Foundation claims Exxon Valdez disaster the result of global warming
From our “Anything that happens on planet earth can be blamed on global warming” file comes this laugh out loud theory promoted by climate change hysterics.
Global warming theory:
An article in the Los Angeles Times written by fellows associated with the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism claims that the 1989 disaster that occurred when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground was due in part to global warming.
The Project is partially funded by foundations connected to the Rockefeller family and George Soros – two of the biggest boosters of the catastrophic global warming theory.
The LA Times disavows any influence over the writers of this fantasy piece. But social media exploded in mirth over its conclusions.
The story unfolded by Washington Times:
The story suggested that Exxon should have known that the Columbia Glacier had become unstable as a result of global warming, increasing the risk of iceberg hazards, before the Exxon Valdez crashed into Alaska’s Bligh Reef after swerving to avoid an iceberg.
“What was triggering the glacier to drop icebergs at such a ferocious and ultimately disastrous pace was unclear at the time,” said the article. “But some scientists, even then, were beginning to look at climate change’s role.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a leader of the #ExxonKnew campaign, retweeted the article, calling the Exxon Valdez disaster an “early product of @ExxonMobil’s well-documented legacy actively peddling #climate denial.”
How was Exxon to “know”? The article said scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey raised the possibility in 1975 and 1978 of climate-driven iceberg hazards.
Then again, there was hardly a consensus: Energy in Depth reported that USGS studies released in 1977 and 1980 said the behaviour of iceberg-calving glaciers “is apparently not directly related to climatic variations.”
Roy W. Spencer, meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was also dubious, calling it “quite a stretch to blame the disaster on human-caused global warming.”
“Glaciers naturally flow to the ocean and calve. As long as it snows on them, gravity makes them flow to the ocean — no global warming required,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “Even if calving increased in the 1980s, the warming in Alaska that abruptly started around 1980 was due to a shift in a natural climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), not the result of a slow warming trend due to humans.”
By the article’s logic, “anyone can blame basically anything that happens to them on climate change. Did you avoid a puddle when you hit that telephone pole? Sue Exxon!” quipped conservative columnist David Harsanyi of the Federalist.
“Somehow, since 1989, thousands of tankers have been able to ship oil from Alaska to California and avoid hitting the reef, even with the presence of a bay ‘riddled with icebergs’ that were allegedly caused by Exxon failing to take responsibility for anthropomorphic global warming in the 1980s,” Mr. Harsanyi.
Mocked mercilessly:
As you might expect, social media was merciless in their mocking:
“Blindingly stupid,” “climate change fan fiction,” “irrelevant” and “ridiculous” were among the insults hurled at the report, written by students from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.
“Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, which is funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories are too outrageous to publish.”
I’m not positing a conspiracy here, but rather like-minded individuals trying to assist the state attorney generals who are going after Exxon for their climate change “denial.” The researchers are employing the butterfly effect on steroids to stretch the notion to the breaking point of climate change causing catastrophes.
Conclusion:
Since this particular theory doesn’t appear to have convinced anyone who isn’t a full blown climate change hysteric, the damage is limited. But perhaps more importantly, it shows just how far these NGO’s and foundations will go to imprint on the public consciousness the hazards of global warming.
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Source: American Thinker
