Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 174 posts

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

#111

Post by lasfter »

sokoloff wrote: post #106
lasfter wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice is there for consumers but to demand oil? If cities create suburban sprawl and inadequate public transportation, it's the consumer's fault for using a car? If every industry whose products I require to participate in society uses oil, how can I choose otherwise? I really don't understand your point and your smug judgements on consumers. Do you consume no oil products? Or are you just saying that you knew…

I think the reductionist blame-shifting of "consumers get a pass because not buying oil is inconvenient because " is unhelpful. I don't get confused or pretend that oil companies go to great lengths to provide oil to the world because they're evil. They do it because people (you and me and billions of others) demand it and benefit from it. We can't reap the benefits and avoid the blame for our choices. (I mean, we ob…

I don't say oil is convenient, I say oil is necessary. Is farming your own food without any fossil fuels possible for you? For me, it is impossible. Not inconvenient, not infeasible, but impossible. I can't afford land to farm on, I can't buy or catch or tend to farm animals to replace tractors, I can't buy or make farm tools that do not come from fossil fuels. Alas, I have to buy food shipped to me using fossil fuels, and farmed using fossil fuels.

If I pay taxes I help subsidize fossil fuels. If I get an EV its manufacturer burned fossil fuels to create it and ship it to me.

Tell me who I can vote for to change this. Tell me how I can eat without using fossil fuels. Tell me how I can work without using fossil fuels. Tell me what choices I can make so that I am not to blame.

There is no such choice. I literally cannot avoid fossil fuels.

Maybe if we could all agree that the fault is indeed with fossil fuel companies, who not only provide oil but also lobby the government to prevent us from moving away from it. Maybe then, we could have the actual change you are clearly so invested in.

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

#112

Post by moistly »

LarryMullins wrote: post #44
kingstoned wrote: post #13

It reminds me of tobacco industry. Check out this article: https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill...

American propagandist and inventor of "PR", Edward Bernays, is infamous for convincing American women to smoke cigarettes. But privately, he wanted his own wife to quit.

And then there are the people who sell phone/tablet devices, and child-oriented apps and games through their walled-garden stores — and at the same time have banned the devices for their own children.

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

#113

Post by dang »

manv1 wrote: post #8

[flagged]

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(We've unbreathtaken the title now)

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

#114

Post by wahern »

lonelyasacloud wrote: post #110
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…

As is normally attributed to Burke, "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

Weren't all these studies leaked decades ago by some of the same scientists who drafted them?

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

#115

Post by yreg »

ars wrote: post #100
anakaine wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a good observation. It's so sad that we haven't used the best tool we had. We still don't use it properly even now, when it's clear that we are already in a terrible crisis.

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

#116

Post by credit_guy »

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…

> Now... the leadership folks who commissioned these predictions and then ignored them... That's another matter!

Ok, you made me curious. What were they supposed to do? Stop drilling and selling oil? Ask the government for increased taxes to take care of externalities? Dismantle the corporation? Just resign and go find a job in a different industry?

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

#117

Post by anigbrowl »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #30
mschuster91 wrote: post #14

Surprise, surprise. And yet, Big Oil continued to launch campaigns designed to deflect responsibility from companies and governments away to individual consumers, like BP's "carbon footprint" [1]. When will those responsible be held accountable for helping to advance the destruction of climate and the immense loss of life and property that climate change has brought? How can we explain to our children and grandchildr…

>When will those responsible be held accountable You have sown the revolving door and now you reap its harvest. Nobody will be held to account so long as the institutions that would be doing the holding have a massive overlap in relevant skills, subject matter and therefore, personnel (especially at the management levels where these sorts of decisions get made).

Who are you addressing here with 'you'?

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

#118

Post by wahern »

lordnacho wrote: post #26
kingstoned wrote: post #13

It reminds me of tobacco industry. Check out this article: https://pandodaily.com/2015/06/30/tobacco-industry-will-kill...

Tobacco is a good one actually. A legendary statistician, IIRC Fisher(?), came up with a bunch of reasons why the statistics might not show causality. As in, how do we know it isn't just people who were at higher risk of dying that smoked? He had a whole bunch of these statistical critical thinking type objections that are all very valid from an epistemological point of view. Climate change actually has the same. The…

> very valid from an epistemological point of view

Philosophers can be dangerous creatures (if unwittingly), perhaps some of the most dangerous. It's incredible how you can draw a straight line from many of the most destructive political narratives (across the spectrum) to reasonable seeming scholarly papers and debates.

There's a near universal consensus today regarding the horrible, unacceptable presumptions behind Social Darwinism and related theories from the turn of the 20th century. Mid-century philosophers, particularly structuralists and post-structuralists, led the charge in attacking those earlier theories. (By first identifying the underlying cultural presumptions, and then "deconstructing" them.) And yet you can draw a straight line from, say, Putin's whataboutism and ethnoreligious rhetoric--not to mention all the culture war narratives (from both the left and right)--straight to those philosophical ideas and debates--i.e. structuralism, post-structuralism, etc. I mean, Putin's rhetoric has always existed in some form, but those and other philosophical schools absolutely supercharged the rhetoric and its intellectual resilience. If there is no objective truth, and if even older moral pillars of Western philosophy, like the exaltation of individual dignity, can be just as illegitimate as any other principle, then Putin supporters can argue the legitimacy of his viewpoint and it would be dishonest to outright reject absolutely everything about it. (There are obvious and time-tested counterarguments, but they're in tension with favored moral norms in the West, such as victim culture. The left birthed victim culture, linking moral worth to membership of a persecuted minority, but the right has embraced it for all its worth.)

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

#119

Post by kitkat_new »

ars wrote: post #99
_visgean wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

cycling, going vegan, renewables

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

#120

Post by teovall »

ars wrote: post #100
anakaine wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fear of nuclear power isn't unnecessary. We're talking about a giant company doing terrible things and a government unwilling and unable to do anything about it. Why then should the answer to that problem be trusting big companies and the government to safely run nuclear power plants?
Post reply on HN