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Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

thecompost.io

221–230 of 340 posts

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

#221

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…

The IPCC reports speak a pretty clear language. For what reasons do you not believe them?

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

#222
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously not true. How would you stop runaway methane release from permafrost for example?

Where is that scientifically demonstrated to happen (not just speculated) and keep in mind Methane has a "half life"

I don't know about you, but I see a pretty clear trend here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions#/medi...

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

#223
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…

And of course, this is only a short term policy since we have to get to negative emissions with a budget of zero fast.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and there's the Extinction Rebellion stuff in the UK. Here in Australia we're kind of complacent/lazy, not often giving a stuff about anything except sports, celebrities, and limitless acquisition of consumer crap. But there is a bit of the school strike stuff happening. It's all a bit marginal though, isn't it? People might object to the 'quasi religious' aspect of what you're talking about. I'd make the point…

I can only speak out of my bubble here, but I believe the Fridays for Future movement and resistance against the copyright reform really shook the German youth and the whole country as a consequence. I have a feeling things are actually moving: A few days ago a mid-sized German YouTuber has published a 1 hour long video harshly criticizing the major German party CDU, not for its support of the copyright reform, but l…

People have been doing this forever, as in ecological propaganda. Even better, we had monkey-wrenching ecoterrorism.

Some youtuber putting out some random video is marginal at best. Kind of hopeless, honestly.

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

#225
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…

There are tons of real world proposals that do this.

Here's one that's in Congress now that you can support: the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org) . All revenue from a carbon tax goes to citizens as a yearly check. It has some 30+ cosponsors, including a Republican. A tax at point of source is more efficent than a per-item budget. Any rising cost of CO2 will be accounted for in the price of the product. Fossil-fuel-expensive products will cost more.

The group behind this is the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has been advocating a fee and dividend model for over a decade. It was cofounded by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago.

In addition, if you live in the states of Oregon and New York, both are on the cusp of passing similar legislation. And there are many more out there in various stages of development...

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

#226

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…

You don't have to stop eating meat completely. It just becomes more expensive.

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

#227

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…

Do you eat organ meat? That's where most of the necessary nutrients are.

https://terrywahls.com/minding-your-mitochondria-dr-terry-wa...

How much protein do you eat per day? Anything more than 5-6 ounces of meat per day is just wasted, harmful.

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

#228
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 not a well supported position. There are numerous well established scientists who have expressed concern and criticism on the current 'consensus' in regards to climate change. These include for instances Richard Lindzen [1], a member of the National Academies of Science, an MIT atmospheric physicist, and also a lead author on one of the scientific sections of IPCC climate report. Appeals to authority are foolish, but I think his credentialing is relevant to this discussion.

Beyond that, one major issue is that the extreme politicization of this issues makes it difficult for people to speak freely. Anybody who speaks their mind on this topic, when such view doesn't abide the 'proper' view is labeled, attacked, and ostracized when and if possible. So you end up primarily with radicals, fools, and a handful of people with extremely thick skin willing to speak. A similar treatment was given to those who, for instance, suggested that leaded fuel might indeed be harmful - the official government and 'consensus' position for decades was that it was safe or posed negligible risk.

I am not, in this posting, thus taking any side. But I do think if you ever want to achieve progress on any topic, people being able to speak freely is critical to progress. Only weak or poorly supported ideas need fear 'contrarian' views. And even in the rare case where those weak or poorly supported ideas happen to be the truth, they invariably become stronger over time (due to the accumulation of validated falsifiable evidence) while, vice versa, alternative views become weaker.

But perhaps more importantly, I think the desire to squash contrarian views has a paradoxical effect. The idea is of course to try to prevent the spread of these ideas, yet in reality there never works - even less so now that we've entered the era of the internet. See: China + Winnie the Pooh for an amusing example. But far more critically, I think efforts to avoid discussion are often seen as an inability to compellingly respond. Once ideas reach a critical mass, they will spread unless compellingly challenged. Refusing to challenge these ideas in a fair and impartial way only strengthens them.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

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

#229
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…

There are tons of real world proposals that do this. Here's one that's in Congress now that you can support: the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act ( http://energyinnovationact.org ) . All revenue from a carbon tax goes to citizens as a yearly check. It has some 30+ cosponsors, including a Republican. A tax at point of source is more efficent than a per-item budget. Any rising cost of CO2 will be accounted for…

Thank you. I live in Switzerland not the US, so I’m not well informed on US legislation. What about my points 1 and 2? Is the roadmap reliable and aggressive, and are all products incl. imported ones included.

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

#230
post #22

It's terrible to think that maybe if Exxon and others didn't invest in lobbying and disinformation campaigns against climate change maybe humanity would have started acting 30 years earlier. It's 2019 and humanity is barely starting to think about acting. Global CO2 emissions keep growing as if we were in "business as usual". Humanity needs to realize the magnitude of the problem. Climate change is, by far, the bigge…

> maybe humanity would have started acting 30 years earlier. I wouldn't bet on it. We know we can cut emissions today by investing in nuclear ... and nothing. We could have invested in nuclear power 30 years ago and prevented trillions of tons of CO2 from being emitted. Instead we decided wind/solar/natural gas (and those are always package deal) is our best bet at fighting climate change. >For example, we can't keep…

I don't disagree about nuclear, but you have to consider that the public opinion has been told for decades that climate change was a myth. Even today so many people use the word "believe" to talk about climate change. You can't believe a fact.
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