How Bad Is Global Warming?

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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:22 pm

Nordic » Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:21 pm wrote:
lucky » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:24 am wrote:FWIW on radio 4 yesterday they were talking about el nino - which should have occured last year but may now come this year and be particularly violent as the Pacific is already 2 degrees warmer in the central area. I don't understand the science an awful lot, but with a starting point at that level and with el nino pushing up the heat further I'm rather surprised that more of this hasn't hit the MSM - batten down the hatches boys n girls.


MSM or not, here in Los Angeles everybody I know is already talking about it.

Most are happy in that it should refill those reservoirs do we can get back to washing our 8 million cars every couple of days.


I posted this article several weeks ago at DU.

An artifact of climate change is that California can have strong El Nino and strong drought at the same time.

Climate change means more and more extreme peak climate events and increased biological extinctions as well as coastal flooding.

And there is no going back no alas.


El Niño vs. the Blob: Here's Why California's Drought Probably Won't End Anytime Soon

California could be in for a wetter-than-normal winter, thanks to the mysterious meteorological phenomenon known as El Niño. Weather scientists have been watching El Niño get stronger throughout this year and think it could match or surpass the strongest on record, back in 1997. What does this mean for long-suffering California and its interminable drought? Let us explain.

What the heck is El Niño again?

Normally, equatorial winds in the Pacific Ocean blow toward the west and push warm surface water in that direction. El Niño—"the child," named in reference to Jesus by Spanish-speaking fishermen from South America who noticed, starting centuries ago, unusual weather around Christmas-time—happens every few years when those winds die down or diminish, leaving more warm water pooled along the equator off the coast of South America.

That's been happening this year; the longer the wind pattern remains unusual, the more the eastern Pacific warms up. Here's a map of ocean temperature anomalies (that is, variations from the long-term average) from late June. Notice the band of red and white (white is the hottest) in the center of the Pacific and the cooler-than-usual water off Southeast Asia? That's El Niño:

(Side note: Satellite maps like these are a prime example of the kind of research GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz wants to block NASA from conducting.) Now check out the same reading from last week. It's gotten stronger:


NASA

That trend is probably going to continue throughout this year, said Daniel Swain, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University.

"It hasn't peaked yet, and it's already quite strong," he said.......

article at: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... ou-drought

Aside and maybe belongs in another thread.....

PKD mass mailed the Tagore letter in 1979 where he described Tagore's belief that humans were killing the Earth's ecosphere because of industrial pollutants.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Rory » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:29 pm

Nordic » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:21 pm wrote:
lucky » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:24 am wrote:FWIW on radio 4 yesterday they were talking about el nino - which should have occured last year but may now come this year and be particularly violent as the Pacific is already 2 degrees warmer in the central area. I don't understand the science an awful lot, but with a starting point at that level and with el nino pushing up the heat further I'm rather surprised that more of this hasn't hit the MSM - batten down the hatches boys n girls.


MSM or not, here in Los Angeles everybody I know is already talking about it.

Most are happy in that it should refill those reservoirs do we can get back to washing our 8 million cars every couple of days.


An apparent quirk of El Nino is that the pineapple express storms it could generate, might only affect the region from the Bay Area to SoCal. So, the central valley will get drenched (yay for almonds), as will the big metro areas. This is seen as having a fairly high chance of occurring.

On the other hand, there is no heightened likelihood of the Sierras getting a good snowpack this winter. The Pacific North West (NoCal to the Yukon) might have a dry, warm winter ahead.

We might have the privileged of watching record rainfall and mudslides, floods, other destruction, without actually recharging the main supply reservoirs in North Cal, and the Colorado River basin.

We might just well be in just as much drought, this time next year, whilst seeing historical levels of local precipitation on our actual doorstep.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Nordic » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:19 pm

Here's my prediction based on mere intuition:

Parts of the PNW, particularly around Portland, are going to suffer some sort of horrible depopulating disaster. It could be the browning, drying, and subsequent burning of the entire area or it could be something else, like an enormous earthquake.

Either that or what I'm picking up in my weird sometimes-psychic bones is something that already happened, maybe a very long time ago.

I hope nothing happens. It's a very nice place and I keep thinking I'd like to move there. Except for the haunting sense of foreboding.
Last edited by Nordic on Sat Sep 05, 2015 4:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby backtoiam » Sat Sep 05, 2015 3:44 am

In front of the juggernaut of "privitization" comes the front roll of the claiming of the prime farm lands and lucrative coastal areas. California is what? the 10th? largest economy in the world? The economy and petroleum reserves of the Louisiana and Florida areas are nothing to sneeze at. I started picking up weird vibes about the coast lines a few years ago myself and sort of figured there would be some unfortunate happenings in these areas and there has been. The people that have been scooping up the remains for pennies are doing pretty good on it too. When the "Birds Point" levee "failed" Soros coined up some serious prime farm territory. A couple of months before the Gulf Oil Disaster some really clever people suddenly bought up oil well fighting companies, and companies that sell oil dispersant, and they made huge bank bux. There is also that pesky little detail that from 100 miles from the shoreline into the mainland that the feds have unfestered legal control to do whatever they want to in a manner that is legally written in a specific manner so as to distinguish this coastal land as a definite place that they will do as they please.

Its an interesting soup.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby backtoiam » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:51 am

Nordic, as a side note to your intuitive bone feeling about the coastal areas I remember several years ago that somebody was running a web bot algorithm that attempts to sift through the noise on the internet and come up with an overall egregore in an attempt to determine what may happen in the future and they were picking up weird vibes about the coastal areas of the U.S. One of the areas it seemed to be hitting on in particular was the southern coast lines.

I can' remember if it was Clif High over at Half Past Human or somebody else. I don't remember if Clif was around back then. But anyway, the essence of the nomenclature that the bot was sifting out was a sense that people might be migrating or fleeing from the southern coast lines in huge numbers for reasons that may also have to include a large presence of coordinated law enforcement or military assistance.

I think this was before Katrina and the oil screw up. People are still moving away from Louisiana on a regular basis because of the sickness, disease, and economic impacts of that oil spill. So maybe the web bot saw it coming? And then the salt dome collapse started happening in Louisiana that opened up a huge sink hole and was causing large amounts of natural gas to boil up out of the swamps. Those people were sort of holding their breaths about the salt dome collapse wondering how bad the situation might get.

I think its possible that the enormous oil reservoir that was tapped into in the gulf might have been connected to oil reservoirs further inland near the salt domes through capillaries in the earth. I don't know this for sure but I have seen well thought out speculation on the subject that made me consider the possibility.

Speaking of Clif High I dropped by his place at Half Past Human the other day and he has a couple of cool little videos on his front page. I like old Clif I think he is pretty cool.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby PufPuf93 » Sat Sep 05, 2015 12:41 pm

Nordic » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:19 pm wrote:Here's my prediction based on mere intuition:

Parts of the PNW, particularly around Portland, are going to suffer some sort of horrible depopulating disaster. It could be the browning, drying, and subsequent burning of the entire area or it could be something else, like an enormous earthquake.

Either that or what I'm picking up in my weird sometimes-psychic bones is something that already happened, maybe a very long time ago.

I hope nothing happens. It's a very nice place and I keep thinking I'd like to move there. Except for the haunting sense of foreboding.


Don't forget volcanic eruption.

Recall the devastation wrought by Mount Saint Helens?

Mount Mazama erupted about 5700 years ago and was (according to wiki) 42X the destruction of Mount Saint Helens.

Crater Lake, one of the deepest lakes in the world, occupies the caldera of Mount Mazama.

I was living in Corvallis during the 1996 Willamette Flood. Took barricades to keep downtown Portland free of floodwaters. My home ended up an island for days that was expected to flood but didn't.

Flood, fire, eruption; the Oh my trifecta.

I am a Douglas-fir type of ecosystem, west side (of Cascades) PNW kind of guy myself.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:46 pm

A Major Surge in Atmospheric Warming Is Probably Coming in the Next Five Years
Written by Nafeez Ahmed Columnist

2 March 2015 // 08:25 PM CET



Forget the so-called ‘pause’ in global warming—new research says we might be in for an era of deeply accelerated heating.

While the rate of atmospheric warming in recent years has, indeed, slowed due to various natural weather cycles—hence the skeptics’ droning on about “pauses”—global warming, as a whole, has not stopped. Far from it. It’s actually sped up, dramatically, as excess heat has absorbed into the oceans. We’ve only begun to realize the extent of this phenomenon in recent years, after scientists developed new technologies capable of measuring ocean temperatures with a depth and precision that was previously lacking.

In 2011, a paper in Geophysical Research Letters tallied up the total warming data from land, air, ice, and the oceans. In 2012, the lead author of that study, oceanographer John Church, updated his research. What Church found was shocking: in recent decades, climate change has been adding on average around 125 trillion Joules of heat energy to the oceans per second.

How to convey this extraordinary fact? His team came up with an analogy: it was roughly the same amount of energy that would be released by the detonation of two atomic bombs the size dropped on Hiroshima. In other words, these scientists found that anthropogenic climate is warming the oceans at a rate equivalent to around two Hiroshima bombs per second. But as new data came in, the situation has looked worse: over the last 17 years, the rate of warming has doubled to about four bombs per second. In 2013, the rate of warming tripled to become equivalent to 12 Hiroshima bombs every second.

So not only is warming intensifying, it is also accelerating. By burning fossil fuels, humans are effectively detonating 378 million atomic bombs in the oceans each year—this, along with the ocean’s over-absorption of carbon dioxide, has fuelled ocean acidification, and now threatens the entire marine food chain as well as animals who feed on marine species. Like, er, many humans.

According to a new paper from a crack team of climate scientists, a key reason that the oceans are absorbing all this heat in recent decades so well (thus masking the extent of global warming by allowing atmospheric average temperatures to heat more slowly), is due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), an El Nino-like weather pattern that can last anywhere between 15-30 years.

In its previous positive phase, which ran from around 1977 to 1998, the PDO meant the oceans would absorb less heat, thus operating as an accelerator on atmospheric temperatures. Since 1998, the PDO has been in a largely negative phase, during which the oceans absorb more heat from the atmosphere.

Such decadal ocean cycles have broken down recently, and become more sporadic. The last, mostly negative phase, was punctuated by a brief positive phase that lasted 3 years between 2002 and 2005. The authors of the new study, Penn State climatologist Michael Mann, University of Minnesota geologist Byron Steinman, and Penn State meteorologist Sonya Miller, point out that the PDO, as well as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), have thus played a major role in temporarily dampening atmospheric warming.

"In other words, the ‘slowdown’ is fleeting and will likely soon disappear."

So what has happened? During this period, Mann and his team show, there has been increased “heat burial” in the Pacific ocean, that is, a greater absorption of all that heat equivalent to hundreds of millions of Hiroshimas. For some, this has created the false impression, solely from looking at global average surface air temperatures, of a ‘pause’ in warming. But as Mann said, the combination of the AMO and PDO “likely offset anthropogenic warming over the past decade.”

Therefore, the “pause” doesn’t really exist, and instead is an artifact of the limitations of our different measuring instruments.

“The ‘false pause’ is explained in part by cooling in the Pacific ocean over the past one-to-two decades,” Mann told me, “but that is likely to reverse soon: in other words, the ‘slowdown’ is fleeting and will likely soon disappear.”

The disappearance of the ‘slowdown’ will, in tangible terms, mean that the oceans will absorb less atmospheric heat. While all the accumulated ocean heat “is certainly not going to pop back out,” NASA’s chief climate scientist Dr. Gavin Schmidt told me, it is likely to mean that less atmospheric heat will end up being absorbed. “Ocean cycles can modulate the uptake of anthropogenic heat, as some have speculated for the last decade or so, but… net flux is still going to be going into the ocean.”

According to Mann and his team, at some point, this will manifest as an acceleration in the rise of global average surface air temperatures. In their Science study, they observe: “Given the pattern of past historical variation, this trend will likely reverse with internal variability, instead adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades.”

So at some point in the near future, the PDO will switch from its current negative phase back to positive, reducing the capacity of the oceans to accumulate heat from the atmosphere. That positive phase of the PDO will therefore see a rapid rise in global surface air temperatures, as the oceans' capacity to absorb all those Hiroshima bomb equivalents declines—and leaves it to accumulate in our skies. In other words, after years of slower-than-expected warming, we may suddenly feel the heat.

So when will that happen? No one knows for sure, but at the end of last year, signs emerged that the phase shift to a positive PDO could be happening right now.

In the five months before November 2014, measures of surface temperature differences in the Pacific shifted to positive, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the longest such positive shift detected in about 12 years. Although too soon to determine for sure whether this is, indeed, the beginning of the PDO’s switch to a new positive phase, this interpretation is consistent with current temperature variations, which during a positive PDO phase should be relatively warm in the tropical Pacific and relatively cool in regions north of about 20 degrees latitude.

In January 2015, further signs emerged that the PDO is right now in transition to a new warm phase. “Global warming is about the get a boost,” ventured meteorologist Eric Holthaus. Recent data including California’s intensifying drought and sightings of tropical fish off the Alaskan coast “are further evidence of unusual ocean warming,” suggesting that a PDO transition “may already be underway a new warm phase.”

While it’s still not clear whether the PDO is really shifting into a new phase just yet, when it does, it won’t be good. Scientists from the UK Met Office’s Hadley Center led by Dr. Chris Roberts of the Oceans and Cryosphere Group estimate in a new paper in Nature that there is an 85 percent chance the faux ‘pause’ will end in the next five years, followed by a burst of warming likely to consist of a decade or so of warm ocean oscillations.

Roberts and his team found that a “slow down” period is usually (60 percent of the time) followed by rapid warming at twice the background rate for at least five years, and potentially longer. And mostly, this warming would be concentrated in the Arctic, a region where temperatures are already higher than the global average, and which is widely recognized to be a barometer of the health of the global climate due to how Arctic changes dramatically alter trends elsewhere. Recent extreme weather events around the world have been attributed to the melting Arctic ice sheets and the impact on ocean circulations and jet streams.

What this means, if the UK Met Office is right, is that we probably have five years (likely less) before we witness a supercharged surge of rapid global warming that could last a decade, further destabilizing the climate system in deeply unpredictable ways.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:51 am

I should have posted the news of Royal Dutch Shell abandoning Arctic drilling here, instead of creating an new thread entitled Shell game?

Limited Progress Seen Even as More Nations Step Up on Climate

By JUSTIN GILLIS and SOMINI SENGUPTA SEPT. 28, 2015

Image
An area of the Amazon rain forest burned to make way for pasturelands. Brazil has pledged to end illegal deforestation.
Credit Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

The pledges that countries are making to battle climate change would still allow the world to heat up by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit, a new analysis shows, a level that scientists say is likely to produce catastrophes ranging from food shortages to widespread extinctions of plant and animal life.

Yet, in the world of global climate politics, that counts as progress.

The new figures will be released Monday in New York as a week of events related to climate change comes to an end. The highlight was an urgent moral appeal at the United Nations on Friday from Pope Francis, urging countries to reach “fundamental and effective agreements” when they meet in Paris in December to try to strike a new global climate deal.

For much of this year, countries have been issuing pledges about how much emissions they are willing to cut in coming decades. With a plan announced by Brazil on Sunday, every major country except for India has now made a commitment to take to the Paris conference.

An analysis by researchers at Climate Interactive, a group whose calculations are used by American negotiators and by numerous other governments, is expected to be released Monday and was provided in advance to The New York Times. It shows that the collective pledges would reduce the warming of the planet at century’s end to about 6.3 degrees, if the national commitments are fully honored, from an expected 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, if emissions continue on their present course.

Image
President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil announced a plan that offered an absolute cut in emissions over the next decade. Credit Mike Segar/Reuters

That would be the biggest reduction in the history of global climate politics, and a sign that 20 years of disappointing negotiations may be giving way to an era when countries start to move the needle on the projected global temperature.

Yet the analysis also shows that the nations are still a far way from meeting their own shared target, set in 2010, of limiting global warming to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That level of warming, while potentially producing dire effects on agriculture, sea level and the natural world, might at least be tolerable, some experts believe.

The pledges countries have made “are a big step forward, but not sufficient — not even close,” said John D. Sterman, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Climate Interactive, a Washington organization with extensive ties to M.I.T., receives foundation money to build tools that help governments and the public understand climate policy.

Making any serious pledge has been a political challenge in many countries, including the United States, where President Obama has encountered vociferous opposition in Congress. Governments are unlikely to want to reopen those fights in the remaining two months before the Paris talks. Thus, many analysts expect that any final deal struck in Paris will probably not be enough to forestall dangerous levels of global warming.

“Everyone is now convinced there will be agreement in Paris,” President François Hollande of France said Sunday afternoon at the United Nations. “But the question is, what kind of agreement?”

Despite the uncertainty, optimism is growing among some diplomats and scientists that progress has become possible. Intensive engagement between China and the United States over the past two years helped break the logjam in global climate politics, and for the first time, virtually every country is now offering to pitch in to help limit emissions growth.

Janos Pasztor, United Nations assistant secretary general for climate change, said the task in Paris would be to put mechanisms into the deal to encourage countries to ramp up their ambitions over time. Requirements for periodic reviews and fresh pledges are under discussion as a potential part of the agreement.

At a luncheon that the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, hosted for dozens of world leaders on Sunday, the heads of state and government “agreed that Paris must be the floor, not the ceiling, for collective ambition,” Mr. Ban said afterward.

Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the NASA unit in Manhattan that studies climate change, said that the history of environmental cleanup suggested that once countries got started on the problem, they would discover that solving it was cheaper and easier than expected.

“By the time people get 10, 15 years of actually trying to do something, that’s going to lead to greater expertise, better technology, more experience,” Dr. Schmidt said. “People will then say, ‘Oh, you know what? We can commit to do more.’ ”

The planet has already warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the temperature that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution, representing an enormous addition of heat. Virtually every piece of land ice on Earth is melting, the sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, droughts and other weather extremes are intensifying, and the global food system has shown signs of instability.

At a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, climate negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed that they would try to limit the warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial temperature, a level that would require that emissions from fossil fuels largely cease within a few decades.

Subsequently, recognizing that many governments were reluctant to agree to binding limits, the diplomats essentially asked each country to volunteer its best efforts. That decision, controversial at the time, has unlocked a willingness by many nations to participate, including countries like China that had long resisted climate deals.

India is the biggest holdout so far, but that nation’s environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, said in an interview in New York on Sunday that a plan would be submitted to the United Nations on Oct. 1, the eve of the national celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday — apparently an effort to limit domestic criticism that India is bowing to Western pressure. The plan is not expected to include a target year for India’s emissions to peak, but will be “anchored” by a major commitment to renewable energy, Mr. Javadekar said.

Last week, China announced plans for a nationwide system that would put a price on emissions of greenhouse gases. Brazil became the latest major country to pledge action, on Sunday, with a plan that makes it the first large developing nation to offer an absolute cut in emissions over the next decade, instead of just restraints on continued growth. Brazil also committed to ending illegal deforestation and to restoring millions of acres of degraded forest.

Bruising fights are still expected at the Paris conference, especially over money. Poor countries that have had little to do with causing global warming, but are likely to suffer the worst effects, are demanding billions from rich countries to help them manage.

Moreover, protests are expected from advocacy groups, island countries threatened with inundation, and many others over the perceived inadequacy of the deal. At a minimum, these groups are likely to demand strong procedures for ratcheting up national commitments over time.

“No one doubts that coming out of Paris, there’s going to be an ambition gap on the table,” said Alden Meyer, who follows climate negotiations for the Union of Concerned Scientists, in Washington. “The question is going to be, what prospect do we have to shrink it, and how quickly?”

Coral Davenport contributed reporting.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:31 am

They Knew: Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago


Big Oil | Corporate America | Energy Policy | Environmental Policy
by Gaius Publius | September 28, 2015 - 8:00am

— from Down With Tyranny!


Reporter Neela Banerjee on Exxon and climate change | FRONTLINE

An explosive story reported by Inside Climate News, an award-winning climate organization, and Frontline, reveals that Exxon knew as early as 1977 that earth's climate was being seriously disrupted, and would continue to be disrupted, by carbon dioxide emissions, and yet in the 1980s they pivoted to financing an aggressive climate denial effort anyway.

That denial effort continues to this day, financed through the American Petroleum Institute and fronted by actress Brooke Alexander (whom I've called "Lying Pantsuit Lady").


Actress Brooke Alexander, API's iconic spokesperson. Here she proudly says the U.S. is the number one producer of methane, a greenhouse gas that, when burned, converts to CO2, another greenhouse gas (commercial here).

The report, the first of a series, is described this way by Inside Climate News:

After eight months of investigation, InsideClimate News presents this multi-part history of Exxon's engagement with the emerging science of climate change. The story spans four decades, and is based on primary sources including internal company files dating back to the late 1970s, interviews with former company employees, and other evidence, much of which is being published here for the first time.

Here's just a bit from that lead report at ICN (my emphasis):

Exxon: The Road Not Taken

Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago

Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions.

By Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer

At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.

"In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon's Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.

It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert.

"Some countries would benefit but others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed," Black said, in the written summary of his 1978 talk.

If you think this adds up to "They knew," you'd be right. They knew back in 1977, in fact. And they acted like they knew:

Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon's ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.

At the time, they saw a business reason, as well as an "ethical" one, for the proactive and pro-science stance they were taking:

In the early 1980s Exxon researchers often repeated that unbiased science would give it legitimacy in helping shape climate-related laws that would affect its profitability.

But that came to an end:

Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.

As noted, the number of documents the reporters accessed was very large. More on those files:

This untold chapter in Exxon's history, when one of the world's largest energy companies worked to understand the damage caused by fossil fuels, stems from an eight-month investigation by InsideClimate News. ICN's reporters interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists, and federal officials, and consulted hundreds of pages of internal Exxon documents, many of them written between 1977 and 1986, during the heyday of Exxon's innovative climate research program. ICN combed through thousands of documents from archives including those held at the University of Texas-Austin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The documents record budget requests, research priorities, and debates over findings, and reveal the arc of Exxon's internal attitudes and work on climate and how much attention the results received.

Many of those documents are available here.

As I said, this is explosive and detailed. I haven't touched on the degree to which Exxon financed its own research, including the outfitting of a state-of-the-art supertanker to take air and sea temperature measurements, or the assembly of "a team of climate modelers who investigated fundamental questions about the climate's sensitivity to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

I want to send you instead to ICN for the full piece. It's well written, detailed and easy to grasp. If you're at all concerned about climate change, this is a must-read, and it will get you set up for the follow-up reports.

For more from the report, watch the brief Frontline video below:



Are Lawsuits a Possibility?

If they knew, they still know. They've certainly knowingly misled the public, lied and done harm for financial gain. Do you think this has lawsuit written all over it? After all, this worked:

Climate win: Appeals court in Oregon rules state court must decide if atmosphere is a “public trust”

If they misled the public, have they misled, and perhaps defrauded, their investors as well? I've privately heard of at least one well-placed and climate-aware congressperson who wondered if federal RICO prosecutions might be an option, though the (next) President would have to be very aggressive-minded to consider them — or the next Attorney General, in case we return to the pre-Bush era of independent attorneys general.

I'll have more on this story, including Exxon's response. I've said it's going to take force. This opportunity, if it's taken, counts as force.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby NeonLX » Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:57 pm

"Lawsuit". The world is literally burning, and lawyers are salivating.

God, what a wonderful time to be alive.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby American Dream » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:03 am

http://boingboing.net/2015/09/29/rush-l ... ars-i.html

Rush Limbaugh: water on Mars is a leftist conspiracy

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Who needs the Onion? "Don't know how long it's going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda."

I don't know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming and you can -- maybe there was once an advanced civilization. If they say they found flowing water, next they're going to find a graveyard.

After NASA Announces It Found Water On Mars, Rush Limbaugh Says It's Part Of A Climate Change Conspiracy [Media Matters]
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
-Malcolm X
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:24 am

^^^^ Oy vey!
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:37 am

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Last edited by seemslikeadream on Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby zangtang » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:37 am

I have for several years wished to learn how to shoot....rifles I think - I was tempted to put 'high powered' but everyone says that & I don't really know
what that means but just think sniper.....or if that's poetically unacceptable visualise hunting for your food.....

I gathered in a spy movie once that there are two schools of thought, re aiming for the head for a certain kill, or the body as it presents a larger target.
Apparently the 'old school', whether due to the available weaponry or a refreshing lack of ego, favors the body, the adage being :
'because then if you miss, - YOU MAIM'
I suspect I shall veer on the side of caution, and plump for the old !

'
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Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Harvey » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:54 am

Here's a digestible background history of big oil from AlJazeera, prompted by the Exxon story above.

The Secret of The Seven Sisters.







And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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