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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

#51

Post by robocat »

sparky_z wrote: post #21
School-Cotton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Surely, as far as the planet's concerned, the total numbers matter more than per capita. If, say, Andorra hypothetically had the largest per-capita numbers by an order of magnitude, that still wouldn't make them the biggest threat to the planet, nor would it Andorra the most effective place to target activism. Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down, while the China's and India…

> Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down

US is trending up again:

https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us-carbon-emissions-20...

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

#52

Post by eppsilon »

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!

Could you add an RSS feed of your posts?

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

#53

Post by sosborn »

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…

I don't think humans will have much trouble adapting. Cities will move to accommodate the rising sea, we will move on to other food sources as the need arises, and life for us will go on.

It's the other species – the ones that had no hand in this – that I worry and feel regret about.

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

#54

Post by reallydude »

School-Cotton wrote: post #23
sparky_z wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, as far as the planet's concerned, the total numbers matter more than per capita. If, say, Andorra hypothetically had the largest per-capita numbers by an order of magnitude, that still wouldn't make them the biggest threat to the planet, nor would it Andorra the most effective place to target activism. Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down, while the China's and India…

It would make Andorra and countries similar to Andorra the most effective place to target activism, assuming the total population of those countries was large enough to be meaningful. According to Wikipedia, there are 41 countries with more emissions per capita than China, including some with large populations like the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Russia... Really, my point is that it's wrong to think…

> it's wrong to think in terms of "countries" because country boundaries are arbitrary

Policies and social behaviors (enforced by nations or voluntary) are not. People cause the pollution we're talking about, so we have to deal with them as they are.

> What matters is the number of people multiplied by the amount they emit.

Pointing to per capita rather than aggregate is a deflection. Either the environment is in practical danger and we need to reduce total aggregate emissions, or we need to do that AND need to mildly reduce emissions through personal responsibility (virtue signaling) leading to "eventual good" by habit forming. Either way the aggregate matters most, per capita least.

I believe that the situation will come down to a trade war before a physical war, which still involves nations and absolute measures. Once those measures are involved, then per capita will become a factor internally (to the nations involved). Convince me otherwise. I will not reply, but I will read/listen. I'm genuinely interested in the train of thought that other people follow.

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

#55

Post by cbHXBY1D »

radford-neal wrote: post #47
cbHXBY1D wrote: post #33

Almost everyone on HN recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to (most) life on earth. There is less agreement on how to mitigate it's effects. One solution which I favor is nationalization of US oil companies. While hardly discussed in the US, it's a solution that is currently being discussed in the UK and has been done by many different countries, though usually because of the legacy of imperialism…

"Almost everyone on HN recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to (most) life on earth." No. There are no even remotely plausible scenarios in which most life (say, all mammals, to pick something specific) go extinct due to climate change caused by human CO2 emissions. If you think that, you have been lied to - and have not been smart enough to recognize the lies.

Did you read the recent IPBES Global Assessment? An article on it from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/climate/biodiversity-exti...

"Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival."

A summary can be found here: https://www.ipbes.net/sites/default/files/downloads/spm_uned...

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

#56

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #33

Almost everyone on HN recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to (most) life on earth. There is less agreement on how to mitigate it's effects. One solution which I favor is nationalization of US oil companies. While hardly discussed in the US, it's a solution that is currently being discussed in the UK and has been done by many different countries, though usually because of the legacy of imperialism…

> One solution which I favor is nationalization of US oil companies.

Can you explain your reasoning behind this? It makes no sense to me.

This is fundamentally an economic issue. People will stop burning carbon when it's less expensive to do something else. If you nationalize the industry only to shut it down, that causes the cost of burning oil to increase (the intended effect), but then the higher prices spur foreign suppliers to increase production which blunts the effect. Meanwhile you suffer a massive domestic loss as you not only have to pay higher oil prices, you have to pay them to foreign suppliers like Russia and Saudi Arabia rather than domestic companies.

By contrast, a carbon tax reduces demand and makes production less profitable world-wide, so everyone reduces production (not just domestic producers), and the money from the higher prices goes to your own government which can either use it to subsidize alternatives or return it to citizens to mitigate the impact of the higher costs.

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

#58

Post by Robotbeat »

Spooky23 wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Venezuela nationalized their petroleum, I think Mexico did something similar. And Iran. I don’t see where those actions have kerbed the export or internal use of petroleum.

Goals there were different. Nationalizing those industries and using tariffs to stabilize at a higher price would accelerate adoption of better technology. You could implode demand for natural gas and fuel oil by raising prices and capturing profits to capitalize heat pump adoption in the northeast, for example.

...and you'd likely elect a populist in 4 years that would wrench open the spigots. Dramatically. Live. On cable news.

I'm fully in favor of "keep it in the ground." But nationalization isn't necessarily the right way. In fact: if someone sufficiently wealthy were able to buy up certain strategic assets, they'd be able to resist public pressure to reopen them. For instance, if you had bought Arch Coal at its nadir when it went bankrupt for about $1.4 billion, you would've had control over 16% of America's coal supply. From what I can tell, billions of tons of coal. You could shut it down for pennies on the dollar versus any carbon sequestration scheme.

Or buy up and close down export terminals (and revitalize the property around them if in urban areas, making back your money easily while crippling the profitability of coal mining in the US).

If it was nationalized, it could as likely go the way of Venezuela, which has (until recently) actually extremely subsidized petroleum consumption.

IMHO, government power should be used to tax these things what they're polluting (the stick), develop regulations while strongly subsidizing clean alternatives (the carrot). Nationalizing the oil industry and jacking up prices is just going to make people mad at you while enabling a successor to completely undo your work.

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

#59

Post by boulos »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #55
radford-neal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost everyone on HN recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to (most) life on earth." No. There are no even remotely plausible scenarios in which most life (say, all mammals, to pick something specific) go extinct due to climate change caused by human CO2 emissions. If you think that, you have been lied to - and have not been smart enough to recognize the lies.

Did you read the recent IPBES Global Assessment? An article on it from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/climate/biodiversity-exti... "Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not…

Fwiw, I was expecting your quote to include a number >50%. Not that this wouldn’t be catastrophic, but most does mean more than 50% :).

Edit: though now I’m curious by percentage of animals (presumably 40% of species may be, or even is likely, more than 40% of animals, because of power-law-style distributions).

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

#60

Post by radford-neal »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #55
radford-neal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost everyone on HN recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to (most) life on earth." No. There are no even remotely plausible scenarios in which most life (say, all mammals, to pick something specific) go extinct due to climate change caused by human CO2 emissions. If you think that, you have been lied to - and have not been smart enough to recognize the lies.

Did you read the recent IPBES Global Assessment? An article on it from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/climate/biodiversity-exti... "Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not…

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 distances to be burned in place of coal. See https://www.draxbiomass.com

Also, "one-third" is not "most".

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