I had the opportunity to conduct research with co-authors from the University of Oxford, Climate Accountability Institute, and UCS to use a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these carbon producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level (Ekwurzel et al., 2017). We found that emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed ∼57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ∼42–50% of the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST), and ∼26–32% of global sea level (GSL) rise over the historical period and ∼43% (atmospheric CO2), ∼29–35% (GMST), and ∼11–14% (GSL) since 1980 (based on best-estimate parameters and accounting for uncertainty arising from the lack of data on aerosol forcings traced to producers). Our study demonstrates that the proportional increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, GMST, and GSL—key indicators of human impact on the global environment—from emissions traced to major carbon producers is quantifiable and substantial. The analyses presented here could be extended to examine the contribution of emissions traced to major carbon producers to other impacts. Attribution science has advanced to now assess the contribution of human-induced climate change to many types of extreme events (see figure and table, UCS 2018). Figure source: UCS (2018) 2

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