Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978 • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by maxlybbert » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

esailija wrote: post #182

maxlybbert wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “97% consensus” number is based on surveys of scientists in general, not just climate scientists. Including scientists when they agree with a position, but not when they disagree (because they aren’t real climate experts) is a very strange debate tactic.

Well, everything you said is false: "Among the most-cited is a 2013 study of nearly 12,000 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers on climate science published since 1990, of which just over 4,000 papers expressed an opinion on the cause of recent global warming. Of these, 97% agree, explicitly or implicitly, that global warming is happening and is human-caused."

It looks like you’re right.

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

#212

Post by perfunctory » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #200

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.

True. And to be honest I am not sure how lifestyle emissions are calculated. Does it include the cost of manufacturing and bringing goods to the market? Can't we argue that most emissions are ultimately lifestyle related?

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

#213

Post by radford-neal » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #83

radford-neal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk of "efforts to protect what natural habitats are left" does not seem to relate to warming from CO2 emissions. Except, that is, that if you're concerned about protecting habitats, you should be concerned about some of the boondoggles destroying them that are justified by "global warming" alarmism - such as replacing natural forests with monocultures of trees that are converted to pellets and shipped long distance…

Almost every one of your posts here is to refute climate change. Someone could be forgiven for thinking you have an interest in fossil fuels. Edit: I see from your CV that you have a history of working with the fossil fuel industry - specifically, Exxon in Calgary in the early 80’s. I think it’s safe to disregard anything you have to say on the topic.

You appear to be unable to count. I've posted occasionally on climate change, but these are nowhere close to "almost every one" of my posts.

I have never worked for Exxon. I've no idea how you came up with that idea. I once worked briefly, 39 years ago, for a company that did production accounting for oil wells. I once worked, 30 years ago, for a SCADA company that may have had oil industry customers, though my recollection is that they had more to do with municipal water systems. The tendency of global warming alarmists to claim, on no evidence whatsoever, that any critic is funded by the fossil fuel industry is one of their most despicable characteristics (up their with trying to equate their critics with Holocaust deniers).

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

#214

Post by Frondo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #177

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goods were more expensive in general when a sales tax or VAT was brought in. Without riots or oppressive regime. If taxes and regulation penalise meat, people will buy less meat - just as taxes and regulation have changed the town landscape from cigarette butts everywhere, to remarkably infrequent. When I was at school pretty much everyone smoked. Now it's really uncommon to see a smoker. Again, there were no riots o…

None of those things are even remotely comparable to eating meat. Meat is the easiest way to have a balanced diet in terms of nutrition. When you increase the price then people will simply pay more. Besides, VAT and other such taxes are only around 20%. You need far more than that. Look at the Yellow Vests if you want to see what happens when prices go too high. We even have instances of political parties being voted…

Meat is easiest because it's sold everywhere. Where I live, someone makes a variety of vegan convenience food that they've managed to get stocked in 7-11s all over the place. The food is all comparably priced to meat-based equivalents (this is stuff like "vegan bbq pulled meat hand-pie") but completely plant-based.

If you ate one of those, you'd find it as filling, tasty, and satisfying as something meat-based.

In fact, eating those (just out of curiosity) was the thing that even opened me up to a meat-free diet, because before that, I'd had friends serve me tempe, tofu, etc., and man that stuff is a bad introduction to a plant-based diet.

If you added a tax on meat to where the tasty, high-quality plant-based thing being sold at the 7-11s was now 20% cheaper, people would switch and not even think twice about it.

The problem is that, up to now, people package plant-based food as part of a lifestyle, and not just something tasty to stand alone on its own. Hopefully the impossible burger and beyond meat close that gap, too. You shouldn't need to be a straight-edge hardcore vegan to eat only plants 6 out of 7 days of the week.

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

#215

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #94

crispinb wrote: post #5

Not news of course, but worth restating. Credulous 'scepticism' about the fundamentals of the climate collapse threat has been largely driven by corporate propaganda campaigns. Those campaigns were themselves constructed by people who weren't 'sceptics' -- they believed AGM was happening -- but considered their short-term profitability more important. Climate collapse 'sceptics' were nearly all gulls.

This is one way to look at it. My view is that climate change is a world problem. Governments will not oblige their citizens to make steps on their consumption if it means reducing their comfort and their economic power. Steps should be taken in advance so that once green deals are put in place, countries can implement those effortlessly. We often hear that some countries don't make enough efforts, but 1. Other count…

" if it means reducing their comfort and their economic power."

This is not really clear. You could argue that using more solar and electric vehicles will increase comfort due to cleaner air.

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

#216

Post by anthuman » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

josho wrote: post #208

anthuman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your comment seems completely rational but ignores that we have science refuting your opinion. Not only that, the research on this comes from different branches of science that all converge on the same conclusions. I suggest you do a little more reading on the topic. Storms of My GrandChildren is an easy place to start. And as always if you have a good source that disputes climate science I would really appreciate a…

"Storms of our Children"? Were you the same person recommending "2012 end of the world" books a decade ago?

Also, "science" hasn't refuted anything I said. I'm the only one who linked to science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#/media/Fi...

That is a list of significant climate changes just in the last 20000 years ( a very short time period relatively speaking ). We don't know the definitive "why" of any of those natural shifts in climate. If you know why these climate changes occurred before humans started using fossil fuels, please let me know. And please let me know the percentages in temperature increase that nature is responsible for and humans are responsible for.

I went into greater detail here if you are interested.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991130

My advice is not to read mass market "oh think of the children" rubbish like "Storms of our Children". Instead look at the facts and think for yourself.

If you have a climate model that works, let me know. If you have any climate scientist who knows why climate shifted in the past, let me know. It's amazing how when it comes to "end of the world nonsense", people will believe anything without any real science behind it.

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

#217

Post by inflatableDodo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #94

crispinb wrote: post #5

Not news of course, but worth restating. Credulous 'scepticism' about the fundamentals of the climate collapse threat has been largely driven by corporate propaganda campaigns. Those campaigns were themselves constructed by people who weren't 'sceptics' -- they believed AGM was happening -- but considered their short-term profitability more important. Climate collapse 'sceptics' were nearly all gulls.

This is one way to look at it. My view is that climate change is a world problem. Governments will not oblige their citizens to make steps on their consumption if it means reducing their comfort and their economic power. Steps should be taken in advance so that once green deals are put in place, countries can implement those effortlessly. We often hear that some countries don't make enough efforts, but 1. Other count…

>Governments will not oblige their citizens to make steps on their consumption if it means reducing their comfort and their economic power.

The UK government is currently delivering on all three, though I suspect not for any ecological reasons.

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

#218

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

murat124 wrote: post #43

Former Exxon CEO and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson famously stated in 2013 during a meeting with Exxonmobil shareholders: "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers"[1]. He explained, "As a species that’s why we’re all still here: we have spent our entire existence adapting. So we will adapt to this. It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions." The idea that the humans will s…

That's sort of in line with the "starve the beast" ideology. Take on a lot of debt now so the next generation has no choice but to shrink government.

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

#219

Post by bumby » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

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…

I think the difficulty here is getting a consensus on #1.

If it's an international effort, there's going to be disagreement on how to set a budget. Does a country with an emerging economy get a higher budget because they're behind more advanced economies who benefited from fossil fuels in their past growth? Getting advanced economies to make a disproportionate sacrifice will be a hard sell. And what is the accountability/oversight mechanism at the international level?

If instead the budget was set at the national level, you're going to have a hard time getting countries on-board if they see other countries not doing the same. "Why should we hamper our economy when country X isn't making a sacrifice?"

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

#220

Post by Frondo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #203

esailija wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that it is human caused. Being "skeptic" about this is like being a flat earther. Baseless skepticism is not any better than blind faith.

Not that's not the scientific consensus but thanks for proving my point by arguing in blind faith. The scientific consensus which EVERYONE agrees about even the so-called skeptics is that the climate is changing. There is no consensus that it's human-caused, there are some indications that humans have an effect but you won't find any actual scientific proof of how much. So the real question here is why you blindly be…

Actually, yeah, something like 99% of working scientists in climate-related fields agree it's human-caused. There've been a number of meta-studies about this.

If you want to know more, you can google this. It's a discussion that, if not for the fossil fuel money being pumped into stirring up controversy (also well demonstrated, also google-able), would have been settled long ago.

As a depressing parallel, there are also HIV deniers, too. There's one prominent scientist, I think the guy who invented PCR, who claims that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS, and he's got a small following. It's dwindled over the years, but he's still out there, trying to raise doubts despite the mainstream science on HIV leading to treatments and even possible cures, while his work leads to nothing.

Edited to mention: of course! There are also evolution deniers! Why does everyone dismiss them, but open their arms to skeptics of human-caused climate change? What's different about human-caused climate change and evolution?