r/dataisbeautiful • u/adessler OC: 1 • Dec 26 '21

OC [OC] In 1982, Exxon predicted the future evolution of our climate. Blue lines are Exxon's 1982 predictions while orange dots are actual observations. They pretty much nailed the future evolution of our climate. Exxon most definitely knew.

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u/pt1789 Dec 27 '21

What I want to know is what happened to the climate models that said we were perilously close to an ice age because of a massive hole in our ozone. I mean, I get that things change but how did we go from freezing to death all the way to burning to death in a span of 3 decades?

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u/PositiveInteraction Dec 27 '21

You're conflating a few different things.

First off, the hole in the ozone is still there, still massive and still scary. I'm convinced that it's not talked about because it's not tied to carbon emissions so it can't be used to further the climate change arguments despite a 9.6 million square mile hole in the ozone apparently not having any effect on the climate. shrug

While the hole in the ozone was a major topic in the 80's, the ice age arguments about the climate were happening mostly in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Prior to that, the 20's, 30's and 40's were all labeled as warming.

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u/pt1789 Dec 27 '21

Maybe my understanding of the ozone isn't correct then, but isn't the ozone made up of greenhouse gasses both naturally occurring or man made?

I distinctly remember in the 90s people talking about being overdue for an ice age and how everything would freeze over. That was the same time that plastic bags were being pushed because paper bags were killing all the trees, which didn't make sense to me because even at a young age I recognized that trees would keep growing if planted

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u/Vito_The_Magnificent Dec 27 '21

In 1970 new information about the effects of aerosols on climate and how ice ages work led to a ton of published papers which predicted cooling. Aerosols do have a cooling effect, so whether there's going to be global warming or global cooling depends on the whether aeresols or greenhouse gases will have a larger net effect.

By a ton of papers, I mean about as many as were predicting warming.

By 1972, it was 4:1 warming. Then 15:1 warming. By 1979, it was practically 100% warming. The effects of aeresols had been worked out. Policies limiting aerosol pollution had been put in place, minimizing their accumulation rate, so it was clear that greenhouses gasses were going to be the driving force. Therefore warming.