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Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

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Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#11

Post by School-Cotton »

bnolsen wrote: post #7

Having now been in China for several weeks this beating the drum trying to make americans feel guilty (and give power over to other people) is absolutely absurd. You want to control pollution the first places to start are china and india. The US in comparison produces negligible impact.

Nonsense. The US produces more than double the CO2 per capita as China.

As usual, total numbers are meaningless without scaling them by population. If China split into 100 independent states tomorrow, they wouldn't be a problem anymore by your metric, even if they produce exactly the same amount of CO2 as they do now.

Fair comparison with roughly equal population: Europe, the US, and Australia combined vs. China. And the former group produces more CO2 than the latter.

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#12

Post by torpfactory »

bnolsen wrote: post #7

Having now been in China for several weeks this beating the drum trying to make americans feel guilty (and give power over to other people) is absolutely absurd. You want to control pollution the first places to start are china and india. The US in comparison produces negligible impact.

That is simply not true. The US may not produce as much visible pollution anymore, but we still emit a ton of carbon. Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia are all about as much or more than us but China is significantly less per capita.

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#13

Post by undefined1 »

> The accuracy of their predictions are chilling — they anticipated (in their "21st Century Study-High Growth Scenario") that in 2020 atmospheric CO2 levels would fall between 400 and 420 ppm. They also foresaw the accompanying sea level rise, melting of polar ice sheets, change of rainfall patterns, and agricultural failures.

Wow. How does this compare to other predictions at the time?

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#14

Post by sbarker »

undefined1 wrote: post #13

> The accuracy of their predictions are chilling — they anticipated (in their "21st Century Study-High Growth Scenario") that in 2020 atmospheric CO2 levels would fall between 400 and 420 ppm. They also foresaw the accompanying sea level rise, melting of polar ice sheets, change of rainfall patterns, and agricultural failures. Wow. How does this compare to other predictions at the time?

Nostradamus.

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#15

Post by dcl »

rorykoehler wrote: post #6

There are articles that are over 100 years old that point out fossil fuels cause climate change. Surely they knew far earlier than 1978?

Those earlier articles made educated guesses that the greenhouse effect would eventually come in to play. Exxon attempted to model the effect to work out the possible impact.

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#16

Post by pier25 »

bnolsen wrote: post #7

Having now been in China for several weeks this beating the drum trying to make americans feel guilty (and give power over to other people) is absolutely absurd. You want to control pollution the first places to start are china and india. The US in comparison produces negligible impact.

Not only it is not negligible, the US produces about triple the world average per capita.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/20...

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#17

Post by Maarten88 »

undefined1 wrote: post #13

> The accuracy of their predictions are chilling — they anticipated (in their "21st Century Study-High Growth Scenario") that in 2020 atmospheric CO2 levels would fall between 400 and 420 ppm. They also foresaw the accompanying sea level rise, melting of polar ice sheets, change of rainfall patterns, and agricultural failures. Wow. How does this compare to other predictions at the time?

Maybe they were somewhat later, but Shell oil knew too. They did similar research and came to the same conclusions. Here is a video they made in 1991 warning about climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlYYlRN0LY

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#18

Post by throwaway66666 »

ajhaupt7 wrote: post #8
caminante wrote: post #2

OP do you have a connection to the blog? I noticed your submission history favors it.

Yep, I'm the author + developer -- hope there isn't a problem with posting your own content. I think there's value in it!

I (not a mod, just your a regular HN user) think it's perfectly fine to post your own content. As long as you don't spam it, and you don't post over-flattering headlines for it. And definitely way better than posting your content under a guise of an "unafilliated" friend. It will reach the front page and stay here only if it's good, so who cares if it came straight from the wolf's mouth.

Also pretty creepy that people go down post comments history to check who it is and where you 're coming from. Eh.

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#19

Post by rdm_blackhole »

No surprises there. I don't understand why it took so long to uncover the truth. Even today, they are just playing the long game using the same tactics that the tobacco industry used and deny, deny and deny some more.

Hopefully this company one day will be prosecuted.

Re: Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

#20

Post by crimsonalucard »

What do we expect? If your purpose in life was found to be a total lie. Do you bury the truth and deny it to yourself and the world? Or do you commit suicide?

Every fossil fuel company is going to lie their pants off because that's what you and all other humans would do if they got into the same situation.

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