Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

https://thecompost.io/articles/exxonknew

by ajhaupt7 • 7 years ago

457 326 7 years ago

thecompost.io

caminante• 7 years ago

OP do you have a connection to the blog? I noticed your submission history favors it.

jchw2• 7 years ago

Comment history has the answer for whatever that’s worth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753300

sk0g• 7 years ago

Seems like they work on it. Or used to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753300

ajhaupt72• 7 years ago

Yep, I'm the author + developer -- hope there isn't a problem with posting your own content. I think there's value in it!

throwaway666662• 7 years ago

I (not a mod, just your a regular HN user) think it's perfectly fine to post your own content. As long as you don't spam it, and you don't post over-flattering headlines for it. And definitely way better than posting your content under a guise of an "unafilliated" friend. It will reach the front page and stay here only if it's good, so who cares if it came straight from the wolf's mouth.

Also pretty creepy that people go down post comments history to check who it is and where you 're coming from. Eh.

eppsilon• 7 years ago

Could you add an RSS feed of your posts?

crispinb8• 7 years ago

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.

modzu6• 7 years ago

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 propaganda (exxon, etc)

logjammin• 7 years ago

Example of investigators whose work has suffered for fear of being labeled a heretic?

adrianN10• 7 years ago

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.

rmellow• 7 years ago

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.

jokoon• 7 years ago

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 countries import carbon emitting products

2. The developed countries of today have emmited greenhouse gases for decades, which allowed them to become developed countries.

The geopolitics of climate change are extremely difficult. I don't think the UN is up for it.

Although a better scenario would be to enact tight regulations on a country basis, but it's a political minefield. Imagine riots because people want to keep using their cars and trade goods that have become illegal, or vendettas against people who emit co2.

Mirioron3• 7 years ago

I find it difficult to imagine how solutions to climate change, that don't rely on improvement in technology, won't result in authoritarianism. I don't think that all the world governments will accept limitations on their people freely.

crispinb8• 7 years ago

I don't know about the solutions - my view is that the die is cast.

My view is that climate change is a world problem

That's undoubtedly true, and the fossil fuel companies clearly acknowledge this - their 30 year anti-science propaganda campaigns have been waged across the world.

NeedMoreTea4• 7 years ago

better scenario would be to enact tight regulations on a country

Here, I am less convinced.

Globalisation came about in good part to move from the places with tighter regulation - on pollution, on employment, on finance - to those without.

It is the same way that offshore finance came about by trading each regulation against each other. The net result is there are fewer controls everywhere, despite a few headline money laundering regs. The history of this is fascinating.

js8• 7 years ago

Governments will not oblige their citizens to make steps on their consumption if it means reducing their comfort

It's interesting though that they will oblige them to wars.

This is generally not a true statement. Government is not entirely segregated from the citizenry. It is, in some form, representation of society (even in a dictatorship).

chewz• 7 years ago

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

Here is the catch - efforts to reduce overconsumption mean slowing economy and lower tax base. No goverment can afford that.

Imagine riots because people want to keep using their cars and trade goods that have become illegal, or vendettas against people who emit co2.

I believe we are on a verge of Millenial movement of some sort that will make a matter of enviroment a quasi religion of sorts. That would change the attitudes.

consp2• 7 years ago

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

The effects climate change has and will have are doing that for them.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

" 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.

inflatableDodo4• 7 years ago

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.

rjf722• 7 years ago

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

graeme• 7 years ago

Lindzen doesn't dispute that CO2 warms the atmosphere! The vast majority of "skeptics" seem to think it's all a fraud, and that CO2 does nothing.

There is zero support for that position.

If you would like to debate the merits of Lindzen's views, feel free to do so: he thinks there will be less warming than existing models predict. He doesn't deny warming!

Meanwhile he retired in 2013, and as far as I can tell has produced no active research in this field since 2011. And his 2011 paper was widely panned including by reviewers he selected. He had to correct numerous errors in the paper. According to wikipedia, he eventually argued that at least 75% of predicted warming was happening.

So, a 25% margin off a catastrophic level of warming. And that's the very best name you can produce. And this info is all in the link you sent. And that's apart from the question of whether he was right in his argument in 2011, which is a factual answer we can measure with temperature sensors. (IIRC, warming has progressed faster than expected instead)

Contrary to your point, there is tremendous economic incentive to prove that fossil fuels are safe, cause us no trouble, and can continue to be used. Anyone who decisively proved that would be a hero, as fossil fuels are very useful indeed. The absence of such a person suggests that this view is mistaken.

kaybe5• 7 years ago

Contrary to the IPCC's assessment, Lindzen said that climate models are inadequate.
According to an April 30, 2012 New York Times article,[67] "Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point "nutty." He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate." He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming.[67] Lindzen first published this "iris" theory in 2001,[9] and offered more support in a 2009 paper.[51]

Hm.. So he has a diverging view on the consequences of warming on the tropical cirrus cloud coverage, and thinks the models are not good enough to reproduce the real climate. That's disagreement about the projections, not the basics, with most of the community, and that's ok, we can research more and figure out the truth. The problem is, we don't have that time (unless he's right).

Only reality will really tell. Let's hope he's right (not that probable), but act as if he wasn't, and see what else we can learn about the system to improve our understanding.

jacobush2• 7 years ago

"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

amanaplanacanal5• 7 years ago

It's interesting how much has changed since that movie came out. What was then shocking, now is mundane. Watching it now it's hard to see what the fuss was about. We've just all gotten used to it.

inflatableDodo4• 7 years ago

Top 100 Corporate and National economies, by revenue - https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/r...

edit - there was a World Bank blog post about this, but it has mysteriously disappeared.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/miga/world-s-top-10...

here's google's cached version -

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Qt-r1E...

rorykoehler2• 7 years ago

There are articles that are over 100 years old that point out fossil fuels cause climate change. Surely they knew far earlier than 1978?

dcl• 7 years ago

Those earlier articles made educated guesses that the greenhouse effect would eventually come in to play. Exxon attempted to model the effect to work out the possible impact.

bnolsen• 7 years ago

Having now been in China for several weeks this beating the drum trying to make americans feel guilty (and give power over to other people) is absolutely absurd. You want to control pollution the first places to start are china and india. The US in comparison produces negligible impact.

jordache• 7 years ago

US still accounts for double digit percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions.. so it's not a non-trivial amount

TaylorAlexander• 7 years ago

It’s my understanding that America has contributed to the majority of total emissions since fossil fuel use began. I’ve heard that recently China has eclipsed us in annual emissions, but we still emit a lot of CO2 (and probably the most per capita). We have the power to develop new technologies and were the ones who benefitted from the majority of historical carbon emissions. With that information it seems to me justified to push Americans to act on climate change.

bayareanative• 7 years ago

Tax carbon severely and plow collections into massive-scale CCS and SRM. It won't happen until the horse has long since left the barn.

umanwizard2• 7 years ago

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 the former group produces more CO2 than the latter.

sparky_z2• 7 years ago

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's are going up with no signs of slowing. So is their population growth. The US is currently "taking care of itself" more or less, but China and India (already # 1 and #3 in total carbon numbers) are getting worse at a frightening pace. If we spend all of our energy focusing on the US, even if we're extraordinarily successful there, we'll look around in 20 years and see we lost progress globally. As though we didn't heed Amdahl's law and spent all of our time optimizing the wrong function. The most important thing we can do is find some way for China and (especially) India to grow their economies and pull their citizens out of poverty in a way that doesn't destroy the planet.

torpfactory• 7 years ago

That is simply not true. The US may not produce as much visible pollution anymore, but we still emit a ton of carbon. Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia are all about as much or more than us but China is significantly less per capita.

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...

pier254• 7 years ago

Not only it is not negligible, the US produces about triple the world average per capita.

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

rorykoehler2• 7 years ago

Adding to what others have stated much of China's pollution comes from producing the endless stream of consumerist crap Americans are uniquely addicted to.

robocat2• 7 years ago

2009 article: Data from 1900 up to 2004 "The US has the biggest historical share (314,772m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide), while European countries such as Germany (73,625) and the UK (55,163) cast a shadow over developing nations such as India (25,054), Brazil (9,136) and Indonesia (6,167). China is on 89,243."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02...

And as per article, US companies are also involved in the muddy waters of denialism propoganda.

undefined1• 7 years ago

The accuracy of their predictions are chilling — they anticipated (in their "21st Century Study-High Growth Scenario") that in 2020 atmospheric CO2 levels would fall between 400 and 420 ppm. They also foresaw the accompanying sea level rise, melting of polar ice sheets, change of rainfall patterns, and agricultural failures.

Wow. How does this compare to other predictions at the time?

sbarker• 7 years ago

Nostradamus.

Maarten88• 7 years ago

Maybe they were somewhat later, but Shell oil knew too. They did similar research and came to the same conclusions. Here is a video they made in 1991 warning about climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlYYlRN0LY

rdm_blackhole• 7 years ago

No surprises there. I don't understand why it took so long to uncover the truth. Even today, they are just playing the long game using the same tactics that the tobacco industry used and deny, deny and deny some more.

Hopefully this company one day will be prosecuted.

perfunctory5• 7 years ago

It's not hard to imagine that in the future there will be some kind of Nuremberg trials against people involved in deliberate climate disinformation campaigns.

imtringued• 7 years ago

The strategy is that you die before the pitchforks arrive.

crimsonalucard5• 7 years ago

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.

dunstad2• 7 years ago

Where is option 3, come clean, change their ways and work to correct the damage? Why are 'lie' and 'kill themselves' more obvious?

crimsonalucard5• 7 years ago

Option 3 is what people admire but it is not human behavior. Throughout history people and corporations have chosen to lie to themselves and others rather than accept a cold hard truth.

reitanqild4• 7 years ago

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.

Speak for yourself.

1. A good number of people actually have a spine. I'd not say the majority "is good && have a spine" but enough that you are lying.

2. It doesn't help at all to spread the lie that everyone else lying.

Speaking as someone who has been embarassingly honest, and who also admires his friend who came back and admitted he'd been laughing at me behind my back.

crimsonalucard5• 7 years ago

Speak for myself? I speak for humanity. And did you just call me a liar? Maybe a better way to disagree with me is to say you think I'm mistaken than to call me a liar.

What do you think religion is except for one big lie? Muslims and Christian's can't both be right, either one of them is right or neither of them. That puts a major portion of the world population gauraunteed to be delusional. Delusional behavior as a corporation like Exxon follows. This is logic you can't deny it.

You apparently are better than most humans since you brag about your ability to be embarrassingly honest.

esailija3• 7 years ago

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.

crimsonalucard5• 7 years ago

Honestly you won't even find one fossil fuel company that will admit it. It's not human nature to do this. The data shows this both among people and corporations.

You are correct, regulation is the only path forward. The problem is, when you give too much freedom to a capitalistic society, the major capitalists aka corporations seem to take control. The corporations in turn take their power and influence the very regulatory bodies that are suppose to keep them in check.

pier254• 7 years ago

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 biggest threat it has ever encountered and probably will ever encounter.

The solution will require us to make radical changes to our lifestyle and our culture. For example, we can't keep having irrational leaders that ignore basic scientific facts.

1337shadow2• 7 years ago

Weren't documentaries predicting a global climate cooling in 1978 ? In that context, did Exxon think they were saving the climate ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei-_SXLMMfo

keithnz• 7 years ago

They were predicting a mini ice age due to reduced solar activity. That is studied and incorporated in the climate models we have today.

breakyerself• 7 years ago

Even in the 70s most climate scientists were expecting human caused global warming. The cooling thing was more a media phenomenon.

1965 - 1979 there were a total of 7 scientific papers predicting a cooling climate. Compared to 42 predicting human caused global warming (Peterson 2008).

Fricken• 7 years ago

We've known about the greenhouse effect and it's threat potential for nearly 2 centuries. Exxon just helped add to a growing body of evidence that we ignore.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

eitland• 7 years ago

and it's threat potential for nearly 2 centuries.

Did you mean decades?

maxlybbert4• 7 years ago

I remember articles in “Scholastic” and the “Weekly Reader” when I was in elementary school (1980s) that said at the time scientists were worried about a 1°-2°C increase in temperature over a 50-100 year period. I’m sure that’s the same information Exxon had in the ‘70s.

Nowadays the predictions are much higher, because scientists started asking “if the oceans get warmer, what changes will that cause, and how will those changes affect the temperature?” In 1970, Exxon wasn’t suppressing research on whether warmer oceans mean more water vapor in the air, more carbon dioxide outgassing from the oceans, etc. They were only asking “should we really make drastic changes to head off a 1°-2°C temperature change that may not happen for a century? Is there a reason to believe that nothing will change in that time to make the prediction irrelevant?”

macspoofing4• 7 years ago

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 having irrational leaders that ignore basic scientific facts.

Facts like nuclear power is by far the best and only way to effectively fight climate change?

steve_adams_86• 7 years ago

I think you're right that nuclear energy is an excellent solution in many places, but I think it's actually becoming the case that solar and wind are cheaper in the short and long term and much cleaner in the long term. I'd personally like to see all 3 used in conjunction. Nuclear is very stable, but wind and sun are highly variable.

ddebernardy2• 7 years ago

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 former regulators don't necessarily agree with you.

pier254• 7 years ago

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.

imagetic• 7 years ago

http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/

gedy3• 7 years ago

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.

EForEndeavour2• 7 years ago

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.

bendbro• 7 years ago

Thanks only to immigration. US birth rate is well below replacement.

gedy3• 7 years ago

I agree "per capita" can be misleading, but China and India are growing faster than the US, and China is outputting more CO2 than the US.

ls612• 7 years ago

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.

Can_Not• 7 years ago

How much of that decrease is just moving the factory to China?

perfunctory5• 7 years ago

US simply outsourced its emissions (together with jobs) to China. A lot of China emissions are due to the exports for western consumption.

frankbreetz• 7 years ago

US per capita is still higher the China and India. It seems that the US thinks they are more entitled to output more per capita simply because they are decreasing.

the US is still an order of magnitude higher than India in per capita emissions

pier254• 7 years ago

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...

cbHXBY1D3• 7 years ago

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 and colonialism. Overtime I have come to the realization free market solutions and incentives are incapable of spurring the changes needed to transition to a cleaner form of energy, especially with the short time scale we have before results are disastrous.

mc32• 7 years ago

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.

Spooky232• 7 years ago

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.

mr_toad• 7 years ago

That would only work if climate change deniers weren’t in charge of governments.

If the latest Australian elections are anything to go by, popular (popularist) voter sentiment is swinging towards denial.

Consultant32452• 7 years ago

I don't know how much noise it made in the press, but the US just made some significant investments into nuclear.

mceoin• 7 years ago

That’s the wrong takeaway from the recent Australian election.

The only reliable takeaway is that jobs are more important than climate to majority of voters in Queensland.

radford-neal3• 7 years ago

"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.

cbHXBY1D3• 7 years ago

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...

travisoneill1• 7 years ago

The truth is that both sides ignore the science, just in opposite directions.

astazangasta• 7 years ago

Eh? There absolutely are plausible scenarios. For example, the Permian-Triassic extinction event was probably the result of runaway warming, perhaps as a result of the "clathrate gun": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

This event resulted in 96% of marine species dying and 70% of land animals dying. I don't think anyone thinks such an event is certain or likely, but it is surely a "remote possibility".

lisper• 7 years ago

Can we agree that it's an existential threat to technological civilization? And isn't that enough to conclude that urgent action is needed?

AnthonyMouse• 7 years ago

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.

amanaplanacanal5• 7 years ago

Would that require a carbon tax to be applied world wide, or would you suggest that a country could apply the tax at the border for imported goods?

mikeash• 7 years ago

Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that oil companies are just giving customers what they demand and that the companies themselves aren’t at fault.

jefflombardjr2• 7 years ago

Relevant to your comment: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/15263800131...

The individualization of environmental problems is a serious obstacle. "We need to stop buying and using plastic water bottles" needs to become "Pepsico and Coke need to stop producing trash."

murat124• 7 years ago

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 somehow adapt to this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Koch bros are pushing the same idea, on the evolutionary level, that humans will learn to live.

To me humanity is already dead, we are eternally doomed. We just don't know it yet. It's better to realize and accept it[2], as if we're told we have cancer and our days are numbered. This is a very pessimistic approach, but it is an honest one and may help mitigate problems for future generations.

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/exxon-ceo-what-good-is-it-to-save-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doo...

karl11• 7 years ago

Fortunately for the rest of us, that optimism has worked pretty well for thousands of years now. Besides, if you really believe we're doomed, what difference does it make to you what anyone thinks about anything?

sdwa• 7 years ago

Why do you think it's appropriate to rely on blind optimism just because it's worked for us so far when the challenge we face is totally unprecedented as well as existential? Seems awfully careless to me.

lostmyoldone• 7 years ago

Even if it were true, thousands of years is barely anything on any time scale that matters. Disregarding that, we've certainly not lived through thousands of years of global anthropogenic climate change, which is what this is all about.

It's worth to remember that adaption doesn't necessarily equate survival in the way we tend to think about it, as dinosaurs adapted too.

Humanity, at least on this planet, is already doomed. The sun will eventually consume us as a natural part of its life cycle. It's a very long time until that happens, but life here will eventually end. So as we're already doomed, should we then do nothing to prevent suffering and pain until then?

It should be a rhetorical question, but apparently it isn't always.

The argument can be made quite simple: As long as we continue to have children, or accept people having children, we have chosen - as a species - to not give up on them, and their descendants.

Preserving a livable environment, and preferably much more than livable, is simply a duty springing from that fact.

There is no need for any deep philosophy, to care for the environment is - essentially - a consequence of choices already made.

justin66• 7 years ago

Besides, if you really believe we're doomed, what difference does it make to you what anyone thinks about anything?

If you believe you're probably doomed because of what a large number of your most idiotic compatriots believe, what other people think is of great interest.

sosborn2• 7 years ago

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.

namarie• 7 years ago

And where are those food sources coming from? As good farmland becomes too hot and the colder regions that warm up don't usually have good soil...

And sure, "cities will move" - so much political chaos happening on Europe just because of a million refugees - now imagine 50 times more coming to northern europe just from southern europe. Similar things happening all over the world. What fun!

pimmen• 7 years ago

We can't substitute water for anything, though. Hundreds of millions of people will lose their water, won't adapt to that, and will move to the northern hemisphere which holds the vast majority of the world's surface level fresh water, or they'll die trying.

If people think the current refugee crisis is bad, boy are they in for a shocker.

ptah3• 7 years ago

once the bees are gone, there will be no food for anyone of any kind

Haga2• 7 years ago

Defeatist is also very comfy as minimal effort is required.

abootstrapper• 7 years ago

In other words - “I have faith your children and grandchildren will adapt to the catastrophe we created. Not to mention the catastrophe is totally worth it. Trust me.” - Person who gains the most from said catastrophe

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

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.

glandium• 7 years ago

AsapScience video on the subject: https://youtu.be/TbW_1MtC2So

thunderrabbit• 7 years ago

This "entertains" me in a perverse way. I knew fossil fuels were harming the environment in 1978, and I was only a kid at the time.

Exhaust stank, looked dirty. Doesn't take much to figure it out.

frittig• 7 years ago

Vaccines hurt, vegetables taste bad and taking drugs feels good. Your ideology is flawed.

ramblerman• 7 years ago

Well, if you don't trust your senses at all, perhaps yours is too.

akerro• 7 years ago

No surprises here, also Shell knew that. Documents show they knew that in '80s, later they renew research in '90s:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=shell+knew+about+global+warming&t=...

ptah3• 7 years ago

How is this not illegal?

mcv2• 7 years ago

They're rich and important?

jhellan• 7 years ago

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.

mangecoeur• 7 years ago

This! I've noticed a pattern recently of headlines that person X or company Y "knew all the way back in the 70s/80s". The real tragedy is that we have delayed doing anything about it for so long, people are now "rediscovering" the original warnings as if they are historical revelations.

As a quick refresher: the original climate deal, the Kyoto Protocol, was signed in 1992, by then everyone was well on board with the science. In fact, the climate negotiations were spun off from the convention on reducing CFCs (Vienna Convention of 1985), which are important greenhouse gases as well as being damaging to the ozone layer. It was thought (correctly) at the time that because CFCs were produced and used in a limited number of places, it would be much easier to resolve that problem and move the wider greenhouse gas negotiations into a separate treaty, which took another 7 years until 1992.

chx• 7 years ago

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

soulofmischief4• 7 years ago

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.

perfunctory5• 7 years ago

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...

the_duke2• 7 years ago

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.

perfunctory5• 7 years ago

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?

soulofmischief4• 7 years ago

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.

the_duke2• 7 years ago

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.

soulofmischief4• 7 years ago

Glad you liked it. Here you go: https://github.com/bad-software/there-will-come-soft-rains

What languages are you interested in seeing?

FrojoS5• 7 years ago

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.

scroot• 7 years ago

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

perfunctory5• 7 years ago

Would have to tax imports from those countries as well

bumby6• 7 years ago

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?"

FrojoS5• 7 years ago

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.

mempko• 7 years ago

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

ridicter2• 7 years ago

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...

FrojoS5• 7 years ago

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.

wang_li4• 7 years ago

Would be much better to give every citizen their share of the CO2 budget and then require them to spend them as they buy goods and services. This way you don't end up with bureaucrats giving favored, e.g. the company that promised said bureaucrat a huge annual salary post government service, businesses special treatment.

If a person can style their life in a such a way as to have CO2 budget left over at the end of the year, then they carry it over to the next year or allow them to sell it. But any system that doesn't involve giving the budget directly to citizens is broken and designed for graft and fuck that.

bumby6• 7 years ago

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but that type of rationing in the U.S. only seems to work if there is a collective agreement on an existential crisis (e.g. WWII).

Unfortunately, there's still too much disagreement on climate change at the population level for that level of shared sacrifice.

smacktoward• 7 years ago

This approach is called "cap and trade" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading), and the main political problem with it is that most of the people arguing for it turned out to be doing so in bad faith, at least here in the United States.

When there were lots of options for dealing with emissions on the table, including more intrusive ones like carbon taxes and outright emissions restrictions, cap and trade was the favored alternative of conservatives because it was "market-based." When President Obama settled on cap and trade in 2009 in order to get conservatives on board with doing something about climate, though, those same conservatives immediately turned on their heel and started denouncing it as an example of Obama's "socialism."

(Yes, they went from praising a policy as market-based to condemning the same policy as socialist. Such is the sorry state of American political discourse.)

So, the political problem is: if the appeal of cap and trade is that it should theoretically get the support of conservatives who would usually oppose action on climate, but those conservatives will stop supporting it the moment all the other options they like less are taken off the table, is there any point in offering them a cap and trade olive branch in the first place? How do you negotiate with a faction whose only goal for the negotiation is that you have to lose?

cschwarm• 7 years ago

I prefer taxes because there's a reliable "shadow of the future". Market prices may go up and down depending on how many certificates are issued, how professional traders behave, and how technology progresses.

So, I'd suggest the following for any nation or country:

1. Create an independent institution (like the European Central Bank) with the goal to get to carbon neutrality until, say, 2040 or 2045.

2. Give it the right to tax carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. This should include tariffs for imported goods, and reimbursements for exported goods, and other means to make some special industries pay (airplanes and ships, mostly).

3. Give it the right to perform auctions for negative carbon emissions.

If the world wants a chance to fix the problem, it'll need negative emissions, as far as I know. This is missing in your suggestion. It may also be faster to create new industries than change existing ones.

My suggestion would also follow a well-known, although maybe no uncontroversial principle of "polluter pays". In the end, the price is determined by the goal, not by political considerations.

If I'm not mistaken, such a carbon tax would rise until (positive) carbon emissions equal negative carbon emissions. At this point, carbon neutrality should be reached. Whatever else needs to be done is then up to future generations.

adrianmonk• 7 years ago

I don't particularly like the idea of coupling together one problem (poverty) with another (carbon).

For one thing, it will be a temporary windfall. Then you've got to find ways to replace the revenue when you succeed.

I'd rather see the revenue from a carbon tax go into research, development, and infrastructure that further accelerates the transition to carbon neutral energy.

Obviously, the tax already gives you an incentive to look for other alternatives, but this helps make those other alternatives more practical, so it kind of pushes and pulls you in the right direction.

merpnderp• 7 years ago

Aren’t the people who fought nuclear power in the 80’s just as culpable? Would there still be any coal plants running if we’d started to move to carbon free sources back then?

0x262d2• 7 years ago

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

trophycase2• 7 years ago

When externalities aren't priced. It isn't a "free market"

0x262d2• 7 years ago

does anyone who is opposed to planned markets ever talk about the information complexity of accounting for all externalities? genuine question.

bobowzki• 7 years ago

This was known around 1900

iconjack• 7 years ago

Also 1978: "International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30‐Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere"

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/05/archives/international-te...

stefek992• 7 years ago

It is a well-known fact, just wondering since when it is news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...

stefek992• 7 years ago

This is a potential strategy to tackle it: https://genesis.re/wiki#Plan_B

(decentralized innovation as politics is too slow)

Exxon knew that fossil fuels were influencing the climate in 1978

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