Exxon scientists predicted 415 ppm of carbon dioxide and 1 C temp rise in 1982!

[True Dough]

Turns out some of the scientific minds within the oil and gas industry were sharp as tacks, or lucky as sin! Now what are the big wig executives going to say about this?

Atmospheric carbon dioxide sets a new record every year. This year’s cracked the ominous milestone of 415 parts per million (ppm) thanks to ever rising emissions from human activities. The sharp rise might seem like something nobody could’ve predicted but there’s at least one group of scientists that were on the money 37 years ago: Exxon’s ace team of scientists.

Internal memos unearthed in InsideClimate’s Pulitzer-winning 2015 investigation into the company revealed all sorts of solid science being done even as the oil giant sowed doubt in public. Bloomberg reporter Tom Randall revisited the memos in light of the world’s new carbon dioxide milestone and tweeted a graph from one showing just how much Exxon knew what our future would look like.

It’s eerie seeing how well the company understood both climate science and the world’s patterns of economic growth built on the back of fossil fuels. Here’s that chart, annotated for ease of reading:

https://earther.gizmodo.com/exxon-predicted-2019-s-ominous-co2-milestone-in-1982-1834748763

[Eko]

1. K&R

[drray23]

2. Just like the tobacco industry

Who knew all about the cancerous effect of their products and yet paid lobbyists to advocate otherwise.

[True Dough]

3. Ever see the movie The Insider?

It's a great watch. Very suspenseful.

[rusty quoin]

4. Exactly what I thought.

[misanthrope]

6. Except there's a monumental difference in the stakes involved

The tobacco issue ran some industries into the red. In this case, the biosphere becomes inhospitable.

[Doodley]

5. They knew that they were contributing to the destruction of the world as we know it and

future generations would suffer in ways we cannot imagine. Yet they chose to lie and carry on plundering the Earth. This is the act of evil men who put their own greed over all others.

[Blue_playwright]

7. Prince Charles talked about this crap in the 1989s.

It’s insane that we are to this point.

[roamer65]

8. Next stop...450 ppm.

I bet that’s within 5 years.

[Recursion]

9. I don't think any oil company has been publicly denying climate change, have they?

That seems like a key difference between this and tobacco

[True Dough]

10. No, there are some parallels

In 2005, science writer Chris Mooney documented the company's years of financial support of individuals and groups fighting policies and government actions to address global warming, typically by instilling doubt about climate science. InsideClimate News in 2015 laid out the discrepancies between Exxon Mobil's "cutting-edge climate research" and its public stance of climate change denial. Oreskes, co-author of the book "Merchants of Doubt" about the tobacco industry's decades-long effort to undermine research on smoking's health effects, that same year showed the similarities between that effort and Exxon Mobil's campaign of "disinformation, denial and delay."

"It's pretty clear that their strategy was the same as tobacco's," Oreskes told me this week. "Delay looked to them as a smart business choice, and it may have been."

Of the company's internal reports and peer-reviewed papers, more than 80% acknowledged that global warming was real and human-caused. Only 2% expressed doubt, and in those cases the doubt reflected a conventional scientific caution about making categorical findings. Of the advertorials taking a position, however, 81% expressed doubt. Typical, Supran and Oreskes say, was a 1997 advertorial citing a "knowledge gap" in climate science and suggesting that a scientific consensus had not been reached — although by then it had.

Exxon Mobil has responded to the reporting by denying that its scientists reached firm conclusions about climate change that the company hid or suppressed while it was placing skeptical "advertorials" in the press. In a statement issued after the signing of the Paris climate agreement in 2016, the company said it "unequivocally" rejected allegations that it "suppressed climate change research," and said it understands that "climate change is real."

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-exxonmobil-20170822-story.html

[anarch]

11. gosh, are you saying capitalist interests KNEW they were destroying the planet, but did it anyway?

because profit is far more of a priority to them than leaving a habitable world for future generations?

Do you mean...(gulp)...science has been aware of the risks associated with increased atmospheric carbon for some time, and industry has just flat out ignored (or more accurately, suppressed) any warnings about how, you know, "hey guys, you should probably cut back some on all that fossil-fuel burning if you want your grandchildren to be able to survive on the planet"?? Why, that would imply that cynical, inhuman corporate entities are making decisions that ignore the welfare of humanity...

oh by the way, here's an article from 19-fucking-12 that talks about how increased CO2 content tends to increase the effect of atmospheric heat retention:



link to archived original newspaper--'Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette' (New Zealand), 14 August 1912

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5

[Oneironaut]

12. Oh well. We're not going to do anything about it anyways.

I wouldn’t be surprised if even studying global warming is outright banned by the GOP one day.

[anarch]

13. that is basically where we are now

the escalation will be, they start jailing scientists for speaking out. Would anyone be surprised at this point?