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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

They could have planned for upgrading infrastructure to cope with expected warming trends beginning 35 years ago or so, but that would have entailed admitting that the science of atmospheric CO2's effect on climate had essentially been settled since 1980.

Send BP and Shell the bill for the infrastructure upgrade, since they spent so much time and effort on science denialism in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s.

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The great irony is that BP and Shell did plan for global warming and did upgrade their infrastructure accordingly. Even back in the 80s, they build their ocean drilling rigs to be high above the water knowing full well that they were causing the icebergs to melt and the water level to rise. They just kind of forgot to let us rubes know about it.

There were plenty of scientists letting the public know about the global warming in the 80s. The public didn't want to know about it.

Don't blame "the public". This wasn't some conscious informed choice by millions of people. The public sucks the glass teat of mass media, and the interests controlling it did not want to present global warming as a problem.

In fact, this state of affairs has not even changed that significantly.

All right, but blaming the mass media is not much more helpful. What do suggest - nationalize it all?

Of course the public was (and is!!) the culprit. Only the individual "footprint" is so small that almost nobody does something.

Real structural changes are hard to enforce. There is always something more pressing, just look e.g. at the 100 billion Germany spends on war (how many trees that would give?). As a politician it would be the end of the career if you tried to enforce something really drastic (and so nobody does it, incl. "the greens").

> The public sucks the glass teat of mass media

Ok I'll blame them for that then.

As you were writing this post, did you have a source for this, or was this hearsay? Not asking you to look for a source now, just curious about the quality of information in HN.

I don't know about BP, but this internal memo from 1988 is what people are referring to when they say shell knew about climate change in the 80s: https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/Shell_Climate_1988.pdf

Source here: https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/

The investigative research that brought this up was a big development in proving that they knew on an institutional level that the science was real.

https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/

There is this article from ArsTechnica talking about a lawsuit from the city of New York against chevron which describes the issue described by the OP https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/judge-dismisses-...

The direct quote from the complaint (found here on page 5: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/show_...) would be: Meanwhile, beginning in the mid-1980s, Exxon and other major oil and gas companies, including Mobil and Shell, took actions to protect their own business assets from the impacts of climate change, including raising the decks of offshore platforms, protecting pipelines from coastal erosion, and designing helipads, pipelines, and roads in the warming Arctic)

Global warming is caused by burning fuel, not by extracting it. To say Shell and BP caused the icebergs to melt is ridiculous.

They suppressed the information that global warming was happening.

Yes they did. But the original statement is still ridiculous.

Are you seriously arguing that two of the largest oil and gas companies in the world have no hand in contributing to global warming? Over a 27 year period, they are collectively responsible for producing 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

Glad to know people will still be pedantically splitting hairs as the world literally burns.

Gunshot wounds are caused by the impact of the bullet, not the pulling of the trigger. To say I killed that guy is ridiculous.

edit: at least someone who sells bullets or guns has the excuse that they can be used for sports or entertainment. If you pull oil out of the ground, it's meant to be burned, made into plastic, or put outside to roast in the sun.

Bad comparison. Here's the comparison you should have made to be in line with my comparison:

The people murdered with guns are murdered by people, not by the manufacturers of the guns.

Doesn't mean that gun manufacturers are nice people, but at least we wouldn't be making ridiculous statements and we could communicate what we actually mean accurately so that we can have a productive discussion.

Are you sure about the oil rigs? The thing with ocean is that there tend to be waves. They are designed to survive once-in-1.000-year storms or worse, especially since the Draupner E platform got hit by a huge rogue wave in 1995.

Sea level rise is measured in millimeters per year. When a platform is already 20-30 meters above the sea, the handful of centimeters of sea level rise over its lifespan is completely insignificant.

Sadly to this day there are people who have been politicized into disbelieving the science, which has been very clear for a long time.

I fear for our ability to deal with the problems of humanity when so much of our politics is easily fooled people fighting ideological wars for the benefit of others.

Don't Look Up ;)

There are also some that think that only God can control the weather, so if the world is warming that is His will; and that the end of the world is imminent, and will be the greatest moment in the history of the universe for the faithful.

I'd bet that probably 20% of the voter base believes exactly that, and that 10% think that not believing that should be grounds for deportation or imprisonment.

If by infrastructure, you mean trains, then the UK, like every other country uses rails appropriate to the average temperature.

"Network Rail said that its rails have a "stress-free" temperature of 27 degrees."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62182880

Why would all countries not just use rails that can tolerate all possible temperatures.

'All possible'? What are all possible temperatures? I think you've answered your own question, if you think about it: a line has to be drawn somewhere, you have to do some sort of statistical analysis, chance of circumstances occuring which this would not cope with <x%, yeah ok good enough, that sort of thing. That's engineering.

I mean like, a lot of European countries have colder winters and hotter summers than the UK. So why are our rail tracks always broken in snow or in heat?

That's not the way metal works.

Because that's not possible without a lot of expense. Metal expands thats just basic physics. Its hard to stop that.

And it also contracts.

I'm pretty sure it comes down to cost. Steel rail has to meet certain wear and strength requirements as well as be reasonably inexpensive to manufacture. And there is not likely an alloy that will accomplish that and not expand in the heat.

In the US, the typical construction method is welded rail. AFAIK there is no allowance for expansion, at least on straight sections. Perhaps curved sections can move a bit to allow for expansion but move too much and the train goes off the tracks.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This seems like an earnest question.

I fully agree. In addition charge back all dividends paid as global warming was long a scientific fact. Profits always must come with responsibilities. Time that people who profited are paying their bills.

1955 opening day of Disneyland.

In temperatures that reached 100 degrees, the fresh asphalt on Main Street, USA melted into a sticky tar that ensnared the high heels of some women

https://www.history.com/.amp/news/disneylands-disastrous-ope...

The main reason for this was that they just laid the asphalt too late and it didn’t set in time.

Disneyland was built with remarkable pace, with some of the original rides being closer to ‘industrial machinery with chairs attached’ than you might imagine!

That’s only 37 degrees in normal people temp.

That's too expensive. The sheikhs would no longer be able to build their ski resorts in the desert.

Much of the London tube doesn't have AC. Talk about lack of planning. Pretty sure all lines of the NYC Subway had ac 25+ years ago and they're notorious for drawing out project timelines.

Little consolation when you're waiting 15 minutes for the R train on the sweltering platform, ugh.

But yeah – sadly London's system used to be pretty cool, but the clay interior has acted like a battery, slowly absorbing the heat, and it simply can't absorb any more. It's a massive engineering problem (and oversight).

The lines without AC were constructed (mostly) in the 19th century. It's not possible to fit AC.

Alternative ways to cool the trains have been under investigation for decades, but there isn't an obvious solution.

They didn’t need AC in 19h century. The ground itself was cool and kept people comfortable.

200 years of constant usage has heated up the surrounding bedrock.

Its much harder on the tube, as where do you dump the hot air? Back into the tunnel? London's clay has basically baked around the tube and is a really good insulator. Its not a particularly easy problem to solve.

You vent it to the surface, at least that's what NYC does.

These tunnels are much deeper.

The trains running in tunnels of similar construction to NYC have AC.

To be fair, that’s been a work in progress for years, and some lines do have AC. It’s not like they haven’t been planning for it at all.

IIRC a big difficulty is that the tunnels are extremely narrow, so it’s just difficult to get any extra equipment in there. (I wouldn’t have thought that’s insurmountable, though, so there’s probably more to it than that.)

Great article on the why here: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/cooling-the-tube-engine...

Space in the deep tube tunnels is really tight[0] (making it tricky to fit on-train air con radiators) and there's insufficient air circulation in the to clear the extra heat emissions in any case. They're working on both, but (unlike the shallower cut-and-cover lines and the NY Subway, both of which have saner tunnel sizes) it's decidedly non-trivial.

[0]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Undergr...

but many trains without lack if space, like DLR, are also without AC

Yeah, that's true. Expect that will change with the next set of new trains, as with the newish S Stock on the subsurface lines. Not all mainline trains have AC either, though I think it's been nearly universal on new trains from the 90s onwards.

The tube is for the dirty working class, AC is for the elite. A few weak people dying in London is no big deal - that's how life in London always worked.

Everyone in London uses the Tube. What are you on about?

What are YOU on about? Have you seen the queen, BoJo or any really rich person on the tube?

I've seen several wealthy celebrities, yes.

NYC is also a much warmer summer city than London.

Thankfully the Elizabeth line, opened this year, has AC. Both in trains and stations (at least the new build ones).

Small steps…

There was a competition to see if anyone could solve the problem

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3069037.stm

> Send BP and Shell the bill for the infrastructure upgrade

Should they also get credits for all the progress oil has allowed us to make?

Have they not already been financially compensated for this?

No, they extract and sell oil and they happen to do it at a profit. This is not the same as being compensated or billed for things that resulted from the use of that oil.

That's called _money_.

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