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

#231

Post by lm28469 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

anthuman wrote: post #183

lm28469 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one denies that the climate changed before and that it's a natural thing. The problem is that in 100 years we went from slow changes to 10 times the amplitudes ever recorded. The questions isn't "Do these cycles exist ?" it's "Are we sure we want to trigger one early ?" Greenhouse effect is a very well studied effect. CO2 / other gases level are a very well studied field. CO2/other gases dramatically increased sin…

10 times the amplitudes ever recorded? Or are you just conveniently only looking at the past 150 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#/media/Fi... And my argument of taking water from the seas causing the rise and fall of tides is just as laughable as the "climatecentral.org" nonsense that is pushed everywhere. And linking to agenda driven "climatecentral.org" propagandists won't win anyone over…

> 10 times the amplitudes ever recorded? Or are you just conveniently only looking at the past 150 years?

Look at the units. 15c in 1000 years is less than what we're expecting if we continue on our trend (+2 to +5c by 2100, probably more after that once the reinforcement loop kicks in properly).

> The industry of climate fearmongering has more to do with politics/geopolitics than climate or science.

Yet the vast majority of deniers are politicians or people with no scientific credentials, and the extremely vast majority of scientists recognise that humans play a role in the current climate change.

> We don't know ... we don't know ... we don't know ...

Yeah sure, there are many things we don't know. But the things we know all point toward the same conclusion: the current change is at least partially man made and it'll suck balls if we continue on the trend.

> Yet, you are absolutely sure of man-made climate change.

Alright, let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm wrong; what then ? We can start mining coal again and stop investing in green energies I guess. Everything we do to curb down climate change, consuming less, polluting less, &c. is a net positive even if climate change isn't man made.

> We don't definitely know why we had a "little ice age" in the last millenia.

Yeah but what we definitely know is that it was not even -1c globally, over 200 years. For comparison we gained 1c between ~1910 and 2010, we expect 2 to 5 more by 2100.

> Though that idea may bruise our egos a bit.

The irony is lost on you I guess ...

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

#232

Post by macspoofing » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #115

macspoofing wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nucl... > I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned. > By Gregory Jaczko > Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012. The author is arguably talking his book, since he invested in a wind power company. But it's still noteworthy that nuclear physicists and f…

Here's the first line:

>The danger from climate change no longer outweighs the risks of nuclear accidents.

If that's the assumption, then yes, let's get rid of nukes.

Do you think the risk of nuclear accidents is more important than cutting CO2 emissions?

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

#233

Post by FrojoS » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #219

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 accountabi…

Sure. The Citizens need to be very willing to take sacrifices despite other countries not being onboard (yet). But they can if they want to!

In principal this already works in many cases, eg California/US subsidies on electric vehicles or Germany’s subsidies for solar. Both are very expensive with little benefit for the countries citizens compared to all other earthlings. To everyone else. They are just not aggressive enough.

Again, we don’t need an international consensus yet. The interesting part is putting financial pressure on foreign companies to reduce their CO2 footprint.

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

#234

Post by FrojoS » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

perfunctory wrote: post #206

scroot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would have to tax imports from those countries as well

Exactly. And sure, some people might move away because of this issue. But unless people start starving a majority won’t leave their homes. They will just revoke the legislation.

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

#235

Post by pier25 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #28

Maybe no help from Exxon, but US per capita CO2 has been decreasing since 1978. But China and India have increased per capita, which is scary given their huge populations.

Maybe it has been decreasing but it is still one of the highest in the world. 3 times above the world average.

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

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

#236

Post by macspoofing » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #230

macspoofing wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And you know what, anti-nuke position is still a way bigger problem than climate change denialism.

If you deny climate change, but you support nuclear power you're doing something to fight climate change.

If you believe in climate change, but you campaign against nuclear power you're actively adding to climate change.

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

#237

Post by jacobush » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

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.

"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and 𝙀𝙭𝙭𝙤𝙣. Those are the nations of the world today."

The Network (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9XeyBd_IuA

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

#238

Post by 0x262d » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

this is an example of what one could sarcastically describe as a "market failure"

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

#239

Post by rmellow » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #80

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.

there has been plenty of genuine scepticism from within the scientific community (as there should be). what has happened is that it has become politicized such that the science is suffering for fear of being labeled a heretic. much of the research is published via the intergovernmental panel on climate change; well it's right there in the title. none of this is to say that there aren't also entities pushing propagand…

The fact you are being downvoted really makes the case that any dissent on climate change makes you a heretic.

And before I'm downvoted, note that you don't know my position on climate change: all I'm against is punishing people for genuine disagreement of thought.

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

#240

Post by mirimir » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #79

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…

> Talk of "efforts to protect what natural habitats are left" does not seem to relate to warming from CO2 emissions. They're connected. I mean, everything is. Even if we didn't emit so much CO2, we destroy habitat for other species through agriculture and forest harvesting. And if we hadn't destroyed so much habitat, there'd be lots more slack for CO2 emissions. And as you say, destroying habitat through biomass ener…

Very belated edit:

I was in a hurry, and didn't say how habitat loss increases extinction rates from global warming. The issue is habitat fragmentation. We degrade/destroy habitat for other species through agriculture, forest modification and harvesting, urbanization, road building, etc. But that not only decreases the amount of high-quality habitats. It also fragments habitats.

Without global warming, habitat fragmentation hurts other species in various ways. At some point, fragments become too small to support viable populations for many species. Especially larger animals, for example. But overall, it's not a huge issue, relative to the amount of habitat loss itself.

However, with global warming, habitat fragmentation becomes a huge issue. As the planet warms, species tend to shift toward the poles, more or less, to stay in habitats that they're adapted to. But when habitats are fragmented, that can't happen. And so you end up with isolated populations on mountains, for example. Given that "up" ~ "away from the equator". And with further warming, there's no more up, so they die off. One mitigation is creating habitat corridors. Through cities and farmland. Across roads, using bridges or tunnels. You can see habitat bridges in I-78 in eastern New Jersey.

Another factor is the speed of anthropogenic global climate change. It's too fast now for evolutionary adaptation.