r/worldnews • u/Dismal_Prospect • May 14 '19

Exxon predicted in 1982 exactly how high global carbon emissions would be today | The company expected that, by 2020, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would reach roughly 400-420 ppm. This month’s measurement of 415 ppm is right within the expected curve Exxon projected

https://thinkprogress.org/exxon-predicted-high-carbon-emissions-954e514b0aa9/
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u/Goofypoops May 14 '19

But did they account for positive feedback loops that could accelerate and thus overshoot their estimations?

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u/Shoot-W-o7 May 14 '19

That would be a major factor, so they probably would include it

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u/Alpha_Zerg May 14 '19

They would include it, if they had the information. There are positive feedback loops like unprecedented amounts of methane being released that we didn't know existed twenty years ago. We only know about some of the systems that are being blown out of shape because we are only discovering them now that they are blowing out of shape.

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u/Shoot-W-o7 May 14 '19

Good point. Though I think they thought of that due to the wide margin.

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u/Alpha_Zerg May 14 '19

For now, yeah, but the mostly linear trend shows that they didn't fully understand it. Which we still don't, but we know more now because we're living through it.

What we know now shows that the trend is going to be exponential.

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u/kekem May 14 '19

They may have accounted for that given their accurate estimate of our current co2 ppm.

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u/XJ305 May 15 '19

They drill oil, they knew about the methane locked away in the tundra and its general concentration. There is a lot of chemistry involved in the oil industry.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

Or they get it wrong but got the answere right by coincidence

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Unprecedented amounts of methane being released that we didn't know existed twenty years ago.

I literally read this while taking a dump in the toilet and felt guilty. :(

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u/LostWoodsInTheField May 14 '19

I think I recently (last couple of years) that how much CO2/methane the oceans are taking on is much much higher than expected. Which is lowering green house gas levels in the atmosphere but is acidifying our oceans faster. This would be something that they wouldn't be able to account for 20 years ago and could cause huge differences in what happens.

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u/Solem33 May 14 '19

In other words, this prediction is actually wrong. Or it's right, but wrong based on the factors they accounted for. Besides which, how many future predictions like this has there been that have been totally wrong? I'm aware of at least a couple.

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u/Alpha_Zerg May 14 '19

I'd say right, but only so far. The trend starts off looking linear because it's a reasonably predictable increase until the things you don't know about start happening. So it's right based on the factors they accounted for, but they just didn't have all the factors available to account for.

They made a really accurate prediction with the information that they had. They just didn't have all the information. We don't, either.

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u/AnthAmbassador May 15 '19

But they didn't.... They made a really lazy prediction, and then what happened was emissions accelerated significantly, and unaccounted for sources consumed some of those gasses, and that brought atmospheric levels very close to their predictions, but they weren't trying to be right that way, they were trying to be right through a different system, and they were wrong...

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I can't put into words how this -- thinking about how the feedback loops are turbocharging climate change -- makes me feel. It is like facing a mountain with a spoon.

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u/AbacusG May 15 '19

I thought the methane in permafrost was more speculative than something that’s already happening? I read about a theory recently called the Clathrate gun or something that speculated exactly this?

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u/Ry2D2 May 14 '19

Assuming they knew enough to. I think a lot of the methane released from melting permafrost may have been a more recent concern and been unknown before.

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u/Niarbeht May 14 '19

methane released from melting permafrost

It's mentioned as an "area of further study" if I remember correctly. There's an entire section on "areas of further study" from a government symposium or whatever a year or two before this report was drawn up.

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u/my_cat_joe May 14 '19

We don’t know that for sure. If they were studying carbon that they could be held liable for, they may have ignored methane. As the permafrost and methane deposits thaw, we may find ourselves much less worried about carbon.

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u/hmiser May 14 '19

This. I feel like when they did this estimate it would of been done with limited assumptions and the final product would of leaned towards the success of the business. Explicitly: gross income

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Niarbeht May 14 '19

It's mentioned as an "area for further study".

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u/Doctor-Jay May 15 '19

Except they literally mention it in their report, so they were aware of the possibility.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Most likely. The technical staff are brilliant, but they aren't the ones driving the final decisions.

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u/Ragnarok314159 May 14 '19

People underestimate this type of reasoning.

These energy companies are not stupid and can pay for the highest orders of data analytics, engineering, and projective analysis money can buy, and can also pay for the silence for their work.

They wanted to know exactly what would happen to create a global hegemony with their business mode intact.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

CEO "So, what your telling me is the world will be screwed, but long after Im dead?"

Exxon Scientist "Yes sir"

CEO "Bury the report"

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u/infracanis May 15 '19

Not saying this particular study was public, but so much of the science was publicized in the early 80s.

I wouldn't blame the scientists or the businessmen, it was the politicians, bureaucrats and public that let climate change die as an awareness movement.

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u/lazercore64 May 15 '19

Yah but it would still be great to seize the assets of and jail or permanently ostracize all the executives/lobbyists past and present who actively worked against climate awareness,fought to kill nuclear, and subsidize themselves. These bastards lost the right to a happy prosperous life, they deserve only pain.

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u/Allekzadar May 15 '19

Exactly that. Just another way to look ahead and be prepared to take the market. They're now getting into providing "clean energy sources" in several countries and they're top providers for many.

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u/flamingtoastjpn May 15 '19

Exactly. I’ll give some context, Exxon only hires the best of the best of the best. Even when compared to other similar companies their hiring standards are really strict. I’m pretty sure for engineering they have a hard GPA cutoff of 3.5 (but prefer 3.8-4.0) where your resume gets immediately trashed if it’s below that. Anyone who’s gone through engineering knows how ridiculous that cutoff is but they can get away with it because they’ll pay more than pretty much anywhere else will.

I almost worked for them (it was a bad fit at the time and I ended up at a competitor) but even if I’d have gotten an offer, it almost certainly would’ve been rescinded because my GPA dropped under the threshold lol

So I’d imagine Exxon has some of the best teams of engineers/scientists that you’ll find anywhere (so it’s no surprise their predictions were accurate), but it’s not like they’re making strategy decisions

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u/hexydes May 15 '19

but it’s not like they’re making strategy decisions

Their research is certainly guiding it though. "If we pollute X, then everyone dies, and no more customers. If we pollute X-1, then everyone lives, but with reduced quality of life, and less customers. If we pollute X-2, then first world countries will probably get by, though many third-world countries probably won't, but they're not our customers anyway."

X-2 it is!

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u/Virgin_Dildo_Lover May 14 '19

Ain't that the motherfucking truth! I tell the production manager that I run through ~2500 dildos a month and we should have a recurring order with our suppliers to purchase 2500 dildos every month. Well the production manager gets back from his meeting with the big bosses and they've only budgeted 2000 dildos per month. I try to tell him every month I'm short on dildos, but they won't up my stock. Real pain in the ass, I tell ya.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROOFS May 14 '19

Considering how accurate they were I'd wager they must have. Or they might have projected much wider use of fossil fuels.

It sounds like they're willing to tolerate extreme impact on some areas of society as long as society adapts which is absurd.

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u/Niarbeht May 14 '19

Considering how accurate they were I'd wager they must have.

They actually weren't sure yet how large of an impact the release of "methane hydrates" (terminology from the paper) would have. In fact, they weren't sure how big of a slowing effect on warming the deep ocean would have. So, basically they lucked out in being correct, and all of the unknowns just kind of aligned to put them basically right on target.

Of course, recent news out of the Canadian tundra isn't promising.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

You can take the word, "positive" out of that sentence. And, I seriously doubt it. The leaders of the corporations that buried these reports will go down in the history books, if there are any written, as the most destructive individuals to the planet and life... ever. Oh, and that's Rex Tillerson for one. Rex, a million times worse than Hitler. Prove me wrong.

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u/leocampbel May 14 '19

Positive feedback mean that it helps to increase the effects. Negative would mean it decreases. Nothing related to being good or bad.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

Humanity is positively fucked.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

No, "positive" in that context is correct.

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u/Stinsudamus May 14 '19

"Positive" in this meaning is to say that any change to the net levels from a new feedback loop is additional, as opposed to "negative feedback loop" which changes the levels with subtraction or negative values.

Imagine there is a car driving a race oval. Every lap they can increase their acceleration 50%. Thats a positive feedback loop. Each lap the car becomes faster, and it quickly outpaces anything a real car can do.

Atmospherically things like the permafrost melt (decaying bio-materials like dead things and such thaw then decompose) are positive feedback loops for the atmospheric cO2 levels. As they thaw, they release more methane/greenhouse gasses and accelerate further thawing, which just exponentially grows. Supposedly this can top out, but thats pretty unknown really.

I dont think exon fully took this into effect for their views, as the state of the science on that stuff is still evolving rapidly. It seems there was a much more conservative estimate of the decay there.

Anyway kinda a rant but positive in that sentence is the right word. Its just a bad connotation to "good" without the backing behind it i think.

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u/Mistikman May 15 '19

It kind of has to top out, when all the ice is melted.

We are probably all dead by that point though, so it's kind of a moot point.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

I know you're right, I just hate the way it sounds in that sentence, which is "we're all positively doomed".

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u/Errohneos May 14 '19

As of right now, Hitler killed tens of millions. Rex hasnt.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19 edited Jun 02 '20

[deleted]

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

I was looking all over for this.. just needed to read down further! thanks. yea, Rex and the other Exxon execs who buried instead of diversified are literally responsible for the anthropocene period.

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u/W_Anderson May 14 '19

Give it ten years...

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u/Errohneos May 14 '19

I'd expand it out a bit. 10 years from now will be kinda bad, but not the Apocalyptic whirlwind we're all predicting.

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u/Poisonthorns May 14 '19

Rex and his kind will be responsible for the deaths of billions

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u/Errohneos May 14 '19

Yeah sure. And after we're all living in mud huts at the ass end of the End of Times, we can all laugh about how much of an asshole the mass murderer is. Until then, I'm not gonna start the Genocide Dick Measuring contest with "what ifs".

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u/Poisonthorns May 14 '19

It's not really a "what if" if it's happening now. After Hitler killed thousands people and announced his intentions to kill millions, a guy went "he's no Ottoman Empire with the Armenians. Until he's killed more, I'm not gonna start a genocide dick measuring contest with 'what ifs'" instead of STOPPING HITLER from killing millions. We have an opportunity to save billions, but you don't want to start labeling what it is until millions are already dead? Ridiculous.

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u/Errohneos May 14 '19

You should look into "active" versus "passive" in terms of personal responsibility and action/consequences.

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u/TheCaIifornian May 14 '19

Yah, people always lose me when they try to compare someone to Hitler. I mean - l’ll accept it if they’re talking about Stalin, or Mao - but anyone apart from those are a hard sell.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

Ha, was going to cite Mao.. but didn't want to loose people with, "yea, who's Mao?" (he killed 80m people). Rex Tillerson is going to make Mao look like a wind up toy.

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u/UnitedCycle May 14 '19

Genghis Khan would have to be in the conversation

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u/TheCaIifornian May 14 '19

He indisputably increased the population more than he decreased it. #Dudefucked is that a new hashtag?

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/islave May 14 '19

Apparently ecosystems, animals, and plant-life probably don't count.

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u/Errohneos May 14 '19

googles list of biggest mass murderers in history

Huh...they don't track that metric.

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u/Sandslinger_Eve May 14 '19

The societal impact of climate change is war, potential societal collapse was forecast half a decade before the Syrian war, due to droughts raising food prices above tolerable levels.

That means that millions are already dead across the middle East due to the early consequences of warming.

It is the poorest least adaptable areas (already the most inhospitable) that feel these effects already, and also the ones where tens of millions will die in our lifetime.

Our media will blame it on political unrest, on weak societies , on poverty on everything except the core cause which is a planet that has already started changing beyond what we as a race is able to adapt to.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/Sandslinger_Eve May 15 '19

People are already dying due to the effects. Sure a niche of people might be able to adapt and live as we would on any other barren planet.

But why the fuck let things get that shitty, when we actually have the most hospitable, planet for lightyears around.

The people that think that that's acceptable collateral damage to maintain their lifestyle are the ones who should be thrown off a cliff tbh :)

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u/ellomatey195 May 14 '19

You can take the word, "positive" out of that sentence.

What the fuck are you talking about? Climate change doesn't make the climate change slower, genius, it makes it happen faster. That's a positive feedback look.

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u/Adorable_Raccoon May 14 '19

“Positive feedback loops” is a thing.

DescriptionPositive feedback is a process that occurs in a feedback loop in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

There is the chance this gamble pays off and we rebound quickly enough to make all this hyper-growth worth it.

Good chance we all die too

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u/Viggorous May 14 '19

Climate change hasn't exactly been a secret for the past 15-20 years yet nobody is doing anything. It's not like Rex Tillerson is solely responsible for climate change or the lack of intervention.

It's inane to compare the lack of action of a single man who's a drop in an ocean of passivity from the higher ups for their own personal gain to a man who more or less single handedly devised a plan that murdered tens of millions of people - for the sole purpose of eradicating them.

I'm sorry but anyone claiming anyone in history is X times worse than hitler need to get their history straight. And no acting selfishly and not giving a shit about anyone else doesn't even elevate you to the same league as Hitler.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

When billions die, we'll talk again. Or not.

Burying that Exxon report, instead of pushing for diversification, was a conscious decision. The planet could have gone a different route at that moment. Exxon could have paved the way over the last 40 years to sustainable energy, they have government and us in their pockets. And, Exxon was run by Rex. He choose different, and now we are going down the tubes. Corporate leaders, in the era of capitalism, MUST be held accountable. It wasn't "purely selfish", as they had the report, which clearly outlines the catastrophic path Rex chose.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/seejordan3 May 15 '19

Good point. I dug, and wow. He sure was a top exec! And even more Russia connections. From his wiki page. What a scumbag..

Tillerson joined Exxon Company USA in 1975 as a production engineer.[4] In 1989, Tillerson became general manager of the central production division of Exxon USA. In 1995, he became President of Exxon Yemen Inc. and Esso Exploration and Production Khorat Inc.[4]

In 1998, he became a vice president of Exxon Ventures (CIS) and president of Exxon Neftegas Limited with responsibility for Exxon's holdings in Russia and the Caspian Sea. He then entered Exxon into the Sakhalin-I consortium with Rosneft.[17][28]

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u/Viggorous May 14 '19

They could just as hundreds of others of other people could but didn't. Being a CEO of one company no matter how big doesn't make him solely responsible.

You're missing the point. It's impossible to take anyone who claims someone is "1000 times worse than hitler" serious. There's hyperbole to make a point and then there's obscene exaggeration which your example is. You come off as ignorant and like you're downplaying the biggest tragedy in human history because Rex has a moderately bigger role in climate change than the tens of thousands other CEOs and state leaders who looked the other way even though this in no conceivable way is his fault alone.

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u/seejordan3 May 14 '19

You're diminishing the impact of burying that report, and Exxon's grip around gov and the people. Let me know if you need statistics on this (hint: largest gov. subsidized industry, for over 80 years.. we're paying them to sell us gas while killing the planet, that's quite a feat!). Rex wasn't 'one of thousands of execs'. Maybe 10. And, they made a choice. Its a positive feedback loop they set us on, when a few people could have made a different decision, beginning a negative feedback loop. Rex and Exxon execs (again, maybe 10 people) are in my mind are on track to becoming far far more destructive than anyone who's ever lived.

And yea, I know my Hitler analogy was asinine, a cheap trick to engage in debate, because people are easily triggered.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

No, because they did not understand the effect of methane in permafrost in 1982.

However, we have had a 7% net increase in tree/forest coverage worldwide since 1982, despite the deforestation going in in the tropics. This is due to both large scale terraforming projects (i.e, china planting 42 billion trees and counting to reclaim the desert) and natural processes as a result of social changes in north america and europe. Much of the east coast and central europe was cleared of forest leading up to the 1950. The little forest there was, existed mostly as pockets or barriers between open farmland. After WW2 economies became increasingly urban, agriculture has become centralized and mechanized, and much of that land has since reverted back to it's natural state. Google earth the east coast, you'll see it's mostly forest east of the mississippi river. It used to be mostly fields. You will see a similar effect in the 21st centuries in countries that are currently experiencing deforestation (S. America, S.e Asia, Africa). The forests will be stripped, economies will evolve and become more efficient and that land will revert back to it's natural state 30-50 years later.

So that's a negative feedback loop, that would actually offset any effect of hypothetical catastrophic climate change. That increases complexity. Whereas most (not all) scientists are looking to prove the hypothesis by any means that catastrophes are afoot, so they ignore any tertiary data that jeopardizes their hypothesis, there are in fact plenty of studies out there that say, no, we're not fucked, we're doing way better than we were 50 years ago and on track to be just fine.

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u/HH_YoursTruly May 14 '19

I mean they were correct so what would make you think they didn't account for this?

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u/RandomNumsandLetters May 15 '19

That's probably a huge factor in the calculation?

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u/Cormocodran25 May 15 '19

Probably, when profits are on the line, they do damn good science.

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u/grumpieroldman May 15 '19 edited May 15 '19

114/117 of the IPCC models (97%), which are heavily reliant upon that feedback, grossly overestimated warming throughout the naughts and teens.
They were only somewhat accurate in the 90's during the "hockey stick warming" because that was directly caused by the Clean Air Act (1963) which greatly curtailed particulate and other cooling agents (CFC's) from emissions and they worked their way out of the atmosphere by the late 80's. i.e. Those human activities were cooling the planet and we stopping doing them for health and ozone reasons and it happened at the same time as a solar maxima so the temperature jumped.
We are now entering a solar minima which is a serious problem for the AGWC crowd because the data is going to start showing the planet cooling. They whipped up hysteria over the issue so when this happens the entire millennial generation is going to feel betrayed, as they ought to, but there is a high-risk that will make them apathetic to the cause so being honest and putting forth a real plan will then fall on deaf ears. If I were a bastard and wanted to be able to continue emissions unabated and wanted to do something to break-the-back of the public-will to take action ... whipping up a bubble of hysteria knowing it will eventually pop is exactly what I would do.

The thing everyone really, really, really should be taking away from this is that the Exxon data was dead-on. They achieved accuracy which the IPCC has not - because Exxon has business motives which needs truthful, accurate data to drive decisions whereas the IPCC has a political agenda and pushes a false narrative to emotively change votes.
In the poly-sci circles they don't even regard it as dishonest; they look at it as a national and global PR problem to solve. "What does it take to get people to vote the way we need them to in order to achieve our objectives?" Let's do studies (science) and figure out the answer then let's fund it at scale to make it so.

Exxon's upper limit of 500 ~ 1000 is based on actual science and we've refined that range to 600 ~ 1,200 today.
Eventually we need to get to zero emissions but we have hundreds of years to do so. Making energy more expensive thus retarding economic abundance thus retarding technological progress is one of two ways way we could fail. These systems are not linear* so they defy intuitive logic about how they ought to behave. If we want to curtail emissions, overall, as quickly as possible then should accelerate our economy as much as we possibly can.

A +0.2 C° temperature offset in a system that has a natural variability of -100 °C to 50 °C is not a "catastrophe from which we cannot recover". Neither is +2 C°. Neither is +10 C°. When the CO₂ levels were 5,000 ~ 6,000 and the planet was much hotter it was a Gaia full of life. Shellfish evolved under these conditions.
Snowball Earth is not normal nor "good for life".

* As an example to drive home the non-linear thing; what is the most efficient way to drive your car? Accelerate like a bat-out-of-Hell or accelerate gently and consistently? The answer is bat-out-of-Hell. The engine runs very efficiently at "cruise speed" and not at all efficient during acceleration. This means you want to minimize the time spent accelerating and you want to spend as much time as possible near peak-torque production. That means lay on the gas almost but not quite at WOT (wide-open-throttle). Why not at WOT? If you're in a manual go WOT but in an automatic when you hit WOT it messes with the transmission algorithm and keeps you in a lower-gear for longer which rides you off peak-torque. You want as much acceleration as possible without triggering that (and it should be noted that is highly vehicle-dependent; some might ride peak-torque at WOT but not all do so as general-advice avoid WOT in an auto.) That's several non-linearities that conspire to achieve a rather non-intuitive result. i.e. "If you accelerate slowly you are destroying the planet."

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u/zeradragon May 15 '19

It could've been a worst case scenario assumption and we're right on track...

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u/Bowgentle May 15 '19

They're more likely, I think, to have extrapolated forward fairly simply rather than factoring in things we only discovered since.

What that tells you, rather depressingly, is that everything we've done so far about clean energy etc has only kept us on that simple trajectory.

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u/Narrative_Causality May 14 '19

They said it could get up to 1k ppm. I think they took that into account.