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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

#191

Post by specialist »

civility wrote: post #150
ljcn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lot" maybe, but I suspect the majority would do the opposite and deny/understate the problem. Also the parent comment is more about risk management. The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind. The precautionary principle is a statutory requirement in law in some jurisdictions to help avoid the worst outcomes.

> I suspect the majority would do the opposite and deny/understate the problem. I don't know. I've seen so much fear-mongering in my life. We're all going to die from zika, n1h1, ebola, killer bees, aids, mrsa, terrorists, and so on. In each case, there's something to be afraid of, and you might actually know someone who died in one those ways, but the media and the lay people blow it way out of proportion. The peopl…

I think about this all the time.

America has an apocalyptical culture. Probably from the cultural imprint of our end times themed christianity during the early years. That whole book of revelations madness. (The Puritans who first colonized the New World were fruitcakes, even back then.)

But we did come very close to snuffing ourselves with nukes a few times.

And ever since I started paying attention to ecological collapse, mid 1980s, pretty much all the predictions have come true. (The only confusing bit there is we've also had amazing technical progress, masking the underlying destruction.)

I so hope that I'm just being an alarmist and it's all going to work out. I have kids, and hopefully grandkids one day. Yet I remain concerned.

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

#192

Post by soulofmischief »

chx wrote: post #126
jhellan wrote: post #117

We all knew. I learned about CO2 greenhouse warming in high school in 1974. At a lecture at the University of Trondheim, Norway, around 1980, (in)famous physicist Edward Teller joked that we of all people shouldn't be worried about global warming.

Teller warned the oil industry in 1959 . https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

I know Teller wanted to come across as calm and respectable so that people would take him seriously, but if he could look back now he would probably have acted like a deranged lunatic preaching in the streets about the dangers of carbon pollution.

I also think the same of Carl Sagan. For all his wonderful and critical achievements, I bet if he could see how things turned out, he would have unquestioningly devoted his life to spreading awareness about climate change here on Earth instead of focusing on astronomy and nuclear war.

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

#193

Post by FrojoS »

Slightly tangential, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the political way forward for big countries:

1. Have a single CO2 budget for the whole country, with an aggressive, Hard to change roadmap of yearly reduction of said budget down to zero in the not too long future.

2. Estimate the CO2 footprint of every single product, incl. imports by one or several neutral organizations. This doesn’t have to be perfect as long as it attempts to be fair.

3. Tax every product according to this budget using supply/demand markets (certificates trading).

4. Redistribute the tax, especially to mitigate the hardship on low income households and domestic companies.

In my mind, this would create a gigantic incentive for CO2 reduction for your citizens as well as domestic AND foreign companies. Crucially, it would not require any global agreement and consensus. Apart from perhaps renegotiation or canceling of trade agreements on the side of the country that implements the policy.

Note, that you can replace CO2 by greenhouse gases or environmental impact in general. I just use it as a shorthandle.

Very curious about your opinions.

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

#194

Post by EForEndeavour »

ls612 wrote: post #81
EForEndeavour wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both US population and absolute US greenhouse gas emissions have been growing over time. Population has simply grown proportionally faster than emissions. So yes, US emissions per capita have decreased over time, but total US emissions have been rising, and that's what affects climate.

US emissions have declined about 15% in absolute terms since the early 2000s. That’s a billion tons less per year. Unfortunately China added about 10 billion tons a year in the same period so it didn’t help very much.

I'm embarrassed that I didn't know total annual US CO2e emissions have _dropped_ since circa 2005. My only source when I wrote my comment was the in-browser graph in the Wolfram Alpha search result for "us greenhouse gas emissions history" (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+greenhouse+gas+emis...), which presents a data period of only 1990-2005. A more complete source is https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/.

Thank you for reminding me not to hastily extrapolate data when it happens to fit my expectation of what's going on, and when actual data are readily available.

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

#196

Post by scroot »

FrojoS wrote: post #193

Slightly tangential, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the political way forward for big countries: 1. Have a single CO2 budget for the whole country, with an aggressive, Hard to change roadmap of yearly reduction of said budget down to zero in the not too long future. 2. Estimate the CO2 footprint of every single product, incl. imports by one or several neutral organizations. This doesn’t have to be perfe…

Could this result in moving to countries that don't have such policies, thereby allowing for increasing emissions (ie carbon tax havens)

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

#197

Post by the_duke »

soulofmischief wrote: post #189

I made a choice-based game a few months ago about dealing with the political realities of climate change, inspired by Sara Teasdale and Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains . You can play it online here: https://tinyurl.com/43softrains-v1-1 I have been considering pursuing funding for making similar choice-based games like this one and integrating them with classroom curriculums.

This is very cool!

Is the code open source? I would love to have a translated version of this and encourage the younger members of my family to play it.

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

#198

Post by esailija »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #20

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.

Even if a fossil fuel company did the right thing, unfortunately all it takes is another fossil fuel company doing the wrong thing so that the end result is the same. The only difference is that the companies who did the right thing just get screwed. You need regulation to force every company to do the right thing so that no 1 company can screw it for everyone else.

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

#199

Post by inflatableDodo »

anthuman wrote: post #158
adrianN wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you literally don't believe the raw numbers coming from sensors all over the world there is no room for doubting that the climate is changing. There can, and has been, plenty of discussion as to the reasons, but for at least thirty years now the consensus has been that human activity is responsible for the vast majority of the effects we've seen.

The climate has always been changing. That's the problem. We have been in a "long trend" global warming period for at least 20,000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum Much of the world was under ice 20K years ago. And the earth has generally warmed since then and melted much of the ice ( with occasional refreezes ). And the "consensus" that human activity is responsible is utter nonsense. Feel f…

>We had 30 years of consensus on global cooling.

No we didn't. That is completely and utterly false.

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

#200

Post by the_duke »

perfunctory wrote: post #141

World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions [0] If my math is right, if the top decile reduced their emissions at least to the level of the second decide, the global emissions would fall by 30%. Dear HN crowd, I bet a fair share of us belongs to the top 10%, please reduce your emissions. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...

This report only deals with "lifestyle related emissions", not total emissions.

A large percentage of emissions is transportation, manufacturing, heating and electricity.

While the rich will consume more, the effect on total emissions is much lower.

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