
Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change - petekistler
https://www.smokeandfumes.org/#/
======
sremani
Outrage is not the answer, if you live in OECD countries you have a massive
footprint that rivals villages of developing countries. So do something about
it. No, your pre-order of Model 3 that is going to come 3 years down the pike,
does not put a dent in your carbon footprint. It is one small step, the roads
your Tesla drives on needs petro-chemicals, so do those perfectly manicured
french fries. Oil industry is greedy and entrenched, and do not expect some
sort of Egalitarian enlightenment not from them, Nor from SV companies that
colluded to screw their employees by forming a Cartel. Understand human
nature, and it will help you trying to see the problems through caricatures
and hopefully to work towards solution.

Here is the hard truth, We are a fossil fuel civilization. The problems are
complex, we can green wash and eat some organic pop corn, but that does not
help.

edit: there are some serious people trying to bring real solutions, I find
Vaclav Smil, taking it to the next level of thinking instead of the constant
greenwashing marketing campaigns.

~~~
noir_lord
I live in a flat that is suitable for living alone, I don't drive, I cycle
everywhere except when I need to go really long distances in which case I use
public transport.

I buy nearly all my food from the local market most of which comes from farms
within a hundred miles, I minimise energy consumption, most of the furniture I
buy is good second hand stuff, I rarely buy clothes and everything I do own
would fit on a single 3ft rack in a closet (and does).

I recycle as much waste as I can, I don't have a garden so that restricts some
options in terms of growing food/composting.

I take showers not baths.

My desktop is 5 years old with upgrades, my laptop is 3 years old, I've no
current plans to replace either.

I don't do any of this for purely ecological reasons (though that's a nice
benefit) but because I have everything I need to live comfortably and I don't
put much premium on expensive possessions, I want to own stuff not be owned by
stuff.

Not really sure how much more I can do given that I rent so major energy
upgrades aren't really a possibility.

~~~
beatpanda
Help organize collective action to make it easier for many more people to make
the choices you're able to make.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yup; not to knock personal lifestyle changes, but your own personal impact is
a drop in the ocean- you only start to make a true difference when you can
spread them to many other people.

Of course, practicing what you preach can be a key step in spreading those
changes.

------
pdonis
The key document given in this article is the Robinson report of 1968. Looking
at the excerpts given, this report made a prediction for CO2 level rise that
can be tested: it predicted about 400 ppm by the year 2000 (from a value of
about 320 in 1968). This was an overestimate: the actual level in 2000 (using
the Mauna Loa measurements, which seem to be the key reference relied on in
the report) was about 375.

This enables us to test a second prediction made by the report: the
temperature increase caused by C02 level rise. The report gives a very wide
range for this: 1.1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the humidity change.
The usual baseline assumption about humidity is that relative humidity will
remain constant, and the report notes that that assumption leads to the larger
prediction--7 degrees F--for temperature rise by the year 2000. That is about
4 degrees Celsius.

Even if we correct for the actual CO2 level rise vs. predicted--about a 20%
increase vs. 25% predicted--that still gives about a 3 degree Celsius
predicted temperature rise by the year 2000, as compared to 1968. The actual
rise was about 0.5 degrees Celsius.

The report does say that the estimating method it uses likely overestimates
temperature rise; but it does not, as far as I can see, consider the
possibility that it might overestimate temperature rise by so much. So as far
as I can see, the oil industry's decision to treat this information as much
more uncertain than its authors claimed was reasonable.

~~~
btilly
It seems that you're cherry-picking items in a deliberately deceptive way.

The CO2 level rise clearly must have been an estimate based on, "If we project
current usage trends forward, here is how much fossil fuel gets burned. Here
is what that does to CO2." That usage model would have been thrown off by the
first OPEC price shock of the 1970s, which induced a lot of conservation
efforts and resulted in significantly less emissions.

I'd be shocked if they had the basic "fossil fuel to CO2" relationship wrong.
There is no way that they could have predicted the economic shocks that slowed
consumption.

Now let's talk about their environmental model. They gave a range from about 1
F to 7 F. The actual rise is about 1 F. I'd call that a success! (And why did
you switch between F and C? Was it just to make the actual rise seem smaller.)

Moving on, you argue for which model should apply, then argue that they got it
wrong. Your behavior already doesn't make me trust you, but let's assume you
are right. What mistake likely explains it?

My best guess is that they simply did a long-term steady state model for what
temperature things would stabilize at. That is a relatively simple
calculation, and would have been fairly accurate if the atmosphere were mostly
separate from the ocean. However we've learned since that heat exchanges with
the oceans are much larger than we knew. (I remember circa 1990 learning in
fluid mechanics that there was a big question THEN about how much global
warming would slow down.) So the long-term temperature picture in the model is
relatively accurate, but we get there more slowly than predicted.

This is the kind of detail of our system that we COULD NOT have predicted with
1960s science. They knew that they were overestimated and knew that they would
be right in the end, but had no way to know how long it would take to get
there.

~~~
andrewla
From this reply it is clear that the GP read, at least, the portions of the
Robinson paper excerpted in the article. Unfortunately, the particular
critiques that you have made indicate that you have not read them.

For example, the switch from F to C is because the underlying paper is written
using F, as that was the style of the time; but the GP presented in C as that
is the current preferred unit.

Robinson admits that the model is crude, as he was using an older model of
Moller (from 1964), and that he expected that more sophisticated models would
improve forecast accuracy. Nonetheless, the numbers presented in the paper are
reflected accurately in the GP's post, including uncertainty ranges, and the
comparisons seen valid at a glance.

In this case, the GP is not cherry-picking, at least not in the usual sense,
as they are using the "cherry-picked" portions of the paper to produce
verifiable predictions.

Admitting that early models of climate change make some inaccurate predictions
does not necessarily undermine the correctness of the directionality,
especially as newer research has come to light, but it does present a less
sinister explanation as to why the results were not taken as seriously modern
observers feel they should have been.

~~~
btilly
The article had failed to load for me, so I was basing what I said on what was
excerpted and what I read elsewhere.

That said, now that I find it, it is easy to dig in for details. Moller's
model from 1964 can be read in
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877/a...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877/abstract)
and says up front that a 1% increase in cloudiness is sufficient to counteract
the warming effects of 30 ppm in CO2. I'm sure it leaves out ocean heat sink
effects. According to
[https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapt...](https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf)
it seems that cloudiness HAS increased several percent. Which means that the
top end of the projection (which the GP thinks it the right model) would have
been the wrong projection to use.

From whence did the GP draw the incorrect claim that humidity has remained the
same? Shouldn't he have done the same Google searches that I just did and come
to the same conclusion??

~~~
pdonis
_> I'd be shocked if they had the basic "fossil fuel to CO2" relationship
wrong._

I would too, and I wasn't claiming that they did. The CO2 rise prediction in
the Robinson 1968 paper was actually reasonable; but the fact remains that to
compare their temperature prediction with what actually happened, we have to
first adjust it based on what actually happened with CO2 compared to what they
predicted.

 _> They gave a range from about 1 F to 7 F. The actual rise is about 1 F. I'd
call that a success!_

They gave a range _based on different assumptions about how humidity would
change_. Their prediction of 1 F was based on no change in _absolute_ humidity
--i.e., the same absolute water vapor content in the air despite a rise in
temperature. That corresponds to a significant _reduction_ in relative
humidity, which clearly did not occur. In fact, the actual data on relative
humidity change suggests, if anything, a slight _increase_ in RH from 1968 to
2000. The Robinson 1968 paper prediction corresponding to that assumption is 7
F, as I said. So their prediction was not a success.

 _> why did you switch between F and C?_

Current temperature projections, such as the IPCC reports, routinely use C, so
that's what most recent figures are quoted in, including the data on
temperature rise over the late 20th century. Feel free to convert back to F if
you're more comfortable with that.

 _> the top end of the projection (which the GP thinks it the right model)_

I didn't say I personally thought it was the "right" model; I said it's the
model that appears to be most consistent with the position taken by the
Robinson 1968 paper. Remember that the topic of discussion here is not how the
climate actually changed from 1968 to 2000; the topic is whether the oil
companies, in 1968, were remiss in not accepting the predictions made in the
Robinson 1968 paper and acting accordingly--since that's the argument the
article is making.

 _> From whence did the GP draw the incorrect claim that humidity has remained
the same?_

I said the usual _assumption_ in making climate predictions is that relative
humidity remains constant. (The data seems to bear out this assumption, as I
noted above; but I don't see any data on RH in the excerpts of the Robinson
1968 paper.) Relative humidity is not the same as "cloudiness", so I don't see
how your findings say anything about how, if at all, RH actually changed from
1968 to 2000.

Also, the Robinson 1968 paper, as far as I can tell from the excerpts, does
not mention "cloudiness". This might simply be because that paper
misunderstood Moller's model. But in any case, that would mean the Robinson
1968 paper did not take into account an additional factor that would clearly
_reduce_ the predicted temperature rise based on a given CO2 rise. So if you
are correct that the actual increase in cloudiness was significant in reducing
the temperature rise over the last half century, you are _agreeing_ with me
that the Robinson 1968 paper was overpredicting temperature rise, and
therefore the oil companies, in 1968, were not remiss in treating that paper
as they did.

------
guelo
Not divulging their internal research cannot be a crime because industries
conduct private research for all kinds of competitive reasons. But the funding
of false propaganda campaigns that they know are the opposite of their
research should definitely be illegal, probably under fraud legislation I
think. The problem is you can't find out that their propaganda campaigns are
knowingly false because the research is secret. Though, as with the tobacco
industry, the research does seem to leak out eventually, but it can take
decades after all the original criminals are dead.

------
matt_wulfeck
> When do we hold someone responsible for a harm? What if the harm is climate
> change?

We all burned oil in our cars. We didn't make an effort to carpool because it
wasn't convenient. Skipped days riding our bike to work because it's too cold,
etc.

To me holding the blame entirely on the oil industry is akin to persecuting
prostitutes for sex crime.

~~~
chris_wot
Did you deliberately obfuscate, falsify documents, spend millions on
misleading advertising, attempt to buy off critics or fund massive lobbying of
law makers to make legislation become more favourable to yourself and increase
your profitability?

~~~
dsp1234
Combining the two, would still have done this:

 _" We didn't make an effort to carpool because it wasn't convenient."_

if the oil companies had not done this:

 _" deliberately obfuscate, falsify documents, spend millions on misleading
advertising, attempt to buy off critics or fund massive lobbying of law
makers"_

If you think the answer is obviously yes, then also please think about the
dramatic turn in smoking statistics since it was revealed that the cigarette
companies were acting in the same manner.

~~~
chris_wot
Um. I'm having difficulty parsing your question. Are you saying we wouldn't
have behaved in the way we did if petrol companies didn't do all those
dreadful things?

~~~
dsp1234
There are certainly a lot of 'not's in the statements, so I apologize for the
confusion. I was trying to keep the previous comments pure.

At a basic level:

Would we have taken the same actions, if the oil industry had not taken the
same actions?

If someone thinks the answer the question is, 'obviously yes', then I'm
suggesting they look at the results of the revelations of the same actions by
the tobacco industry.

If someone thinks anything else, I'm not making any specific statement.

~~~
intended
I think something else, because I don't think that individual human choice is
the only driver of _society_ , and modern human civilization.

This is precisely the role of policy and governance - we don't use CFCs for
example, and we move towards more progressive emissions norms around the world
every year.

lots of people would be tremendously happy to wait for tomorrow to make a
difficult moral choice, even if it was obviously immoral.

And then there's additional fallout. The improvement and evolution FUD. A
series of catchy rhetorical arguments, has given birth to "deniers", and the
amazingly made expertise itself toxic.

And with the web, this malaise spreads over the English speaking web and
infect other countries, forums and communities.

So, yes - as a society we would have taken different decisions and at a
different time scale.

------
saiya-jin
how about we start considering every single corporation above certain
size/revenue not as an altruistic setup but rather ruthless gain-at-almost-
all-costs oriented businesses and deal with them accordingly. and it would be
their responsibility to prove state and public otherwise. something along
presumed guilty until proven innocent.

I know, naive and with many holes, but imagine it for a moment...

------
btbuildem
Even if you took all the oil industry executives and board members and
brutally murdered them on live television, leaving their corpses to hang from
trees by their disemboweled entrails, it would not change anything. Others
would take their place, doing the same thing. We all enable this by creating
the demand.

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, that's a pretty inappropriate reaction!

------
givan
Is the industry or us evil? most of us have big suv's that we drive alone and
the only thing we care about oil is the price.

Some will look worried, chat on forums about these stuff but continue to do
nothing because "there is nothing we can do".

~~~
surfaceTensi0n
I don't think your assertions are correct. This article[0] is a bit old
(2015), but it puts the number of SUVs on the road at 35%. There absolutely
are things you can do, though obviously you, personally, aren't going to solve
the problem. For example, skipping meat one day a week can have pretty
substantial affects on emissions[1]. Or you can get involved with a group that
is organizing around climate change.

[0] - [http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2016/01/usa-suv-crossover-
marke...](http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2016/01/usa-suv-crossover-market-
share-2015-sales-chart.html) [1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock's_Long_Shadow)

------
lutusp
Easily solved -- let's all stop using petrochemicals of all kinds.

~~~
jonknee
That would _devastate_ the global economy.

~~~
cryptoz
Using petrochemicals has _already devastated_ the global economy. We will
spend trillions to attempt to fix the damage that has already been caused,
when exactly $0 is what we should have to spend. We are causing a mass
extinction event on the planet and will never be able to undo all the physical
damage done. We will spend a huge amount of the world's money, resources and
time to do our best to fix it, and all that is wasted because it could have
been used to move forward sustainably rather than make a few people obscenely
rich at the expense of most life on Earth.

~~~
oldmanjay
Your basic premise is not terribly convincing. The earth, and humanity, are in
no serious danger of collapse. The measurable advantages our species has
because of our industrialization seem far more tangible and have far more
weight than your emotions, no matter how stridently expressed.

I understand how difficult it is to hate people who have things (your
unrelated parting shot at the "obscenely rich" is rather telling) and also
want to express that hatred in a morally defensible way, but I don't think
hyperbolic lies are as useful as you want them to be.

~~~
cryptoz
> The earth, and humanity, are in no serious danger of collapse.

Many species on Earth are indeed in very serious danger of extinction due to
human-caused climate change. Here is a paper in Nature discussing this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14712274](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14712274)

> The measurable advantages our species has because of our industrialization
> seem far more tangible and have far more weight than your emotions, no
> matter how stridently expressed.

I disagree with this. We could have industrialized and gained those measurable
advantages without causing all of this destruction. That's what this HN link
is about: why did we do this? Partly because the rich and wealthy people
controlled the public's understanding of the risks in a way that would keep
their money flowing at the detriment of our health.

> your unrelated parting shot at the "obscenely rich" is rather telling

How is this unrelated? The pursuit of wealth and the greed of the oil
executives is directly related to this disaster. I do not "hate people that
have things". I have lots of things. I do, however, hate people who are so
greedy as to pollute our planet and cause runaway global greenhouse effects
purely for their own gain.

------
minikites
The harder problem to solve is social, I think. The planet is literally unable
to support 7 billion people living a USA/Western Europe lifestyle. Who's going
to be the one to tell all the people in developing economies, "Sorry, but you
can't have those things that we have."

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Who's going to be the one to tell all the people in developing economies,
> "Sorry, but you can't have those things that we have."

Who is going to be so brave to tell poor third world countries they cannot
have nice things? We do all the time, by complicity in geopolitics which
consist in things such as propping up dictators elsewhere so "our"
corporations can get bigger slices of pies and resources rather than the local
population. Not to mention war. So who is going to tell the actual centers of
power that this can not be tolerated any longer? That is the real question
IMO.

The problem is taking out resources and exploiting people at a level that
cannot be sustained; not that others want to do it _too_ , but that anyone
does.

I mean, what is "a Western lifestyle"? For me it's stuff like basic
sanitation, freedom of speech, high literacy rates, having medicine and
clothes and shelter. Living and letting live, and last but not least work,
preferably meaningful. Yes, some prosperity is a requirement to even have the
possibility of those things. But buying new things all the time, ordering
screws individually at Amazon, and throwing away a lot of plastic, those
things and others seem not strictly needed to me.

We need the scientific method, human rights and rule of law, not so much a
constant stream of trinkets. People should be free to strive for trinkets,
sure, but without too much pollution (which is essentially a way of
restricting the freedom of others; indirectly, but very powerfully). As many
things in life, it's not really a complex issue, it's not wanting to step on
the toes of powerful people or peers that makes it complicated and contorted I
think.

