12 ms·

Exxon says world set to fail 2°C global warming cap by 2050

71 points by myshpa 3y ago

staunton 3y ago
While I agree with the prediction, the tone they use seems somewhat too close to "well, if we're not going to make it anyway, how about we sell some more fossil fuels?"
- bamboozled 3y ago
  Exxon produces less than 3% of the world's daily crude demand and in May its shareholders overwhelmingly rejected calls for stronger measures to mitigate climate change. What else can be said, there are assholes that are legally allowed to actually pursue this and there is absolutely nothing in the way of the law that's going to stop it. Our current system of governance isn't equipped for this.
  - Loughla 3y ago
    This is one of those problems that takes either collapse or dictator to fix. It's just too big and nebulous for society as it is to even acknowledge it across the board. The problem with both of those things is all the dead people. But we seem to think we can just keep skating by like we are in perpetuity.
    - version_five 3y ago
      > The problem with both of those things is all the dead people. Right. The consequences of communism or totalitarianism are well known and have recent precedents for how bad they will be. Climate change is an unknown, but throwing ourselves into the hands of a dictatorship (and that's what a lot of people are advocating, we're already seeing dictatorial rules in the name of climate) we know what will happen. The alternative is a technological solution. People need to stop using climate change to push a political agenda (which is literally all that's done) and get behind building nuclear and carbon capture.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        > The consequences of communism or totalitarianism are well known and have recent precedents for how bad they will be. Climate change is an unknown, but throwing ourselves into the hands of a dictatorship (and that's what a lot of people are advocating, we're already seeing dictatorial rules in the name of climate) we know what will happen. It's a very popular culturally infused meme, but not really. There are levels of "authoritarianism"...for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship#Lee_Kuan_Yew https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship#Lee_... https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMj8mXByQ/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMj8mXByQ/ > People need to stop using climate change to push a political agenda (which is literally all that's done) and get behind building nuclear and carbon capture. People might benefit from wondering what needs to be done, rather than assuming that their intuition is correct. If we don't desire to know what is true, we may never reach it.
      - eastbound 3y ago
        The alternative is that biased researchers are extremely bad at math when they want to demonstrate something they already agree with, and it’s a big nothing burger. Because, they’re so bad at math that when I compiled the figures they give, I find that we’ll get a +8°C and above scenario. So, if announce it’s even remotely possible to not fall into that scenario, it must be that their figures are better than they say.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
    Until people are willing to use less energy or consume fewer goods and services (that cost energy to produce), it's going to be difficult to achieve. You can blame the big evil corporations but they're polluting so we can buy our crap from them.
    - DarkNova6 3y ago
      The average US consumer causes 15t emissions of CO2 per year. The average EU consumer causes 7.5t emissions of CO2 per year. This is a structural difference, not one of consumers. They want you to blame the individual so the big actors can keep pocketing big money.
      - chpatrick 3y ago
        Why isn't it reasonable to blame the individual when the individual EU consumer manages to cause half the pollution of the individual US consumer?
        truculent 3y ago
        Do you think the EU consumers are trying harder than the US ones?
        chpatrick 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely.
        staunton 3y ago
        Most people in either region are not making any significant effort. They just live their lives like everyone else around them. The difference is in what that looks like. Anyway, what's with this dichotomy "corporations should change behavior" vs. "consumers should change behavior"? Those two interact and influence each other. Obviously, both must change their behavior. This is a process that must be bootstrapped.
  - DarkNova6 3y ago
    The past decades have shown the massive shift from public/national actors to the private actors. It is just as expected that now, the government cannot act strong enough to fight against a (global) crisis of the common people. Or perhaps it is the cause why we face so many threats to our planets all so seemingly suddenly. Most of all, consultancies have taken the job of people in ministries. This brain drain is another reason why the government seems so lobotomized to outsiders. But when one of your large clients is Exxon mobile and another team should consult a government about climate change... oh well
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
machina_ex_deus 3y ago
Our profits margins are lacking, please do force some artificial scarcity so we get some of our power back after the competition in our field eroded our power! Notice how every suggestion for fighting climate change always involves preventing new oil competitors from developing while doing nothing about existing oil fields? They are laughing all the way to the bank as they know the world depends on them and can't possibly detach that dependence, renewables barely make a dent in that. They don't care about total oil consumption only profit margins.
- simmerup 3y ago
  There’s nothing artificial about the budget of carbon emissions we have before each temperature increase is bought. Increasing the cost of fossil fuel is a good way to make alternative energy more appealing to investors
  - myshpa 3y ago
    Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... ... fossil-fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion over the past two years as explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion ... Our analysis shows that consumers did not pay for over $5 trillion of environmental costs last year. This number would be almost double if damage to the climate was valued at levels found in a recent study published in the scientific journal Nature ...
    - myrmidon 3y ago
      I'm not defending our irresponsible Co2 emission behavior in any way, and this only applies to a part of your link, but I feel calling negative (future?) externalities "government subsidies" is simply dishonest reporting. I'd also argue that this framing is actively harmful, because it perpetuates the view that "big government" and "big oil corporations" are mainly to blame for lackluster action, but the inconvenient truth is that the average western citizen just does NOT want to sacrifice neither vacation air travel nor personal car, nor is he willing to pay more for energy/electricity. Government action (or lack thereof) mainly mirrors this popular sentiment-- its not a big lobbying conspiracy...
rex_lupi 3y ago
...."thanks to us".
wiredfool 3y ago
Back in the early 90's (post Valdez), a friend of mine had a tshirt: At Exxon, we don't have to care, Because at Exxon, We're Part of the Problem
delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
Nice to rub it in our faces, I guess. Thanks, Exxon. They knew about this in the 1980s, and have actively laboured to hide it from the public[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Edit: People have got to stop assuming that commenters are American...
- flakeoil 3y ago
  Well, everyone did, or at least the US congress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOdTEIihFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOdTEIihFU It's easy to blame the oil companies, but in fact, the governments around the world did not care or do anything about it. Car manufacturers did nothing to decrease size of their cars or fuel efficiency (certainly not the last 20 years). And consumers did not bother to buy smaller and more fuel efficient cars. Everyone has known about global warming for 40 years. Everyone blames oil companies and not themselves. If we completely stopped to use or at least massively reduced the usage of oil then there would be no rich oil companies. It's easy to blame someone else. [1] Carl Sagan testifying before congress in 1985.
  - joker_minmax 3y ago
    Even Margaret Thatcher made a speech about global warming. George HW Bush also believed in it.
  - breakyerself 3y ago
    I blame government AND fossil fuel companies. Harder to blame individuals when they're just trying to survive in a system they didn't build and have little power to change and they happen to be targets of PR campaigns to make them doubt reality. Funded by fossil fuel money.
    - flakeoil 3y ago
      At the end it's all humans. Government does what the voters want so the get elected/re-elected. Unfortunately voters don't seem to want to pay more tax for fuel and electricity. They don't seem to want to pay additional taxes for their flights etc. Politicians are slowly phasing in these kind of policies, but it is not fast and drastic enough. Maybe soon with a bit more forest fires and heat waves and water scarcity the population will ask and show in the polls that they want more and more drastic measures. Once the majority of the population decides we cannot continue as we have done, then things will happen, but it goes to slow unfortunately. Just look at everyone who without blinking takes a long flight for their holiday. In one swoop they spend as much energy as they use in one year on commuting with car, cooking, heating house, warming water, household machines etc.
formvoltron 3y ago
Is this another way of saying our profits are secure with your DCF models!?s
Pxtl 3y ago
werealltryingtofindtheguywhodidthis.gif
pnut 3y ago
Amusing that fossil fuel companies are now both - Acknowledging that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, and - Revealing that their confidence on its effects is so strong, they can publicly predict its impact on global climate decades into the future. I guess from their perspective, in spite of all criticism, they are just accommodating the energy demands of the global market, which have been universally "more energy now" until very recently.
- fsloth 3y ago
  It's a mess. Energy companies are both huge part of the problem - and at the same time the only reason modern civilization exists. Hydrocarbons are primary input still to most of the processes we have to exist above ... well, actually exist, because the alternative with this amount of people to hydrocarbon driven economy is mass starvation. The energy companies should be taken to court for the damage they have done to planet via their anti-climate-action PR. But, at the same time we need their product to live.
  - avidphantasm 3y ago
    Large energy companies should be nationalized and run rationally, i.e. in a way that acknowledges the extreme scarcity of waste absorption capacity we are faced with.
    - 10u152 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - remh 3y ago
        i recommend you open a dictionary and look for the definition of "nuance"
    - kozak 3y ago
      Nationalization is not a guaranteed solution because of the dangers of populism.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Meanwhile they (allegedly) fund stuff like this: https://co2coalition.org/facts/ https://co2coalition.org/facts/
Geisterde 3y ago
Anyone ever heard of the conversation of happiness? Happiness cannot be created or destroyed, only taken. See I have a good idea of where we are headed and what could be done to fix it; energy shortages and nuclear respectively. When the wind and solar people are crying that we failed these warming goals and still don't have stable electric grids, I will be laughing; its pretty obvious what environmentalist policies do to anyone who understands energy, and I'm prepared.
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  A diversified profile needs to exist to meet fluctuating demand. I think energy storage or some long term reliance on natural gas is baked in to any sort of emergency response, because nuclear is harder to adjust willy nilly. But yeah it's hard to ignore the largest low-carbon baseload power source
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    There is a possible way to offset this, an energy consumer of last resort, someone who's paying you more than nothing but doesn't compete with other demands. Bitcoin mining is ideal because it can be deployed anywhere at any scale, it can ramp up to soak up excess power off peak, and ramp down to provide it back to the grid. Since mining is a globally decentralized competition for cheap energy, its unlikely it would ever price out other uses of energy, which could be limited by contract anyways.
moralestapia 3y ago
So, it turns out that the world will not stopping using oil in the foreseeable future? Colour me surprised.
onewheeltom 3y ago
They should know, after all …

71 points by myshpa 3y ago

While I agree with the prediction, the tone they use seems somewhat too close to "well, if we're not going to make it anyway, how about we sell some more fossil fuels?"

bamboozled 3y ago
Exxon produces less than 3% of the world's daily crude demand and in May its shareholders overwhelmingly rejected calls for stronger measures to mitigate climate change. What else can be said, there are assholes that are legally allowed to actually pursue this and there is absolutely nothing in the way of the law that's going to stop it. Our current system of governance isn't equipped for this.
- Loughla 3y ago
  This is one of those problems that takes either collapse or dictator to fix. It's just too big and nebulous for society as it is to even acknowledge it across the board. The problem with both of those things is all the dead people. But we seem to think we can just keep skating by like we are in perpetuity.
  - version_five 3y ago
    > The problem with both of those things is all the dead people. Right. The consequences of communism or totalitarianism are well known and have recent precedents for how bad they will be. Climate change is an unknown, but throwing ourselves into the hands of a dictatorship (and that's what a lot of people are advocating, we're already seeing dictatorial rules in the name of climate) we know what will happen. The alternative is a technological solution. People need to stop using climate change to push a political agenda (which is literally all that's done) and get behind building nuclear and carbon capture.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      > The consequences of communism or totalitarianism are well known and have recent precedents for how bad they will be. Climate change is an unknown, but throwing ourselves into the hands of a dictatorship (and that's what a lot of people are advocating, we're already seeing dictatorial rules in the name of climate) we know what will happen. It's a very popular culturally infused meme, but not really. There are levels of "authoritarianism"...for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship#Lee_Kuan_Yew https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship#Lee_... https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMj8mXByQ/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMj8mXByQ/ > People need to stop using climate change to push a political agenda (which is literally all that's done) and get behind building nuclear and carbon capture. People might benefit from wondering what needs to be done, rather than assuming that their intuition is correct. If we don't desire to know what is true, we may never reach it.
    - eastbound 3y ago
      The alternative is that biased researchers are extremely bad at math when they want to demonstrate something they already agree with, and it’s a big nothing burger. Because, they’re so bad at math that when I compiled the figures they give, I find that we’ll get a +8°C and above scenario. So, if announce it’s even remotely possible to not fall into that scenario, it must be that their figures are better than they say.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  Until people are willing to use less energy or consume fewer goods and services (that cost energy to produce), it's going to be difficult to achieve. You can blame the big evil corporations but they're polluting so we can buy our crap from them.
  - DarkNova6 3y ago
    The average US consumer causes 15t emissions of CO2 per year. The average EU consumer causes 7.5t emissions of CO2 per year. This is a structural difference, not one of consumers. They want you to blame the individual so the big actors can keep pocketing big money.
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      Why isn't it reasonable to blame the individual when the individual EU consumer manages to cause half the pollution of the individual US consumer?
      - truculent 3y ago
        Do you think the EU consumers are trying harder than the US ones?
        chpatrick 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely.
        staunton 3y ago
        Most people in either region are not making any significant effort. They just live their lives like everyone else around them. The difference is in what that looks like. Anyway, what's with this dichotomy "corporations should change behavior" vs. "consumers should change behavior"? Those two interact and influence each other. Obviously, both must change their behavior. This is a process that must be bootstrapped.
- DarkNova6 3y ago
  The past decades have shown the massive shift from public/national actors to the private actors. It is just as expected that now, the government cannot act strong enough to fight against a (global) crisis of the common people. Or perhaps it is the cause why we face so many threats to our planets all so seemingly suddenly. Most of all, consultancies have taken the job of people in ministries. This brain drain is another reason why the government seems so lobotomized to outsiders. But when one of your large clients is Exxon mobile and another team should consult a government about climate change... oh well

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

machina_ex_deus 3y ago

Our profits margins are lacking, please do force some artificial scarcity so we get some of our power back after the competition in our field eroded our power! Notice how every suggestion for fighting climate change always involves preventing new oil competitors from developing while doing nothing about existing oil fields? They are laughing all the way to the bank as they know the world depends on them and can't possibly detach that dependence, renewables barely make a dent in that. They don't care about total oil consumption only profit margins.

simmerup 3y ago
There’s nothing artificial about the budget of carbon emissions we have before each temperature increase is bought. Increasing the cost of fossil fuel is a good way to make alternative energy more appealing to investors
- myshpa 3y ago
  Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... ... fossil-fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion over the past two years as explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion ... Our analysis shows that consumers did not pay for over $5 trillion of environmental costs last year. This number would be almost double if damage to the climate was valued at levels found in a recent study published in the scientific journal Nature ...
  - myrmidon 3y ago
    I'm not defending our irresponsible Co2 emission behavior in any way, and this only applies to a part of your link, but I feel calling negative (future?) externalities "government subsidies" is simply dishonest reporting. I'd also argue that this framing is actively harmful, because it perpetuates the view that "big government" and "big oil corporations" are mainly to blame for lackluster action, but the inconvenient truth is that the average western citizen just does NOT want to sacrifice neither vacation air travel nor personal car, nor is he willing to pay more for energy/electricity. Government action (or lack thereof) mainly mirrors this popular sentiment-- its not a big lobbying conspiracy...

rex_lupi 3y ago

...."thanks to us".

wiredfool 3y ago

Back in the early 90's (post Valdez), a friend of mine had a tshirt: At Exxon, we don't have to care, Because at Exxon, We're Part of the Problem

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago

Nice to rub it in our faces, I guess. Thanks, Exxon. They knew about this in the 1980s, and have actively laboured to hide it from the public[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Edit: People have got to stop assuming that commenters are American...

flakeoil 3y ago
Well, everyone did, or at least the US congress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOdTEIihFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOdTEIihFU It's easy to blame the oil companies, but in fact, the governments around the world did not care or do anything about it. Car manufacturers did nothing to decrease size of their cars or fuel efficiency (certainly not the last 20 years). And consumers did not bother to buy smaller and more fuel efficient cars. Everyone has known about global warming for 40 years. Everyone blames oil companies and not themselves. If we completely stopped to use or at least massively reduced the usage of oil then there would be no rich oil companies. It's easy to blame someone else. [1] Carl Sagan testifying before congress in 1985.
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  Even Margaret Thatcher made a speech about global warming. George HW Bush also believed in it.
- breakyerself 3y ago
  I blame government AND fossil fuel companies. Harder to blame individuals when they're just trying to survive in a system they didn't build and have little power to change and they happen to be targets of PR campaigns to make them doubt reality. Funded by fossil fuel money.
  - flakeoil 3y ago
    At the end it's all humans. Government does what the voters want so the get elected/re-elected. Unfortunately voters don't seem to want to pay more tax for fuel and electricity. They don't seem to want to pay additional taxes for their flights etc. Politicians are slowly phasing in these kind of policies, but it is not fast and drastic enough. Maybe soon with a bit more forest fires and heat waves and water scarcity the population will ask and show in the polls that they want more and more drastic measures. Once the majority of the population decides we cannot continue as we have done, then things will happen, but it goes to slow unfortunately. Just look at everyone who without blinking takes a long flight for their holiday. In one swoop they spend as much energy as they use in one year on commuting with car, cooking, heating house, warming water, household machines etc.

formvoltron 3y ago

Is this another way of saying our profits are secure with your DCF models!?s

Pxtl 3y ago

werealltryingtofindtheguywhodidthis.gif

pnut 3y ago

Amusing that fossil fuel companies are now both - Acknowledging that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, and - Revealing that their confidence on its effects is so strong, they can publicly predict its impact on global climate decades into the future. I guess from their perspective, in spite of all criticism, they are just accommodating the energy demands of the global market, which have been universally "more energy now" until very recently.

fsloth 3y ago
It's a mess. Energy companies are both huge part of the problem - and at the same time the only reason modern civilization exists. Hydrocarbons are primary input still to most of the processes we have to exist above ... well, actually exist, because the alternative with this amount of people to hydrocarbon driven economy is mass starvation. The energy companies should be taken to court for the damage they have done to planet via their anti-climate-action PR. But, at the same time we need their product to live.
- avidphantasm 3y ago
  Large energy companies should be nationalized and run rationally, i.e. in a way that acknowledges the extreme scarcity of waste absorption capacity we are faced with.
  - 10u152 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - remh 3y ago
      i recommend you open a dictionary and look for the definition of "nuance"
  - kozak 3y ago
    Nationalization is not a guaranteed solution because of the dangers of populism.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

Meanwhile they (allegedly) fund stuff like this: https://co2coalition.org/facts/ https://co2coalition.org/facts/

Geisterde 3y ago

Anyone ever heard of the conversation of happiness? Happiness cannot be created or destroyed, only taken. See I have a good idea of where we are headed and what could be done to fix it; energy shortages and nuclear respectively. When the wind and solar people are crying that we failed these warming goals and still don't have stable electric grids, I will be laughing; its pretty obvious what environmentalist policies do to anyone who understands energy, and I'm prepared.

joker_minmax 3y ago
A diversified profile needs to exist to meet fluctuating demand. I think energy storage or some long term reliance on natural gas is baked in to any sort of emergency response, because nuclear is harder to adjust willy nilly. But yeah it's hard to ignore the largest low-carbon baseload power source
- Geisterde 3y ago
  There is a possible way to offset this, an energy consumer of last resort, someone who's paying you more than nothing but doesn't compete with other demands. Bitcoin mining is ideal because it can be deployed anywhere at any scale, it can ramp up to soak up excess power off peak, and ramp down to provide it back to the grid. Since mining is a globally decentralized competition for cheap energy, its unlikely it would ever price out other uses of energy, which could be limited by contract anyways.

moralestapia 3y ago

So, it turns out that the world will not stopping using oil in the foreseeable future? Colour me surprised.

onewheeltom 3y ago

They should know, after all …