Comment by fromthestart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fromthestart | Hacker News Reader

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>Exxon and other energy companies knew as long ago as 30 years that carbon emissions were becoming perilous to the planet.

This is ridiculous.

No one knew about climate change 30 years ago. A small number of scientists were aware of the possibility of climate change - it took some 30 years of research, heavily dependent on modeling capability which was only really unlocked in the last decade or so, to come to any sort of alarmist consensus, not to mention less than 30 years ago the consensus was one of global cooling.

Sure, in hindsight, it all seems obvious, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we're talking about terraforming a planet on the scale of 100 years. You'd be crazy to believe in such a thing without some hard data to back that up.

Meanwhile let's ignore that society, globally, has advanced - technologically and socially - on the back of petroleum fuel. We all may be paying a price, but we are all partaking in the reward.

>This is ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous. I was taught about the carbon cycle, greenhouse gasses, and climate change in a United States public high school in 1993. 26 years ago.

>Meanwhile let's ignore that society, globally, has advanced - technologically and socially - on the back of petroleum fuel.

Sure, but society has provided massive subsidies (both direct and indirect) to carbon-based fuels. Had we not provided those subsidies, society would be much better off.

>It's not ridiculous. I was taught about the carbon cycle, greenhouse gasses, and climate change in a United States public high school in 1993. 26 years ago.

Climate is a complex, chaotic system. Again, there was no certainty regarding warming without the decades of research, data gathering, and modeling that followed. Knowledge of the carbon cycle and greenhouse potential is not enough alone to prove that the planet is warming from human activities. And, again, 20 years ago the consensus was that of global cooling, to emphasize the degree of uncertainty in the historic consensus. You're underestimating the gravity of the notion that we are terraforming, modifying global climate, which normally changes over 10^4-10^6 years, on the scale of 10^2, 2-4 orders of magnitude difference. No time in history have humans even been able to do such a thing, let alone had they reason to believe that it were even possible.

>Sure, but society has provided massive subsidies (both direct and indirect) to carbon-based fuels. Had we not provided those subsidies, society would be much better off.

Much better off without fuel for local and global shipping and power generation and raw material for plastics?

> Much better off without fuel for local and global shipping and power generation and raw material for plastics?

No. That's an absurd characterization of my position. I do believe we're much better off when the market, absent direct and indirect subsidies, finds the most efficient solution. That _may_ mean less shipping, more efficient power generation (trading CapEx for OpEx), and more efficient use of plastics.

You really should read through Exxons internal documents that have been disclosed as part of this process. They far exceed what you are describing in terms of uncertainty. Not only did they conduct a mini IPCC to evaluate the public science they conducted their own original research. Then based on all of this they drew up operational plans for the effect on their Arctic operations.

I have read them. These was the theoretical work of a handful of geoscientists working from the computational limitations of 70s-80s technology, and substantially limited data compared to what has been made available in the decades since.

The historic certainty of climate change is being vastly overstated, neglecting the critical role that petroleum has played in the development of modern infrastructure and society in a blind rush to find some evil to blame. Science is built on skepticism.

Fourier was already warning about climate change in the 19th century.

And the head of the Manhattan Project had concerns that the nuclear tests could ignite the atmosphere.

Science is far more than theoretical speculation. Grand claims require development of supporting theory and evidence. Even the consensus regarding climate change has been rather quick to form considering the enormity of the claims and how young the field of modern science is.

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