Beware the engineers

The CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, gave a little speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York last week. He says that global warming is a manageable problem. This is a real break for Exxon. The last CEO, Lee Raymond, denied the concept of climate change entirely.


Tillerson says that  global warming was a “great challenge”, but it could be solved by adapting to risks such as higher sea levels and changing conditions for agriculture. "As a species that’s why we’re all still here: we have spent our entire existence adapting. So we will adapt to this,” he said. “It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.”


I don't know about you but this kind of talk from engineering types gives me the willies. I imagine guys with white coats and clip boards dutifully jotting down statistics in the midst of people drowning and dying all around them. Not the most empathetic bunch. I am sure that the engineers at Fukushima or Chernobyl had the same sort of false bravado. Which they always have until the shit hits the fan. Engineers are good at delivering data for the people that pay their checks. Pulling the wings off bugs to see what makes them tick. Not sure that I want them deciding what is in the best interests of either people or the planet. 


Adaptation is not a very successful long term strategy. The fact that a pod of humans might survive our general bad stewardship and big time stupidity doesn't seem like much of a win to me. Scientists will tell you that prevention is always a smarter bet than adaptation. But by the time we figure it out, it will probably be way too late.

Shell is on its way up the arctic to do a little oil exploration.  They are also trying to clarify what their response will be to oil spills during their upcoming drilling projects in the arctic this summer. They initially said that they would be able to recover 95% of the oil from a spill. Now they say they will be able to "encounter" 95% of the oil from a spill.
Our Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he believed the company’s claims that it could collect at least 90 percent of any oil spilled in the event of a well blowout. Better think again Ken. This from Coast Guard Admiral Roger Rufe - to NPR: 


Once oil is in the water, it’s a mess. And we’ve never proven anywhere in the world — let alone in the ice — that we’re very good at picking up more than 3 or 5 or 10 percent of the oil once it’s in the water.

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said opposition groups are purposely mischaracterizing Shell’s oil spill response plan. The plan does not claim Shell can clean up 90 percent of an oil spill, he said.
“We say in our plan we expect to ‘encounter’ 90 percent of any discharge on site — very close to the drilling rig,” he said. “We expect to encounter 5 percent near-shore between the drilling rig and the coast. And we expect to encounter another 5 percent on shore. We never make claims about the percent we could actually recover, because conditions vary, of course.”


Encountering sounds pretty innocuous. Is it like speed dating? What good is this encountering oil thing if you aren't recovering oil? Have we once more been sold a bill of goods by the people with the pocket protectors? What the engineers have proven best at is engineering the money out of our wallets. When they figure out a way to charge us for sunlight, all of our energy problems will magically disappear.