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This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. In fact the scientific community

This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. In fact the scientific community knew about it for a long time (even back to the 19th century...) but public policy makers ignored it. "How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming: Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries." https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Public policymakers initially worked to combat it. You can find Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush, Newt Gingrich etc. all taking a totally sensible view on it. Sometime around 1988-1992 some of them changed tack dramatically and started fighting against efforts to fight against it.
- savanaly 4y ago
  I would be very interested to read more about this, and any explanations for it. I assume they're grounded in political science realities but I would love to know the details if you can remember a source.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I already linked a video that covers some of this history ("A CONSERVATIVE solution to global warming") in another comment, but basically the Koch brothers and a few other fossil fuel magnates freaked out when George H W Bush was going to commit to Kyoto, and started the long term suicide pact of the American right and climate change denial: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin... “Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial > The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
19th Century Scientists also claimed that heavier than air flight would be impossible. 19th century scientists though that space was filled with ether. The 19th century scientists predicted global warming trope is basically survival bias.
- MayeulC 4y ago
  Indeed, and I am not sure if there was a consensus on that topic back then. However, it is remarkable that some predicted it, as not everyone was paying attention. One issue with "scientists" (and engineers, as well as other humans, including me and you, and everyone on HN) is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert (related to Dunning-Kruger, although I was recently pointed out[1] that what people call DK is not what the paper was about). And, from my experience, we tend to attach more credibility to claims by famous people than from skilled people. Or at least broadcast them more. Einstein said that after he became famous, people started asking his opinion on any topic, from politics to football. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    > is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert Aka being human. This all says more about the people invoking it than the supposed effect. That is, they expect otherwise smart people to not behave like people. But they do, and they talk about subjects they have no clue about, just like everyone else.
    - MayeulC 4y ago
      Well, I'm guilty of it myself, but I try to pay attention. It's a trap that can be avoided to some extent if both the audience/interviewer and interviewee are aware of it.
- compiskey 4y ago
  They didn’t predict global warming. They measured directly industrial emission accumulation and predicted an impact on human health. Global warming is a colloquialism. The researchers did the science that gives rise to it. Luminiferous Aether is just another name for electromagnetic field effects. Which do literally exist but our written logic works out better if we talk around it as an idea not a thing. You’re just arguing semantics to look smurt. Qualitative ideas like survivorship bias are relative in when they apply.
hammock 4y ago
The academic world and government scientists knew about global warming as well as they knew about global cooling... cherrypicking doesn't do anyone any good.
- btilly 4y ago
  Pot. Kettle. Black. You should stop believing misinformation. The belief that they ever believed in global cooling is itself a result of cherrypicking. Most papers predicted warming. See https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in... for details. The short version is that aerosols in the air have a cooling effect. Papers did predict that a massive increase in aerosols could cause cooling. That increase never happened thanks to the Clean Air Act. Similarly dust from a nuclear war would have the same effect. Thankfully this theory has not been put to the test.
  - hammock 4y ago
    >The belief that they ever believed in global cooling is itself a result of cherrypicking. Most papers predicted warming Who are "they"? If "most papers" predicted warming then some papers predicted cooling. Science and truth are independent of majority view. My point is not that one or the other of global warming or cooling is true, but that reaching into the past and surfacing research that points to warming - or cooling for that matter - is cherrypicking, and of limited value.
    - btilly 4y ago
      Sorry, but you're just arguing for intellectual dishonesty at this point. There were, in fact, papers like https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.173.3992.138 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.173.3992.138 which painted a "what if" scenario about what would happen if aerosol usage increased by a factor of 4. However it didn't actually predict that aerosol usage WOULD increase by that much, and the law that successfully reduced aerosol usage was actually passed in 1970. (Though it took a few years to demonstrate its success.) And even papers like that acknowledged that CO2 was creating a long-term temperature increase, while the cooling of aerosols will stop very shortly after we stop emitting them. Conversely we can choose to emit aerosols. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio... as evidence that this is being considered as a solution to climate change. (Sadly it does nothing to fix ocean acidification or the fact that plants grown in excess CO2 have lower nutritional value.) There was no equivalence where some scientists said one thing and others said another so who knows. Instead there was an ever improving understanding of a complex reality which is easy to cherrypick to rhetorical ends. Exactly as you are doing right now.
pengaru 4y ago
There was passing mention of atmospheric CO2's planet-warming effects in some old 1800s book I read on archive.org that was about nutrition and diet, and how evolution explains all one needs to know about which foods to eat. The CO2 blurb was made matter-of-factly as if it were entirely well understood, and it wasn't even a major component of what was being discussed. It was just a section explaining planetary temperatures and how/why they varied over time, and how that affected the course of evolution of life on earth. The wording was something like "CO2 acts as an invisible blanket on the planet, trapping in the heat gained from the sun" if memory serves...
zardo 4y ago
> This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. That is nonsense, but I don't see it in the article.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Public policymakers initially worked to combat it. You can find Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush, Newt Gingrich etc. all taking a totally sensible view on it. Sometime around 1988-1992 some of them changed tack dramatically and started fighting against efforts to fight against it.

savanaly 4y ago
I would be very interested to read more about this, and any explanations for it. I assume they're grounded in political science realities but I would love to know the details if you can remember a source.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I already linked a video that covers some of this history ("A CONSERVATIVE solution to global warming") in another comment, but basically the Koch brothers and a few other fossil fuel magnates freaked out when George H W Bush was going to commit to Kyoto, and started the long term suicide pact of the American right and climate change denial: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin... “Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial > The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

19th Century Scientists also claimed that heavier than air flight would be impossible. 19th century scientists though that space was filled with ether. The 19th century scientists predicted global warming trope is basically survival bias.

MayeulC 4y ago
Indeed, and I am not sure if there was a consensus on that topic back then. However, it is remarkable that some predicted it, as not everyone was paying attention. One issue with "scientists" (and engineers, as well as other humans, including me and you, and everyone on HN) is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert (related to Dunning-Kruger, although I was recently pointed out[1] that what people call DK is not what the paper was about). And, from my experience, we tend to attach more credibility to claims by famous people than from skilled people. Or at least broadcast them more. Einstein said that after he became famous, people started asking his opinion on any topic, from politics to football. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141367
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > is that they can't help but give their "expert" opinion on every topic, even if they are not an actual expert Aka being human. This all says more about the people invoking it than the supposed effect. That is, they expect otherwise smart people to not behave like people. But they do, and they talk about subjects they have no clue about, just like everyone else.
  - MayeulC 4y ago
    Well, I'm guilty of it myself, but I try to pay attention. It's a trap that can be avoided to some extent if both the audience/interviewer and interviewee are aware of it.
compiskey 4y ago
They didn’t predict global warming. They measured directly industrial emission accumulation and predicted an impact on human health. Global warming is a colloquialism. The researchers did the science that gives rise to it. Luminiferous Aether is just another name for electromagnetic field effects. Which do literally exist but our written logic works out better if we talk around it as an idea not a thing. You’re just arguing semantics to look smurt. Qualitative ideas like survivorship bias are relative in when they apply.

hammock 4y ago

The academic world and government scientists knew about global warming as well as they knew about global cooling... cherrypicking doesn't do anyone any good.

btilly 4y ago
Pot. Kettle. Black. You should stop believing misinformation. The belief that they ever believed in global cooling is itself a result of cherrypicking. Most papers predicted warming. See https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in... for details. The short version is that aerosols in the air have a cooling effect. Papers did predict that a massive increase in aerosols could cause cooling. That increase never happened thanks to the Clean Air Act. Similarly dust from a nuclear war would have the same effect. Thankfully this theory has not been put to the test.
- hammock 4y ago
  >The belief that they ever believed in global cooling is itself a result of cherrypicking. Most papers predicted warming Who are "they"? If "most papers" predicted warming then some papers predicted cooling. Science and truth are independent of majority view. My point is not that one or the other of global warming or cooling is true, but that reaching into the past and surfacing research that points to warming - or cooling for that matter - is cherrypicking, and of limited value.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Sorry, but you're just arguing for intellectual dishonesty at this point. There were, in fact, papers like https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.173.3992.138 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.173.3992.138 which painted a "what if" scenario about what would happen if aerosol usage increased by a factor of 4. However it didn't actually predict that aerosol usage WOULD increase by that much, and the law that successfully reduced aerosol usage was actually passed in 1970. (Though it took a few years to demonstrate its success.) And even papers like that acknowledged that CO2 was creating a long-term temperature increase, while the cooling of aerosols will stop very shortly after we stop emitting them. Conversely we can choose to emit aerosols. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio... as evidence that this is being considered as a solution to climate change. (Sadly it does nothing to fix ocean acidification or the fact that plants grown in excess CO2 have lower nutritional value.) There was no equivalence where some scientists said one thing and others said another so who knows. Instead there was an ever improving understanding of a complex reality which is easy to cherrypick to rhetorical ends. Exactly as you are doing right now.

pengaru 4y ago

There was passing mention of atmospheric CO2's planet-warming effects in some old 1800s book I read on archive.org that was about nutrition and diet, and how evolution explains all one needs to know about which foods to eat. The CO2 blurb was made matter-of-factly as if it were entirely well understood, and it wasn't even a major component of what was being discussed. It was just a section explaining planetary temperatures and how/why they varied over time, and how that affected the course of evolution of life on earth. The wording was something like "CO2 acts as an invisible blanket on the planet, trapping in the heat gained from the sun" if memory serves...

zardo 4y ago

> This is nonsense: that the oil industry knew about climate change but that the academic world and government scientists didn't. That is nonsense, but I don't see it in the article.