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Exxon CEO: Warming Happening, But Fears Overblown

Posted by samzenpus on from the we-didn't-start-the-fire dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes "In a speech Wednesday, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt. The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said. Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press, and advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations."

2 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Re:C'mon by Schmorgluck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The atmosphere is a chaotic system, but the climate configuration, is a general property of it. And it's perfectly possible to study the general properties of a chaotic system with good precision. You can predict the general properties of a quantity of water boiling in a pan, even if reliably predicting the trajectory of bubbles is out of reach.

    --
    There's nothing like $HOME
  2. Not Really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Tillerson cleverly attacks the weakest part of research about climate change: the prospective part, about its consequences.

    In general, the short term projections that were included in the 'concensus' report by the IPCC show that the scientists underestimated the effects of global warming, so far.

    Tillerson is combining PR and salesmanship. He acknowledged the objection, and then he minimized it. After which he went on to taught the strengths of his company and it's position and even called to question the intelligence of it's detractors. It was really quite masterful, in a pathological sense, since, if you view his assertions in light of the fact that climate change, if severe enough, could challenge humanity's ability to produce enough agricultural output to support the current population, require the re-engineering of all of our coastal facilities and population centers worldwide, and require the relocation of millions of refugees who exist at subsistence level to begin with.

    Tillerson, on the other hand, is in the enviable of position of being able to outsource his move, off-shore his assets and afford to have staff make all the arrangements.