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Study: Exxon mobil accurately predicted warming since 1970s
- throw0101c 4y agoSeems to be the study in question: * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063 See also the section entitled "What ExxonMobil knew versus what they said".
- coretx 4y ago[flagged]
- SuoDuanDao 4y agoYou're kind of feeding into stereotypes of the other side here...
- raverbashing 4y agoOnly goes to show that "Climate controversy" only exists for people willing to throw their reputation on the trash for good amounts of money Of course there are plenty of attention seekers willing to do just that
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago> - Of course there are plenty of clowns willing to do that > + Of course there are plenty of attention seekers willing to do just that Calling someone a clown/attention seeker makes it seem like it's some unavoidable trait. Let us not remove agency from them. Let us not confuse ill-intent with foolishness. At some point there must be some form of world climate trials reckoning.
- brookst 4y agoIt seems like a pretty straightforward fraud. At the very least civil liability should be a question of how much, not if.
- fwsgonzo 4y agoI watched a long lecture by someone who had worked in academia for a long time, and his conclusions were that they cannot accept things that is incompatible with their world view. The classic example is someone who works in oil is not capable of accepting what the consequences are. They may accept that plastic is bad, or that smoke pollutes, although sometimes not even that. Talk to an old biker and he may swear that CO2 is good for you. Have you ever seen someone get defensive at the mere mention of a topic? Eg. that the planet is over-populated and that reducing the population is one of the best things we can do to save ourselves? Well, some immediately enter solution-mode and they talk as if you are arguing for gas chambers (or something equally idiotic). It's quite draining to talk to people when you know their worldview does not allow a conversation about something. But it's also important to understand how it happens, and that you cannot do anything. Now I wish I could find that lecture, but I couldn't. Finding these gems amidst all the junk on the Internet is a challenge.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoThey accept it but it's hard to objectively tell me why I should care about future generations. I do care, but I can't think of any objective reasons to care. Only romantic reasons about humanity, descendents, future generations, etc. It gets philosophical.
- aebtebeten 4y agocf https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... tl;dr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism#Content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism#Content
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoReducing population is not a workable idea. The people saying it may not think they're calling for gas chambers. But thats just because they are ignorant. If you want to do the sums, just assume no one is ever born ever again and plot out the population for the next 100 years. Note that half the planet's population is under the mean age of 30. Life expectancy is above 80 if you exclude death in childbirth (which we just abolished in this thought experiment). Unless you actively start killing people it's not going down fast enough to make any difference in the timescale we have for climate change. And if you do want to start killing people, you'd get the most bang per buck by starting in America, then other rich Western nations. So I'd be very careful about putting this meme out there in case you find yourself on the wrong end of it.
- jamager 4y agohttps://corporate.exxonmobil.com/sustainability/environmental-protection/climate-change https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/sustainability/environmenta... No further questions, your honor.
- omgmajk 4y ago>“#ExxonKnew” is a campaign orchestrated by activists and trial lawyers to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s position and research on climate change. For the past several years, activist organizations have sought to punish ExxonMobil for voicing its opinion on climate policy, even though the company supports policies to limit climate change. The last part there is almost comical.
- headsoup 4y ago"Supports policies" is nothing tangible in itself. Exxon will do whatever makes them the most money possible. If 'green energy' turns out to be that thing, they'll jump on it.
- 082349872349872 4y agoMy parents have been trying to divest themselves of oil majors for some time. So they sell some CVX/SHEL/XOM/etc., and buy green energy replacements. Only to find out they've been playing whack-a-mole, because several months later, the green company has been acquired, and after the merger, my parents position once again has more CVX/SHEL/XOM/...
- snowpid 4y agoThis paper generates an interesting research policy question: Why was Exxon able to create equal or better projections than the NASA?
- headsoup 4y agoMore money in it
- snowpid 4y agoCan you quote a source?
- headsoup 4y agoDo I need to? It is entirely logical that Exxon would research the things that are either a threat to, or benefit to their future profits. The larger the potential, the more research.
- snowpid 4y agobut otherwise NASA could put more money into climate research and researchers have a more open enviroment. One liner explaination most of time arent very good and therefore my question.
- iamgopal 4y agoYou have no idea about NASA’s budget
- recuter 4y agoNext you're going to tell me recycling doesn't work and nuclear power is a good idea after all and we knew that the whole time as well. It is almost as if the public discourse is dominated by loud simple minded people who sort themselves into tribes along arbitrary/self-serving lines and fiercely double down in the face of evidence.
- fedeb95 4y ago"as if"
- xattt 4y agoI want to say that some public discourse was possibly seeded by foreign state actors in order to establish energy dominance.
- SN76477 4y ago>It is almost as if the public discourse is dominated by loud simple minded people who sort themselves into tribes along arbitrary/self-serving lines and fiercely double down in the face of evidence. It is exactly this
- 082349872349872 4y agofor a long (~7'500 word) expansion of that, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34367615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34367615 > If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible.
- ospray 4y agoI blame the sound byte media and humans inability to act on long term problems. Climate change/global warming is real and can be very dangerous but it's hard to have a critical discuss about.
- asah 4y agoThe problem with nuclear was never it "not working" but the extreme penalty for the once-a-decade safety failure. To the average voter, they look at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima and say "three strikes and you're out" - and they look at Fukushima and say, "if even the Japanese can't get nuclear to be safe, then Homer Simpson stands no chance." For every HNer shouting for nuclear, there's another million viewings of Simpsons episodes and 3.6 roentgen memes. I know it's frustrating, but maybe just maybe society isn't so keen on 40 year [1], $500B cleanup jobs [2] and 1000 square mile areas becoming uninhabitable [3], and instead prefers diffuse damage (climate change, air quality, oil wars, etc). I'm not arguing either way, just observing. HN: before you downvote, please ask yourself if you're hitting the button because this comment is false, or because you don't want it to be true. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=three+mile+island+cleanup https://www.google.com/search?q=three+mile+island+cleanup [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=fukushima+cleanup+cost https://www.google.com/search?q=fukushima+cleanup+cost https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=chernobyl+exclusion+zone https://www.google.com/search?q=chernobyl+exclusion+zone
- machina_ex_deus 4y agoDid it really hurt their business tho? It seems that pushing climate change only improved their profit margins with artificial scarcity. I'm not sure people are correctly analyzing their interests here. Renewables are still unreliable in winter, most of the oil is used in transportation and the power grid is just decades away from supporting electric cars. Minewhile they get to enact cartel style output limiting and competition suppression in the name of climate change. I'll also note that the narrative only truly took off when they started getting pressure from shale oil competition, not the literally 40 years beforehand that they had good margins. All in all I believe that the timing and actions are in their advantage.
- simiones 4y agoIf serious action against climate change would have started in the 1970s, back when we could prevent the massive problems that we'll have live with in the 2050s and beyond, Exxon Mobil would have been out of business by now (or at least, would have had to pivot to some other industry). Also, oil producers have been coordinating and doing cartel-style output limitting since forever, this is not some new thing or some environmental purpose - OPEC exists exactly for this purpose.
- calvinmorrison 4y agoIf wasn't for you and those and the meddling anti nuclear protesters... - Scooby-Doo
- concordDance 4y agoWhile, yes, anti-nuclear protestors bear a lot of the blame, what makes you think the parent was one?
- makomk 4y agoOPEC is an alliance of state-owned oil producers in the Middle East, and their influence on global oil prices were seriously curtailed when the US started producing more oil - if attempts by global warming activists to limit oil production in the democratic developed world were more successful that'd really help give them back power. Also, there's not really an OPEC analog for natural gas but the ESG movement seems to have had similar effects in practice. I reckon the comment you're replying to is exactly right - people have been mislead about their interests and the effects of specific policies on them. Specifically, the media has pushed for fossil fuel production to be cut back without first tackling the need for it and told people that the reason governments won't do this is because it'll hurt big oil's profits, and then when this had the opposite effect that it was the result of corporate profiteering, and that any claims to the contrary were just big oil propaganda. People bought this because it fit into their existing view of the world and all their friends did. Of course, this couldn't possibly work as advertised because it'd require consumers and the industries supplying them to burn fossil fuel that's not actually available. The whole reason prices go up and consumers can afford less is because the fossil fuel demand at previous levels of consumption can no longer be supplied.
- rr888 4y agoIts so dumb that everyone is looking for someone else to blame, except themselves. Just to live in the Western world you're creating CO2 every day. Exxon might have known something but would it make a difference? We all know now about global warming but there are hundreds of coal stations being built right now.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Exxon might have known something but would it make a difference? They did more than know; while knowing, they pretended not to, and cast doubt on research confirming what they internally knew. If I make knowingly false representations to sell something, that's generally considered fraud.
- MailleQuiMaille 4y agoSo the « …and yet you live in society » meme ? You don’t see how a company responsible for one of the most potent use case of global warming, knowing about this for 50 years and hiding the truth is more responsible than the average joe just trying to live by ?
- resoluteteeth 4y ago> We all know now about global warming but there are hundreds of coal stations being built right now. There are still people denying it, they are literally funded by companies like Exxon, and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. So, yeah, if Exxon had just announced their results 50 years ago rather than spending tons of money denying them it would have made a huge difference.
- rr888 4y ago> There are still people denying it, Only a few crackpots > and this is one of the biggest impediments to stopping climate change. No I dont believe this at all.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Only a few crackpots That's overly dismissive. They might be crackpots, but they're sometimes powerful crackpots. Like US Senators: https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowball-climate-change/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/james-inhofe-snowbal...
- danbruc 4y agoSo some company figured out that their business has negative externalities and then they tried their best that nobody else figures this out and does anything against it so that the profits keep rolling in? Morally bad, sure, unexpected, no. So what is even the point of this? Do we want to say that it would have been the job of Exxon to minimize climate change? As an excuse for government inaction because Exxon tricked them? Do we just want to put a number on how morally bad Exxon is? I am seriously confused what the point of this is. NOTE: I read the following post [1] which has a duplicate link to this post. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34366666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34366666
- ceejayoz 4y agoWe have a term for "outright lying about a product to improve sales"; it's "fraud".
- warinukraine 4y agoThis. I'm sorry you're "confused". Some times I get confused with morals and legals don't align, but that's not even the case here.
- danbruc 4y agoLet me just accept that they actually did something illegal, fine, they are not only morally wrong but also legally. And now? Do we make them pay a huge fine and climate change is averted? This seems pure distraction to me. Make some unpopular but impactful policy decisions that actually help to improve the situation instead of pointing fingers and changing nothing.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Do we make them pay a huge fine and climate change is averted? We should make them pay a huge fine even if the damage they did can't be reversed. Perhaps especially if.
- smn1234 4y agorelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34358759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34358759
- diego_moita 4y agoAnd Purdue Farma knew that Oxycontin was severely addicting. And RJ Reynolds knew that cigarettes cause cancer. And GM knew that tetraethyl lead was poisoning the planet. And Meta/Facebook knows it is igniting racism, bigotry and even genocide all over the world. And probably no one will be punished.
- fedeb95 4y agoThis doesn't say anything about that company. It says much, very much, about public institutions.
- kodyo 4y agoThat’s an accomplishment that climate alarmists can’t claim. Government scientists have told me we were 10 years from mass death and deprivation for those same 50 years.
- foreverobama 4y ago[dead]
- throwaway4aday 4y agoVery little informational content in this article. 90% of it is structured around building up the case that "Exxon knew exactly how much warming would occur" but there is very little information about the models themselves that appear to be the key piece of evidence. The one sentence that does mention them says "From 63% to 83% of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm about .36 degree (.2 degree Celsius) a decade." So we have an uncertain number of projections that match the outcome to within whatever amount of error "strict standards for accuracy" means. If the number is on the low end of 63% and the error is loosey-goosey then I can see why Exxon would say that their models may not be reliable since they would be getting 37% of their predictions wrong and some amount of the "correct" predictions would be off as well. People love to talk about broken clocks, I think we should be talking about broken models.
- JoshTko 4y agoI won't assume intent, but this structure is a textbook approach on how to distract from core issue.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoGood thing I haven't read any textbooks then. Hunting for witches doesn't pay well, just so you know.
- e63f67dd-065b 4y ago> research that Exxon funded that didn't just confirm what climate scientists were saying but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists I didn't read the paper in question, but I think (just from this description) that this is a bit disingenuous. Exxon is no angel, but big companies fund thousands of researchers on thousands of grants, and I don't expect management to pay attention to everything that that comes out of that with equal priority. Maybe there's some wishful thinking going on in management, some malfeasance, but "a study they funded shows they're doing bad things" is not something that surprising; thousands of studies come out every day alleging some wrongdoing by somebody or another, and we don't find out what's signal and what's noise until much later.
- timeon 4y agohttps://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-Memo-to-Management-About-CO2 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-M...