Elephant in the room is named CO2

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Just like an alcoholic who refuses to admit the problem, the API American Petroleum Institute is denying the danger of carbon dioxide emissions.

The legion of hydrocarbon fuel companies is terrified that civilization will soon take the big step of defending its future by seriously limiting CO2 emissions. 

The option they offer is that we can have some easy energy right now and drill for more later.  Lost is the option of a radical carbon fuel cut back.

We should be hyper suspicious of the message dispensed at energytomorrow.com... they seem to be saying "Keep using oil while we look for more"  and "Our oil helps the economy"

The science says all CO2 has to stop.  But their Marketing campaign avoids mention of carbon dioxide emissions.  But that is the most important issue of all.

Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions
H. Damon Matthews
Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Ken Caldeira Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA

Current international climate mitigation efforts aim to stabilize levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, human-induced climate warming will continue for many centuries, even after atmospheric CO2 levels are stabilized. In this paper, we assess the CO2 emissions requirements for global temperature stabilization within the next several centuries, using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity. We show first that a single pulse of carbon released into the atmosphere increases globally averaged surface temperature by an amount that remains approximately constant for several centuries, even in the absence of additional emissions. We then show that to hold climate constant at a given global temperature requires near-zero future carbon emissions.

Our results suggest that future anthropogenic emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize global-mean temperatures. As a consequence, any future anthropogenic emissions will commit the climate system to warming that is essentially irreversible on centennial timescales.   http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032388.shtml

Chart of the current trend for atmospheric CO2


Recent comment from RealClimate.org: 
  
...unabated CO2 emissions to the atmosphere would have climatic consequences that would persist for a thousand years, which they define operationally as "forever", as in the sense of "Irreversible".

It is not really news scientifically that atmospheric CO2 concentration stays higher than natural for thousands of years after emission of new CO2 to the carbon cycle from fossil fuels. The atmospheric CO2 concentration has a sharp peak toward the end of the fossil fuel era, then after humankind has gone carbon neutral (imagine!) the CO2 concentration starts to subside, quickly at first but after a few centuries settling in a "long tail" which persists for hundreds of thousands of years.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/langswitch_lang/in

Big Oil knows it is enabling the problem and hastening our demise.  They know all about the CO2 elephant in the room.  They are just lying about it.

1 Comment

If I have to pay taxes so should massive Large oil corporations! We expect all businesses to pay their fair share of taxes. Oil companies post billion dollar bonuses and profits! Americans need an alternative fuel and obviously a reason to force us or we won't take action to make the change.

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