Arctic warming may be to blame.

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

That's irrelevant to what I was talking about: if we are helping change the climate shouldn't we try to reduce that effect, so the change is slower and gives us more time to react?

if,....if.....if.....if....

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

And if you do, it shows that we are causing change different from a natural cycle. 

    Have a wonderful day/night!   

it?....it???....there is nothing but consensus and consensus is NOT science.....(those numbers have been skewed before to make what they wish for happen)

It's all a money grab....

[ArMaP]

if,....if.....if.....if....

Yes, if, as I think that first we should be sure of what is happening, and knowing what we are doing would also help correct any of our actions.

I just don't think ignoring the question is the right way of looking at it.

Personally, I really don't care, as I don't have any children to worry about and I don't think I will live more than some 20 years or so, but I don't like unsolved problems.

[ArMaP]

It's all a money grab....

It wasn't at the start, some 20 or 30 years ago, when I first saw articles by scientists talking about it.

It was only when politicians and their friends saw it as a source of power and money did they start turning it into the circus it is now.

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

It wasn't at the start, some 20 or 30 years ago, when I first saw articles by scientists talking about it.

It was only when politicians and their friends saw it as a source of power and money did they start turning it into the circus it is now.

Yeah 20 or 30 years ago, the catch phrase was global cooling.Then when that didn't work, it was global warming. When that didn't work, it became global climate change. Which is where we are right now. Global climate change! Now that's a starter! The climate changes every day, 'Hey that should work'! Yes there is such a thing as global climate change. I really believe that the climate can change on a global scale. It's been happening for 4.5 billion years! 

[ArMaP]

Yeah 20 or 30 years ago, the catch phrase was global cooling.

No, I'm talking about global warming.

[zorgon]

No, I'm talking about global warming.

"global warming" and "global cooling" are real NATURAL cycles This is not in question''

What is the bullshit is that mankind is to blame (or able to control it

[ArMaP]

What is the bullshit is that mankind is to blame (or able to control it

I'm not talking about global warming being man-made, I'm talking about human influence in it.

Do you think that our activities do not have [strike]a result[/strike] any influence in the global Earth climate?

[The Seeker]

That's irrelevant to what I was talking about: if we are helping change the climate shouldn't we try to reduce that effect, so the change is slower and gives us more time to react?

Basically what we as humans have contributed to climate change is a very small drop in the bucket; a few years back when Mt Pinatubo erupted it pumped more pollution and noxious gases into the atmosphere in 3 days than we had in the last 200 years...

the part that really chaps my ass is that here in the states many changes have been made to reduce emissions, yet China and India in particular aren't doing anything to reduce emissions and are actually increasing the amount of pollutants on a daily basis; that is the main reason the US pulled out of the Paris Accords, because no one, repeat, no one, would have done anything to reduce anything besides us, and they wanted the US to foot the bill for all of it...

This period of climate change we are in the middle of is a natural, recurring cycle that happens every so many years; according to the ice cores, we are overdue for the next ice age

[ArMaP]

Basically what we as humans have contributed to climate change is a very small drop in the bucket; a few years back when Mt Pinatubo erupted it pumped more pollution and noxious gases into the atmosphere in 3 days than we had in the last 200 years...

Even if it's a very small drop in the bucket (do you have some values to back that up?), it's a drop we can try to reduce, so why not do it?

the part that really chaps my ass is that here in the states many changes have been made to reduce emissions, yet China and India in particular aren't doing anything to reduce emissions and are actually increasing the amount of pollutants on a daily basis; that is the main reason the US pulled out of the Paris Accords, because no one, repeat, no one, would have done anything to reduce anything besides us, and they wanted the US to foot the bill for all of it...

This is not a contest, shouldn't we do what is right instead of what others are doing?

This period of climate change we are in the middle of is a natural, recurring cycle that happens every so many years; according to the ice cores, we are overdue for the next ice age

Again, irrelevant to what I was saying

[The Seeker]

ArMaP, what you seem to be missing is that the US has been actively doing things to reduce green house gases since 1974, the rest of the world hasn't and I daresay they will; just here in my state, in the last 5 years, most of the coal-fired power plants have all been changed over to natural gas...

China has been putting a new plant online on average of once a week and I guarantee you that those aren't low emission configurations...

you figure out how to get the rest of the world to do anything to reduce their emissions and i will support you and applaud you but I believe it will be a very cold day in hell before that ever happens...

[space otter]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings

Climate Consensus - the 97% Climate change
Benjamin Franta

Wed 19 Sep 2018 06.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Sep 2018 19.55 EDT


Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings
Newly found documents from the 1980s show that fossil fuel companies privately predicted the global damage that would be caused by their products.

One day in 1961, an American economist named Daniel Ellsberg stumbled across a piece of paper with apocalyptic implications. Ellsberg, who was advising the US government on its secret nuclear war plans, had discovered a document that contained an official estimate of the death toll in a preemptive "first strike" on China and the Soviet Union: 300 million in those countries, and double that globally.

Ellsberg was troubled that such a plan existed; years later, he tried to leak the details of nuclear annihilation to the public. Although his attempt failed, Ellsberg would become famous instead for leaking what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers – the US government's secret history of its military intervention in Vietnam.

America's amoral military planning during the Cold War echoes the hubris exhibited by another cast of characters gambling with the fate of humanity. Recently, secret documents have been unearthed detailing what the energy industry knew about the links between their products and global warming. But, unlike the government's nuclear plans, what the industry detailed was put into action.

In the 1980s, oil companies like Exxon and Shell carried out internal assessments of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels, and forecast the planetary consequences of these emissions. In 1982, for example, Exxon predicted that by about 2060, CO2 levels would reach around 560 parts per million – double the preindustrial level – and that this would push the planet's average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels (and even more compared to pre-industrial levels).


Exxon's private prediction of the future growth of carbon dioxide levels (left axis) and global temperature relative to 1982 (right axis). Elsewhere in its report, Exxon noted that the most widely accepted science at the time indicated that doubling carbon dioxide levels would cause a global warming of 3°C. Illustration: 1982 Exxon internal briefing document
Later that decade, in 1988, an internal report by Shell projected similar effects but also found that CO2 could double even earlier, by 2030. Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming, and ecological calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.

Shell's assessment foresaw a one-meter sea-level rise, and noted that warming could also fuel disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in a worldwide rise in sea level of "five to six meters." That would be enough to inundate entire low-lying countries.

Shell's analysts also warned of the "disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction," predicted an increase in "runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland," and said that "new sources of freshwater would be required" to compensate for changes in precipitation. Global changes in air temperature would also "drastically change the way people live and work." All told, Shell concluded, "the changes may be the greatest in recorded history."

For its part, Exxon warned of "potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." Like Shell's experts, Exxon's scientists predicted devastating sea-level rise, and warned that the American Midwest and other parts of the world could become desert-like. Looking on the bright side, the company expressed its confidence that "this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine."

The documents make for frightening reading. And the effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants' refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted. Shell's report, marked "confidential," was first disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier this year. Exxon's study was not intended for external distribution, either; it was leaked in 2015.

Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for their products. In Shell's study, the firm argued that the "main burden" of addressing climate change rests not with the energy industry, but with governments and consumers. That argument might have made sense if oil executives, including those from Exxon and Shell, had not later lied about climate change and actively prevented governments from enacting clean-energy policies.

Although the details of global warming were foreign to most people in the 1980s, among the few who had a better idea than most were the companies contributing the most to it. Despite scientific uncertainties, the bottom line was this: oil firms recognized that their products added CO2 to the atmosphere, understood that this would lead to warming, and calculated the likely consequences. And then they chose to accept those risks on our behalf, at our expense, and without our knowledge.
The catastrophic nuclear war plans that Ellsberg saw in the 1960s were a Sword of Damocles that fortunately never fell. But the oil industry's secret climate change predictions are becoming reality, and not by accident. Fossil-fuel producers willfully drove us toward the grim future they feared by promoting their products, lying about the effects, and aggressively defending their share of the energy market.

As the world warms, the building blocks of our planet – its ice sheets, forests, and atmospheric and ocean currents – are being altered beyond repair. Who has the right to foresee such damage and then choose to fulfill the prophecy? Although war planners and fossil-fuel companies had the arrogance to decide what level of devastation was appropriate for humanity, only Big Oil had the temerity to follow through. That, of course, is one time too many.

Benjamin Franta, a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, where his research focuses on the history of climate science and politics.

An earlier version of this piece, entitled "Global Warming's Paper Trail", was published on Sept. 12, 2018 by Project Syndicate.

............................................

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/climate-plan-exxon-liability-175022079.html

HuffPost   
Amy Westervelt
HuffPost11 June 2019


A Climate Plan Even Exxon Could Love

A few years ago, putting a price on carbon was a non-starter for Republicans, but things have changed. Now there are multiple bipartisan proposals to do just that ― but only one has the backing of both automotive and fossil fuel companies, and it could put in place a permanent loophole eliminating any responsibility for their role in delaying action on climate.

In mid-May, the House held its first Ways & Means Committee hearing on climate change in a dozen years. The hearing discussed a carbon fee and dividend plan from the Climate Leadership Council, one developed by two former Republican Secretaries of State, James Baker and George Shultz, and endorsed by a broad coalition that includes former Obama Department of Energy head Steven Chu, the late physicist Stephen Hawking, former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, ExxonMobil, Conoco Philips, Shell, Ford and GM.

CLC founder Ted Halstead was the only witness at the hearing associated with any particular carbon pricing plan (although the Baker-Shultz plan has not yet been formally introduced as a bill) and touted its four "unseverable" pillars: an initial $40 per ton fee on carbon emissions that will rise over time, a carbon dividend that pays citizens back to offset the rising costs of goods, border carbon adjustments and other trade remedies, and a phase-out of most federal greenhouse gas regulations already in place, particularly the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

The plan also stipulates that "no party should be liable for damages from past emissions that were legal at the time." Herein lies the rub for a lot of people who care about climate change.

While the first three pillars are fairly standard as carbon tax proposals go, the liability waiver is unique to the CLC proposal, and it comes just as efforts to litigate on climate change appear to be bearing fruit. The Trump administration has yet to win a single case in federal court defending a delay or rollback of climate regulations, according to a new analysis from Columbia University's Sabin Center on Climate Change Law. And in January, the Supreme Court declined Exxon Mobil's bid to block the Massachusetts attorney general's request of internal company documents.

Creating the sort of liability exemption laid out in the CLC proposal is rare, said longtime consumer advocate and attorney Pamela Gilbert, though industries are constantly lobbying for them. The only industries that currently have this sort of legal protection at the federal level are gun manufacturers and nuclear energy.

"It's always the very most dangerous products or industries, which makes you think maybe this isn't so wise," said Gilbert, a former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and current partner at the law firm Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca. "Is the idea that we wouldn't be able to have these products without this legal immunity, because of the harm they cause? Then maybe we need to rethink that."

There are currently 17 different climate liability cases underway, brought by cities, counties, states and other industries in an attempt to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for their portion of the bill on climate change adaptation. So it makes sense that oil companies would trade a carbon fee, which they have traditionally fought, for a pass on litigation. Just last year, the U.S. oil industry spent some $30 million in Washington state to defeat a carbon tax. Shifting that opposition to support seems to have required permanent legal immunity on climate change.

And then there are the fraud allegations against ExxonMobil. The state of New York brought a suit against ExxonMobil earlier this year which alleges that the company hid the financial risks of climate change from its shareholders. The Massachusetts attorney general's office is also continuing a fraud probe of the oil giant. Yet another case, also in Massachusetts, alleges that Exxon has not appropriately managed the risk of climate change to a seaside terminal in Everett, Massachusetts. That case just made it past the motion to dismiss, putting Exxon in the position of either having to prove that it has managed for climate risk or acknowledge that it has not; neither is a particularly good argument for them to have to make, and likely means the company will have to turn over internal climate documents to make its case.

CLC Senior Vice President Greg Bertelsen said the proposal isn't final yet and details are still being fleshed out. They expect to release a final proposal this fall and then an as-yet-unnamed lawmaker will introduce it as a bill later this year. But Bertelsen said he expects that bill will include the liability waiver.

"We envision a provision which, in the context of a robust and rising national carbon price that considerably exceeds the U.S. Paris target, Congress would reaffirm that companies are not liable for historic emissions that were legal at the time," he said.

That would be a key difference between the Baker-Shultz plan and other carbon fee and dividend plans, which offer regulatory relief but not legal immunity.

"We don't expect this to be part of the Energy Innovation Act," Flannery Winchester, with the Citizens Climate Lobby, said. The CCL is a nonprofit whose carbon fee-and-dividend plan has been introduced by a bipartisan group headed up by Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) and Francis Rooney (R-Fla.). "That's something our volunteers would be incredibly upset about. It would feel like a blow if something like that were to make its way in."

Gilbert said the key issue with liability waivers is that government regulations generally fall far short of protecting the public. In fact, "it's generally legal cases that push the regulation farther," she said. "You need both the courts and regulation." Take away the courts and you're left with weak regulations, standards that never improve, underfunded enforcement and impacts that companies are free to pass on to taxpayers. 

In the case of climate liability, taxpayers and local governments are currently shouldering the cost of climate change adaptation ― everything from seawalls to major infrastructure projects like building new roads, in an effort to adapt to sea level rise and prepare for an increase in both the volume and intensity of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. These costs are only increasing, and cash-strapped local governments are hoping to share the responsibility for them with some of the industries that contributed to the problem, fought to stall regulation that would have mitigated impacts, and profited while doing so.

One of the cities filing suit last year was Richmond, California, which is still awaiting a decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said in a statement that access to the courts is "fundamental to our system of democratic governance," and "ensures that even the most powerful corporations are subject to checks and balances." Butt joined five other California plaintiffs last year in a letter to Democratic California Sens. Kamala Harris and Diane Feinstein warning against carbon legislation that includes immunity against litigation.

CLC argues that such immunity is necessary to get a reasonably high price on carbon. Their $40 a ton figure is certainly higher than the proposal from Reps. Deutch and Rooney that starts at $15 a ton, but that bill has the price increasing $10 per year until it hits a point where emissions are not increasing past 2016 levels; the CLC price is lower than a plan from Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), and Kirstin Gillibrand (N.Y.) that starts at $52/ton. 

But Gilbert said this is a false bind, pointing to the tobacco industry's attempts to curb suits in exchange for Food and Drug Administration regulations in a 1997 bill as an example of why these sorts of trade-offs are not necessary.

"That bill never passed, and years later legislation did pass without that liability limitation," she said. "Sometimes people will say you'll never get federal regulation so you have to give up the lawsuits, but that's just not true

[ArMaP]

ArMaP, what you seem to be missing is that the US has been actively doing things to reduce green house gases since 1974, the rest of the world hasn't and I daresay they will; just here in my state, in the last 5 years, most of the coal-fired power plants have all been changed over to natural gas...

Are you sure of that bold part?
In Portugal, during March 2018 we produced more electricity from renewable sources than the country's needs.

[space otter]

https://www.livescience.com/65469-highest-carbon-dioxide-levels.html

Carbon Dioxide Soars to Record-Breaking Levels Not Seen in at Least 800,000 Years
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer | May 14, 2019 06:48am ET

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been for 800,000 years — since before our species evolved.

On Saturday (May 11), the levels of the greenhouse gas reached 415 parts per million (ppm), as measured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Scientists at the observatory have been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958. But because of other kinds of analysis, such as those done on ancient air bubbles trapped in ice cores, they have data on levels reaching back 800,000 years. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

During the ice ages, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were around 200 ppm. And during the interglacial periods — the planet is currently in an interglacial period — levels were around 280 ppm, according to NASA.

But every story has its villains: Humans are burning fossil fuels, causing the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which are adding an extra blanket on an already feverish planet. So far, global temperatures have risen by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since the 19th century or pre-industrial times, according to a special report released last year by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Every year, the Earth sees about 3 ppm more carbon dioxide in the air, said Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University. "If you do the math, well, it's pretty sobering," he said. "We'll cross 450 ppm in just over a decade."

The subsequent warming is already causing changes to the planet — shrinking glaciers, bleaching coral reefs and intensifying heat waves and storms, among other impacts. And carbon dioxide levels higher than 450 ppm "are likely to lock in dangerous and irreversible changes in our climate," Mann told Live Science.

"CO2 levels will continue to increase for at least the next decade and likely much longer, because not enough is being done worldwide," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The long-term increase is due to human-related emissions, especially the emissions of our burning of fossil fuels."

However, he noted that the annual peak in carbon dioxide, which fluctuates throughout the year as plants change their breathing rhythms, occurs right now. The annual average value will be more like 410 to 412 ppm, he said. Which ... is still very high.

"We keep breaking records, but what makes the current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere most troubling is that we are now well into the 'danger zone' where large tipping points in the Earth's climate could be crossed," said Jonathan Overpeck, the dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. "This is particularly true when you factor in the additional warming potential of the other greenhouse gases, including methane, that are now in the atmosphere."

The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, way before Homo sapiens walked the planet, the Antarctic Ice Sheet was much smaller and sea levels were up to 65 feet (20 meters) higher than they are today, Overpeck told Live Science.

"Thus, we could soon be at the point where comparable reductions in ice sheet size, and corresponding increases in sea level, are both inevitable and irreversible over the next few centuries," he said. Smaller ice sheets, in turn, might reduce the reflectivity of the planet and potentially accelerate the warming even more, he added.

"It's like we're playing with a loaded gun and don't know how it  works."

links
Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice
The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health
Originally published on Live Science.

........................................

https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2

[The Seeker]

Are you sure of that bold part?
In Portugal, during March 2018 we produced more electricity from renewable sources than the country's needs.

That is great, ArMaP, but that is just Portugal, not China or India...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2


From the above link:

On pure emissions alone, the key points are:

    • China emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together - up by 171% since the year 2000
    • The US has had declining CO2 for two years running, the last time the US had declining CO2 for 3 years running was in the 1980s
    • The UK is down one place to tenth on the list, 8% on the year. The country is now behind Iran, South Korea, Japan and Germany
    • India is now the world's third biggest emitter of CO2 - pushing Russia into fourth place
    • The biggest decrease from 2008-2009 is Ukraine - down 28%. The biggest increase is the Cook Islands - up 66.7%

This data set was from 2009, 10 years ago, and I wager the numbers are even higher today...