religious fundamentalists were placed into power by Western powers. These days we see them as representative of the Islamic world but it's largely our own doing.

I'm aware that there are non Islamic "oil countries" of course and I don't think the GP comment was equating oil with Islam. It's just something that does happen in other contexts and that we should be aware of when speaking, because there are very real real would consequences.

	▲	tankenmate 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		"It's just something that does happen in other contexts and that we should be aware of when speaking"; I guess my point can be mostly boiled down to this one point, "jumping to conclusions" (meant in both the none emotive and emotive sense) cuts both ways. Again, something that comes as a part of the human condition.

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Spooky23 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Big money from resource extraction is always boom/bust and always struggling with corrupting influences. The folks who control the political strings are always flush with cash, and their only priority is maximizing return on their assets.