While billionaires may pay scientists to release public statements favorable to their financial interests, I would assume they also make sure to get the actual facts so they can make their own plans for dealing with climate change.
So how dire is climate change going to be? Billionaires are building space ships.
Literally true … particularly ironic since ExxonMobil was among the most aggressive of the big climate change deniers, and among the most invested in secret “dark money” funding of campaigns to deny and undermine the science – all while keeping secret some of the most accurate data anywhere on how much fossil fuels were driving climate change.
The findings suggest that ExxonMobil’s predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading NASA scientists.
“It really underscores the stark hypocrisy of ExxonMobil leadership, who knew that their own scientists were doing this very high quality modelling work and had access to that privileged information while telling the rest of us that climate models were bunk,” Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, told BBC News.
The findings are a “smoking gun”, suggests co-author Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami.
“Our analysis allows us for the first time to actually put a number on what Exxon knew, which is that the burning of their fossil fuel products was going to heat the planet by about 0.2C of warming every decade,” he said.
Well, there’s suffering and there’s “suffering.”
Not just “beach front”, and not just Florida.
Due to the increasing destructive power of hurricanes, home insurance in Florida is nearly four times the national rate. Major national insurers are pulling out, and some of the regional insurers are at risk of bankruptcy. Meanwhile recurrent wildfires have made insuring homes even more dire in California, where State Farm, the nation’s largest home and auto insurer, has pulled out altogether. Existing policies will continue to be honored, but no new homeowner policies will be issued.