Only 100 Companies Are Responsible For 71 Percent of Global Emissions, Says Study (theguardian.com) 180
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report. The Carbon Majors Report (pdf) "pinpoints how a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers may hold the key to systemic change on carbon emissions," says Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute. The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 -- the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established -- can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.
The other 29% are from (Score:2, Funny)
one single apartment in Silicon Valley.
snowflake three-letter agendas (Score:3)
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So 100 companies are drilling oil, digging up coal and then just burning it off to produce CO2, eh?
Of course it's from the Guardian, one of the more hysterical of the Climate Change Drama Queens.
Since most emissions are the result of petroleum usage, and since the global petroleum businesses have consolidated into smaller number of major players, the 'finding' makes sense, that is if you blame only the supplier but not the end user for all emissions. But so what? Would it be better if the same amount of emissions came from more companies?
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Of course not, but what is your "solution" to this problem? Have all the oil companies just stop drilling? Let's see what happens then.
This "complaint" is like complaining when Exxon-Mobile has a $20b profit in a quarter... it's not their fault we use so much gasoline. The profit margin on gasoline is much smaller than most commodities, but you can't help but make a profit when we use nearly 400 million gallons of gasoline every day (and that's just the U.S.). So let's blame the company for using their
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Of course not, but what is your "solution" to this problem? Have all the oil companies just stop drilling? Let's see what happens then.
That's my point. The 'solution' has nothing to do with the number of companies responsible for most emissions. That number is irrelevant.
I don't think this means they're polluters (Score:5, Interesting)
They're oil companies (Score:5, Insightful)
"small set of fossil fuel producers..."
Yeh, we know, we dig up hydro-carbons and turn it into CO2. How the f*ck does that help to list the oil coal and gas companies?
If any of them stopped tomorrow, another company would fill the demand, the names would be different but it would make no change.
The DEMAND for those hydrocarbons is the problem here.
I just priced solar+storage for my house, why the f*ck am I paying for electricity? I never priced it until I read Slashdot the other day and decided to check the prices and specs for myself. The misleading marketing and political funding these companies do is the problem from these companies, not the hydrocarbons themselves.
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Funny that you decided to look at solar after reading Slashdot. I haven't figured out whether the comments on renewable power here are shills or just Slashdot's modern ultraconservative crazy population, but most of the comments tend to be along the lines of "it ain't possible!"
There was a story today about a report that estimates renewables will be the cheapest form of electricity virtually everywhere by... 2020 was it? It seems we're close to having innovated ourselves out of our mess, hopefully in time
Re:I don't think this means they're polluters (Score:5, Informative)
"Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world" (19 October 2011)
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
".. revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships"
"..found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network."
Domestic brands in shops that show freedom of choice could just be local marketing by a multi national.
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if you live in a forested area solar is a no go.
Sure you can do solar energy. You just cut down the trees and salt the soil with herbicides. Plenty of solar energy that way.
I'm not serious about cutting down the trees but solar does have an energy density problem, even in the tropics.
I encourage people to watch this video: https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
Dr. MacKay does some math on renewable energy and the numbers are interesting. One interesting comparison is the means of measuring consumption and production of energy, both can be measured as a den
Re: I don't think this means they're polluters (Score:5, Interesting)
"Solar power produces about 5 W/m^2, which means a nation would have to cover 20% of their land in solar PV panels to achieve a standard of living like the UK."
Hmm, now if only houses had a large surface area above them where you could fit solar panels. Then we wouldn't have to cover 20% of our land in solar PV panels, we could just use the land that is already covered in houses.
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Do you really think the combined areas of all the rooftops in the USA would add up to the area of Alaska?
A quick Google search tells me that the area of all the structures in the USA, rooftops, parking lots, roads, and highways, would add up to an area equivalent to Ohio.
Nice try, but you are off by at least an order of magnitude.
With concentrated solar it'd have to cover an area equal to that of Texas.
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With concentrated solar it'd have to cover an area equal to that of Texas.
What do you mean by "concentrated solar"? Something with curved mirrors or fresnel lenses or something?
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Do you really think the combined areas of all the rooftops in the USA would add up to the area of Alaska?
It doesn't need to, which you would have realized if you had taken your own advice and rewatched the video you linked. The TED Talk specifically said that rooftop installations in England were getting 20W/m^2, 4x the number you quoted (which was for solar parks in England). At those numbers, home-based installations would only need to cover 5% of England in order to achieve 100% coverage of the country's energy needs. And that's ALL of the country's energy, including transportation, businesses, and home use
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It doesn't need to, which you would have realized if you had taken your own advice and rewatched the video you linked. The TED Talk specifically said that rooftop installations in England were getting 20W/m^2, 4x the number you quoted (which was for solar parks in England). At those numbers, home-based installations would only need to cover 5% of England in order to achieve 100% coverage of the country's energy needs. And that's ALL of the country's energy, including transportation, businesses, and home use.
Yes, of course, my mistake. I did see on his website a caveat that such efficiency in current solar panels would be impractical for mass deployment because of excessive cost.
https://www.withouthotair.com/... [withouthotair.com]
While it can be done, using only solar power from 5% of the nation's area, it would mean energy prices would quadruple. Keeping energy within sane prices AND using only solar would mean needing 20% of the nation's area covered in solar panels. This assumes stable prices for everything, which is imposs
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Solar power is 5W/m^2? The peak solar radiation is around 1050 W/m^2. The energy consumption 1 W/m^2 is also probably the peak energy consumption. If that is true, i would like to see the citation and dig through it.
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Peak solar radiation is around 1 kW/m^2. Factor 0.5 for day/night, 0.5 for angle/latitude/overcast, 0.1 for efficiency of conversion, you get 25 W/m^2. Not too far from GP's 20 w/m^2
You need 40,000 sq km. 1 Rhode island?
Total paved area of USA, all the parking lots and roads is around 60,000 square mile
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Your numbers are way out. Take a typical modern panel, like the Sunpower 300. You are looking at 200W/m^2. They can be place side by side on a roof. Typical home systems in Australia are now 6-10KW.
Wind and Solar are getting cheaper, and they arent competing for land. Wind works well with farmland - its also being installed offshore. Solar works well on buildings and carparks. We arent anywhere near a position where it needs to compete for land.
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Those are not my numbers. I got them from Dr. David MacKay who was the scientific advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. He got his numbers from real world data. You might argue that his data was old but he used those numbers in a talk from 2015, so not all that old.
I also believe that you do not understand the scale of this problem. Even if much of the land, and even if it is as high as 90%, used for wind can also be used for crops then you still have the problem of covering twice t
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Fortunately you can put those solar panels where crops don't grow. Actually, putting the solar panels in the desert and those wind whirlies onto the hill tops is a pretty good idea, while putting your crops there is less so.
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http://www.climatecentral.org/... [climatecentral.org]
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Then there are those worry about damage to the desert ecosystem.
Those people are idiots. No one should give one shit about the desert, except that we shouldn't go forth and spray it with depleted uranium which will create a problem for us later. It doesn't matter if nothing lives there, because that wouldn't affect things in nearby biomes. The biomass is so low there (like a rock, it's just about all silicates) that the relevance is near zero. All we should care when it comes to deserts is their extents, and not polluting them.
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And maybe that we don't create more of them.
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And maybe that we don't create more of them.
I would argue in my defense that is covered by the subject of "extents" :)
We should probably be reclaiming them.
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Those people are idiots. No one should give one shit about the desert, except that we shouldn't go forth and spray it with depleted uranium which will create a problem for us later. It doesn't matter if nothing lives there, because that wouldn't affect things in nearby biomes. The biomass is so low there (like a rock, it's just about all silicates) that the relevance is near zero. All we should care when it comes to deserts is their extents, and not polluting them.
But your opinion doesn't matter as it will become an issue if large swaths of desert are used for energy. There will be those that care. Even if it is just the added cost of dealing with the legal fights and environmental studies required for each siting.
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Give a man an 80-20 (or an 88-12 or a 98-2) in any select dimension and he can raze the world.
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Or build massive solar farms in the Sahara. Sure, you have energy supply security concerns to factor in but the western and southern Sahara regions are reasonable stable and the local governments would welcome the income.
Of course you could also just build massive nuclear plants in the Sahara too.
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My back of the envelope calculation suggests that 1W/m2 is out by an order of magnitude. I calculated it to be about .14W/m2.
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Eventually the fission-fusion reaction in the Sun will run out of fissile/fusion material and the reaction will stop (or it will grow unstable and explode). In either case, all life will end on the planet shortly thereafter.
Holy shit, we better get on that. I mean we only have another 5 billion years give or take. We probably should have started looking for a solution last year or the year before. Now we're really going to be under the gun to get this figured out before it becomes an issue. There certainly aren't any other more pressing problems we should be looking into.
So called fossil fuels are "renewable" however. It is all just a matter of time scale. Fossil fuels are renewable on the scale of millions of years, and solar power is renewable on a scale of billions or trillions of years.
Cool. So as long as we don't rely on solar we should be fine. We must demand our leaders switch us back to fossil fuels immediately as they are renewable and
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I think it's more likely that almost everything is owned by 100 companies.
Close, but not quite. I think the truth is that these companies produce most of the raw materials we use. Propylene, ethylene, and phenol are fossil fuel products. These are used to make most plastics, and BPA. BPA is used to make polycarbonate and epoxy. Epoxy is used to make carbon fiber and other composites.
Formaldehyde is used in some industrial wood glues, like those used to create plywood and MDF. Since it's a commodity (and a dangerous one), there are probably very few companies producing formaldehyd
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Regarding the study it seems like they hold the oil extractors responsible for all the emissions from cars so it is more a list of top fossil fuel companies than top emitters.
This might be a better way to put it.... with the way that the fossil fuel companies are given credit for emissions, if Ford/GM/Chrysler/etc were to suddenly shift to all electric vehicles then the fossil fuel company would get credit for significantly reducing their carbon emissions despite performing zero action on their part.
Terrible misnomer (Score:5, Insightful)
They use "linked to" in the very broadest sense. There are less than a hundred major fossil fuel producers in the world, so of course it's "linked" to them. It's not like they are burning it though. It's not like we can just change 100 companies and remove more than half the greenhouse emissions. That's like saying because 70% of the world's greenhouse emissions are produced by 20 countries that it means 70% of the world's greenhouse emissions are linked to only 20 people (the current heads of state for those countries).
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According to this comprehensive chart [wri.org], about 66.5% of greenhouse gas emissions are from the energy sector (nearly all of it CO2), so yes, it's not unexpected that the major energy companies are the penultimate source of so much.
While this is an activist report of course, the point it's making is that these companies hold a huge amount of influence over our energy future - if they chose to scale down their investments in carbon-based energy in favour of creating and supplying low- or zero-carbon alternatives
Re: Terrible misnomer (Score:2)
You misread that chart. It says that about two thirds of GHG emissions were due to human uses of energy, with "transportation" and "industry" being two of the large chunks. Electricity and heat generation is only 25% of the total.
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I consider Exxon, BP, Shell, and other fossil fuel producers to be energy companies, so I was including transportation and their other consumer industries as part of the wider energy market, not just electricity and heating. But whatever you prefer, I don't think it changes my point.
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You may not think it changes your point, but that is because your point is pretty vapid. To the extent that it isn't vapid, it is based on incorrect beliefs and faulty premises. Do you blame minimum-wage workers for struggling to break even? By your logic, if they chose to scale down their hours at the minimum wage it would reduce the supply of cheap labor and thereby increase the market-clearing wage.
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Huh? Sorry, if you're making a point that's related, then I'm not seeing it.
Obviously all participants in the energy chain bear some responsibility, but it's the primary producers who have the most direct control. Consumers rarely care how their energy is produced, only about cost, and they have little influence over methods or pricing. But if the fossil fuel companies (gradually) phased out e.g. coal production, then the electricity market would be forced to build other types of power plants.
Re: Terrible misnomer (Score:2)
Half a trillion annually would perhaps replace vehicles in a tenth of a large city per year. Maybe. But it wouldn't even begin to cover switching infrastructure costs over. You are in a fantasy land as to how quickly it's possible to switch away from oil/gas, and BTW just what major material do you think is involved in making the bodies of all those electric cars...
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Sure. We create all that steel, aluminium and thermo-plastic carbon fibre without using petrochemicals.
Right.
wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a bullshit report with bullshit ideas and bullshit conclusion.
A company that provides you with fuel for your car does not actually produce the emissions, your car produces the emissions, you are the one driving it. You are the one eating the food that is produced due to oil companies supplying energy and chemicals, you are the one living in a building heated and lit by whatever energy source that allows you to survive.
Etc.etc.etc.
To say that some companies that allow you to live on this planet by providing you with everything you need to live are producing the waste that is actually the result of you existing and consuming all this stuff is propaganda and nothing more. It is aimed at stealing profits from companies that are actually largely responsible for you being alive in the first place.
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How to fix that?
Have an app that connects workers to some self driving pod that then collects random workers on the way to work every day?
A self driving community van filled with random strangers that finds the best way to each destination on time.
Suggest all workers get rail or bus transport early each morning?
Tax all other cars off the road? S
Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, don't blame me when I press statist infants through a fine mesh screen to create a useful industrial slurry--blame my customers.
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I can't see where the article says that these companies are 'guilty' - it only really says they play a disproportionately large role in the production of CO2, which isn't surprising at all; it is what we would expect. It points out where we can most effectively concentrate our efforts, if we want to curb emissions: cut back on the production and use of fossil fuels. Again this is no surprise at all. Alas, neither is the reaction of people like you, who immediately work themselves into a frenzy instead of th
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Re:wrong (Score:4)
The report is not trying to apportion blame, it's trying to give some advice.
Investing in these companies is risky, because the world is moving away from emitting large amounts of CO2, with several countries committing to being CO2 neutral in the next few decades. Major consumers of the products they make are moving to other sources of energy, e.g. electric cars.
It's also a helpful guide to which companies we should focus on bankrupting or forcing to change their ways if we want to avert disastrous climate change. It would be nice if the measures that responsible governments are taking were enough, but unfortunately not. Encouraging BP and Exxon Mobil to invest some more of that profit into cleaner forms of energy is a good thing.
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A company that provides you with fuel for your car does not actually produce the emissions, your car produces the emissions, you are the one driving it.
Remember when Chevron bought up the battery technology used in the Honda Insight so that it couldn't be used in any other vehicles? Do people really license environmentally beneficial technology only to suppress it? People do.
These companies buy legislation to permit them to continue polluting, so they absolutely do share the blame.
No (Score:3)
A company that provides you with fuel for your car does not actually produce the emissions, your car produces the emissions, you are the one driving it.
Global warming is systemic, that's the point to take away from this article. Your argument is flawed because you can apply it to all players: the consumers are responsible because they keep consuming; the producers are responsible because they keep producing.
However there is a difference, individual consumers are powerless to make any difference, practical alternatives come from above, the control lies in the hands of the relative few who own the infrastructure and the businesses.
To see the consumer as the
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Oil companies produce oil because there's a demand. Shut down some of them and others will make up for the shortage. Remove some of the demand and oil companies produce less.
Part of the solution is to have individuals doing things that result in less CO2 emission. We're all on the hook. Act wisely.
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What I don't understand is what we're supposed to do with the oil companies. They supply a demand in the market, and the demand won't go away just because we nuke the oil companies.
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Australian Government (Score:2)
We're still responsible (Score:3)
The companies' managers and shareholders are responsible for their behavior, but we, the people who buy their stuff and elect the officials who could legislate some of their behavior, are still responsible for our behavior.
problem is, that the report is based on BS (Score:2)
What is needed are satellites to monitor the globe and record CO2 flow IN and OUT of a region. That will actually allow a better check on things.
Also, look at the first 4 companies (Score:2)
Meaningless gibberish (Score:2)
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Sure they can stop producing everything that produces pollution. But life as we know it would come to a grinding halt. You fail to see the big picture in how this works.
Don't count Corporate Entities, Count Products (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporate entities counting is disingenuous. Pollution is not just produced, it is the byproduct of some job. Presumably there 100 companies produce over 70% of the work we use. They supply the gas we use to get to work, raise the cattle we eat, or produce our electricity. Who cares how they want to group themselves, that is the realm of accountants and lawyers.
After the next round of mergers and acquisitions (Score:3)
That number will be up from 71% to over 80% emitted by the top 100.
The number of corporate entities doing the emission is irrelevant, the total emission is what matters. So, if you suddenly killed Exxon/Mobil tomorrow, their emissions would just be transferred over to whatever company picks up their business, almost seamlessly.
What's needed is for the economic framework to reward lower carbon emissions.
Supposedly in 3 years renewables cheaper (Score:2, Insightful)
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
So who cares ? Either you believe the B.S. and the problem is already solved
or you don't and in that case you never believed there was a problem to begin with.
Personally if the greens want to declare victory and let the world get on with life absent them, they can have their parade.
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Science is in a no-win situation here. If we solve the problem and reduce emissions and no additional warming or catastrophic consequences occur, people like you will say the science was flawed and will be less likely to heed warnings in the future. If we continue along our present course, catastrophic consequences will almost certainly occur. If the latter happens at least us "greens" will be able to point to those consequences and say, "you should have listened", but you'll probably just tell us it's a natural cycle.
No the science says we are past the point of doing anything to change it.
https://www.sciencealert.com/s... [sciencealert.com]
https://www.sciencealert.com/s... [sciencealert.com]
I love settled science
So what you are arguing for is making people more miserable than they supposedly will be any way.
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second link should have been scientific american
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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Neither cite says that it's too late. Both claim that we need to take action now.
Yes but... (Score:2)
So long as it is only poor people who become extinct thats OK, again thats ok because who wants to be poor.
So, no problems, lets drill some more oil
So... (Score:2)
...either the city council are made to look foolish when it's found unconstitutional after many piles of city money are spent fighting in court.
Or, failing that, the "rich" move like 2 miles thataway into another city.
And what will the result be?
Loss of property tax income to the city of Seattle, as fewer high-rollers will want to live there, depressing prices of the highest-value properties.
I think it would be hilarious if the city had to cut funding for the indigent because of this.
Defund government (Score:2)
So, how much of the CO2 output can be traced to government activity? You think that all those bureaucrats turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater like Jimmy Carter did? Sure they do, in the middle of summer.
I hear so many suggest that we "just" enact a tax on fossil fuels. Then we "just" have the government subsidize windmills and electric cars. The government does not "just" do anything. The government is built of many people, all with their own intentions. Some of them not so nice.
We might get o
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If governments can just print money to fund these subsidies then why do these senators keep pleading with me for my money? I shouldn't have to give them ANY money, right?
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Nope, you don't have to give them money. You also don't have to pay for things that you can take by force. These and many other arrangements are something we've worked out of the years, but they are not inviolable physical laws. We could certainly let civilization fall, it is within our power to do so.
ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.... (Score:2)
Newsflash Murrica... When the rest of the world dissagrees you probably have it wrong.
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The same ultra rich employers of lobbyists who would have America believe that climate change is a hoax
Huh? Two of the companies you mentioned have major investments in green energy, one is one of the largest wind producers in the USA, and all three lobbied against trump pulling out of the Paris accords.
nonsense (Score:3)
If you look at it that way, just 100 companies have then probably been the source of more than 70% of the world's wealth, reduction in hunger, reduction in poverty, etc. It's then because of those 100 companies that you don't freeze, starve, or die of horrible diseases. So, be grateful that those 100 companies exist.
What about real pollution? (Score:2, Insightful)
Carbon emissions... get back to me when you are interested in real pollution (like China and India are putting out by the metric ton). Anyone who wants to call CO2 emissions a pollutant should be required to try to live without it for a month.
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Yes, everything is black and white. Beautiful binary logic. There is either CO2 or there is no CO2. Something is either good or it is bad, in any quantity.
Except water, I don't think I'd like to breathe water. And heat, I don't think I want absolute zero or super heated plasma, I prefer temperatures somewhere in the middle. A temperature that supports fishing and agriculture would be ideal for me.
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Then you should be pleased to know that you breathe far more water every day than CO2 and we will never approach even 0.5% CO2, and indeed all indications from the raw data are that global CO2 concentration is a myth (as some kind of fixed constant). CO2 concentration is actively consumed by plant life, meaning it peaks where CO2 is produced, and valleys where it is consumed by plants. CO2 is plant food and is limited not by production but by plant life (mostly in the ocean) and will never exceed 0.08% (w
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When I'm 80 years old, I won't like to breath air that is 100F and 95% humidity. No matter what the CO2 content is. If CO2 and Methane resulted in the air being that hot and my retirement home to be hit by floods 3 out of the 10 years, then that's not ideal for me.
Absolutely you need quite high concentrations of CO2 to be directly toxic to human being or really to vertebrates in general. If you failed to catch on to my earlier posts, you lack the ability to see nuance in environmental topics or identify sec
Re:What about real pollution? (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone who wants to call CO2 emissions a pollutant should be required to try to live without it for a month.
Anyone who wants to call CO2 emissions not a pollutant should be required to breathe nothing else for five minutes.
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Because we are soooo close to having that condition at 400PPM... Oh wait, that's complete bullshit (that's .04% since you clearly have no math skills or comprehension of proportion).
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Because we are soooo close to having that condition at 400PPM... Oh wait, that's complete bullshit (that's .04% since you clearly have no math skills or comprehension of proportion).
I answered your ridiculous example with a ridiculous example, and now you're sad. Don't be sad.
100 Companies plus (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus 3-4 billion people. (taking a rough guess as to how many consumers it takes to generate 70% of the world's emissions)
Point being, the responsibility isn't wholly on corporations. But also on the nations of the world, their governments, and the people of the world.
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I didn't realize you had a gun to your head to fill up your car with gas. My apologies.
This useless factoid... (Score:2)
...brought to you by some climate activist organization. (peeks at TFA) Yep, the "Climate Accountability Institute". Fascinating: they provide no information on their sponsors. They are also not a non-profit, but only a "not for profit", which gives them a lot of leeway, and removes a lot of accountability.
"...a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers
Well, duh. If you take the top 100 companies mining/pumping/extracting fossil fuels, and blame them, the surprising thing is that you don't top 90%. Mean
Government owned entities are the biggest culprits (Score:4, Insightful)
For consistency why isn't these countries pursues with same venom and vitriol as Exxon and Shell? Exxon, Shell, and all privately held companies are held to much higher environmental standard then anyone of these state owned companies.
What exactly do they mean? (Score:2)
I'll accept the criticism if it's the former, but not the latter.
Sturgeon's law (Score:2)
You'll probably find that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of everything.
Your all nuts (Score:2)
For once I feel like i'm a super minority on slashdot... who cares if it's a half bakes article, why are you all protecting these companies? You're selectively arguing against the consumer...
Everyone who is part of the equation is to blame. However the difference between me and one of these companies is that I can't change my mind and "go green" tomorrow, everything I touch is tainted with fossil fuels, there is no choice. The problem is systemic and it is correct to point the finger at the small number of
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Do you have any idea what this 'report' is about? It is not a list of 100 companies that create the most pollution. It is a list of 100 companies that SUPPLY fossil fuels.
Suppose Exxon-Mobil decided to get out of the oil business tomorrow. That would get them off this list. Yay! Of course some other company would then take that business, so there would be a different name for you to hate. Big deal.
What, exactly, would you have these companies do that would make the slightest bit of difference?
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People have no choices? You mean there are only gas-powered cars, and all cars have the same fuel efficiency and pollute the same?
On my daily commute I see an awful lot of cars (including mine) with only one occupant. I didn't realize it was 'big oil' that was causing that, I thought it was my choice.
I see a lot of cars and RVs on the weekends. Didn't know 'big oil' was behind the desire to get away.
I guess every one on the 943 TRILLION airline passenger miles last year was an absolutely essential trip.
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I guess every one on the 943 TRILLION airline passenger miles last year was an absolutely essential trip. Or is 'big oil' behind that, too?
People have lots of choices. Some people (like you) just don't want to admit they are part of the problem when it is so much easier to blame 'big oil'.
Oh sure we have choices.... But please for my sake, define "essential", and then chuck all your stuff away and go live in the woods.
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You seem to have at least some understanding that fossil fuels are essential to our way of life.
What I am taking issue with is your idiotic assertion "it is correct to point the finger at the small number of companies who ultimately have control of the infrastructure that drives it.". What is 'driving' the use of fossil fuels is the 1 BILLION cars in the world, the ships, trains, and trucks that supply us with food and goods, mechanized farming, residential and commercial heating, etc.
You want to 'point t
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You want to 'point the finger' at the companies that 'control the infrastructure', but what do you expect them to do? What magic can those companies (and only those companies) do that is going to convert all those cars to use something other than fossil fuels? Exactly what 'control' do you suppose those companies have?
I'm probably not expressing my point very clearly, let me try again:
1. No one is obligated or has any incentive to change, from both perspectives of supplier and consumer, their is no reasonable choice. There are no market forces or laws that would make big oil change.
2. Means for change: Consumers are few resources diveded by many, they cannot develop viable alternatives; the large multinational companies are large resources divided by the few, they have the means (just not the incentive).
So my point is th
More FAKE man made global warming news (Score:2)
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Then we crash, not just back down to the reasonably stable temperatures of most of the time from the taming of fire to the start of the industrial revolution, but onto the already-in-progress and accelerating descent into the next ice age
What model are you using ? Your ass ?
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What model are you using ? Your ass ?
Actually that one was published in, among other places, the Scientific American - a publication normally quite on board with global warming theories, anthropogenic and otherwise.
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Could you provide a cite? You're claiming that there is a legit model that says that, when we've burned all convenient fossil carbon, temperatures will drop. What happens to all the additional CO2 in the air? You're claiming that people have been burning large enough amounts of fossil fuel to matter for millennia. Actually, what people typically burned for millennia were things like wood, which are carbon-neutral.
If that model showed up in Scientific American, it was as a bad example. If you want me