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Only 100 Companies Are Responsible For 71 Percent of Global Emissions, Says Study (theguardian.com)
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.
one single apartment in Silicon Valley.
I always was confused about calling solar energy "renewable energy" cuz it is not. And it will not solve global warming (if there is such a thing). Solar Energy is not renewable. 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.
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.
However, the problem has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2. The problem is that humans only know how to use energy by one method: conversion into HEAT. So it does not matter what the SOURCE of the energy is, if you use the same amount of it you will produce the same amount of HEAT, which will have the same effect on the planet.
Same with wind power. Oh the eco-faeries love it now, but just wait until there is enough of it to significantly interfere with wind patterns and alters the climate. When you extract energy (kinetic) and convert it to HEAT you are going to be changing something. If you do not believe so you are nought more than a retard deluding yourself.
The solution is to attach a gigantic heatsink to the planet to dissipate the heat into space.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"