Are you still going to pursue global warming reduction policies like reducing CO2 emissions?

Oil companies stand to lose trillions of dollars in future revenues if policy action is taken to slow carbon emissions. Their financial stake is colossal and undeniable (by honest and sensible people). In order to deal with this business challenge they have taken various measures, including deliberately helping to confuse people about climate science.

This is a matter of historical fact. Science, however, does not actually depend on anyone's confused misunderstanding of it, inability to understand it, or unwillingness to try to understand it. As difficult as it is for this reality to penetrate dense craniums, science does not depend on ANY opinions or actions or psychological hangups of ANY human who has ever lived or who ever will.

Oil companies have helped confuse a lot of people about this, but you can be sure that they did not become large and successful by being confused themselves. U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record... Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems. http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20... Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.

http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes...election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/the-great-carbon-bubble_b_1259782.html "ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind but their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously."

Edit: Re MIke: "Oil companies stand to lose trillions of dollars in future revenues if policy action is taken to slow carbon emissions. This is a common claim (trillions?). And this is the exact type of claim I am looking to see explained in economic terms."

Actually, Mike, you don't need to understand economics, or post longwinded anti-science "questions" here, you can get the explanation you claim to seek with Google & grade school multiplication.

1) They're not. The consumer is hurt. Oil companies don't pay any additional money; they just raise the price of gas.

It's all one big tax on the common man. 2) There's no guarantee they'll come out on top in the new market. 3) No idea.

Probably their equivalent of propagandists. 4) It's all politics. The truth is the earth is getting warmer.

Anything can be politicized, but especially something like this. Some claim doomsday is upon us and therefore we need a democratic socialism across the world. Others deny the facts or say something along the lines of, "It might be true, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad."

I think the truth is somewhere in-between.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.