Big oil firms knew of dire effects of fossil fuels as early as 1950s, memos show

Major oil companies, including Shell and precursors to energy giants Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, were alerted about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents show.

The warning, from the head of an industry-created group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, was revealed by Climate Investigations Center and published Tuesday by the climate website DeSmog. It represents what may be the earliest instance of big oil being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its products.

“Every time there’s a push for climate action, (we see) fossil fuel companies downplay and deny the harms of burning fossil fuels,” said Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center who uncovered the historic memos. “Now we have evidence they were doing this way back in the 50s during these really early attempts to crack down on sources of pollution.”

The Air Pollution Foundation was founded in 1953 by oil interests in response to public outcry over smog that was blanketing Los Angeles county.

Researchers had identified hydrocarbon pollution from fossil fuel sources such as cars and refineries as a primary culprit and Los Angeles officials had begun to proposal pollution controls.

The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by the lobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publicly claimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in large part to counter efforts at regulation, the new memos indicate.

It’s a commonly used tactic today, said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in climate disinformation at the University of Miami. (...)

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

In 2004, a trio of researchers published a study that accomplished something never seen before. They calculated the specific contribution that human-caused climate change made to an individual extreme weather event.

The extreme event in question was the European heatwave in the summer of 2003. Week upon week of extreme heat had a devastating impact, killing more than 70,000 people across the continent.

The scientists worked out that human influence had at least doubled the risk of such an extreme heatwave occurring. The findings made headlines around the world.

The study kick-started the scientific field of “extreme event attribution”.

Attribution studies calculate whether, and by how much, climate change affected the intensity, frequency or impact of extremes – from wildfires in the US and drought in South Africa through to record-breaking rainfall in Pakistan and typhoons in Taiwan.

To keep track of this rapidly growing field of research, Carbon Brief has mapped every published study on how climate change has influenced extreme weather.

This latest iteration of the interactive map (below) includes more than 600 studies, covering almost 750 extreme weather events and trends. (...)

Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures

Abstract: Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate change may threaten price stability. Here we apply fixed-effects regressions to over 27,000 observations of monthly consumer price indices worldwide to quantify the impacts of climate conditions on inflation. Higher temperatures increase food and headline inflation persistently over 12 months in both higher- and lower-income countries. Effects vary across seasons and regions depending on climatic norms, with further impacts from daily temperature variability and extreme precipitation. Evaluating these results under temperature increases projected for 2035 implies upwards pressures on food and headline inflation of 0.92-3.23 and 0.32-1.18 percentage-points per-year respectively on average globally (uncertainty range across emission scenarios, climate models and empirical specifications). Pressures are largest at low latitudes and show strong seasonality at high latitudes, peaking in summer. Finally, the 2022 extreme summer heat increased food inflation in Europe by 0.43-0.93 percentage-points which warming projected for 2035 would amplify by 30-50%.

Helene, Milton losses expected to surpass "truly historic" $50 billion each

Climate change fueled the fury of hurricanes Helene and Milton
Two new studies link abnormally hot water in the Gulf of Mexico to the storms’ intensity

Fascinating how many folks weighed in on the Dock Workers who insisted they  adapt to Technology and Change.

Pretty rich while a global Industry insists on maintaining a toxic addiction to Fossil Fuels by erecting barriers to employing new technology.
States, like Texas,  have passed Laws preventing any county or city investment in any firm that also engages in carbon reduction activities.

Who are the Luddites now?

 haresfur wrote:

exactly

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Climate change isn't occurring -> Climate change is occurring but people aren't a cause ->  ok, we are a cause but other things... -> Human impacts are too expensive to address ->

...? 

-> We're fucked so no sense trying to keep things from being fucked worse

It's honestly so fucking perfect that scientists have been warning about emissions driving catastrophic climate change for decades, and now that we have one catastrophic hurricane per week the freak right-wing echo chamber has landed on "the government is controlling the weather"

 R_P wrote:

one day there will be the ultimate "come to Jesus" storm, but in the meanwhile until Jesus comes to you it's nothing to worry about. 

 rgio wrote:
Apparently, the Asheville NCEI systems and websites are down.  By the last estimate I read, about 60-65% of customers in Buncombe County (which includes Asheville) do not have any electricity. Some nearby counties are at  80-100% without power.

I was reading an article, and it said the data was from NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI).  

This is a copy/paste of the current website page

NCEI Asheville Hurricane Helene Outage