News round-up, Friday, January 13, 2023
“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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US Republicans determined to track down Hunter Biden scandal
An investigation is already targeting the son of US President Joe Biden in a tax evasion case, but it is his business activities in Ukraine and China that fuel most of the theories around him.
By Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent)
Published on January 13, 2023
Le Monde
US Congressman Jim Jordan shows an email from Hunter Biden during a press conference on the Biden family business investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, November 17, 2022. EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / REUTERS
Hunter Biden, 52, had his first drink when he was 8 at an election night party celebrating his father. He had lost his mother and sister in a car accident when he was 2, then witnessed his older brother, Beau, die of cancer at age 46. His first marriage fell apart and he struggled then with drug and alcohol addictions.
But beyond his personal misfortunes, Mr. Biden represents a vulnerability for his father, the incumbent President of the United States. The Republicans, who won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives after the midterms elections last November, decided to attack Mr. Biden through his son over his questionable financial activities.
The White House has already stated that it does not intend to cooperate with a future House committee focused on Hunter Biden whereas it has said it would do so in other proposed topics of investigation such as the military withdrawal from Afghanistan or immigration at the Mexican border.
The president wants his son to keep a low profile so that his opponents have no leg to stand on and to reinforce the idea that he is being persecuted. But whether the strategy holds in the longer term is another question.
"This is an investigation into US President Joe Biden and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge of and involvement in his family's business schemes," James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, told journalists in November to justify the launch of the battle against the Biden family.
Democrats for their part point out the Grand Old Party's lack of interest in another matter that heightens suspicions of conflict of interest on a completely different scale. The matter covers a $2 billion investment by a Saudi fund in a new company, Affinity Partners, created by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, six months after he left the White House. Mr. Kushner had developed a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Business activities in Ukraine and China
President Biden's son is already under investigation. Media reported that FBI and IRS agents have gathered strong evidence of tax evasion and a lie about purchasing a handgun in 2018 when Hunter Biden failed to mention his drug use. It was up to the Delaware attorney general to issue a possible indictment.
But the Republicans have a different idea. They claim to be exposing a mafia-type "family". Their conclusions are written down already even though there is no evidence that the president has taken part in any wrongdoing or questionable actions.
This is why Hunter Biden would have been better off never spilling liquid on his computer. In April 2019, he visited a repair store in Wilmington, Delaware, to save his personal files and data but he seemed to forget about going to collect the machine. This was when the drama started before becoming the greatest obsession of the MAGA – Make America Great Again – supporters.
The MacBook, which is now in the hands of the FBI, contained nearly 129,000 emails and a large number of instant messages, as well as photos and videos, mixing mundane, sordid and professional content. Bank documents, hotel bills, family chats and videos of Hunter Biden's parties with crack and prostitutes. The most controversial content, however, was about his business activities in Ukraine and China.
'Poor judgment'
The Washington Post wrote in March last year that Hunter Biden and his uncle James had received $4.8 million in 14 months in 2017 from the Chinese energy group CEFC. The newspaper reported that there was no evidence that Joe Biden was involved or personally benefited from this, although the financial relationship seemed questionable at a time when the US and China were already engaged in a systemic confrontation.
That said, an elected official's son using his name for personal gain is nothing new in Washington DC, the world's lobbying capital.
But another matter triggered the biggest suspicions: The presence of Hunter Biden on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, between 2014 and 2019, while his father served as vice president for former US president Barack Obama (2008-2016).
At the time, Joe Biden was responsible for monitoring Ukraine now torn apart by war. In an interview with ABC in late 2019, Hunter Biden denied any wrongdoing but he admitted: "In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part," he said, adding the Ukrainian gas sector was a "swamp."
In July 2019, Mr. Trump exerted pressure on Ukraine's then new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to "look closely" at the role of Joe Biden and his son after Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, was dismissed. In reality, Mr. Shokin was considered by Washington as an opponent of judicial reform in Ukraine. The first impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump were launched following this intervention in early 2020.
Multiple conspiracy theories
In mid-October 2020, the New York Post, a pro-Trump publication at the time, ran a front-page story on the president's son's emails. The article revealed an email sent to Hunter Biden by Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior executive at Burisma, thanking him for his invitation to Washington and the opportunity to meet his father.
The newspaper reported that, as a member of the company's board, Hunter Biden was then earning $50,000 a month. In April 2015, Joe Biden's campaign team investigated the matter and determined that no such meeting with Mr. Pozharskyi had ever taken place.
With three weeks to go before the presidential election, it was an important moment for the Democrats, even though the confusing details of the scandal were difficult to understand. A few days after the report by the New York Post, about 50 veterans from the security and intelligence services signed an open letter to denounce a possible manipulation coming from Russia.
This was not beyond the realm of reality due to prior Russian involvement, such as the cyberattack against French President Emmanuel Macron's campaign team in 2017 or the attack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
Those who signed the letter acknowledged later that they did not know whether the emails were authentic and could not substantiate the rumor of Russian involvement. But they said they were "highly suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role."
Since then, the Hunter Biden controversy has grown out of control. It seems unlikely that any hard truths will emerge given so many fantasies and conspiracy theories have piled up. The responsibilities are shared. The mainstream media was accused of hiding the truth and protecting Joe Biden while tech giants like Facebook and Twitter were believed to censor conservatives' posts.
Elon Musk recently revealed how Twitter was moderated behind the scenes. In doing so, Republicans were quick to denounce conspiracy and expose federal pressure on these companies. US Republican congressman James Comer said he intended to devote first hearings to this issue from early next month.
By trying to prevent the release of information from Hunter Biden's computer at the end of the 2020 presidential campaign for fear of externally orchestrated manipulation, these private companies – who are free to do as they please, but find themselves caught in the act of hypocrisy – have fueled the idea that there was some sort of coalition of elites working against the people to hide the truth.
The reality is more nuanced than that. Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson – who promoted the racist "Great Replacement" theory of white Americans – released an accusatory documentary called Biden, Inc.
While promoting the film on Fox News, he explained that he became very close with Hunter Biden when he was living in Washington and had asked him for a letter of recommendation for his son Buckley's application to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington.
Piotr Smolar(Washington (United States) correspondent)
Russia-Ukraine WarRussia Says It Has Taken Soledar as Kyiv Denies the Claim
A Russian victory in Soledar would be a symbolic win but have limited strategic value, analysts say.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.
NYT, today news
A Ukrainian soldier pointing toward smoke near Soledar, in the eastern Donetsk region, on Wednesday.Credit...Libkos/Associated Press
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that its troops had captured the eastern salt-mining town of Soledar, a claim quickly rejected by Ukraine’s military, which said that its soldiers were hanging on.
After a string of setbacks for Russia, capturing Soledar would represent the biggest success for Moscow’s forces in Ukraine in months, though military analysts have cautioned that the small town is of limited strategic value.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that its troops had “completed” their capture of the town overnight.
But Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops fighting in the east, denied that Soledar had been captured.
“This is not true,” Mr. Cherevaty said in remarks to Ukrainian news outlets on Friday afternoon. “The fighting is ongoing.”
Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said that Kyiv’s troops were still “bravely trying to hold the defense” of the town under a “high intensity” Russian offensive.
Over the last several days there have been conflicting reports about who controls Soledar, while losses mount on both sides. This week, the head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting in Ukraine claimed that his fighters had seized control of the town. Ukraine denied the reports, and the Kremlin walked back the assertion at the time.
Weeks of intense fighting have devastated Soledar, which has taken on outsize attention despite its small size and limited strategic value, as Russia sought a win after months of setbacks.
The town lies near Bakhmut, the focal point of the Kremlin’s quest to take control of the entire eastern Donbas region. The battle for Soledar, where hundreds of civilians are trapped in a town that has largely been reduced to rubble, has put into sharp relief Moscow’s costly and grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Taking Soledar would give Moscow’s forces new locations to place artillery and put pressure on Ukrainian supply lines that run toward Bakhmut. But military analysts say that even if Soledar were to fall, it would not necessarily mean that Bakhmut — or the whole of the Donbas — is next.
The Russian claim came after the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an analysis on Thursday that geolocated footage indicated that Moscow’s forces “likely control most if not all of Soledar.” It called the capture “at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory” after Moscow had committed significant resources, adding that the battle will have contributed to “Russian forces’ degraded combat power and cumulative exhaustion.”
“All available evidence indicates Ukrainian forces no longer maintain an organized defense in Soledar,” the institute said, adding that the fall of the town “is not an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.”
The White House’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, echoed those sentiments on Thursday when asked about the status of Soledar, cautioning that it was important to “keep this in perspective.”
“We don’t know how it’s going to go, so I’m not going to predict failure or success here,” he told reporters. “But even if both Bakhmut and Soledar fall to the Russians, it’s not going to make a — it’s not going to have a strategic impact on the war itself.”
He added: “If you look at what’s been happening over the last 10 and a half months, particularly in the Donbas, towns and villages have swapped hands quite frequently.”
About 559 civilians — including 15 children — are trapped in the town as the brutal battle unfolds, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the local Ukrainian military administration, said on Ukrainian state television on Thursday.
Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s
Oil company drove some of the leading science of the era only to publicly dismiss global heating
Oliver Milman in New York
Thu 12 Jan 2023
The Guardian
The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.
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”.
Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years
Geoffrey Supran, whose previous research of historical industry documents helped shed light on what Exxon and other oil firms knew, said it was “breathtaking” to see Exxon’s projections line up so closely with what subsequently happened.
“This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born,” said Supran, who led the analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We now have the smoking gun showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.”
The research analyzed more than 100 internal documents and peer-reviewed scientific publications either produced in-house by Exxon scientists and managers, or co-authored by Exxon scientists in independent publications between 1977 and 2014.
Photograph: Supran, et al., 2023, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections”
The analysis found that Exxon correctly rejected the idea the world was headed for an imminent ice age, which was a possibility mooted in the 1970s, instead predicting that the planet was facing a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”. Company scientists also found that global heating was human-influenced and would be detected around the year 2000, and they predicted the “carbon budget” for holding the warming below 2C above pre-industrial times.
Armed with this knowledge, Exxon embarked upon a lengthy campaign to downplay or discredit what its own scientists had confirmed. As recently as 2013, Rex Tillerson, then chief executive of the oil company, said that the climate models were “not competent” and that “there are uncertainties” over the impact of burning fossil fuels.
“What they did was essentially remain silent while doing this work and only when it became strategically necessary to manage the existential threat to their business did they stand up and speak out against the science,” said Supran.
“They could have endorsed their science rather than deny it. It would have been a much harder case to deny it if the king of big oil was actually backing the science rather than attacking it.”
Climate scientists said the new study highlighted an important chapter in the struggle to address the climate crisis. “It is very unfortunate that the company not only did not heed the implied risks from this information, but rather chose to endorse non-scientific ideas instead to delay action, likely in an effort to make more money,” said Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University.
Mahowald said the delays in action aided by Exxon had “profound implications” because earlier investments in wind and solar could have averted current and future climate disasters. “If we include impacts from air pollution and climate change, their actions likely impacted thousands to millions of people adversely,” she added.
Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, said the new study was a “detailed, robust analysis” and that Exxon’s misleading public comments about the climate crisis were “especially brazen” given their scientists’ involvement in work with outside researchers in assessing global heating. Shindell said it was hard to conclude that Exxon’s scientists were any better at this than outside scientists, however.
The new work provided “further amplification” of Exxon’s misinformation, said Robert Brulle, an environment policy expert at Brown University who has researched climate disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry.
“I’m sure that the ongoing efforts to hold Exxon accountable will take note of this study,” Brulle said, a reference to the various lawsuits aimed at getting oil companies to pay for climate damages.
A spokesperson for Exxon said: “This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how “Exxon Knew” are wrong in their conclusions. In 2019, Judge Barry Ostrager of the NY State Supreme Court listened to all the facts in a related case before him and wrote: “What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible….The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting.”