A Steaming Pile Of Right-Wing/Big Oil Talking Points Debunked, Thanks To Climate Denier Roundup
Links at original.
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Kate Aronoff is suffering through CERAWeek, and reported (among other things) that there was a long line of energy industry types waiting to get serially debunked Steven Koonin to sign their copy of his book. The latest in his long line of rebuttals comes from ClimateFeedback, which took a look at Koonin’s latest Wall Street Journal op-ed. Lauren Simkins called it “intentionally misleading and flawed” and Anders Anker Bjork suggested that “the WSJ title could just as well have been: ‘Last decade showed highest mass loss from Greenland ever measured.’”
Koonin’s critics include the authors of the very study Koonin (mis)cites, and they responded in a letter to the WSJ, in which they write that Koonin’s argument is “an incorrect” and “invalid interpretation” that “is often referred to as ‘cherry picking,’” confirming that, as we pointed out, Koonin’s op-ed accusing climate scientists of cherry picking was itself cherry picking. Kind of a "you're rubber and I'm glue" situation.
The popular disinfo these days is to blame some combination of Greta, Greenpeace, and Joe Biden for Vladimir Putin’s fossil-fueled invasion of Ukraine is, you'll no doubt be shocked to learn, also something experts don’t consider accurate. For example, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo mostly false-ly claimed that the U.S. is “reliant on Russian oil” and “have doubled our imports from Russia in the last year,” when we went from 1% of crude oil imports being from Russia in 2020 to just 3% overall in 2021. And though facts aren’t stopping those who attack Biden for not drilling enough, the fact is that oil production under Biden has been greater than during three of Trump’s four years in the Oval office (and adjacent TV-viewing rooms).
And on the Keystone XL front, it’s only “half true” that KXL’s potential to ship 800,000 barrels of oil a day would “offset what we import from Russia” because yes, that would’ve been its capability. If Biden hadn’t canceled it, it was only 8% complete so it still would’ve faced years of construction and legal challenges, and the oil was never guaranteed to even make it to U.S. markets. As Tom Kertscher summarizes, “it couldn’t have solved today’s demand needs. Even in the future, there would be no certainty that the pipeline could produce a net increase of 800,000 barrels per day, rather than just transporting oil from Canada that is currently being transported some other way. Nor would producers be obligated to sell that entire amount to the U.S.”
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/11/2085275/-Factcheck-Roundup-Koonin-GOP-Big-Oil-Still-Wrong-About-Basically-Everything#view-story