{"id":38888,"date":"2018-10-08T16:38:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T21:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38888"},"modified":"2018-10-08T16:40:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T21:40:02","slug":"fossil-fuel-companies-knew-how-hard-keeping-to-ipccs-unprecedented-1-5c-limit-would-be-and-did-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38888","title":{"rendered":"Fossil Fuel Companies Knew How Hard Keeping to IPCC’s ‘Unprecedented’ 1.5C Limit Would Be \u2014 And Did Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fossil Fuel Companies Knew How Hard Keeping to IPCC’s ‘Unprecedented’ 1.5C Limit Would Be \u2014 And Did Nothing<\/a><\/h3>\n

The scientists are clear:\u00a0\u201crapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society\u201d are\u00a0needed if the humans are\u00a0going to prevent the world warming by more than 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial\u00a0levels.<\/p>\n

This news \u2014 emanating from the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s (IPCC) mammoth new special report \u2014 \u00a0comes as a surprise to almost no-one. Least of all the fossil fuel industry, which has known for decades that the carbon budget that keeps that goal within reach has been rapidly depleting thanks to its\u00a0products.<\/p>\n

So how did we get here, to a place where plotting a path to keep planetary warming within this highly desirable limit requires changes on a scale for which \u201cthere is no documented historic\u00a0precedent\u201d?<\/p>\n

Exxon Knew, Shell\u00a0Knew<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their products would lead us to this\u00a0point.<\/p>\n

Back in 1982, Exxon published this graph<\/a>, which shows a probable temperature rise of 1.5\u00b0C some time between 2030 and\u00a02040:<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nSource: Graph from an internal\u00a01982 Exxon briefing\u00a0document<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s report confirms how scarily accurate that prediction is likely to be \u2014 it says that on current trends, the world is expected to wam by 1.5\u00b0C between 2030 and 2052. It also shows that the world has already currently warmed by about 1\u00b0C since pre-industrial levels thanks to human-caused greenhouse gas\u00a0emissions.<\/p>\n

Exxon wasn\u2019t the only fossil fuel company to commit resources to understanding this problem in the early days. An internal document from 1988 shows Shell also knew back<\/a> that fossil fuel emissions were likely to lead to 1.5\u00b0C to 3.5\u00b0C of warming. On current trends, they’d be right \u2014 under current policies, the world is expected to warm by about\u00a03.1\u00b0C to\u00a03.7\u00b0C<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fossil Fuel Companies Knew How Hard Keeping to IPCC’s ‘Unprecedented’ 1.5C Limit Would Be \u2014 And Did Nothing The scientists are clear:\u00a0\u201crapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society\u201d are\u00a0needed if the humans are\u00a0going to prevent the world warming by more than 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial\u00a0levels. This news \u2014 emanating from the release of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[3193,141,5317,4390,386,5161,440,22197,1729,2100],"class_list":["post-38888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate-change","tag-desmog-blog","tag-exxon","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","tag-ipcc","tag-mat-hope","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-shell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38888"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38891,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38888\/revisions\/38891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}