Exxon Mobile and climate change

[Sam]

But it is true that reducing our use of hydrocarbons sufficiently to make a real effect on the current trend up in Atmospheric CO2 would be more than civilization could bear at this point in time. That is the point.

I'm not convinced it is true. The US economy has continued growing (though not as fast as we'd like, and without the benefits being distributed as broadly as would be helpful) even as carbon emissions have dropped to levels not seen since the 1990s. Sweden decoupled carbon emissions (which have stayed flat) from economic growth back in the 90s.

There are reasons these countries could do so that won't apply everywhere. And some countries (China, for examples) would have further to go to get to flat emissions, which is why they're targeting that for 15 years from now. So, i'm not trying to claim that any of this would be simple or easy. But i don't entirely agree with the "more than civilization can bear" phrasing. And flat emissions would be a major step towards addressing the problem.

This is indeed a contested point. Paul Krugman pointed out last year, referencing an IMF working paper and a study by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, that measures estimated to significantly reduce the environmental impact of AGW can also improve national economies, given the right policy outlook. Krugman writes:

Source: Errors and Emissions. Paul Krugman. The New York Times. 2014.09.14

On one side, there has been dramatic progress in renewable energy technology, with the costs of solar power, in particular, plunging, down by half just since 2010. Renewables have their limitations — basically, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow — but if you think that an economy getting a lot of its power from wind farms and solar panels is a hippie fantasy, you’re the one out of touch with reality.


On the other side, it turns out that putting a price on carbon would have large “co-benefits” — positive effects over and above the reduction in climate risks — and that these benefits would come fairly quickly. The most important of these co-benefits, according to the I.M.F. paper, would involve public health: burning coal causes many respiratory ailments, which drive up medical costs and reduce productivity.


And thanks to these co-benefits, the paper argues, one argument often made against carbon pricing — that it’s not worth doing unless we can get a global agreement — is wrong. Even without an international agreement, there are ample reasons to take action against the climate threat.


But back to the main point: It’s easier to slash emissions than seemed possible even a few years ago, and reduced emissions would produce large benefits in the short-to-medium run. So saving the planet would be cheap and maybe even come free.

© Copyright Original Source

[oxmixmudd]

This is indeed a contested point. Paul Krugman pointed out last year, referencing an IMF working paper and a study by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, that measures estimated to significantly reduce the environmental impact of AGW can also improve national economies, given the right policy outlook. Krugman writes:

Source: Errors and Emissions. Paul Krugman. The New York Times. 2014.09.14

On one side, there has been dramatic progress in renewable energy technology, with the costs of solar power, in particular, plunging, down by half just since 2010. Renewables have their limitations — basically, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow — but if you think that an economy getting a lot of its power from wind farms and solar panels is a hippie fantasy, you’re the one out of touch with reality.


On the other side, it turns out that putting a price on carbon would have large “co-benefits” — positive effects over and above the reduction in climate risks — and that these benefits would come fairly quickly. The most important of these co-benefits, according to the I.M.F. paper, would involve public health: burning coal causes many respiratory ailments, which drive up medical costs and reduce productivity.


And thanks to these co-benefits, the paper argues, one argument often made against carbon pricing — that it’s not worth doing unless we can get a global agreement — is wrong. Even without an international agreement, there are ample reasons to take action against the climate threat.


But back to the main point: It’s easier to slash emissions than seemed possible even a few years ago, and reduced emissions would produce large benefits in the short-to-medium run. So saving the planet would be cheap and maybe even come free.

© Copyright Original Source

This is of course an optimistic look. Pessimistically, we'd need to revisit the issue in he link in my last post. To move from oil we need supplies to make batteries, motors and other key elements of the move to renewables. Solar Power needs power storage when the sun is down. Efficient electric motors often use rare earth elements because they are powerful yet lightweight. These resources tend to be limited or hard to extract economically. The second can be worked on by developing more efficient mining methods, but where significant shortages exist, we can only produce so much and then we are done.

According to this report (http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/07...tri-67078.html), lithium availability looks to be knife edge balanced against what is projected to be needed by 2100. Is that true if we go 'all electric'?

Rare earths are often toughted as a problem, but one interesting fact is that Tesla claims it does not use rare earths in its Model S, but rather an AC motor - no fixed magnets at all, just electro-magnets.

http://my.teslamotors.com/de_AT/foru...metals-model-s

Which brings up the fact that on the one hand we could go positive and say that our ingenuity and resourcefulness will find ways around the problems. Or we could go negative and say the mountains are too high.

From the BIAS perspective - human nature is going to push us to the side that best fits what we believe or what benefits our specific immediate bottom line. History would say that mankind has often been able to find solutions to seeming insurmountable technical problems. Much better than its track record solving social problems. I tend to think a lot of the roadblocks could be solved if we went 'all in' so to speak.

Jim

[Sam]

This is of course an optimistic look. Pessimistically, we'd need to revisit the issue in he link in my last post. To move from oil we need supplies to make batteries, motors and other key elements of the move to renewables. Solar Power needs power storage when the sun is down. Efficient electric motors (or wind generators) need rare earth elements to create magnets of sufficient field density. These resources tend to be limited or hard to extract economically. The second can be worked on by developing more efficient mining methods, but where significant shortages exist, we can only produce so much and then we are done.

According to this report (http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/07...tri-67078.html), lithium availability looks to be knife edge balanced against what is projected to be needed by 2100. Is that true if we go 'all electric'?

Rare earths are often toughted as a problem, but one interesting fact is that Tesla claims it does not use rare earths in its Model S, but rather an AC motor - no fixed magnets at all, just electro-magnets.

http://my.teslamotors.com/de_AT/foru...metals-model-s

Which brings up the fact that on the one hand we could go positive and say that our ingenuity and resourcefulness will find ways around the problems. Or we could go negative and say the mountains are too high.

From the BIAS perspective - human nature is going to push us to the side that best fits what we believe or what benefits our specific immediate bottom line. History would say that mankind has often been able to find solutions to seeming insurmountable technical problems. Much better than its track record solving social problems. I tend to think a lot of the roadblocks could be solved if we went 'all in' so to speak.

Jim

I'm not at all sure those are optimistic perspectives. The IMF is not known for its optimism (it severely underestimated the effect of fiscal multipliers at the zero-bound, for example). And while its true that we'll need continued advances in conserving rare-earth metals, there's no clear reason to believe that shifting to renewable and implementing carbon pricing, which is estimated to have a significant effect on mitigating the impact of AGW, is more than civilization can bear in the next 100 years.

The IMF working paper speaks to your point about benefits to "our specific immediate bottom line" by suggesting that carbon pricing is currently an economical positive for many countries, rather than merely being an instance of delayed gratification.

Mitigating AGW isn't going to have a cure-all, of course, or be free of unintended consequences. But I think the focus should be on what the estimates of AGW's impact are for the next 100 years and what we can do to mitigate that impact. In this case, the argument is that there isn't a downside to a heavier focus on renewables and carbon pricing, as those things benefit national economies in addition to the environment.

[klaus54]

Is it ok if others express disappointment with those denialists that scare the scientifically illiterate without offering a whit of a practical solution?

See, i could use that sort of language too, if i felt it had any value. It doesn't.


"And the ALARMIST approach, like most of the Left's nonsense, is clearly incendiary spew to effect political divisiveness."

Or look at your very next post:


Combined, the two have name calling, labelling, accusations of dishonesty and bad motives. Plus a distinct disinterest in reality, because why focus on that when you can talk about your impression of reality.

Do you honestly not see how that comes across? Or do are you just honestly uninterested in building understanding and cooperation with people who might not agree with you.

I stand by ALL of these harsh usages since that's EXACTLY what I've experienced to be the case. Twenty+ years of interacting with students, faculty, (biased) texts and articles, ... have all contributed to this opinion.

I consider ALARMIST a harsh word as well, but it's only nasty when it's applied to the wrong person. When I describe a person with that word, I MEAN it.

It's difficult to try to nail down the truth in the broad middle of a polarized issue in which both ends are wrong.

And the older I get, the harder it is to tolerate stances that are clearly wrong on important issues.

What would YOU do?

[TheLurch]

What would YOU do?

I'm pretty old myself, but I deal with people who are clearly wrong several times a week. When they're not drive-by trolls, i try to engage them, and figure out how they came by their wrong information. In some cases, i can use that to help them understand why it's wrong; in all cases, it helps me understand how misinformation comes to be held as accurate.

Ultimately, my goal is to have fewer people misinformed. What's your goal?

[oxmixmudd]

I'm not at all sure those are optimistic perspectives. The IMF is not known for its optimism (it severely underestimated the effect of fiscal multipliers at the zero-bound, for example). And while its true that we'll need continued advances in conserving rare-earth metals, there's no clear reason to believe that shifting to renewable and implementing carbon pricing, which is estimated to have a significant effect on mitigating the impact of AGW, is more than civilization can bear in the next 100 years.

The IMF working paper speaks to your point about benefits to "our specific immediate bottom line" by suggesting that carbon pricing is currently an economical positive for many countries, rather than merely being an instance of delayed gratification.

Mitigating AGW isn't going to have a cure-all, of course, or be free of unintended consequences. But I think the focus should be on what the estimates of AGW's impact are for the next 100 years and what we can do to mitigate that impact. In this case, the argument is that there isn't a downside to a heavier focus on renewables and carbon pricing, as those things benefit national economies in addition to the environment.

The point wasn't to present optimism in those links, but rather to say that some of the issues raised by those most pessimistic about our abilities to find other energy solutions than oil to run our civilization have mitigations. Having listened intently to both sides, with no real internal bias (AGW has never been a hot button issue with me) I know fairly well the issues that the anti-side raise that seem to me to be legitimate. And the fact oil provides a VERY hard to replace energy source seems to me to be one of them. Reducing carbon emissions for the most part is about burning less oil and less coal. But we don't burn oil or coal for the fun of it. We burn it to extract millions of years of stored solar energy in a moment. Using electricity can perhaps reduce that problem by being more efficient and limiting the number of CO2 sources, but have we honestly looked at the number of wind and solar farms it would take to even provide half our energy needs, assuming we can produce enough batteries and motors to take up that much in terms of our mobile energy use? And we aren't too fond of our best alternative source to these (nuclear). And it will take a good bit of energy to produce those energy sources as well.

Fusion keeps staying 20 - 40 years away. I don't think a fusion power plant has ever been less than 25 years from 'now' my entire lifetime. So that is an unlikely candidate. Most of the calculations I've seen don't take into account the energy costs to build the infrastructure, batteries, motors we need to even begin to replace the oil based society. You have to mine the raw materials and run the factories that make these things. For example

Source: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/march/store-electric-grid-030513.html

The five battery technologies fared much worse. Lithium-ion batteries were the best performers, with an ESOI value of 10. Lead-acid batteries had an ESOI value of 2, the lowest in the study. "That means a conventional lead-acid battery can only store twice as much energy as was needed to build it," Barnhart said. "So using the kind of lead-acid batteries available today to provide storage for the worldwide power grid is impractical."

© Copyright Original Source

ESOI is just the amount of energy a device can store over its lifetime vs the amount of energy it takes to create the device itself. (The article does mention a stored energy device called pumped hydro that comes in with an ESOI of 210).

Any strategy to reduce carbon emissions has to take these kinds of issues to heart. It is not (necessarily) that we can't solve the problems, it is just that it may well be a bit naive to think we can make a serious dent in carbon emissions in the next 5 to 10 years. Of course, we won't make any dent at all if we don't start heading down that road (which we are BTW, just perhaps not as fast as we should be).

Jim

[TheLurch]

I think one thing that's getting lost here is that doing nothing can entail massive costs as well. Building new infrastructure, relocating existing infrastructure, writing things off as too difficult to maintain. So, it's not simply a matter of "what will it cost to change the status quo", but rather "how do the costs of changing the status quo compare to the costs of doing nothing?"

Separately, yes there are limitations on some of the components of existing batteries and electric engines. But there is also lots of work on things like cellulosic biofuels, flow batteries, and even superconducting magnets that could mean we an deploy multiple technologies at once, and use different resource for the different tech.

[oxmixmudd]

I think one thing that's getting lost here is that doing nothing can entail massive costs as well. Building new infrastructure, relocating existing infrastructure, writing things off as too difficult to maintain. So, it's not simply a matter of "what will it cost to change the status quo", but rather "how do the costs of changing the status quo compare to the costs of doing nothing?"

Separately, yes there are limitations on some of the components of existing batteries and electric engines. But there is also lots of work on things like cellulosic biofuels, flow batteries, and even superconducting magnets that could mean we an deploy multiple technologies at once, and use different resource for the different tech.

I don't think it is getting lost. The landscape is changing. We have the most viable electric cars the planet has ever had (who woudn't want a Tesla!). We have made and will continue to make major strides in efficiently harnessing the energy of the sun and wind and even tides. How much of that energy we can extract without negative effect is now actually greater than it would be w/o global warming (an interesting thought). So I don't quite understand why you think it is 'getting lost'. The issue is how fast do we act, and how do we act w/o damaging economies and balancing that against the negative economic and ecological effects of the warming itself (rising oceans, changes in weather patterns, shifts in climate)

But we must balance all the factors, not just one over the other. The same oil that adds CO2 feeds billions. keeps billions from freezing or dying of heat exhaustion and makes our econimies tick. It's that we can't ignore either the ecological OR the economic consequences on both sides as we work through the issue. And we have to make sure the science is right and not jacked up because its "The latest PC correct platform" - or in the case of this op, not played down because "It will hurt my specific buisinesses' bottom line".

Jim

[Sam]

The point wasn't to present optimism in those links, but rather to say that some of the issues raised by those most pessimistic about our abilities to find other energy solutions than oil to run our civilization have mitigations. Having listened intently to both sides, with no real internal bias (AGW has never been a hot button issue with me) I know fairly well the issues that the anti-side raise that seem to me to be legitimate. And the fact oil provides a VERY hard to replace energy source seems to me to be one of them. Reducing carbon emissions for the most part is about burning less oil and less coal. But we don't burn oil or coal for the fun of it. We burn it to extract millions of years of stored solar energy in a moment. Using electricity can perhaps reduce that problem by being more efficient and limiting the number of CO2 sources, but have we honestly looked at the number of wind and solar farms it would take to even provide half our energy needs, assuming we can produce enough batteries and motors to take up that much in terms of our mobile energy use? And we aren't too fond of our best alternative source to these (nuclear). And it will take a good bit of energy to produce those energy sources as well.

Fusion keeps staying 20 - 40 years away. I don't think a fusion power plant has ever been less than 25 years from 'now' my entire lifetime. So that is an unlikely candidate. Most of the calculations I've seen don't take into account the energy costs to build the infrastructure, batteries, motors we need to even begin to replace the oil based society. You have to mine the raw materials and run the factories that make these things. For example

Source: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/march/store-electric-grid-030513.html

The five battery technologies fared much worse. Lithium-ion batteries were the best performers, with an ESOI value of 10. Lead-acid batteries had an ESOI value of 2, the lowest in the study. "That means a conventional lead-acid battery can only store twice as much energy as was needed to build it," Barnhart said. "So using the kind of lead-acid batteries available today to provide storage for the worldwide power grid is impractical."

© Copyright Original Source

ESOI is just the amount of energy a device can store over its lifetime vs the amount of energy it takes to create the device itself. (The article does mention a stored energy device called pumped hydro that comes in with an ESOI of 210).

Any strategy to reduce carbon emissions has to take these kinds of issues to heart. It is not (necessarily) that we can't solve the problems, it is just that it may well be a bit naive to think we can make a serious dent in carbon emissions in the next 5 to 10 years. Of course, we won't make any dent at all if we don't start heading down that road (which we are BTW, just perhaps not as fast as we should be).

Jim

I'm somewhat hesitant to bring graphene up (best science-nerd comment I've heard this year was "Graphene can do everything but leave the damn labs") but graphene is showing great promise in enhancing batteries, supercapacitors, etc. There has even been progress in substituting rare-earth metals for abundant or sustainable material in graphene batteries.

I think, knowing what we know right now, the responsible action is to act as quickly as is feasible — our path for capping global temperature increases isn't going to run into a resource cap for decades, at least. Even relatively aggressive action is going to improve economies rather than harm them, given the right policy decisions. If we're 50 years in and it's looking like there's a hard ceiling for renewable energy with current technology, that's something that can be dealt with. But I don't think we can act as though that ceiling exists as the most responsible decision at the moment (we certainly haven't acted that way in the past with resource extraction tech, for example!).

There has been research into replacing a significant percentage of the nation's energy sources with renewables. Haven't read this report but the organization thinks that 50% is doable in the relatively short term. Even 50% renewables by 2050 would be a huge improvement over the status quo.

[oxmixmudd]

I'm somewhat hesitant to bring graphene up (best science-nerd comment I've heard this year was "Graphene can do everything but leave the damn labs") but graphene is showing great promise in enhancing batteries, supercapacitors, etc. There has even been progress in substituting rare-earth metals for abundant or sustainable material in graphene batteries.

I think, knowing what we know right now, the responsible action is to act as quickly as is feasible — our path for capping global temperature increases isn't going to run into a resource cap for decades, at least. Even relatively aggressive action is going to improve economies rather than harm them, given the right policy decisions. If we're 50 years in and it's looking like there's a hard ceiling for renewable energy with current technology, that's something that can be dealt with. But I don't think we can act as though that ceiling exists as the most responsible decision at the moment (we certainly haven't acted that way in the past with resource extraction tech, for example!).

There has been research into replacing a significant percentage of the nation's energy sources with renewables. Haven't read this report but the organization thinks that 50% is doable in the relatively short term. Even 50% renewables by 2050 would be a huge improvement over the status quo.

I agree. We really don't have anything to lose by developing and pushing towards the use of these technologies unless we take draconian measures to force their use. Encouraging with financial incentives is useful though I think. The primary potential negative impact would be on the oil industry itself I guess, but only if they are not smart enough to get on board and diversify to all energy platforms. No reason not to I would think. Exxon graphene batteries has a ring to it I suppose ...

Jim

[TheLurch]

Relevant to the original topic in here, one of the people who does frequent TV appearances to argue about climate change appears to have been paid heavily by a coal company:

http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2015...-chris-horner/

[oxmixmudd]

Relevant to the original topic in here, one of the people who does frequent TV appearances to argue about climate change appears to have been paid heavily by a coal company:

http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2015...-chris-horner/

And so this asks the questions:

If I believe something is true, and someone in industry benefits financially if my belief is more widely accepted:

(1) When is it immoral for them to fund me (or when is it NOT immoral for them to fund me)?
(2) Is it immoral for me to take their funds?

Note the highlighted pre-condition.

And of course, the 'something' here is that AGW is flawed science, but the principles apply equally to if I believe AGW is correct science.

Jim

[Kbertsche]

And so this asks the questions:

If I believe something is true, and someone in industry benefits financially if my belief is more widely accepted:

(1) When is it immoral for them to fund me (or when is it NOT immoral for them to fund me)?
(2) Is it immoral for me to take their funds?

Note the highlighted pre-condition.

And of course, the 'something' here is that AGW is flawed science, but the principles apply equally to if I believe AGW is correct science.

Jim

Jim, I don't think there is anything wrong with this in principle. Advertising agencies and political campaigns do this all the time.

I'd say that the problem comes when one tries to mislead the public by misrepresenting a biased advocacy position as unbiased science. If someone comes at a question with preconceived beliefs as to what is true, and if his funding source shares these beliefs, there is a strong potential for a biased study.

But even here, a good researcher can overcome the bias. (E.g. Rich Muller and the "Berkeley Earth" project.)

[oxmixmudd]

Jim, I don't think there is anything wrong with this in principle. Advertising agencies and political campaigns do this all the time.

I'd say that the problem comes when one tries to mislead the public by misrepresenting a biased advocacy position as unbiased science. If someone comes at a question with preconceived beliefs as to what is true, and if his funding source shares these beliefs, there is a strong potential for a biased study.

But even here, a good researcher can overcome the bias. (E.g. Rich Muller and the "Berkeley Earth" project.)

There we agree. It really depends on whether or not the funding agency is purposefully trying to mislead. The fellow getting the funding should have a clear conscience as long as what he is doing is motivated by what he believes is true (morality here is independent of the ultimate truth in the matter). I think in the Exxon case, we have good reason to believe they knew the science did not support the thrust of the organisations and individuals they were funding. Likewise probably the Coal company in the previous post.

When that breaks down I suppose would be if the fundee is aware of the fact the funder doesn't really believe in what they are funding. That should be a red flag to the fundee something isn't right, maybe even a call to re-evaluate the position. But few are able to take a step back from what they believe is true and ask if it is 'really' true. Not if they are substantially invested in it.

But it is possible, as you indicate in the case of Muller.

Jim

[TheLurch]

The fellow getting the funding should have a clear conscience as long as what he is doing is motivated by what he believes is true (morality here is independent of the ultimate truth in the matter).

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. In this case, Horner has no scientific qualifications, and what he was saying went against all the experts in the field. I don't know about you, but for me that would be a giant red flag with "slow down, maybe you want to think about this" printed on it. Belief is all well and good, but there are plenty of things that should cause one to step back and re-evaluate your beliefs.

Plunging willfully ahead despite the warning signs on a matter of importance like this does not strike me as entirely ethical behavior. But i accept that's a debatable point with lots of grey area surrounding it.