10 Q21: Could you please briefly describe the key findings of “The rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level from emissions traced to major carbon producers,” a paper you co-authored? A21: We estimated that the major carbon producers contributed ~57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ~46% of the observed rise global mean surface temperature, and ~29% of global sea level rise since 1880, and ~43%, ~32%, and ~12% of CO2, temperature, and sea level rise since 1980, respectively. We quantified the contributions of each major carbon producer in percent of the global increase in CO2, temperature rise, and sea level rise. For example, the largest carbon producer from 1980 to 2010 is Saudi Aramco, to which my research attributed emissions of 36 GtCO2, and our modeling study attributed CO2 rise of 3.23 ppm (parts per million), a 0.017 degree Celsius rise, and 1.43 mm of sea level rise (SLR). Gazprom followed as #2, with SLR of 1.14 mm, and ExxonMobil #3 with SLR of 0.92 mm. Q22: How was your group able to arrive at these findings, or what methods were used? A22: We used a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level. We used the emissions of CO2 and methane traced to the ninety major industrial carbon producers as discussed in the peer-reviewed Climatic Change (Heede 2014) as input data to the model. Q23: How do you think this type of research will be advanced in the future? A23: The significance of the findings is that climate impacts — such as a proportion of observed rise of sea levels globally — can be attributed to the emissions traced to individual fossil fuel producing companies. In the context of responsibility for climate change and for climate damages — such as inundated coastal areas, threatened private and public property, marginal costs of severe storms and storm surges, abatement costs by cities and corporations to protect assets, populations increasingly at risk from floods, forest fires, crop failures, and disease vectors — we can begin to understand not only which energy companies have a quantifiable responsibility for the climate effects of the carbon fuels they have extracted and marketed globally, but also link attributed emissions to anthropogenically-exacerbated damages. A rich set of scientific literature is now emerging that is refining the attribution models and with increasing confidence able to quantify the human fingerprint on the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and similar attributable climate-related impacts. (Some impacts are not strictly global warming related, such as impacts on coral reefs, marine biodiversity, and shell-fisheries from the acidification of the oceans caused by increased uptake of atmospheric CO2; carbon dioxide is a mild acid, leading to decrease in surface water pH.) Q24: Could you please briefly describe the key findings of your recent paper, “Carbon producers' tar pit: dinosaurs beware: the path to accountability of fossil fuel producers for climate change & climate damages”? A24: This is a survey paper submitted to the Plenary Conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Edinburgh in October 2017 in which I discuss the arc and objectives of my work, from the tracing of two-thirds of global industrial CO2 emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers to our common