Comments 1 to 2:

1. One Planet Only Forever at 04:43 AM on 4 February, 2025

   Living in Alberta I witness more evidence of Cenovus supporting and delivering misinformation marketing than is presentation in the Weekly News item “Cenovus Funded 'Grassroots' Groups That Oppose Climate Laws, Document Reveals” by Geoff Dembicki, DeSmog, Jan 30, 2025.

   Cenovus has been running a very misleading video and radio ad that it calls “Helping Canada run smoothly” (you can watch it on YouTube).

   The Cenovus ad simply asks the question: What would life be like if fossil fuel production stopped? But it makes an ‘irrational step, twist, leap of faith’ to imply that anything that is imagined to be done using fossil fuels cannot be done any other way. And it implies that actions to reduce the harm done by fossil fuel use, including plastic production, will immediately shut it all down.

   The video opens with images of a happy family driving home and taking in a parcel left on their sidewalk then heating a tea kettle with natural gas. And the audio begins with “You might not think much about how a strong oil and gas industry affects your daily life.” It then misleadingly calls it all ‘needs’ and uses the terms ‘essential’ and ‘relied on’ for stuff that is understandably not ‘essential to a decent life’ – if you think about it.

   The ad is comically misleading by trying to imply that:

   • Transportation must be fossil fuelled. Undeniably the family car could have been an EV. But also note that Cenovus is a Calgary-based company. Calgary Public Transit CTrains have been wind powered for decades – CBC 2001 article “City's LRT first in North America to be wind-driven”.
   • Parcel delivery can only happen via fossil fuels. There already are EV delivery vehicles.
   • Cooking ‘needs’ to be done with natural gas, likely the deadliest and most harmful modern way of cooking.

   A particularly comical bit is that the delivered package has the old-style harmful and wasteful Styrofoam peanut packing that very few parcel packers use today.

   An obvious misleading implication is that actions like carbon pricing and emissions caps would immediately end fossil fuel use with no possible alternative ways to do the fossil fuelled stuff.

   A more important question, unasked in the Cenovus ad, is: What would life be like without governing actions that effectively limit the harm done by pursuers of profit?

   Thoughtful consideration of that question would include: How horrible would life be for the less fortunate, and many of the more fortunate, if pursuers of profit were freer to be as harmful as they could be in their pursuit of maximum profit, including being more secretive, deceptive, and misleading?

   • Smog and other poisons in the air, but cleaner safer air where the ‘most fortunate’ live.
   • Contaminated water, but purer and safer for the ‘most fortunate’.
   • Nutrition deficient and deadlier food, but safe and nutritious for the ‘most fortunate’.
   • More harmful climate change, but the ‘most fortunate’ living ‘more exclusively’ where it is ‘Better and Safer’ for them.

   All of that is understandably the developed reality today. The important question is: Does the future get worse or better for the less fortunate? How does the entire future of humanity become sustainably more fortunate?

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2. One Planet Only Forever at 03:57 AM on 5 February, 2025

   A supplement to my comment about the misleading Cenovus ad.

   When the audio asks “But what if that system suddenly stopped working?” the video makes all the food, reusable bags, and the package disappear. The misleading implication is that other harmful petrochemical developments, like plastics and agrichemical, are essential needs that cannot be obtained by less harmful alternatives.

   The ‘collective petrochemical misinformation effort’ is investigated and discussed in items listed in recent SkS Weekly News and Weekly Research.

   In the 2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03, the second item in the Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science category “New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create a Climate Denial Echo Chamber on Social Media” is about one of the ‘Open access notables’ on the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3 2025: Networks of climate obstruction: Discourses of denial and delay in US fossil energy, plastic, and agrichemical industries, Kinol et al., PLOS Climate:.

   Another New Research ‘notable’ in Week #3, Compartmentalization by industry and government inhibits addressing climate denial, Hendlin & Palazzo, PLOS Climate:, also investigates the way that ‘harmful interests join forces to collectively act for their harmfully obtained collective benefit’.

   There is a tragic history of the collective gathering of pursuers of benefit by promoting misunderstandings, not just in business and politics (note how social conservatives and economic conservatives support or excuse each other's misunderstandings). Everybody loses when these (Us against all Others who are not like Us) collectives succeed in their misleading pursuits of perceptions of superiority relative to Others.

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