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Oil giant funds computer game that promotes fossil fuels to schoolchildren

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Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from TBIJ  under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The online game is targeted at pupils as young as seven

Equinor, the company looking to develop the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea, has funded a computer game aimed at UK school children, promoting the idea that fossil fuels are part of a green energy mix.

In an unusually frank admission of lobbying children, a web page promoting the game stated that it “aligns with our work to build future talent pipelines and secure permission to operate at a time of sensitivity around fossil fuels, particularly in light of . . . the Rosebank development”. The story was first revealed by the Norwegian news publication E24.

Rosebank – the UK’s largest untapped oilfield – was greenlit by the Conservative government in 2023, prompting condemnation from climate campaigners. That decision was ruled unlawful by the courts in January this year because it had not taken into account the carbon emissions created by burning any oil and gas produced. Equinor, Norway’s state energy company, continues preparation work on the site under its joint venture with Shell. [*1]

The game lets players choose between renewable energy or fossil fuels to power their city.

Marketing agency We Are Futures, which describes itself as “the go-to partner for building advocacy for brands amongst young people”, developed Equinor’s schools-based, curriculum-linked education programme, Wonderverse. It also received support from the Association for Science Education (ASE), a UK membership organisation for science teachers and technicians.

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The game was promoted on ASE’s School Science website, which also stated: “With over two-thirds of teens believing the oil and gas industry causes more problems than it solves, Wonderverse helps lay misconceptions to rest by exploring some of the challenges involved in a just energy transition.”

The ASE web page, which has been taken down since the story first broke, said the programme, aimed at 7–14 year olds, is “designed to spark wonder for science and the future of energy”. It includes a game, in which players attempt to build a city that survives until the year 2050, and in-school education materials to “showcase how modern cities use energy resources and the ways the energy transition can be managed”.

While players are encouraged to invest in research into renewable energy, TBIJ successfully ran a city powered by oil and some renewables until 2050. Meanwhile, scientists say there must be huge declines in the use of coal, oil and gas to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and avoid further catastrophic climate change.

Screenshot from Game Over screen of Energy Town

Charlotte Howell, who leads the climate campaign group Parents for Future, was shocked that Equinor was behind an energy-themed game aimed at UK schoolchildren. She told E24: “We want to know how this can be allowed. I’m horrified that Equinor, as a partly state-owned company, is working against UK ambitions on climate. They are lobbying directly against our children.”

Tessa Khan, executive director at climate campaign group Uplift, said it was “morally indefensible” to pretend that the UK needed Rosebank for energy security when in reality it would accelerate the climate crisis.

Khan told TBIJ: “It’s one thing for Equinor to mislead the public about the benefits of new oil fields like Rosebank, but it is quite another to target children with blatant fossil fuel propaganda disguised as ‘education’. This so-called ‘computer game’ is not about learning – it’s about teaching the next generation to see oil and gas as inevitable, when the climate science could not be clearer that we need to leave new fossil fuels in the ground.”

Equinor told TBIJ it was not aware of the promotional material associated with the game until notified by media, and denied that rolling out the school game is part of a lobbying campaign to promote developing Rosebank.

A spokesperson said: “The overall intention and aim for Wonderverse and Energy Town is to provide schools and teachers with a suite of high-quality resources to help students learn more about where energy comes from, whilst building … the employability skills needed to successfully enter employment. The learning resources have been awarded a green tick by the Association for Science Education, assuring the programme’s quality for use in schools.” They also said the game was developed using data from the International Energy Agency.

ASE’s School Science website provides free online science resources for teachers and students. The site was sponsored by partners including ExxonMobil, which ASE describes as “the world’s leading nongovernmental energy company aiming to meet world energy demand in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible manner”. ExxonMobil is the world’s third most polluting company, according to Carbon Majors, a database of historical fossil fuel production data.

A spokesperson for ASE said the promotional text was provided via briefing materials from We Are Futures. They said the School Science website was no longer actively maintained and will be decommissioned, and that ExxonMobil is no longer a partner of ASE.

We Are Futures, which also works for the UK government and BP, did not respond to a request for comment.

After the court ruling in January, Equinor is set to reapply to the UK government for approval to develop Rosebank. This time it must include information about the emissions that will be produced by burning the oil extracted from Rosebank. According to Uplift, those emissions could be more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 lowest-income countries in the world, including Uganda, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Equinor is reportedly “confident” that the project will go ahead and expects it to start up in 2026 or 2027.

Khan said: “If Equinor is serious about supporting the next generation, it should start by walking away from Rosebank and using its power and influence to focus solely on renewable energy. That’s the only way to really protect our children’s future.”

Reporter: Josephine Moulds
Environment editor: Rob Soutar
Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles
Editor: Franz Wild
Fact checker: Frankie Goodway
Production editor: Sasha Baker

TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.

Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from TBIJ  under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

*1 by dizzy. Equinor is attempting to develop the Rosebank oil field in partnership with Ithaca Energy, not Shell.

Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

Continue ReadingOil giant funds computer game that promotes fossil fuels to schoolchildren

Despite Trump-Musk Feud, CO2 Milestone Is the ‘Important News of the Day’

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Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A view of flames and giant smoke is seen over the sky as a fire erupted at the natural gas Moss Landing Power Plant in Moss Landing of Monterey Bay, California, United States on January 17, 2025. (Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Scientists said that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations peaked above 430 parts per million for the first time in perhaps 30 million years.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025—the highest it has been in millions of years—according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego on Thursday.

The news was overshadowed by the explosive feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and his erstwhile backer Elon Musk, but climate activist Bill McKibben argued that it was ultimately more consequential.

“In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day—CO2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone,” McKibben wrote on social media.

In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day–co2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T20:33:11.672Z

Carbon dioxide has been accumulating in the atmosphere due primarily to the human burning of fossil fuels, as well as by the clearing of forests and other natural carbon sinks. There, it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat from the Earth, and is the primary gas responsible for the rise of global temperatures by approximately 1.1°C from the 1850 -1900 average. This warming has already had a host of dramatic impacts, from extreme weather events to sea-level rise to polar ice melt, and scientists warn these impacts will only accelerate under current energy policies, which put the world on track for around 3°C of warming by 2100.

The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations topped 430 ppm was most likely more than 30 million years ago, Ralph Keeling, who directs the Scripps CO2 Program, told NBC News.

“It’s changing so fast,” he said. “If humans had evolved in such a high-CO2 world, there would probably be places where we wouldn’t be living now. We probably could have adapted to such a world, but we built our society and a civilization around yesterday’s climate.”

“While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call.”

Scripps and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration both measure carbon dioxide levels from NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where Charles Keeling began taking measurements in 1958. As CO2 levels rise over time, they also follow a seasonal cycle—peaking in May before falling in the Northern Hemisphere summer and rising again in the fall.

This May, Scripps Oceanography calculated an average of 430.2 ppm for 2025, which is 3.5 ppm over the average for May 2024. NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, meanwhile, calculated a monthly average of 430.5 ppm, a 3.6 ppm jump from the year before and the second-steepest yearly climb since 1958.

“Another year, another record,” Keeling said in a statement. “It’s sad.”

The news comes two months after Mauna Loa daily measurements surpassed 430 ppm for the first time in March, which Plymouth Marine Laboratory professor Helen Findlay called “extremely disappointing and worrying.”

“While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call, especially given the accelerated response we are seeing of glaciers and ice sheets to current warming,” Dr. James Kirkham, chief scientist of the Ambition on Melting Ice coalition of governments, said at the time.

“This upward trajectory is a direct result of continued fossil fuel use, likely exacerbated by emissions from extreme wildfires last year, methane leaks from fossil fuel extraction and possibly greater permafrost emissions, alongside decreased ability of very warm oceans to absorb CO2,” Kirkham said.

The monthly record also comes a little more than a week after a United Nations report warned that there was a small chance global temperatures could surpass 2°C in at least 1 of the next 5 years, only a decade after world leaders pledged in the Paris agreement to keep global temperatures “well-below” that level.

“Carbon emissions are still rising, and the atmosphere is going to keep heating further until greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize,” Matt Kean, who chairs Australia’s Climate Change Authority, wrote in response to the Scripps and NOAA figures. “What sort of climate do we want to leave our children and those who come after them?”

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
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GB News Owner Paul Marshall Calls for BBC’s Fact-Checking Service to be Shut Down

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

The right-wing multi-millionaire, who also owns The Spectator, called for the public broadcaster to be part-privatised at a Pharos Foundation event.

GB News co-owner Paul Marshall speaking at the Pharos Foundation on 20 May 2025. Credit: Pharos Foundation / YouTube

A hedge fund manager who owns three right-wing UK media outlets has called for the BBC to be “broken up” and its fact-checking service “shut down”.

Sir Paul Marshall – proprietor of GB News, The Spectator, and Unherd – was speaking last week (20 May) at the Pharos Foundation, an educational charity that received £350,000 from Marshall’s charity Sequoia Trust in 2023.

Pharos co-founder and director Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial campaign group, is a significant backer of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch.

In his speech, titled ‘Reflections of an Accidental Media Owner’, Marshall said: “the BBC squats like a giant toad in the middle of the UK media landscape”, calling it “a propaganda arm of the state, who [sic] are ultimately its paymasters.”

The multi-millionaire, who runs the hedge fund Marshall Wace, added that “the BBC should be broken up” to separate its “public service elements” like news and documentaries from “entertainment, drama, sport”, adding: “The latter should be privatised and allowed to complete to compete with other entertainment companies.”

Marshall also took aim at BBC Verify, the corporation’s fact-checking service founded in 2023 to cover and debunk online misinformation, calling for the service to be “shut down”.

Marshall accused progressive groups like Stop Funding Hate, HOPE not hate, and Led by Donkeys of acting like “school yard bullies” on social media.

“Unfortunately most of the disinformation agents who seek to track sites or individuals under the misinformation rubric have an explicit or near explicit left-wing agenda,” Marshall said. “This very much includes BBC Verify which is frankly an abuse of taxpayer money and should be shut down.”

GB News has accused of spreading misleading information – including conspiracy theories – since it launched in June 2021, and has been regularly probed by broadcast regulator Ofcom.

In February 2024, HOPE not hate revealed that Marshall had been liking and retweeting posts on X expressing a wide variety of anti-Muslim views, including a post that called for the “mass expulsions” of refugees. Responding to HOPE not hate, a representative for Marshall said: “He posts on a wide variety of subjects and those cited represent a small and unrepresentative sample of over 5,000 posts. This sample does not represent his views.”

As DeSmog has reported, GB News frequently platforms individuals who deny basic climate science, while its guests and presenters attacked climate action nearly 1,000 times in the immediate run-up and aftermath of the 2024 general election.

BBC Verify has debunked false claims about climate issues, including whether the UK is meeting its net zero targets, on the supposed need for new North Sea oil and gas extraction, and false claims about extreme weather events.

As DeSmog has revealed, Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace had billions invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023. One of its major investors, the private equity giant KKR, which is tipped to buy Thames Water, is itself a significant fossil fuel investor.

Richard Wilson, founder of Stop Funding Hate, told DeSmog: “A fossil fuel magnate is pushing for the break-up of the BBC – and lobbying for its fact-checking service to be shut down – while bankrolling a TV channel that pumps out toxic misinformation on climate change.

“GB News has lost over £100 million as advertisers continue to steer clear. So it’s understandable that the channel’s owner would want to lash out at Stop Funding Hate supporters. But we’re happy to take these attacks as a badge of honour – and another sign that our campaigning is working.”

Marshalling the Right

Marshall is a major player in the transatlantic network of radical right-wing politics. He is a co-founder with Canadian activist Jordan Peterson of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an anti-climate lobby group to which Marshall’s Sequoia Trust gave £1 million in 2023.

His attacks on the BBC echo those of Reform UK, whose leader Nigel Farage receives a six-figure salary to host his own show on GB News.

Reform’s manifesto for the 2024 election included a pledge to scrap the BBC licence fee, labelling the broadcaster “institutionally biased” and “wasteful”.

“Marshall and his professional disinfluencers know they’ve utterly lost the fight on facts, and instead of being correct, they’ve started attacking the fact checking referees at the BBC,” said Philip Newell, communications co-chair of the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition.

“In a healthy democracy, unbiased news is a vital tool of holding the rich accountable – which is exactly why one part of the disinformation playbook is to attack fact checkers and media institutions that speak truth to power. That an oily hedge fund baron has attacked the BBC only further confirms its validity and value.”

More recently, Donald Trump’s administration in the U.S. cut government funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS, accusing them of bias.

The Pharos Foundation, which offers “Marshall fellowships” in Sir Paul’s honour, is also politically connected.

Pharos director Neil Record donated £10,000 and the use of office space to Kemi Badenoch’s campaign for the Tory leadership last autumn. Badenoch stayed at Record’s Gloucestershire estate in February ahead of a flagship speech attacking net zero targets.

Record is chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which claims carbon dioxide emissions are “not pollution” and could be a “benefit” to the planet.

He is also a life vice president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an anti-regulation think tank that has received funding from the oil giant BP.

Pharos was also co-founded by historian Nigel Biggar, who was nominated for a peerage by Badenoch in late 2024.

After purchasing The Spectator in September 2024 for £100 million, Marshall appointed former Conservative Party Cabinet minister Michael Gove as its editor.

Gove is the founder of think tank Policy Exchange, whose head of political economy James Vitali is a current Pharos research fellow. Marshall donated £890,000 to Policy Exchange between 2020 and 2023.

The chair of Pharos’ development committee, Sian Hansen, until recently worked as chief operating officer at CT Group, the lobbying firm that has represented the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as the Legatum Institute), whose funder the Legatum Group co-owns GB News with Paul Marshall.

CT Group has lobbied on behalf of oil and gas companies, and its clients have included the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association and BHP, which has mining and oil assets.

Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

Continue ReadingGB News Owner Paul Marshall Calls for BBC’s Fact-Checking Service to be Shut Down

Swiss Glacier Collapse That Buried Village Likely a ‘Direct Result of Our Warming Climate’

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

This May 29, 2025 aerial photograph shows the town of Blatten, in the Bietschhorn mountain of the Swiss Alps, destroyed by a landslide after part of the huge Birch Glacier collapsed and was swallowed up by the river Lonza the day before. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

“What happened to Birch Glacier is what we would expect from rising temperatures in the Alps and elsewhere,” one scientist said.

Thawing permafrost exacerbated by human-caused global heating is the likely culprit behind a massive glacier collapse that buried nearly the entire Swiss town of Blatten, one scientist said Thursday while warning of the likelihood of similar disasters in the future.

The alpine hamlet of 300 inhabitants—who were evacuated earlier amid warning signs of disaster—was almost completely wiped out on Wednesday after the Birch Glacier, located in the Lötschental Valley in northern Switzerland, collapsed. The glacial avalanche, laden with boulders and other debris, cascaded down the mountainside and into the village, obliterating everything in its path. Local officials said around 90% of Blatten was buried.

“We’ve lost our village,” Blatten Mayor Matthias Bellwald told reporters. “The village is under rubble. We will rebuild.”

before and after today’s glacier collapse that buried 90% of blatten, switzerland

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer.com) 2025-05-28T22:01:19.155Z

While there are no verified casualties from the disaster, one 64-year-old man has been reported missing.

Mathieu Morlighem, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, told ABC News that permafrost thaw under and along the sidewalls surrounding the glacier likely caused the collapse.

“What happened to Birch Glacier is what we would expect from rising temperatures in the Alps and elsewhere,” he explained. “I think we can expect more events like this in the future.”

As ABC News reported:

Glaciers in Switzerland have lost almost 40% of their volume since 2000, and the loss is accelerating, according to the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research. Record-high summer temperatures in 2022 and 2023 caused a 10% glacial ice loss in the country.

Experts warn that Switzerland’s glaciers could disappear completely by 2100 due to the climate emergency.

As Common Dreams reported in March, the crisis is planetary and is predicted to adversely affect nearly 2 billion people who depend upon glaciers for agricultural irrigation and drinking water.

“Most of the world’s glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide,” a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization report published earlier this year warned. “Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns… this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability.”

The Swiss collapse happened a day before Thursday’s opening of the High-Level International Conference on Glaciers’ Preservation in Tajikistan, which aims to “highlight the vital role of glaciers in maintaining global ecological balance and addressing water-related challenges.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingSwiss Glacier Collapse That Buried Village Likely a ‘Direct Result of Our Warming Climate’