At the time of course Teller was trying to get the nuclear industry out of the slump it was in rather than save the planet. And it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers, we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted.
So I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? How about to Pauling and his vitamins, or Toffler and his "future shock", or Erlich's "Population Bomb"?
All of these topics have the potential to be huge things and deserve the research funding they received but looking back 100 years and picking out one that was closer to the truth than the others isn't really helpful unless your advocating more funding for basic scientific research.
Erlich/Simons bet. Erlich lost. The limits to growth are misunderstood and relate more to the rate of exploration and exploitation under economic forces, than actual hard limits of resource in geology.
Pauling vitamins.. turns out mega doses kill. Vitamin D toxicity is a thing.
> I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action?
Is this snarky comment really all you have to contribute to the conversation? At least make the effort to do the math. The conference occurred in November 1959, around 59 years ago. This is well before consensus about the reality of global warming began to form among atmospheric scientists. That's the point of this article.
Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.' ? The question I asked, perhaps badly was exactly "What is the point of this article?"
You state "59 years ago ... well before the consensus about the reality of global warming began to form." And I had pointed out that 59 years ago there were several different threats to the world that were pointed out by brilliant people, what is the point of going back and cherry picking one that panned out? (the others haven't)
I really did not see any point to the article. Since you did (see the point) , and you assert that the point involved the timing of the conference and the discussion it contained, what is that relevant to? The greenhouse effect was discovered in the 19th century[1], and by 1959 it was common knowledge. Teller was doing a nice side by side comparison of energy technologies in 1959 and notes one side effect that burning fossil fuels has, based on 19th century science, that nuclear power does not.
When I read that article I felt that it creates a false narrative that somehow the petroleum industry was 'warned' and then through 'and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction' somehow blocked something. And my argument is that this is silly, if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in (and I gave several examples of where that would have been 'bad') we (collectively) would have made the wrong choice.
> Can you contribute more on 'That's the point of the article.'?
Sure. I'm not a scientist but I have done some reading about Teller and his role in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. He was clearly a genius. He was also a controversial figure and had a poor reputation in the physics community because of his churlish behavior in the theoretical physics group at Los Alamos, his claim to be the "father of the Hydrogen bomb", and the Oppenheimer affair.
It's no surprise that the petroleum industry ignored his 1959 warnings about CO2 pollution of the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The point of the article is that because of his poor reputation in the scientific community, scientists might have dismissed his important message.
I didn't see in this article where it describes how Teller's poor reputation in the scientific community might have caused many scientists from dismissing his message.
While he was "ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer" ... "he retained the embrace of industry and government."
It makes no mention of Teller's influence on how other scientists in the 1950s and 1960s viewed global warming.
Agreed, but I think the author implies that scientists didn't trust Teller and therefore weren't listening to him. It's an interesting claim. I have no idea if it's true.
I don't know either, but as the article was about Teller's influence (or lack thereof) on the oil industry, I don't think we can draw a conclusion about his influence on the scientific understanding of global warming.
The point is that the oil industry has long stated to the public and shareholders something along the lines of the 1997 advertorial: “Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil.”
However, documentary evidence shows again and again that they had plenty of warning, and plenty of chance to investigate the possible effects. And the petroleum industry actually did research on the topic, which agreed with the general scientific conclusion.
It's not some single or small number of "brilliant people" who pointed it out, but something investigated by their own researchers, who came to similar conclusions.
> We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public.
> ... We stress that the question is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' but rather how they communicated about it [11].
as well as
> A third example is a table (see https://perma.cc/9DGQ-4TBW) presented by Exxon scientist Henry Shaw at a 1984 Exxon/Esso environmental conference, which showed that Exxon's expected 'average temperature rise' of 1.3 °C–3.1 °C was comparable to projections by leading research institutions (1.5 °C–4.5 °C) .
That is, their own researchers knew that there was sufficiently strong evidence of global warming that it could justify changing large-scale change in economic policy. It just didn't make it out to Exxon general communications.
This Guardian article is "merely" an extension of the document trail backwards by a few more decades.
As this piece points out:
> Dunlop went on to describe progress in controlling carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions from automobiles. Absent from his list? The pollutant he had been warned of years before: carbon dioxide.
If your argument is "if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in .. we .. would have made the wrong choice", then in 1967 what was the argument for controlling CO, NOx, and hydrocarbon emissions, and why was it stronger than the argument for controlling CO2 emissions?
This isn't rhetorical. I don't have an answer to that. SRI a year later pointed out to the API that CO2 pollution was important, so it's not like this was an obscure topic even then, only promoted by a couple of influential individuals.
One easy interpretation is that there were ways to handle those pollutants, and they had obvious local effects like smog, but no way to handle CO2 pollution or pressing need, so they shoved it under the rug in discussions with the public and with shareholders.
Perhaps the result has not yet been as catastrophic as he suggested at the time (I mean, it's Edward Teller, after all), but he was more generally correct that use of fossil fuels would have negative impact on the environment. CO2 levels would rise and cause warming. The later Stanford study noted in the article came to the same conclusion. The point of the article is that the oil industry knew by the end of the 1960s that this was a problem, and they buried it.
It isn't clear to me that they 'buried it', there are quite a few papers and studies on climate change that were funded by the oil and gas companies over the last 60 years. Have they argued against it over the years? Sure.
That in turn shows the strong difference between the papers and studies on climate change by Exxon-Mobil scientists, vs. what Exxon-Mobil was saying to the public, politicians, and shareholders.
"Burying" isn't quite the right word. As that link says:
> The question we have addressed in this study is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' 'withheld it,' or 'sought to hide' it, which is how ExxonMobil has glossed the allegations against it [11, 12, 135]. This is also how the allegations have occasionally been presented in the press [136]. Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it.
> However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did. This conclusion is based on three factors: discrepancies in AGW communications between document categories; imbalance in impact of different document categories; and factual mispresentations in some advertorials.
You wrote: "it didn't help that he was "wrong" in his numbers"
That is a misreading of the text.
He said: "Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5."
The change in the instrumental temperature record from 1959 to now is about 1C, or 1.8F - well within his range of 1-5F.
He also said "there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise". He did not, as you summarize it, say that Greenland and the polar ice caps will have melted.
We believe the ice caps have started to melt, and the oceans begun to rise.
This is within the range of his estimate.
It's possible to calculate what the sea level rise might be if the ice melted. However, he did not give a time frame for what that would happen.
You wrote "we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action".
This event was in 1959, which is only 59 years ago. The "100" is because the talk was on the centennial of the American oil industry.
You picked 2 unimportant points he made and totally ignored what he was trying to say.
The point was that many people said many different things that didn't happen at all, it makes no sense to pick one that guessed it right 59 years later.
My complete answer is in several parts, based on the different threads which existed before I started.
This part of the thread was to focus on the incorrect reading by ChuckMcM.
I followed up on the "what [ChuckMcM] was trying to say" (I assume the 'he' refers to ChuckMcM and not Teller) at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 , which was posted about 5 minutes before you posted your criticism.
I do not believe that a single wall of text would be a better way to get my points across.
>we have already passed the additional 10% of CO2 (360 ppm) in the atmosphere and New York is not submerged, and Greenland and pole ice caps are not melted.
Kinda not melted. In geological time ranges, his error is statistical noise.
19 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 52.7 ms ] threadSo I wonder a bit about what the Guardian is trying to tell us here. That we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action? How about to Pauling and his vitamins, or Toffler and his "future shock", or Erlich's "Population Bomb"?
All of these topics have the potential to be huge things and deserve the research funding they received but looking back 100 years and picking out one that was closer to the truth than the others isn't really helpful unless your advocating more funding for basic scientific research.
Erlich/Simons bet. Erlich lost. The limits to growth are misunderstood and relate more to the rate of exploration and exploitation under economic forces, than actual hard limits of resource in geology.
Pauling vitamins.. turns out mega doses kill. Vitamin D toxicity is a thing.
Is this snarky comment really all you have to contribute to the conversation? At least make the effort to do the math. The conference occurred in November 1959, around 59 years ago. This is well before consensus about the reality of global warming began to form among atmospheric scientists. That's the point of this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
You state "59 years ago ... well before the consensus about the reality of global warming began to form." And I had pointed out that 59 years ago there were several different threats to the world that were pointed out by brilliant people, what is the point of going back and cherry picking one that panned out? (the others haven't)
I really did not see any point to the article. Since you did (see the point) , and you assert that the point involved the timing of the conference and the discussion it contained, what is that relevant to? The greenhouse effect was discovered in the 19th century[1], and by 1959 it was common knowledge. Teller was doing a nice side by side comparison of energy technologies in 1959 and notes one side effect that burning fossil fuels has, based on 19th century science, that nuclear power does not.
When I read that article I felt that it creates a false narrative that somehow the petroleum industry was 'warned' and then through 'and its conspiracy of silence, deceit, and obstruction' somehow blocked something. And my argument is that this is silly, if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in (and I gave several examples of where that would have been 'bad') we (collectively) would have made the wrong choice.
[1] https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
Sure. I'm not a scientist but I have done some reading about Teller and his role in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. He was clearly a genius. He was also a controversial figure and had a poor reputation in the physics community because of his churlish behavior in the theoretical physics group at Los Alamos, his claim to be the "father of the Hydrogen bomb", and the Oppenheimer affair.
It's no surprise that the petroleum industry ignored his 1959 warnings about CO2 pollution of the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The point of the article is that because of his poor reputation in the scientific community, scientists might have dismissed his important message.
While he was "ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer" ... "he retained the embrace of industry and government."
It makes no mention of Teller's influence on how other scientists in the 1950s and 1960s viewed global warming.
However, documentary evidence shows again and again that they had plenty of warning, and plenty of chance to investigate the possible effects. And the petroleum industry actually did research on the topic, which agreed with the general scientific conclusion.
It's not some single or small number of "brilliant people" who pointed it out, but something investigated by their own researchers, who came to similar conclusions.
The link to the NYT op ed links to http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f saying:
> We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public.
> ... We stress that the question is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' but rather how they communicated about it [11].
as well as
> A third example is a table (see https://perma.cc/9DGQ-4TBW) presented by Exxon scientist Henry Shaw at a 1984 Exxon/Esso environmental conference, which showed that Exxon's expected 'average temperature rise' of 1.3 °C–3.1 °C was comparable to projections by leading research institutions (1.5 °C–4.5 °C) .
That is, their own researchers knew that there was sufficiently strong evidence of global warming that it could justify changing large-scale change in economic policy. It just didn't make it out to Exxon general communications.
This Guardian article is "merely" an extension of the document trail backwards by a few more decades.
As this piece points out:
> Dunlop went on to describe progress in controlling carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions from automobiles. Absent from his list? The pollutant he had been warned of years before: carbon dioxide.
If your argument is "if we were to take any scientific hypothesis as fact and start acting before the science was in .. we .. would have made the wrong choice", then in 1967 what was the argument for controlling CO, NOx, and hydrocarbon emissions, and why was it stronger than the argument for controlling CO2 emissions?
This isn't rhetorical. I don't have an answer to that. SRI a year later pointed out to the API that CO2 pollution was important, so it's not like this was an obscure topic even then, only promoted by a couple of influential individuals.
One easy interpretation is that there were ways to handle those pollutants, and they had obvious local effects like smog, but no way to handle CO2 pollution or pressing need, so they shoved it under the rug in discussions with the public and with shareholders.
That in turn shows the strong difference between the papers and studies on climate change by Exxon-Mobil scientists, vs. what Exxon-Mobil was saying to the public, politicians, and shareholders.
"Burying" isn't quite the right word. As that link says:
> The question we have addressed in this study is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' 'withheld it,' or 'sought to hide' it, which is how ExxonMobil has glossed the allegations against it [11, 12, 135]. This is also how the allegations have occasionally been presented in the press [136]. Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it.
> However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did. This conclusion is based on three factors: discrepancies in AGW communications between document categories; imbalance in impact of different document categories; and factual mispresentations in some advertorials.
That is a misreading of the text.
He said: "Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5."
The change in the instrumental temperature record from 1959 to now is about 1C, or 1.8F - well within his range of 1-5F.
He also said "there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise". He did not, as you summarize it, say that Greenland and the polar ice caps will have melted.
We believe the ice caps have started to melt, and the oceans begun to rise.
This is within the range of his estimate.
It's possible to calculate what the sea level rise might be if the ice melted. However, he did not give a time frame for what that would happen.
You wrote "we should have listened 100 years ago to Teller and taken action".
This event was in 1959, which is only 59 years ago. The "100" is because the talk was on the centennial of the American oil industry.
100 years ago would be closer Arrhenius's original research on the topic, from 1896, than it would be to Teller's talk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...
The point was that many people said many different things that didn't happen at all, it makes no sense to pick one that guessed it right 59 years later.
This part of the thread was to focus on the incorrect reading by ChuckMcM.
I followed up on the "what [ChuckMcM] was trying to say" (I assume the 'he' refers to ChuckMcM and not Teller) at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16048733 , which was posted about 5 minutes before you posted your criticism.
I do not believe that a single wall of text would be a better way to get my points across.
Kinda not melted. In geological time ranges, his error is statistical noise.