More ‘smoking guns’ in oil industry documents

IN October 2021, an extensive exposé published by The Conversation in Australia revealed that the petroleum industry was aware of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions since at least 1959, did extensive research throughout the 1970s and 1980s that produced extraordinarily accurate models of global warming, then purposefully conspired to hide that information from the public and embark on a campaign to downplay and encourage skepticism about climate change.

At the time, most of the information came from a trove of internal documents from Exxon (now ExxonMobil), although similar information had also been uncovered at other oil giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and France’s Total. One of the most shocking revelations came from Exxon’s 1981 internal report on the results of its climate research, to which one Exxon manager attached a memo stating, “the company’s long-term business plans could produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the Earth’s population).”

Last week, a similar batch of internal documents from the Netherlands’ Shell was released to the public by the Climate Investigations Center (they can be viewed at https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/new-shell-oil-documents-dirty-pearls-investigation-2023/), and if anything, they are even more alarming than Exxon’s internal communications. Not only did Shell’s own research reach the same conclusions as Exxon’s and other research done by the American Petroleum Institute, but Shell was, if anything, even more forthright about acknowledging how much damage its business was causing the environment.

The big difference, however, is that, unlike Exxon, Shell was not as diligent at keeping what it knew from the public. Among the documents released to the public was an October 1970 article in the Dutch trade publication Chemisch Weekblad (Chemical Weekly), in which researchers from the University of Leiden reported on their study into “chemistry and ethics,” which included interviews with petrochemical executives. “If a product is used, as indicated by Shell, and annoying consequences nevertheless arise, Shell feels partly responsible,” the authors quote Shell as stating.

That sentiment was also reflected in internal Shell reports in 1987 and 1990, and most noticeably in Shell’s 1998 decision to leave the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) — an oil industry lobbying group dedicated to promoting climate skepticism, and which Shell had helped to found — because of differences with the group over how the industry should address the Kyoto Protocol. “The GCC is actively campaigning against legally binding targets and timetables as well as ratification by the US government,” an internal report at the time said. “The Shell view is that prudent precautionary measures are called for.”

The public disclosure of the new Shell documents comes at a bad time for the company, which is facing dozens of lawsuits in several countries seeking to hold the oil giant accountable for climate damage. The admission, dating back decades, that Shell knew its business was doing damage strengthens the cases against it, according to legal experts, although whether that is actually so remains to be seen.

The first case that may not go Shell’s way as a result of the new evidence is the company’s appeal of a ruling by the District Court of The Hague ordering the company to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent from 2019 levels by 2030. If it was forced to comply, the company would incur enormous expenses, and the outcome would serve as a precedent for the other cases against it, at least those that have been filed in Europe. Other legal experts have pointed out that since the current case, expected to be concluded within the next two or three months, is an appeal of a lower-court ruling, the “admission of guilt” evidence might not be admissible. However, they also acknowledged that, at best, it would only buy Shell a little time, as a ruling in its favor would almost certainly prompt the filing of a new case against it.

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What’s in a name? A short side conversation with one of our reporters while I was working on this column encouraged me to ponder the question.

On Wednesday, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) announced it was retiring the names “Egay” and “Goring” from its list of names for typhoons and tropical storms due to those storms’ noteworthy destructiveness in Northern Luzon in July and August 2023. Other memorable names that have been retired in recent years include “Odette,” which ripped through northern Mindanao and the Visayas just before Christmas in 2021; “Paeng,” which caused widespread flooding in Luzon in October 2022; and, of course, 2013’s Super Typhoon “Yolanda,” which killed about 7,000 people.

Retiring storm names is a tradition among weathermen, and the reason for it is that a storm that is memorable for being particularly bad becomes a historic event. For instance, if you mention Hurricane Agnes to someone my age or a little older from my part of the US, you’ll hear some harrowing tales. Recycling the names of those kinds of storms could be confusing in future events, so striking them from the list makes a certain kind of sense.

On the other hand, I’m not sure it is actually a good idea because weather information is difficult for the average person to visualize. I’d be willing to bet that not one person in 10 here could provide a correct explanation of what the various “storm signals” mean without looking it up or being able to describe what a rainfall rate of some number of millimeters per hour looks like. Providing correct information that is easily understandable to ordinary people seems to be a constant challenge, which is why every typhoon or tropical storm results in a number of casualties.

Here’s a suggestion: Instead of retiring the names of the worst storms, why not make it a point to reuse them for future storms of a similar nature? A typhoon with a name like “Kristine” (one of the names on Paasa’s list for this year) is not going to scare anyone before it arrives, but if it has a name like “Ondoy 2,” for example, people who experienced the original calamity are going to take notice and tell everyone around them. It’s just an idea, but if it works to get people to move out of harm’s way, it’s a good one.