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above, and myself. The team incorporated emissions data from the 90 carbon
producers identified by Heede (2014) into a simple, well-established climate
model that captures how carbon dioxide and methane emitted into the Earth’s
atmosphere lead to the extra trapping of heat, driving increases in global
surface temperature and sea level.
Using this model, the research team quantified the results of including or
excluding different natural and human contributions to climate change—
including the very specific contributions of emissions traced to these
companies’ products (Ekwurzel et al. 2017). The new study analyzed the
climate change impacts of each company’s carbon dioxide and methane
emissions for two time-periods: 1880–2010 and 1980–2010. The latter time
period was chosen as indicative of a key factor relevant to the societal
assessment of company climate responsibility.
The results of the study, published in the scientific journal Climatic Change,
show that emissions from the products of 90 major fossil fuel producers and
cement manufacturers contributed nearly half of the global temperature rise
and about 30 percent of global sea level rise between 1880 and 2010, among
other findings.
Q2: What was the motivation, if any, in making this study?
A2: Policymakers in several jurisdictions around the world are now considering
whether fossil fuel producers bear some responsibility for the damages from
climate change resulting from emissions from their products. Our intent in this
research was to inform such considerations.
Of course, the question of responsibility for climate damages is not singularly
the domain of science. Historical analyses indicate that senior executives in
leading investor-owned fossil fuel companies knew about the risks of their
products by 1980 or earlier, but did not bring those risks to the attention of the
public and their shareholders; rather, many of these companies supported and
engaged in efforts to sow doubt about the risks of their products (Banerjee
2015; Frumhoff, Heede, and Oreskes 2015).
The editors of the journal Climatic Change invited Professor Henry Shue of
the University of Oxford, a leading expert in ethics, equity, justice and
philosophy, to write a commentary on ethical implications of the Ekwurzel et
al (2017) paper and such related historical evidence. His commentary,
published alongside Ekwurzel et al (2017), argued that fossil fuel companies
“… knowingly violated the most basic moral principle of 'do no harm,' and
now they must remedy the harm they caused by paying damages and their
proportion of adaptation cost.”
Q3: Can you please explain what does a peer-reviewed research mean?
A3: Peer review means that the journal (in this case, Climatic Change) invites
scholars with expertise in the subject area of a submitted paper to provide a
critical written assessment of the quality of the research and its adherence to