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We already name hurricanes, so let's name heat waves ... after oil companies [1]

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Date: 2023-08-01

It’s been pretty hot lately. Scientists say July was the hottest month on record—likely by a “significant margin”—and may have been the most brutally steamy stretch in 120,000 years. And the reason is almost certainly—surprise, surprise!—human-caused climate change.

It’s been so hot, Madame Tussauds’ wax Donald Trump statue has melted to the point where it actually looks like him. It’s been so hot, the Jiffy Pop portion of Louie Gohmert’s brain has finally burst to life, boosting his IQ by at least 3.5 points. It’s so hot, Ted Cruz still wants to go to Cancun—because it’s cooler than Texas.

In other words—it’s been hot! But it didn’t have to be this way. While President Joe Biden’s green-energy infrastructure initiatives have been a step in the right direction, progressives had to fight tooth and nail to get them passed—and, hey, it would have been nice to start addressing the problem nearly 50 years ago when Exxon first became aware of its seriousness.

And if one meteorologist has his way, Exxon will get the credit it deserves for gradually turning our planet into an unlivable hellscape with very little fresh water and nearly unlimited plastic bottles to put it in.

RELATED STORY: It’s the hottest month ever recorded, but all Republicans can do is blow hot air

Forbes:

Is it time for someone to give each major heat wave a name like what’s been done with hurricanes and viral epidemics? Well, a meteorologist named Guy Walton has offered to be that guy. The 30-year veteran of The Weather Channel has come up with a heat wave-naming convention that may end up, ahem, fueling an interesting response. He’s been naming the major U.S. heat waves of 2023 after big petroleum companies, calling the first two Heat Wave Amoco and Heat Wave BP. And in July, the U.S. has been getting its fill of what Walton has dubbed Heat Wave Chevron. , “This year, as promised, we are going to poke a little fun at oil companies by using their names to name heatwaves.” Gee, why would anyone name a heatwave after an oil company? Walton explained, “Petroleum companies are a big reason why heatwaves have been getting worse year after year for the past forty years, at least, due to carbon pollution from the burning of their products.” Walton refined this whole petroleum company-naming convention in April 2023, when he wrote on his Guy on Climate blog , “This year, as promised, we are going to poke a little fun at oil companies by using their names to name heatwaves.” Gee, why would anyone name a heatwave after an oil company? Walton explained, “Petroleum companies are a big reason why heatwaves have been getting worse year after year for the past forty years, at least, due to carbon pollution from the burning of their products.”

Oh, my, that’s delicious. Even more delicious than the platter of serendipitous fondue you found last month, after leaving your mom’s charcuterie board in the bed of your El Camino beyond the recommended two minutes.

Of course, it would also be appropriate to name hurricanes after oil companies—or maybe after the GOP politicians who’ve done the most to block climate action over the past several decades—but the naming convention for storms has long been established, and there are a lot of perfectly suitable human names to choose from.

There are far fewer oil companies than people, of course, but since the Supreme Court long ago decided that corporations are people, it seems only fair to give them some of the same perks.

So Walton has complied an alphabetical list of 20 major oil companies—starting with Amoco and progressing to XTO—and plans to roll out them out as major heat waves develop. Walton has already “burned” through three of those names, which means ExxonMobil is just about ready for its close-up. Though given the company’s historic negligence, it might be far more appropriate to hold its name in reserve for the next mass extinction.

As The Guardian reported earlier this year:

A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use. A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years. Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science , finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/1/2184565/-We-already-name-hurricanes-so-let-s-name-heat-waves-after-oil-companies

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