An opinion piece in Scientific American is suggesting that we begin naming so-called climate-related disasters after individual companies and organizations that emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The piece is titled “Let’s Start Naming Climate-Related Disasters for Polluters and Their Enablers.”
The piece was penned by Drew Shindell, an earth science professor at Duke University. Professor Shindell is a highly respected climate alarmist, having been listed as a “Coordinating Lead Author on the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC and on the 2018 IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C.”
Shindell also chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition — a group launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2012.
“The Marathon Oil Megadrought has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” Shindell asks in a teaser to the op-ed.
Shindell is proposing that we name weather events that he terms “climate-related disasters” on the companies and industries that provide us with fuel to heat our homes and power our automobiles.
“Some destructive forces are in fact unleashed by bad actors. Climate disasters are a good example — so I propose that we name climate-related extreme events such as the floods that have devastated Germany and drought and wildfires tormenting the American West after the polluters whose behavior has, despite repeated warnings from scientists, continued to warm the planet,” Shindell writes.
Shindell draws a parallel to the National Weather Service’s tradition of using male or female names for tropical storms. But in the professor’s world, the “guilty” would get their just reward by having disasters named after them.
“But what if they drew instead on a list of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters?” Shindell asks. “Imagine the connections people would make — correctly — if it was Hurricane ConocoPhillips that flooded Houston in 2017 instead of Hurricane Harvey. Or if we’d been hit by Exxon this year instead of Elsa?”
And not just tropical storms should be named for fossil fuel companies, but any “climate-related disaster” can be named for an emitter.
“And there’s no reason to stop at tropical storms. There are now human fingerprints on many climate-related extreme events, including hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and floods. What impression would people get if the West were currently suffering under the Marathon Oil Megadrought on top of which the Peabody Energy Heat Dome shattered temperature records?” Shindell asks.
“The right one,” he insists. “Companies might even be motivated to clean up their act, with Royal Dutch Shell, for example, perhaps getting itself off the list of shame if it follows recent court orders to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint.”
So, in Shindell’s mind, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and other producers of fossil fuels should be tarred and feathered for producing a product we all depend upon. Perhaps Shindell leads an Amish existence where he neither uses or benefits from any form of fossil fuel for anything.
Or, maybe, like most climate hysterics, he’s being a hypocrite.
It could be that Shindell views himself as a modern day Jonathon Swift. Swift wrote the essay A Modest Proposal in 1729 suggesting in an obviously hyperbolic way that impoverished Irish people sell their infants as food for the wealthy to ease their financial hardships. If this is the case, the professor doesn’t go far enough.
Shindell should target climate hypocrites who claim to be all about living carbon-neutral lives but instead live lavish, fossil-fueled lifestyles featuring gigantic mansions, megayachts, and private jets. Consider the rhetorical impact of Hurricane Al Gore, the DiCaprio Deforestation, or the John Kerry Wildfires.
And the world’s largest emitter shouldn’t be left off the hook, either. Perhaps climate change itself could be re-branded yet again, this time as China Climate Change, or Climate Change, Brought to You By China. Individual “climate-related disasters” could be named after the Chinese cities where the hundreds of new coal-fired power plants, scheduled to be built in line with the country’s 14th Five Year Plan, are located.
Imagine the Beijing Brush Fires, the Chongqing Cyclone, or the Dongguan Drought.
But that’s a pipe dream. Someone such as Shindell, with such a close association to the Marxist United Nations would never risk offending China like that.
The energy disaster in Texas earlier this year proves how much we still depend on fossil fuels. In that case, much of the energy grid in the Lone Star State was dependent upon renewable energies such as wind and solar. And wind and solar were not up to the task.
Energy companies provide us with a necessary product that all of America still needs in order to sustain life. Should they be deified for those efforts? Of course not. They provide a service and we pay for that service. But they should also not be vilified, and that’s what Shindell is looking to do.
