5 ms·

In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming

39 points by maryfoxmarlow 9y ago

Pica_soO 9y ago
Maybe euthanizing the oil industrial complex with cheap nuclear energy would have been a good plan. After it was gone- we could have started over.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
At the time of course Teller was trying to get the nuclear industry out of the slump it was in rather than save the planet. And it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers, we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted. So I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? How about to Pauling and his vitamins, or Toffler and his "future shock", or Erlich's "Population Bomb"? All of these topics have the potential to be huge things and deserve the research funding they received but looking back 100 years and picking out one that was closer to the truth than the others isn't really helpful unless your advocating more funding for basic scientific research.
- ggm 9y ago
  For context, Erlich/Simons bet. Erlich lost. The limits to growth are misunderstood and relate more to the rate of exploration and exploitation under economic forces, than actual hard limits of resource in geology. Pauling vitamins.. turns out mega doses kill. Vitamin D toxicity is a thing.
- chmaynard 9y ago
  > I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? Is this snarky comment really all you have to contribute to the conversation? At least make the effort to do the math. The conference occurred in November 1959, around 59 years ago. This is well before consensus about the reality of global warming began to form among atmospheric scientists. That's the point of this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.' ? The question I asked, perhaps badly was exactly "What is the point of this article?" You state "59 years ago ... well before the consensus about the reality of global warming began to form." And I had pointed out that 59 years ago there were several different threats to the world that were pointed out by brilliant people, what is the point of going back and cherry picking one that panned out? (the others haven't) I really did not see any point to the article. Since you did (see the point) , and you assert that the point involved the timing of the conference and the discussion it contained, what is that relevant to? The greenhouse effect was discovered in the 19th century[1], and by 1959 it was common knowledge. Teller was doing a nice side by side comparison of energy technologies in 1959 and notes one side effect that burning fossil fuels has, based on 19th century science, that nuclear power does not. When I read that article I felt that it creates a false narrative that somehow the petroleum industry was 'warned' and then through 'and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction' somehow blocked something. And my argument is that this is silly, if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in (and I gave several examples of where that would have been 'bad') we (collectively) would have made the wrong choice. [1] https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
    - chmaynard 9y ago
      > Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.'? Sure. I'm not a scientist but I have done some reading about Teller and his role in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. He was clearly a genius. He was also a controversial figure and had a poor reputation in the physics community because of his churlish behavior in the theoretical physics group at Los Alamos, his claim to be the "father of the Hydrogen bomb", and the Oppenheimer affair. It's no surprise that the petroleum industry ignored his 1959 warnings about CO2 pollution of the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The point of the article is that because of his poor reputation in the scientific community, scientists might have dismissed his important message.
      - eesmith 9y ago
- Finnucane 9y ago
  Perhaps the result has not yet been as catastrophic as he suggested at the time (I mean, it's Edward Teller, after all), but he was more generally correct that use of fossil fuels would have negative impact on the environment. CO2 levels would rise and cause warming. The later Stanford study noted in the article came to the same conclusion. The point of the article is that the oil industry knew by the end of the 1960s that this was a problem, and they buried it.
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    It isn't clear to me that they 'buried it', there are quite a few papers and studies on climate change that were funded by the oil and gas companies over the last 60 years. Have they argued against it over the years? Sure.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      The 'buried it' is addressed in the NYT link from that article, which I elsewhere pointed out references http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f . That in turn shows the strong difference between the papers and studies on climate change by Exxon-Mobil scientists, vs. what Exxon-Mobil was saying to the public, politicians, and shareholders. "Burying" isn't quite the right word. As that link says: > The question we have addressed in this study is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' 'withheld it,' or 'sought to hide' it, which is how ExxonMobil has glossed the allegations against it [11, 12, 135]. This is also how the allegations have occasionally been presented in the press [136]. Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it. > However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did. This conclusion is based on three factors: discrepancies in AGW communications between document categories; imbalance in impact of different document categories; and factual mispresentations in some advertorials.
- eesmith 9y ago
  You wrote: "it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers" That is a misreading of the text. He said: "Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5." The change in the instrumental temperature record from 1959 to now is about 1C, or 1.8F - well within his range of 1-5F. He also said "there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise". He did not, as you summarize it, say that Greenland and the polar ice caps will have melted. We believe the ice caps have started to melt, and the oceans begun to rise. This is within the range of his estimate. It's possible to calculate what the sea level rise might be if the ice melted. However, he did not give a time frame for what that would happen. You wrote "we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action". This event was in 1959, which is only 59 years ago. The "100" is because the talk was on the centennial of the American oil industry. 100 years ago would be closer Arrhenius's original research on the topic, from 1896, than it would be to Teller's talk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    You picked 2 unimportant points he made and totally ignored what he was trying to say. The point was that many people said many different things that didn't happen at all, it makes no sense to pick one that guessed it right 59 years later.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      My complete answer is in several parts, based on the different threads which existed before I started. This part of the thread was to focus on the incorrect reading by ChuckMcM. I followed up on the "what [ChuckMcM] was trying to say" (I assume the 'he' refers to ChuckMcM and not Teller) at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 , which was posted about 5 minutes before you posted your criticism. I do not believe that a single wall of text would be a better way to get my points across.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted. Kinda not melted. In geological time ranges, his error is statistical noise.
awful 9y ago
This is from when I was a kid; Dr. Frank Baxter, Unchained Goddess, 1958, I saw it in the 1960s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
- awful 9y ago
  I mean, if kids were being told about this, why such a surprise that the oil companies were being warned?

39 points by maryfoxmarlow 9y ago

Maybe euthanizing the oil industrial complex with cheap nuclear energy would have been a good plan. After it was gone- we could have started over.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

At the time of course Teller was trying to get the nuclear industry out of the slump it was in rather than save the planet. And it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers, we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted. So I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? How about to Pauling and his vitamins, or Toffler and his "future shock", or Erlich's "Population Bomb"? All of these topics have the potential to be huge things and deserve the research funding they received but looking back 100 years and picking out one that was closer to the truth than the others isn't really helpful unless your advocating more funding for basic scientific research.

ggm 9y ago
For context, Erlich/Simons bet. Erlich lost. The limits to growth are misunderstood and relate more to the rate of exploration and exploitation under economic forces, than actual hard limits of resource in geology. Pauling vitamins.. turns out mega doses kill. Vitamin D toxicity is a thing.
chmaynard 9y ago
> I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? Is this snarky comment really all you have to contribute to the conversation? At least make the effort to do the math. The conference occurred in November 1959, around 59 years ago. This is well before consensus about the reality of global warming began to form among atmospheric scientists. That's the point of this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.' ? The question I asked, perhaps badly was exactly "What is the point of this article?" You state "59 years ago ... well before the consensus about the reality of global warming began to form." And I had pointed out that 59 years ago there were several different threats to the world that were pointed out by brilliant people, what is the point of going back and cherry picking one that panned out? (the others haven't) I really did not see any point to the article. Since you did (see the point) , and you assert that the point involved the timing of the conference and the discussion it contained, what is that relevant to? The greenhouse effect was discovered in the 19th century[1], and by 1959 it was common knowledge. Teller was doing a nice side by side comparison of energy technologies in 1959 and notes one side effect that burning fossil fuels has, based on 19th century science, that nuclear power does not. When I read that article I felt that it creates a false narrative that somehow the petroleum industry was 'warned' and then through 'and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction' somehow blocked something. And my argument is that this is silly, if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in (and I gave several examples of where that would have been 'bad') we (collectively) would have made the wrong choice. [1] https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
  - chmaynard 9y ago
    > Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.'? Sure. I'm not a scientist but I have done some reading about Teller and his role in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. He was clearly a genius. He was also a controversial figure and had a poor reputation in the physics community because of his churlish behavior in the theoretical physics group at Los Alamos, his claim to be the "father of the Hydrogen bomb", and the Oppenheimer affair. It's no surprise that the petroleum industry ignored his 1959 warnings about CO2 pollution of the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The point of the article is that because of his poor reputation in the scientific community, scientists might have dismissed his important message.
    - eesmith 9y ago
Finnucane 9y ago
Perhaps the result has not yet been as catastrophic as he suggested at the time (I mean, it's Edward Teller, after all), but he was more generally correct that use of fossil fuels would have negative impact on the environment. CO2 levels would rise and cause warming. The later Stanford study noted in the article came to the same conclusion. The point of the article is that the oil industry knew by the end of the 1960s that this was a problem, and they buried it.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  It isn't clear to me that they 'buried it', there are quite a few papers and studies on climate change that were funded by the oil and gas companies over the last 60 years. Have they argued against it over the years? Sure.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    The 'buried it' is addressed in the NYT link from that article, which I elsewhere pointed out references http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f . That in turn shows the strong difference between the papers and studies on climate change by Exxon-Mobil scientists, vs. what Exxon-Mobil was saying to the public, politicians, and shareholders. "Burying" isn't quite the right word. As that link says: > The question we have addressed in this study is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' 'withheld it,' or 'sought to hide' it, which is how ExxonMobil has glossed the allegations against it [11, 12, 135]. This is also how the allegations have occasionally been presented in the press [136]. Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it. > However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did. This conclusion is based on three factors: discrepancies in AGW communications between document categories; imbalance in impact of different document categories; and factual mispresentations in some advertorials.
eesmith 9y ago
You wrote: "it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers" That is a misreading of the text. He said: "Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5." The change in the instrumental temperature record from 1959 to now is about 1C, or 1.8F - well within his range of 1-5F. He also said "there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise". He did not, as you summarize it, say that Greenland and the polar ice caps will have melted. We believe the ice caps have started to melt, and the oceans begun to rise. This is within the range of his estimate. It's possible to calculate what the sea level rise might be if the ice melted. However, he did not give a time frame for what that would happen. You wrote "we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action". This event was in 1959, which is only 59 years ago. The "100" is because the talk was on the centennial of the American oil industry. 100 years ago would be closer Arrhenius's original research on the topic, from 1896, than it would be to Teller's talk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  You picked 2 unimportant points he made and totally ignored what he was trying to say. The point was that many people said many different things that didn't happen at all, it makes no sense to pick one that guessed it right 59 years later.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    My complete answer is in several parts, based on the different threads which existed before I started. This part of the thread was to focus on the incorrect reading by ChuckMcM. I followed up on the "what [ChuckMcM] was trying to say" (I assume the 'he' refers to ChuckMcM and not Teller) at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 , which was posted about 5 minutes before you posted your criticism. I do not believe that a single wall of text would be a better way to get my points across.
coldtea 9y ago
>we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted. Kinda not melted. In geological time ranges, his error is statistical noise.

awful 9y ago

This is from when I was a kid; Dr. Frank Baxter, Unchained Goddess, 1958, I saw it in the 1960s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY

awful 9y ago
I mean, if kids were being told about this, why such a surprise that the oil companies were being warned?