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Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

theguardian.com

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Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#91

Post by fwungy »

erulabs wrote: post #85

I've chatted with a few folks who have spent their entire lives working in climate science while being employed by the oil industry. They're some of the most moderate, intelligent, considered people I've ever talked to. And most people hear "a climate scientist who works for an oil company" and assumes they're the worst sort - a profiteer or a liar or a complicit drone. They're not leadership - they don't get to deci…

International oil companies are a small piece of the production pie. Even if they all shut down it's the state oil companies that do the bulk of the production.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#92

Post by anakaine »

ars wrote: post #84
V__ wrote: post #60

I don't want to wish someone the worst. But I wouldn't loose one second of sleep if all those people involved in delaying climate action got some karmic justice.

The only kind of climate action possible in those days was nuclear power. If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you will discover it was environmentalists.

So because alternative technology didn't exist there was no case to have the discussion and invest more heavily in alternative green tech research, shortening the time frame to action and reducing dependence on fossil fuels earlier?

This isn't about what occurred then, it's about the time and opportunity cost of inaction that was fostered by rubbishing climate science and hiding the research.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#93

Post by shawnb576 »

fwungy wrote: post #91
erulabs wrote: post #85

I've chatted with a few folks who have spent their entire lives working in climate science while being employed by the oil industry. They're some of the most moderate, intelligent, considered people I've ever talked to. And most people hear "a climate scientist who works for an oil company" and assumes they're the worst sort - a profiteer or a liar or a complicit drone. They're not leadership - they don't get to deci…

International oil companies are a small piece of the production pie. Even if they all shut down it's the state oil companies that do the bulk of the production.

OK well then, we'd better not do anything about it!

I don't think this is strictly true. Oil production is not fully fungible due to all kinds of issues including sanctions and production capacity.

But this is also a strawman - this isn't saying "we should shut them all down" or even begging that question.

At a minimum it's saying "there were people and companies who intentionally chose to mislead the public on a potentially existential issue - perhaps there should be some reckoning for that?"

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#94

Post by AstralStorm »

ars wrote: post #84
V__ wrote: post #60

I don't want to wish someone the worst. But I wouldn't loose one second of sleep if all those people involved in delaying climate action got some karmic justice.

The only kind of climate action possible in those days was nuclear power. If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you will discover it was environmentalists.

Nah, we had wind power available since at least 50s, and hydropower could be used too. Hoover dam is pretty old...

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#96

Post by fwungy »

shawnb576 wrote: post #93
fwungy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International oil companies are a small piece of the production pie. Even if they all shut down it's the state oil companies that do the bulk of the production.

OK well then, we'd better not do anything about it! I don't think this is strictly true. Oil production is not fully fungible due to all kinds of issues including sanctions and production capacity. But this is also a strawman - this isn't saying "we should shut them all down" or even begging that question. At a minimum it's saying "there were people and companies who intentionally chose to mislead the public on a pot…

https://www.aei.org/economics/environmental-energy-economics...

I never said don't do anything.

What I believe is that we need to balance carbon elimination w/ carbon mitigation and not put all our eggs in the elimination basket.

We've got one chance to do this right.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#97

Post by klyrs »

LarryMullins wrote: post #83
klyrs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the ~40k employees of the coal industry[1], who are used as a scapegoat by the politicians (ahem, Manchin) who take the most ardent stands against modernization of our electrical infrastructure. And I'd bet that most of those employees' skills would transfer pretty directly to any other sort of mining. But it's just not that many people. We could cut them each a $1M check for the trouble, which is about 10…

It's easy to claim coal miners could transition to another mining industry, but what mining industry in those regions could absorb that many miners? None I think. It's not as though a secession of coal mining would create a boom in other mining industries. > We could cut them each a $1M check for the trouble, which is about 10 years worth of coal subsidies[2]. Maybe if they were offered that deal for real, they'd tak…

I don't think this is about politicians duping coal workers, no. And that $1M bonus idea is just a comparison of scale. It's a comparatively tiny industry, which is extremely harmful to the environment and its workers. There are certainly coal-mining towns that exist solely because of what's in the ground, and of course you can't just dig up something else there.

I'm not a "rootless cosmopolitan tech worker," I'm one of the only cousins in my family who isn't blue-collar or in deep poverty. I don't expect this to be painless, but we need to get off of coal for the good of the species.

I don't think the coal workers are being duped. I know that they're in a really tough spot. I think that the coal (and more generally fossil-fuel) executives are lobbying politicians hard, with complete disregard for the long-term impact that we've known very clearly for _decades_ now. Follow the money: politicians and executives are raking it in, and the small population of front-line workers' lives depend on it. Blame the politicians, blame the executives, who make their decisions for personal benefit at great cost to humanity.

Quitting tobacco, as a person, is hard in part because of withdrawal symptoms. The analog for quitting coal, as a nation, is that an industry needs to die. We need good policies to take care of the people whose jobs are impacted, but we techies are in large part responsible for automating away entire industries -- way more than 40k jobs -- and who's there to take care of _those_ workers?

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#98

Post by ars »

AstralStorm wrote: post #94
ars wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only kind of climate action possible in those days was nuclear power. If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you will discover it was environmentalists.

Nah, we had wind power available since at least 50s, and hydropower could be used too. Hoover dam is pretty old...

All hydropower that can be used is already used, and without neodymium magnets (which were commercialized in 1982) wind power doesn't work well.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#99

Post by ars »

_visgean wrote: post #87
ars wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only kind of climate action possible in those days was nuclear power. If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you will discover it was environmentalists.

There was plenty of action possible; building more railways, different city design less dependent on car travel and maybe publishing their own research instead of burying it for 40 years...

Cars are around 10% of total energy usage, this would have only minimal impact.

I agree about the research, but that's unrelated to the point I was making.

Re: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

#100

Post by ars »

anakaine wrote: post #92
ars wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only kind of climate action possible in those days was nuclear power. If you go check who actually delayed nuclear deployment you will discover it was environmentalists.

So because alternative technology didn't exist there was no case to have the discussion and invest more heavily in alternative green tech research, shortening the time frame to action and reducing dependence on fossil fuels earlier? This isn't about what occurred then, it's about the time and opportunity cost of inaction that was fostered by rubbishing climate science and hiding the research.

You can certainly have the discussion, but it would not have helped. We are still having discussion TODAY and it's doing nothing of any consequence.

The only thing that matters for actual deployment is how much the energy source costs. Nuclear power costs were dramatically increased due to unnecessary fear.

For example solar power needs inverters - but those didn't work well back then. It just so happens to right now technology has finally reached the point that alternate power actually is cheap enough to deploy.

So we are deploying it.

All the "climate talk" is doing nothing, what actually matters is the money.

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