Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago

[Galraedia]

Source: Inside Climate News

At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.

"In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon's Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.

It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert.

Read more: http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Exxon owners and execs need to be charged and tried with crimes against humanity and earth.

[Hortensis]

8. How about our complicity? It's not like we didn't know. In 1965 President Johnson

officially informed Congress of global warming and the need to take action, at the same time warning the American people. President Carter repeated the call for action during his presidency.

And us? We geared right up and "got off the backs of business" by dismantling regulations like a nation of rioters burning down its own grocery stores and responded to a world oil crisis by sending our sedans to landfills and replacing them with hundreds of thousands of giant SUVs. And even together they're almost the least of it...

I am a not-proud member of The Worst Generation

[Dont call me Shirley]

10. That was the ReaganBush Revolution who led to the deepening warming. I did not vote for them,

ever! I reduce, reuse, recycle, compost, conserve water, gas, electricity, don't buy cartloads of useless junk, rid my mind/body of destructive energy toxins, teach my children to do the same.

I will not take responsibility for the heinous crimes of a few! They must take responsibility for the crimes against the Earth and all its inhabitants that they have committed. They know who they are! They try to outrun their guilt, but they never will; it will always be infused with their beings.

[Hortensis]

11. I'll gladly toss them all in prison for life. But there are 300 million of us.

At any point in the past 50 years WE could have stopped the "few" and done our duty to literally...EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY one can conceive of.

The few could not have done it without the collusion and, very frequently, active assistance of the many -- oh, yes, ESPECIALLY of conservatives. The few didn't vote in the politicians who served them or vote by the millions to block those people who were trying to stop global warming. But conservatives weren't the only ones to blame. The few didn't type their own letters or buy our SUVs or bottled water for us. Yes, conservatives are very heavily and dreadfully to blame, but one way or another most of the rest of us were part of the problem every step of the way.

We who knew should have stopped the few and didn't try hard enough. IMO, most of us have absolutely no right to hurl blame at the few before we even smash the image in our own mirrors. This is OUR doing, and our children and grandchildren will only be able to learn about the world WE had through books.

Just my opinion.

[Dont call me Shirley]

12. We really did not know at a mass level the breadth of the conspiracy they were running and still do

There is still time to act, hortensis, don't despair. There are many things we can do to begin to reverse the mess these criminals have intentionally created. It may sound sappy but love does conquer all. Rid yourself of self-defeating negative energies, replace them with self-love and respect. This energy is far more powerful than their negativity and poison.

Thom Hartmann always says, "Dont give in to despair. Get out there. Get active. Tag you're it".

[Hortensis]

13. I agree that throwing ourselves into action is the best, and least, we can do,

Don't Call me Shirley (the temptation is really strong, btw).

We've reduced our "footprint" a great deal and are letting the woods take over most open areas of our small acreage (some pasture left open in case we need to someday keep goats or whatever), although sitting at home watching trees grow doesn't really fit the image of people throwing themselves into battle. Nor does the image of someday entertaining myself by watching chickens eat bugs, instead of wintering in Florida (vastly reduced heating costs at least), but we haven't "reduced" to that yet.

BTW, your message did cheer me up. It is too late to do anything but deal with it.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Yeah

but that was science. Now we have biblical pseudo-science. You can't
prove a thing to them unless it lines their wallets.

[tclambert]

3. Exxon didn't ignore these findings. They started a Public Relations campaign to fight them.

The warning the executives took from this was they had to fight the dissemination of this information so they could keep selling fossil fuels and not get held liable for the environmental and economic damage they did. The PR campaign has worked so well, almost 40 years have passed without any effort at conservation or fighting global warming. The Western United States is on fire, tens of thousands around the world have died from record heat waves, freshwater wells in parts of Florida have turned brackish from the intrusion of rising seawater, yet Exxon still gets to sell just as much oil as ever.

Exxon executives must feel so proud.

[AlbertCat]

4. DUH!

[Paka]

5. Not such a surprise.

[Dustlawyer]

6. They duplicated the same policies of the asbestos manufacturors and their insurance companies.

Exxon learns about the threat to our climate caused by the use of their product, proceeds to cover it up and fight anyone who comes up with the same conclusion. They deny what they know is true!

In 1932 members of the National Safety Council, a large group of corporate manufacturors had a subgroup of asbestos manufacturors who were concerned because they were starting to have their employees files Worker's Compensation cases for lung disease. In those days no worker would file for worker's compensation unless they could never work again because they would be black balled. Metropolitan Life (Snoopy) insured many of these companies such as Owens Corning (Pink Panther), Owens Illinois, and Johns Manville to name a few. They decided to fund a study and the scientist came back and told them asbestos causes colon, throat, and lung cancer, including the worst, Mesothelioma! He was going to publish his findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. Vandiver Brown, CEO of Johns Manville, the biggest asbestos manufacturors of all threatened the scientist and his family if he ever published his work. They managed to murder generations of workers and their families with their asbestos as they covered it up until the 1970's.

Tobacco companies have also followed this pattern, yet we allow refineries and chemical plants to "self report" leaks, fires etc because our regulatory agencies are so under budgeted and understaffed they cannot do the job.

Why do they get away with it? Because we have allowed them to buy our government. They OWN IT! Let's reverse this by supporting Bernie and any other like minded candidates!

[Judi Lynn]

7. There's not much time left for the public to look the other way before it's too late.

Thank you for your informed post.

[PATRICK]

9. Confirmation for a really scary general principle

That the powers that be in business or government or whatever have had and continue to have access to the leading science of future crises. If some choose to deny or really be ignorant it is clear many if not most have the facts- and fit them into their game plan as knowledge to be kept secret or denied.

And what do they do? Double down on the business before anyone else gets wind of it. Shut up all present and future knowledge. Think(but rarely do) anything about moving to alternatives. Start hiding money and planning getaways and moves to other countries. Keep surfing their wave until its too late to do what they think with all their power they could do---later, later, uh too late- give the taxpayer the bill. Exploit the catastrophe, but even that is contingent to just keeping the old game going. Arming the police. Buying the government. Owning the media. brainwashing the public. Dumbing them down to superstitious moron status. Despising the people into insignificant numbers. Getting religion based on success entitlement, faith in the triumph of the greedy will.

Looking at meltdowns of empires and civilizations we see the "elites" there also had better first hand access to real problems and their first concern was conserving power and advantages and gaming problems, not ever allowing anyone to solve them.
Then not allowing people to save themselves or stop feeding the greed at the top. Violent repression and then chaos, dissolution. The fact that it is the entire planet this time is just a matter of insignificant scale when the insignificant scale of symbolic numerical value substitutes(money) is God. The true God of the human world as opposed to real physical nature.

Bushes buy critical watershed in Paraguay. Plans for floating arks. Moving to the mountains. Disempowering the areas likely to be hurt most. Preparing for war- and profits. Allowing genes to be bought and sold. Bypassing global human rights organizations like the UN. Hoarding mythical castles of cash that are literally vaulting human potential away- in advance of the cresting crisis. Slowing progress. Attacking global awareness itself. Attacking science itself. Creating bogeymen.

In general, the madness of being run by people afflicted with a sickness. Scientists are high end flowers presenting a gardening crisis to dominant weeds.