So Bill McKibben’s against Rex Tillerson, is he?

Because ‘Big Oil’, apparently…

Their scientists were so far ahead of the curve that management was taking precautions and planning strategy a quarter-century ago – building drilling rigs to account for the sea level rise they knew was coming, and plotting to bid for leases in an Arctic they knew would melt.”

I bet their share price tanked over that same period.

If this Tillerson chump believes in a carbon tax its a Trump own goal.

Likewise the other idiot he is lining up as Attorney-General. Sound enough on migration-stopping but a fuckwit drug warrior who will look to fire up all that stupidity again just as it is starting to die out.

@TimNewman: “In other words, it’s bollocks on stilts.”

I see what you did there… 😉

We don’t take into account HAT, which is what rising sea levels would affect.

Actually, rising sea levels would affect LAT, but not in the way that would care: we like to know where LAT is so we know where to put our boat landing, so that it isn’t a metre out of the water.

TimN,

What’s the planned life of these platforms at any given place? When I read the article it struck me that they wouldn’t be in place long enough to be affected by any sea rises, real or forecast.

Also, what difference would 1 or 2 metres make in the grand scheme of things given engineers’ are generally conservative when doing calculations on weather effects?

The simple answer is that the warmists cloak their true agenda behind this concern about climate change. They are not really interested in coping with the impacts of climate change: they want to end capitalism and economic growth.

This is what I was referring to in my previous comment.

What’s the planned life of these platforms at any given place?

Design life is 25 years, actual life can be 40+ in benign environments like the Gulf of Guinea. But bear in mind that the 25 years is not so much an expectation of life but the maximum an engineering company can reasonably be expected to design for, so it’s become standard.

When I read the article it struck me that they wouldn’t be in place long enough to be affected by any sea rises, real or forecast.

Exactly.

BinD, Tim Newman

Thank you. I learned something new today.

In one of the futile demonstrations that marked the run-up to the Iraq war, I saw a woman with a sign that read “How Did Our Oil End Up Under Their Sand?”

Kek. It’s a point though. The oil was/is completely useless to Arabs without Western, Russian or Chinese know-how to exploit it.

Rex Tillerson – who has literally spent his entire working life at Exxon – is big oil personified. It’s like appointing Ronald McDonald to run the agriculture department (which is certainly a possibility, since that job is still unfilled).

Presumably what Tillerson brings to the job is transferable skills: vast experience of running a yuge organisation, negotiating with foreign leaders, being accountable to shareholders, etc.

Hard to see how this is a Bad Thing, especially given the alternative is a political hack who hasn’t had a real job in decades, if ever.

So maybe Ronald McDonald is worth a look. He could hardly be a bigger clown than the people who’ve redirected huge swathes of US agriculture to producing biofuels.

But in another way, his announcement is truly novel: the honor (secretaries of state are usually considered the second-most important official in our government) comes after a season of disgrace at the world’s largest oil company, in a moment when the energy business is on the ropes and when its product is causing the greatest crisis the planet has yet faced.

I thought Brexit and Trump were the biggest crises facing the planet. 🙁

The disgrace is the long, slow reveal by investigative reporters that Exxon knew all about climate change as early as the late 1970s.

Everybody’s known the climate is subject to change since we invented geology. What Bill forgets to mention, though, is that Exxon got it wrong on climate forecasting. Badly wrong. They were relying on National Research Council studies to predict global temperature rises of 0.8 degrees C between 1980 and 2015.

Actual warming was about half that, proving once again that “climate science” is bollocks.

In a rational world, Congress would be grilling Tillerson about the company’s conduct

ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, INVOLVED IN THE EXPLORATION, PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE LIVE-SAVING HYDROCARBON PRODUCTS ON WHICH OUR CIVILISATION DEPENDS?

But climate change means not just the collapse of the planet’s fundamental systems (after the hottest year ever measured, global sea ice has been charting record lows – literally the world looks different from outer space). It also means that the energy business is in serious trouble.

Hottest year ever, you guys. Remember how hot 2016 was? Whaddayamean, “no”?

Big oil has underperformed on the stock market for years.

Because the oil price has been low for years.

The global response to climate change is the third part of the puzzle. If we listened to climate scientists and ramped up our commitment to change,

…there would be a brief period of food riots, political revolutions, then the climate witch-doctors would be rounded up and lynched.

Back to the original question, because our Bill doesn’t want a solution, he wants something to rant about.

Warmest year ever they said and yet we are enjoying the longest sustained cold spell locally in a very long time, to the point that people are skating on some lakes for the first time in decades, should I start worrying about ice ages (again). Next I’ll be hearing about terrible snow fall expected in the U.K.