It may not be advisable to talk on LinkedIn about the time I was fired by #ExxonMobil. But here goes.

I am a #climate scientist. I can identify with both climate researchers featured in this worth-your-time article.

I started out as Ms Rebecca Grekin, a climate scientist who earnestly, naively believed that the ExxonMobil of today is a trustworthy actor in the energy transition. I spent more than a decade working for ExxonMobil, occasionally (but not often enough) advocating for combatting #climatechange .

In 2020, I was fired—yes, fired—by ExxonMobil because I reported what amounted to a $10 billion fraud. To put it mildly, that experience fundamentally altered my opinion of whether present-day ExxonMobil can be considered an honest broker in anything, but most especially in the realm of the energy transition, which is a far-greater-than-$10-billion threat to the Exxon's bottom line. I have become the article's more cynical and wiser Mr Kashtan.

Despite what smooth-talking spokespeople will tell you, ExxonMobil continues to fund and be an active member of organizations that are—today—working to decrease political support for government action to curb climate change and decrease the public’s access to and trust in readily available replacements for #oilandgas. They fund PhDs and national labs to burnish their reputation and influence what questions researchers address. #industry lobbyists have convinced large swaths of the public (and most of their own well-meaning employees) that technologies like carbon capture and storage are legitimate recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for combatting climate change. Those taxpayer dollars are urgently needed for existing, proven, ready-right-now solutions but instead are funding a massive campaign to enhance oil recovery. Carbon capture and storage is, at its core, a technology for producing more oil. It requires more carbon to be expended to inject #co2 at pressure than it keeps out of the atmosphere. It is not and will not be a viable solution to climate change.

ExxonMobil executives can continue this deception in large part because so many useful idiots, myself included, willingly lend their personal reputations to the propping up of a lie. They can continue this deception because they make an example of people like me (I’m not the only one) to ensure that their employees are afraid to truly challenge the ethics of the company line.

I wish I could tell my younger self that the cynical Mr Yannai Kashtan is right. That idealism and/or a paycheck can lull you into trusting those who say one thing and do another. That we must stop allowing ourselves to be used by a few people who care more about their reserve shares than about doing the right thing. And, most important, that we must, without delay, find the unflinching political will to turn off the #fossilfuels tap as fast as we possibly can. — Lindsey Gulden, geophysicist

No digital games – for me, they automate (eliminate) too much players' improvisational creativity (since all possible actions / reactions are already scripted (coded) in the program), fully cybernetic illusionism / railroading. — 180 Proof

Eating Persimmons — javi2541997

Writing battle raps that will never see the light of day — AmadeusD

Only an epistemological interpretation (old Copenhagen) would say this. Pretty much all interpretations since are metaphysical interpretations with describe what is, not what any particular observer knows. Humans play no special role in wave function collapse, except in that solipsistic Wigner interpretation. — noAxioms

The present Europe isn't sufficiently strong. — jorndoe

And thus by that note, abandon defense, especially sufficiently strong ones? Nah. — jorndoe

Does jamming, dazzling, or damaging a satellite amount to a use of force prohibited under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary international law? If so, when? Is it lawful to declare and operate “space exclusion zones,” despite the fact that States are prohibited from claiming sovereignty in space under Article II of the Outer Space Treaty? During an international armed conflict, does a belligerent State have right to capture and detain astronauts when they are also members of enemy armed forces, despite the fact that States are obliged to rescue and return them as “envoys of mankind” under Article V of the Outer Space Treaty? — Woomera project

Maybe? Prophecy aside, that's certainly what the Kremlin would have (everyone think). By the way, acting on what seems like overall "European interests" isn't so straightforward. For that matter, it's quite easy to find anti-EU sentiments within the EU, and some defer to NATO for defense. — jorndoe

Why? — ssu

And what do you have in mind when saying that Europe getting it's act together? There's no nuclear parity between Russia's nearly 6000 nuclear weapons compared to France's 300 deployed nuclear weapons. You think the people in Brussels would want (or have the ability) to suddenly start a large nuclear weapons program? I'm not sure how much Benkei want's his tax dollars to go to pay for a new nuclear weapons procurement program. — ssu

If the comment of Benkei was actually an implicit threat of banning or post suppression because they smell as racist, instead of being racist, that’s rather disappointing. Indeed, claiming that the "psyche of a group of people” smells too close to racism smells as dumb as claiming that blaming Israelis for their “rather one sided” conflict with Palestinians smells to close to anti-semitism, doesn’t it? — neomac

Remove all Hamas members from the gene pool and those that voted for these monsters. If some innocents have to die because Hamas hides behind civilians, c'est la vie. — RogueAI

Well that’s not my case. Indeed, what you are saying is very much related to the point I made on several occasions in the thread about the Ukrainian crisis: if states/governments are security driven and anticipate threats (because if the threat is imminent, it may be too late to respond to it effectively), then any DEFENSIVE move can be perceived as OFFENSIVE by a competitor states/governments (see Putin’s complaining about NATO expansion and invasion of Ukraine to prevent that, triggered Finland and Sweden to candidate for NATO membership, so NATO expanded). Notice that, by this logic, even Nazis and Christians could see Jews as a threat for what Jews did and had done. BTW this is true also for PROPAGANDA spin by ordinary people like you: any propaganda by political activists can threaten and trigger a counter-propaganda. — neomac

And ultimately pick a side as consistently as possible with such understanding, if one wants to be rationality motivated.
Besides I also do not underestimate the possibility that not all human problems can be solved through diplomatic means or for the benefits of all involved parties. — neomac

A happy family today might be an unhappy family tomorrow. — BC

"Anything that degrades culture shortens the paths that lead to servitude." Albert Camus — BC