Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings

New submitter jrmcferren writes: PBS Reports the Exxon ignored their own internal climate change warnings. Newly discovered documents show that the corporation's own research scientists warned top executives that atmospheric CO2 was increasing and that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame as early as 1977. The report goes on to say: "In 1978, the Exxon researchers warned that a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius and would have a major impact on the company’s core business. 'Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical,' one scientist wrote in an internal document."

Comments

And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

The Third World was industrializing, oil was cheap, and people still wanted big cars. Do you blame the California almond growers, or the people who eat almonds?

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

To be fair, there was great uncertainty about those findings at the time. We have struggled to build good models to the day.

OTOH, they certainly were not going to back down and hand things over to nuclear. Their propaganda machine was already in full gear, and these finding would undermine their efforts;

Nuclear power’s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil, which had no problem with nuclear weapons, but was not happy to lose its grip on the world’s major source of energy. Nuclear energy was not under their control, requiring by definition major government involvement and regulation of the industry. Its widespread use would leave Big Oil with falling profits, and would mean the end of Big Oil’s economic hegemony.

This led to a bizarre situation where oil companies both founded and funded ecology-related organisations, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others to protest the peaceful use of nuclear power. These groups have all received backing from the oil industry, notably Atlantic Richfield Oil and BP

http://www.globalresearch.ca/b...

Of course, many still choose to believe and support big oil's agenda to the day.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[oh_my_080980980]

Yes. You know like the farmers that did not do crop rotation and depleted the soil nutrients such that they couldn't grow crops anymore. Moron.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[FranTaylor]

To be fair, there was great uncertainty about those findings at the time. We have struggled to build good models to the day.

Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.

Lots of companies did research in their own fields to support their industry, so I am not sure of your point? Drilling uncertainty had a known cost/risk associated, they price that into their product.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[FranTaylor]

they price that into their product.

just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels. The long term outlook for solar panels is better than the long term outlook for oil. Don't believe me? Ask the saudis, with all the oil in the world they are still investing heavily in solar. Watch the world bypass the USA as it adapts solar and leaves us in the dust.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

Nuclear powerâ(TM)s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil

It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. Similarly, no one has a fission engine on their car. Similarly, there is no overlap in the other uses of oil such as chemical feedstock or asphalt road systems.

Coal is the fossil fuel competing head to head with nuclear.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[FranTaylor]

Similarly, no one has a fission engine on their car.

people are using energy from nuclear fission to power their cars, whether or not the reactor is attached to the car is irrelevant.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear powerâ(TM)s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil

It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. Similarly, no one has a fission engine on their car. Similarly, there is no overlap in the other uses of oil such as chemical feedstock or asphalt road systems.

Coal is the fossil fuel competing head to head with nuclear.

"Big oil" also pumps out gas, which IS often used for electricity, much like oil. Nuclear energy is quite literally the only credible threat to the bottom line of oil companies. Even if they went nuke, their profits would dry up very very quickly as reactors tend to need far less fuel than their fossil fuel equivalents.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

"Big oil" also pumps out gas, which IS often used for electricity, much like oil. Nuclear energy is quite literally the only credible threat to the bottom line of oil companies. Even if they went nuke, their profits would dry up very very quickly as reactors tend to need far less fuel than their fossil fuel equivalents.

Two things to note. First, natural gas has been for decades used as peaking load. That means it is complementary to nuclear power to the degree that a higher use of nuclear power, which is a very inflexible power source, results in higher demand for natural gas to cover the variability that nuclear power can't cover.

Second, it doesn't even make sense to compare nuclear to fossil fuel by amount of fuel. Nuclear fuel rods are considerably more expensive, and upkeep and liability for nuclear plants is considerable.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

Most people aren't doing that and are burning oil products instead. I'd look at the propaganda around electric cars instead. That's the actual crucial segment for Big Oil to attack. And there just isn't a lot of propaganda out there (say the occasional story about the pollution from the battery packs or how the vehicle does in an accident, maybe).

I think a much better explanation for Big Oil funding of environmental organizations is protection money.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost no one burns oil for electricity.

I assume you mean that almost no one burns crude oil for electricity; diesel fuel made from crude oil, on the other hand, is one of the most extensively-used source of electricity in the world. Of course extent isn't everything, and it doesn't make oil nuclear power's main energy competitor - while there may be more diesel generators than coal-based power plants in the world, wholesale energy production from coal plants dwarfs the millions of little generators scattered around.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

What we bloody well need is LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) to be built! Energy and water desalination problems will be a thing of the past!

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Reactors in France don't have this problem, they can ramp them up and down fairly quickly.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

At the time, oil was used much more in electrical generation. Also, oil had a big stake in coal. They worked hand in hand.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

Mid east countries are also investing in nuclear, also leaving us in the dust. They became too dependent on burning oil, so that have some catching up to do first in that regard.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. >

To add to my other reply, going back to the days when this propoganda was full force, oil was used heavily for home heating, for trains and ships, for heat in process plants, and as I said for electrical generation where oil generators were used the world over, particularly where coal supply was limited. That combined energy market was absolutely huge.

So yes, nuclear was seen as a big threat to big oil.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Tharkkun]

To be fair, there was great uncertainty about those findings at the time. We have struggled to build good models to the day.

Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.

Drilling was never the problem. Transportation of the product was.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity

Yes they do. I know someone who works for a utility company and he said that they're using three different fuels for their generators: natural gas, coal, and the leftover products from a nearby oil refinery. The petroleum based stuff is about the same size and compressible like those little hand exercise balls. Of course, people often use diesel or gasoline for backup generators, but I believe you were referring to utility companies.

FWIW, he said the utility was looking into wind power to augment their existing infrastructure so they can claim to provide "green energy" to the customers that want it. However, to match the same amount of electricity that their 3 standard generators can produce, they would need 30-40 thousand windmills.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

In that same vein: people who are burning oil to power their cars are using energy from a fusion reactor. This reactor just happens to be 93 million miles away.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completely ignoring the fact that they were completely and utterly wrong. If they were right, we wouldn't even be questioning any of it. The fact of the matter is that if any predictions about the climate were accurate we wouldn't be questioning anything. So I challenge you: name one prediction of climate change that has come to pass. Just one.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the payback of finding a new oil field vs the payback of an oil company abandoning oil? Some things are worth the uncertainty.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why companies like BP divested solar only 3 years ago right, because they have all that money right?

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Type44Q]

Big Oil, which had no problem with nuclear weapons

I've heard that Big Ag has no problem with radial tires; I wonder if that's true...

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[thegarbz]

just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels.

You mean like BP who started the solar business in the 80s and closed it in 2011?
Or like Royal Dutch Shell who started in 2002 and got out of it only about 6 years later?

Yes but where did it get them? Those poor deluded people at at Exxon only made more profit than the world's top 20 solar providers combined. They really made the wrong choice didn't they? /sarcasm

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[dj245]

they price that into their product.

just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels. The long term outlook for solar panels is better than the long term outlook for oil. Don't believe me? Ask the saudis, with all the oil in the world they are still investing heavily in solar. Watch the world bypass the USA as it adapts solar and leaves us in the dust.

Why should we buy heavily into solar now? By continuing to pump oil even though the price is very low, the Saudi's are once again giving us a period of very cheap oil. Every few years they do this to slap the competition around. In addition to attempting to make US and Canadian high-cost competition go out of business, they are also slapping down the competition from renewables. The economics for an electric car don't look so great at current car and fuel prices.

They are investing in renewables because they have big piles of money and would prefer to export oil rather than burn it in their inefficient oil-powered power plants. Nobody else in the world burns so much oil for electricity. Oil is an expensive way to make electricity and it is better to sell the oil and make electricity some other way.

If and when solar takes over, it will be cheaper than it is now. That's pretty much a given if you look at any graph of price over time. In addition, we will have the time value of money on our side if we wait to invest in Solar. Until the economics work out in solar's favor, waiting and "being left in the dust" is the smart play. It is exactly the same as buying a hard drive. Waiting as long as possible is the right move. The future buyer will be better off than a buyer today, in almost all cases.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

Well, things have changed. My point is that it didn't used to be that way.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

The combined energy market was and is still huge. The energy market for oil power plants isn't and never was. It's a fallacy to attach a small market to a large one and then claim the former is large as well.

Further, the places that tend to use oil-generated power because oil is plentiful, also tend to have a notable lack of competition. A Middle East country like Saudi Arabia or Iran would usually have the same parties in control of all their power generation.

Personally, I think the article you originally cited makes the common error of assuming that oil is energy. It's not. Certain oil products, like gasoline and diesel drive the oil market, but they have the additional feature of being very energy dense, cheap, and convenient fuels, which batteries still aren't. Nuclear power never will replace those features.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

You are not viewing through the lens of yesteryear, and are minimizing just how big the market overlap was. I was never even remotely hinting oil would be completely displaced, or even mostly.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

You are not viewing through the lens of yesteryear, and are minimizing just how big the market overlap was. I was never even remotely hinting oil would be completely displaced, or even mostly.

What is the point of making such an assertion? Find some evidence first.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[Mr D from 63]

The point is that back when nuclear was still 'new', there was a lot of talk about all kinds of uses that could displace oil. There certainly was a reason for big oil to attack nuclear. It matters not how well founded their fears were. I didn't get any sense from your post that you understood that.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

The point is that back when nuclear was still 'new', there was a lot of talk about all kinds of uses that could displace oil. There certainly was a reason for big oil to attack nuclear. It matters not how well founded their fears were. I didn't get any sense from your post that you understood that.

Big Oil is not the only special interest out there. There is a really obvious reason to fund environmental groups - protection both for regulation and public opinion. And there's a really obvious reason not to fund an assault on nuclear power - retribution from the big money behind nuclear power.

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[dbIII]

If there was big money behind nuclear power they could afford to build new stuff instead of getting governments to put up the money.
Like it or not it is not commercially attractive. Small units may change that by making it less capital intensive, but for now the only movement is in China, India and Russia where "big money" has less of a say than "big government".

Re:And so what, people still drove cars

[khallow]

If there was big money behind nuclear power they could afford to build new stuff instead of getting governments to put up the money.

They could, but I highlighted the part of your post that explains why they frequently don't. And these plants require billions of dollars in capital investments. If that's not big money, then what is?

Further, what's the cost of funding some environmental astroturf to permanently protest a refinery? I bet it's on the order of a few hundred thousand a year including the lawsuits obstructing every capital improvement or other major change the refinery tries to make. And permanently hiring a PI to sniff out expensive, time consuming safety and environmental violations? A factor of ten less a year.

The sort of stuff that "Big Oil" is being accused of in this thread would generate a considerable amount of blowback. It's one thing to pick on small fry, it's another to pick on fellow bullies with international reach (like General Electric). The MAD principle is at work here.

Exxon MADE the hard decision

[turkeydance]

cold hard cash

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

No, people filling up their tanks made the decision for them.

Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[FranTaylor]

No, people filling up their tanks made the decision for them.

Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.

yeah, if they had gone into the solar panel business, we could be selling solar panels to china, but no.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.

Right, because the only two options were to shut down all operations completely, or to continue with business as usual. /sarcasm

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Trailer Trash]

Right! Had that evil Exxon just stopped pumping oil and went into the flower business or something I know what I would have done! I would have sold my car and started walking! This is *all* Exxon's fault!

Cripes, how stupid can people be? Exxon sells oil. It's the people who burn oil that are causing the problem. That includes you.

If you want to put Exxon out of business, quit using their product and convince everybody else to quit using their product. Good luck!

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[PopeRatzo]

Cripes, how stupid can people be? Exxon sells oil. It's the people who burn oil that are causing the problem. That includes you.

And the real criminals are not people who design malware, it's the people who use computers.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Layzej]

I think the issue is that internally they knew that their product would cause global warming, but at the same time were funding think tanks to push the message that their product would not cause global warming.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[localman]

Ah yes, the old "had to do it for the money" claim. If we accept that everyone is an idiot robot that will play Russian Roulette for a dollar, sure. But the fact is that a person or organization has the power to make a decision with short-term or long-term thinking in mind, or a decision with self-interest or social awareness in mind. Yet somehow we've got to the point where we'll excuse absolutely anything as being reasonable if there was money at stake. Personally, I'd prefer we hold ourselves to a slightly higher standard, but I realize I'm shouting into the wind.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Cripes, how stupid can people be? Exxon sells oil. It's the people who burn oil that are causing the problem. That includes you.

And the real criminals are not people who design malware, it's the people who use computers.

Not even remotely comparable. Malware is unauthorized use of a person's computer.
A much closer comparison would be blaming the beer manufacturers for drunk driving or fetal alcohol syndrome.
You can't blame the sellers for selling something (legal) that somebody else wants.
Even if they stop selling it, someone else will move in to fill the void.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[PopeRatzo]

Not even remotely comparable. Malware is unauthorized use of a person's computer.
A much closer comparison would be blaming the beer manufacturers for drunk driving or fetal alcohol syndrome.

Yes, but only if the beer manufacturers spent hundreds of billions of dollars making sure that pregnant women think that getting drunk while pregnant is 100% safe.

A much closer comparison would be the tobacco industry.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[HornWumpus]

How many solar panels does BP sell in China?

Before making an assertion, you should check if other companies did what you suggest and look at what actually happened.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you know. Have you stopped using gasoline? You're reasoning is flawed and you should quit trying to justify your hypocrisy with even more convoluted metaphors.

Re: Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Or create artificial scarcity while their competitors started outselling them? Please, tell us what they should have done...

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Right! Had that evil Exxon just stopped pumping oil and went into the flower business or something I know what I would have done! I would have sold my car and started walking! This is *all* Exxon's fault! Cripes, how stupid can people be? Exxon sells oil. It's the people who burn oil that are causing the problem. That includes you. If you want to put Exxon out of business, quit using their product and convince everybody else to quit using their product. Good luck!

So, you think that excuses them for funding lies about climate change? This isn't black and white like you seem to think.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[PopeRatzo]

Have you stopped using gasoline?

Yep.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[GLMDesigns]

Bull$h1t

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Tharkkun]

No, people filling up their tanks made the decision for them.

Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.

yeah, if they had gone into the solar panel business, we could be selling solar panels to china, but no.

For like what, a week? Once they reverse engineered the solar panel they would create their own.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[PopeRatzo]

Not bullshit. As of March: http://www.teslamotors.com/mod...

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

MOST oil companies tried to go the solar route. At one point BP was the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world.
Also you fail at history. Exxon bankrolled Solar Power Corporation back in the 70s. Eventually that was sold to Royal Dutch Shell, and then divested out of the oil industry in 2006.

Most of the western oil companies had some stake in renewable energies. Solar particularly they all got their asses handed to them and divested in the last 10 years.

As a side note, I think you have an ignorant solar fanboy modding up all your posts.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

You're absolutely right, no need for the sarcasm. They bankrolled Solar, invested in biofules, and .... made a loss so they got out of it. Back to the good old dollar. They made a product, people bought it.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

The former is called good business the latter is called advertising.
Not doing either would result in nothing other than having a competitor taking your place.

Of note is that there's a current oversupply of oil, but that is the upstream supply side. In the downstream markets refining capacity has remained somewhat stead, although ever trending upwards and yet the refiners still cant satisfy the world's demand for finished products.

They aren't the big polluter. I am, driving my diesel engine 40km to work every day.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

No. I'm excusing something as reasonable for a corporation when money is at stake. For the corporation money is life. If Exxon were a not for profit then I'd be standing right beside you with a pitchfork. But the fact is they are a corporation that exists to make money for shareholders and they do so by creating a product that people are demanding in great volume.

It may also surprise you that they are attempting to do so in the most efficient possible way because wasted energy is an expense for them. Ultimately though the fall of Exxon is the rise of a competitor. I'm not going to stop driving my car to work because some oil company goes out of business, and neither will the billions of other people on this planet. So what makes you think they have any other moral obligation or legal obligation to ensure they maximise profit while operating within the rule of law?

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

How would everyone else know what Exxon had found out in the 80's and then dumped oil? And in the 80's, what would they have dumped oil for? And since Exxon kept bleating on about how it was all so uncertain and nothing needed to be done for a hundred years yet, WHY would they have dumped oil?

No, its not people's fault rather than Exxon's fault. It's Exxon's fault.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[GLMDesigns]

OK. My point was consumption of oil. And perhaps I wasn't precise enoughas saying "bullsh!t" is more of a comment than an answer:-)

You and I and others may not be direct consumers of oil but the trucks that deliver our food do. The farmers that grow the food use it. This food comes wrapped in plastic (I mean oil) and so on; and so on; and so on.

We all use oil in our daily lives.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[PopeRatzo]

This food comes wrapped in plastic (I mean oil)

You would be surprised at how little of the food my family buys is wrapped in plastic.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Layzej]

The former is called good business the latter is called advertising.

If it is advertising, and it is known to be false by the advertiser, then it is called "false advertising" and it is illegal.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

You're right, it's not advertising, it's marketing. There's a difference and I used the wrong word. Funding think tanks, political allies other groups who will spread a message you want is not illegal.

*This post brought to you by Donald Trump

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Layzej]

No. That's called racketeering, and it is also quite illegal. The tobacco industry was caught and charged for doing the same thing. Their defense was that they"believed that their economic survival depended on their scheme to defraud," - http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/09...

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Exxon was among the companies that bought up metropolitan transit systems and replaced them with... nothing, right? There are Rails to Trails projects all over the place that resulted from this.

Compounding this is the fact that some of these companies are also blatantly seeking to profit from the effects of climate change.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[gzuckier]

MOST oil companies tried to go the solar route. At one point BP was the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world. Also you fail at history. Exxon bankrolled Solar Power Corporation back in the 70s. Eventually that was sold to Royal Dutch Shell, and then divested out of the oil industry in 2006.

Most of the western oil companies had some stake in renewable energies. Solar particularly they all got their asses handed to them and divested in the last 10 years.

As a side note, I think you have an ignorant solar fanboy modding up all your posts.

Exxon in the 70s was a different corporation than Exxon in the late 80s. Much as the US in the 70s was a different country than the US in the late 80s.

Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision

[thegarbz]

And yet they hold onto their renewable arm way into the 2000s, what's your point?

No suprise

[Martin Spamer]

Why should it be surprising that a vested interest ignored the evidence at the time, when we see the same denial today when faced with overwhelming evidence?

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no evidence that Exxon ignored anything. Had Exxon changed their strategy and moved out of oil back in the 70's... we'd all be right where we are today, but Exxon would be a non entity.

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL as if the black & white options are the only options. You should read 50 shades of grey. And learn how we can get fucked better.

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what you're saying is that not only did the market fail to address global warming, but it would punish any business who did. Color me shocked.

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't ignore it. They reported it. The reports were from Exxon employees. You could argue that the EU is ignoring warnings too, since they have increased their CO2 output every year for the last 100 years running.

Same as the tobacco industry then..

[Anonymous Coward]

Another similarity; both oil and tobacco industry have huge PR and lobby efforts to continue misleading and confuse the topic and as much as possible avoid that anything is done about it.

Re: Same as the tobacco industry then..

[Anonymous Coward]

The oil and tobacco industries also have huge customer bases interested in buying their product. But let's just blame a small group of rich men. Otherwise the bromides get too long and complicated for a bumper sticker or a chant at a rally.

Re: Same as the tobacco industry then..

[Anonymous Coward]

The oil and tobacco industries also have huge customer bases interested in buying their product. But let's just blame a small group of rich men. Otherwise the bromides get too long and complicated for a bumper sticker or a chant at a rally.

The issue here is that they willfully mislead that customer base about the negative effects of their product. You perfectly ok with that?

Re:Same as the tobacco industry then..

[gzuckier]

Another similarity; both oil and tobacco industry have huge PR and lobby efforts to continue misleading and confuse the topic and as much as possible avoid that anything is done about it.

Heck, it's the very same people. S. Fred Singer and the Heartland Institute. Steven J. Milloy and the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.

About us

[Anonymous Coward]

Exxon is a company run by humans who will suffer dire consequences not just in terms of bottom line return on investment, but real life, death, and perhaps even extinction although a few years down the road. Given the choice: save the world for later or keep making a few bucks now. . . They kept making a few bucks and even went on to prevent others from doing anything to mitigate the looming climate crisis. What does this say about us as a species? Is this why we look out into the night sky and see nothing but stars? Is this how it ends - intelligent yet so stupid as to fail to act in a timely fashion to keep on surviving?

Re:About us

[Coisiche]

As Tom Toro put it...

"Yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

Re:About us

[Rob Riggs]

Here is a link to the political cartoon parent is quoting.

Re:About us

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to argue with the sentiment of that brilliant quote, but just saying that the planet will be fine and recover almost instantly, the shareholders who got that blissful value out of those shares, and their kids and grandkids, will be extinct.

Apes don't see far ahead into the future...

Then the share holders

[Anonymous Coward]

should have to meet the cost of correction. After all they took the 'profits'!

vaudvillan burlesque old hat soft shoe rhettorhea

[Anonymous Coward]

finger pointing.... nothing really new in centuries until now... times to tahrir squared... thanks moms

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[DamonHD]

Which part of "five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical" did you actually fail to read rather than having fun baiting flames?

That talks of taking decisions, not how long it would take the bad effects from failing to take those decisions to show up.

That statement could yet be entirely right and Exxon wilfully doomed us all circa 1982, but the statement doesn't have to be read that strongly either.

Rgds

Damon

Something doesn't smell right...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the mid 70's the big scare was climate cooling, not climate warming. There were even proposals to dump soot on the poles to reduce the reflectivity of all the ice to prevent a runaway "icehouse" effect of having too much heat reflected back into space. So somehow, at a time when no one was concerned about global warming, not only was this scientist bucking the cooling trend scare, but he also came up with the exact same 2-3 degrees Celsius warming that the scientists started throwing around 20 years later. And he did all this without the billions of dollars that we've spent on climate models.

Either this guy was twice as smart as Einstein or else some records have been fudged. Color me skeptical.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[oh_my_080980980]

Except it wasn't. Nice troll.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[FranTaylor]

The fact that one guy at one company

BULLSHIT

A survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total). Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming (Peterson 2008). The large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than 1970s scientists predicting cooling, the opposite is the case.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Ol Olsoc]

In the mid 70's the big scare was climate cooling, not climate warming.

If you wanted to believe some fringers, and some pop culture magazines that loved the frightening headlines.

All based on a couple years of whacky weather. Which many (most?) scientists said was partially based on destabilization, based on - you got it - Global warming.

One does not look outside the window, see it is hot or cold that day, and determine that AGW is either real or fake.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Ol Olsoc]

^^^ This. Back then, conventional wisdom was that the earth was cooling and potentially headed for another ice age.

That's odd - I was working with scientists back in the day, and they thought no such thing. They thought that the couple years of off weather - which was what triggered the pop culture global cooling thought by fringers - was just a temporary anomaly. Which it turned out to be.

Otherwise, they thought that the greenhouse effect did exist.

Newsweek is not a peer reviewed science journal,

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[taiwanjohn]

In 2008, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a review of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1979. They found seven papers that pointed to global cooling and forty-four that indicated global warming.

You'll find a quick, 7-min summary in this video by Peter Hadfield (aka: Potholer54):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms&index=3

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Anonymous Coward]

But everyone believed it was, there was plans to dump dirt on the ice caps to help warm Earth. Both then and now it is all about politics and people wanted to make money off of gullible people.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Notorious G]

That's odd - I was working with scientists back in the day, and they thought exactly that thing. They also were 100% certain the "population bomb" would see us in a post apocalyptic, cannibalistic society living a roving mad max style existence. The problem with claiming nobody I know believed it is that you didn't know anybody. It's called the the argumentum ad populum logical fallacy.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeatedly, the anti-global warming nuts try to trot out that 'most people' were worrying about global cooling. When the actual reality was one guy who got one article placed in a prominent magazine. One time.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[NatasRevol]

Well, unless you're in congress. And want to base public policy on a snowball outside. Then you actually do look out the window to determine if AGW is fake.

You're insane and incomprehensibly wrong, but that's what you do.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[garethjrowlands]

In the 1970s, the majority of published climate papers forecast warming, not cooling. There were famous articles from Newsweek and Times Magazine that forecast cooling but that's not the same as the science.

See http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Ol Olsoc]

That's odd - I was working with scientists back in the day, and they thought exactly that thing. They also were 100% certain the "population bomb" would see us in a post apocalyptic, cannibalistic society living a roving mad max style existence. The problem with claiming nobody I know believed it is that you didn't know anybody. It's called the the argumentum ad populum logical fallacy.

So you were working with scientists who were 100 percent sure of anything?

Ummm, no. if they were 100 percent sure of anything - they weren't scientists. Your handy little apocryphal story is seriously doubtful in its veracity.

Because if you ask a scientist about a population "bomb" as you put it, you'll get a dissertation first about Malthus, and how and why her was wrong, eg that Malthus did not factor in human ingenuity, and things like the green revolution - which was quite mature during the 1970's. Malthus suffered from the idea that food production would be stabilized at a point that was contemporary. And that proved to be his undoing.

And no actual scientist would ever make the mistake of thinking that we will not have any more advancements in food and health technology that will allow us to double or triple our present population. I've already outlines a plan for nuclear powered underground algae food production facilities that would allow us to circumvent the problem of humans and food production needing to occupy the same space. There is also to possibility of genetically modifying humans to be much smaller, thus requiring less resources.

But I would never assume 100 percent that it would work. I am certain I wouldn't want to live that way.

The closest thing a scientist would come to 100 percent certainty about in this regard is that it is not possible to have infinite numbers of humans on the earth.

And next time try to start out with a premise that isn't completely wrong and shows your complete misunderstanding of scientists and science. You have to start with there is no 100 percent certainty of anything. What you were arguing is called the absoluteum bullshitum fallacy.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[HornWumpus]

So the 'scientists' that say they are 100% sure climate change is mostly caused by humans aren't scientists? Good to know.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Anonymous Coward]

And scientific american. I read that article.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[Ol Olsoc]

So the 'scientists' that say they are 100% sure climate change is mostly caused by humans aren't scientists? Good to know.

You have their names? they need to lose their scientific chops, because noting in the universe is 100 percent certain. Ever.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[HornWumpus]

Lets just start by booting everybody from the University of East Anglia.

Re:Something doesn't smell right...

[budgenator]

We are in an interglacial period, It will not last forever, based on past cycles we are very, very lucky. The question isn't whether the glaciers will cover the majority of the earth's land but when and how quickly the ice will return. Beside in 1965, climatology was considered in the same league as tarot cards.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

So it looks like scientists have been wrong about their global warming predictions going on four decades.

Except that their criteria for a 2-3 C increase hasn't passed yet. The IPCC apparently thinks the "first doubling of atmospheric CO2" will happen by about 2050. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies thinks that global temps. have so far risen by 0.8 C since 1880. This means that the Exxon researcher's warning that "a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius" could still come to pass. Several of the projections in the IPCC's figures suggest a 2C rise by ~2050 is possible, so they could still be proven right.

Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings? Can you describe the decision-making process you wish they'd followed?

It's the same for the rest of us as it is for Exxon -- just less existential. We've been "warned". Yet we go on with our lives. The warnings get louder and more shrill and catastrophic and angry. And we still go on with our lives. Eventually this should stop being a big surprise.

Re:Versus doing what?

[oh_my_080980980]

It's relevant from the stand point that Exxon knew about the problem during the '70s and did nothing about it. They decided profit was more important than the problem. Just like Tobacco companies did. It's amazing that we hold people responsible for their actions but not corporations. Since corporation are people, they should be held accountable for their actions. Too bad jackasses like you don't understand that.

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings? Can you describe the decision-making process you wish they'd followed?

They are an energy company, not an oil company. Just imagine if they had invested heavily in solar technology. All that money we are paying to the Chinese for solar panels, we could be paying it to them instead. BUT NO.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

... and did nothing about it.

Versus doing what? Tell us.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

Would people buy solar panels made by Exxon? Why would anyone expect Exxon would be good at making solar panels? Why would an Exxon executive think Exxon would be good at making solar panels?

When you tell yourself a story about Exxon making solar panels, does it seem like a believable story?

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

Would people buy solar panels made by Exxon? Why would anyone expect Exxon would be good at making solar panels? Why would an Exxon executive think Exxon would be good at making solar panels?

When you tell yourself a story about Exxon making solar panels, does it seem like a believable story?

Shell, Arco, and BP are all making and selling solar panels, why not?

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

Shell, Arco, and BP are all making and selling solar panels, why not?

So if they sold as many solar panels as Shell, Arco, or BP, they'd be immune to criticism? It seems like environmentalists still complain about Shell, Arco, and BP.

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

It seems like environmentalists still complain about Shell, Arco, and BP.

the concepts of "more" and "less" are apparently too complex for you?

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Investing in solar during the 70s wouldn't have generated a return for another 30+ years. Even now it is only profitable because of government intervention in the market. If CO2 doubles by around 2050 the problem was literally a lifetime away. There was plenty of time to wait and see if the prediction turned out to be correct and if some alternative energy source would come along to save the day. There was every possibility and a lot of optimism at the time that fusion or advanced fission would make burning chemical fuel for electricity seem foolish and an atomic age of cheap and abundant energy powering electric cars with newly invented super batteries was about to dawn.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

What evidence can you show us that there's any less complaining about Shell, Arco, and BP? How much less? Is "less complaining" a great outcome that they should spend their days working toward?

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

Investing in solar during the 70s wouldn't have generated a return for another 30+ years.

Energy companies invest ALL THE TIME in new chemical technologies that won't be profitable for decades.

There was plenty of time to wait and see if the prediction turned out to be correct and if some alternative energy source would come along to save the day.

plenty of time? exxon has ALREADY missed the boat on solar panel research.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

what evidence can you show that your stupid argument has any relevance whatsoever?

My argument is relevant because Exxon is being criticized. But they're going to be criticized no matter what. They "ignored" warnings. But if they had taken action instead, there's no reason to think they'd be treated any better or be better off in any way.

"They did nothing!!!"
"What should they have done? How would that have helped them?"
"Irrelevant."

Irrelevant? Really?

Re:Versus doing what?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings?

In fact, the report advised a wait-and-see attitude based on all available scientific data. So, it's not that they ignored the advice of their scientists, they actually followed it.

The warnings get louder and more shrill and catastrophic and angry.

The scientific situation hasn't changed much in the last 30 years. (1) The planet is getting warmer (mainly at the poles). (2) That will lead to changes in climate, redistribution of arable land, and gradual and significant sea level rise over the next few centuries. (3) There is little reason to believe that massive government intervention at this point is would be either beneficial or effective in the long run, and it would certainly be quite harmful in the short run.

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

My argument is relevant because Exxon is being criticized. But they're going to be criticized no matter what. They "ignored" warnings. But if they had taken action instead, there's no reason to think they'd be treated any better or be better off in any way.

So if exxon had invested their outrageous profits in solar energy and become the #1 vendor of solar panels, nobody would think any differently of them?

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

There is little reason to believe that massive government intervention at this point is would be either beneficial or effective in the long run, and it would certainly be quite harmful in the short run.

I know, right? the government made an effort to save lives on the road, and over the decades it's only saved about a million lives, really just nothing at all.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

So if exxon had invested their outrageous profits in solar energy and become the #1 vendor of solar panels, nobody would think any differently of them?

That's all it takes to become the #1 vendor of solar panels?

Re:Versus doing what?

[taiwanjohn]

Even now it is only profitable because of government intervention in the market.

That may have been true in the 70s, but it's not today in most "industrialized" energy markets. Even with no subsidies, the cost of solar PV has dropped so much in recent years that it's now competitive with coal, when you amortize the cost of installation over the life of the system. And those gov't subsidies are disappearing rapidly anyway. Even California's will be gone in a few years.

If CO2 doubles by around 2050 the problem was literally a lifetime away.

No, the problem is already here:

  - increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, worldwide
  - decreased arctic sea ice coverage (to the point where total loss is expected within a couple of decades)
  - savage droughts associated with persistent, record-low mountain snow accumulation
  - off-the-charts arctic warming, causing a more "meandering" jet-stream (ie: the "polar vortex"), bringing unseasonal highs and lows at middle latitudes
  - increased severity of storms (cyclones in particular)
  - sea level rise (accelerating)
  - ocean acidification (if enough plankton die, we are toast)
  - ocean warming (ditto above, but for coral instead of plankton)
  - species migration (they can't adapt fast enough)
  - human migration (cf: the current refugee crisis in Europe, ultimately cased by a drought in Syria a few years ago)

Exxon and the other oil players could have diversified, just as Phillip Morris has been doing for decades. They could have been leading the charge toward alternatives, instead of gumming up the works. Unfortunately they didn't, so now they are going to pay the piper as the market finds those alternatives in spite of them.

Re:Versus doing what?

[FranTaylor]

That's all it takes to become the #1 vendor of solar panels?

it's how they became the #1 vendor of oil

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

it's how they became the #1 vendor of oil

They aren't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did they miss the boat? There was at that time, continued to be and still is a lot of research into solar panels and they could build a factory to start producing them any time they want. They can invest in other companies that build solar panels. Hell, they could probably invest in the companies *in china* if they wanted to. If you think that pouring a lot of money into solar panel research in the 70s would have made them better/cheaper than they are now I think that is debatable. Solar panels rode the coattails of the semiconductor industry and that developed at its own (fast) pace and wouldn't have been sped along. Most other advances benefited form or were enabled by advances in computing. Money in doesn't equal results out. Research doesn't work that way. Look at all the money poured into global warming research and our understanding today is not meaningfully different from the understanding that these guys at Exxon had in the 70's. We have reduced the error bands slightly and wrung our hands about various real and potential impacts, but we haven't accomplished anything real other than some PR to raise awareness of the problem.

Re:Versus doing what?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

I know, right? the government made an effort to save lives on the road, and over the decades it's only saved about a million lives, really just nothing at all.

So you are saying that because some government regulations are useful, people should unquestioningly accept all government regulations, no matter what? Or what exactly is your point?

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And because I don't know what they should have done you think you won that argument?

I don't sell oil, I don't have to know.

Re:Versus doing what?

[taiwanjohn]

Hm... just noticed a slight error, due to ambiguity in the GP...

If CO2 doubles by around 2050 the problem was literally a lifetime away.

My brain "saw" the present-tense verb and missed the past-tense verb that followed. So I understand that my comment does not directly address the actions of Exxon in the 70s. But the broader point of my comment still stands.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, the two problems are completely analogous and clearly are of the same scope in terms of what is required to solve them. In the same period we passed the clean air act, scrubbed the soot coming out of smoke stacks and saved millions of lives that would have been shortened by air pollution. Stopping burning fossil fuels is essentially the end of the modern age. We either revert back to low energy intensive society which means a huge reduction in standard of living economic contraction and probably a global food crisis that leads to mass starvation in densely populated poor countries or we come up with a huge array of new technology to improve energy efficiency and find alternative sources of energy, which will take decades regardless of what Exxon might do. Despite what you may wish for we have been and continue to do the latter instead of the former, and *crucially* we had and still have those decades to work on the slow solution. Please take your panic about the future and vinegar about the past and shove it.

Re:Versus doing what?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Oil companies don't make "outrageous profits". Corporations on average make about 7% profits; Exxon fluctuates between 5-10%.

Solar panel companies have had poor profitability, and the profits they do make are largely derived from lobbying and crony capitalism. Exxon would have been foolish to switch their business to solar panels. But if you think solar panels are a great thing, by all means, invest your money in them.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Kohath]

What wrong with "they did nothing about it" then? Maybe they did everything they could think of. They did at least as much as you can think of. Maybe you should be congratulating them on doing everything anyone could think of at the time.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy companies invest ALL THE TIME in new chemical technologies that won't be profitable for decades.

Do they really? Or do researchers at universities and government funded research foundations research technologies years or decades out and the energy companies come along and pick them up when they are ready for commercialization?

Re:Versus doing what?

[thegarbz]

No need to imagine. THEY DID.

Learn your history. All the oil companies have divested solar as a loss in the past 10 years. The biggest solar producer in the world was BP, the owner of the largest solar power plant in the world was ARCO, Exxon bank rolled a solar power manufacturer in the 70s who they couldn't make profitable and eventually sold to Royal Dutch Shell, which couldn't make it profitable either and sold it off in 2006.

The only renewable investments that any of oil companies have managed to turn a profit out of is biofuel and that barely counts considering the waste of food that it is. As a side note the BP plant near us just sold off it's 30MW wind farm because it's too expensive to maintain.

Re:Versus doing what?

[kqs]

Investing billions of dollars in solar panel research 35 years ago seems like it might give you an edge in selling solar panels today, yes. You don't agree?

And if Exxon kept pumping out oil, but also started sounding the alarm about climate change and started a discussion about what was needed to move from energy-via-hydrocarbon to other energy issues, people would think differently of them, yes. And maybe Exxon would now be changing from an

Of course, they would have made less money, so the hypothetical smart people in charge may have been kicked out by greedy small-minded investors who would then revert those changes, so maybe it wouldn't have helped after all. Hard to say once you are in "what if" land.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the report advised a wait-and-see attitude based on all available scientific data. So, it's not that they ignored the advice of their scientists, they actually followed it.

The didn't ignore it, they started a campaign to discredit it. That's the important part of this story.

Re:Versus doing what?

[rahvin112]

Solar panel production will never be as profitable as sucking black goo out of the earth and selling it for top dollar. Never. That's just a simple reality. The margins on oil production are HUGE, more than 50% in most cases. You don't see those margins in any manufacturing business.

Say what you will but no US company was going to stop the Chinese from dominating the Solar production. You had a state with trillions of dollars of financing available that pumped that money into companies without even a guarantee of payback let alone a requirement to pay interest. What resulted was a massive overbuild of solar panel production that caused a price crash of better than 80%. No market based company that needed to make money could ever compete against that. It's simply an impossibility. In time if the Chinese government money dries up the industry will right itself and private companies will be able to produce panels at a profit but right now the only private companies that can effectively compete in the market do so by not competing directly against the Chinese production.

For example, one of the remaining major US producers (First Solar) produces an entirely different kind of panel (cadmium-telluride instead of silicon) with lower cost and lower efficiency and sells 99.9999% of their production directly to large commercial installations (often owned by First Solar directly). The other US producers that survive do so by not competing against the Chinese government financed solid silicon panels produced in massive volumes and sold at or below cost.

Re:Versus doing what?

[riverat1]

What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings? Can you describe the decision-making process you wish they'd followed?

It's the same for the rest of us as it is for Exxon -- just less existential. We've been "warned". Yet we go on with our lives. The warnings get louder and more shrill and catastrophic and angry. And we still go on with our lives. Eventually this should stop being a big surprise.

I don't fault Exxon for continuing to supply oil products. They were meeting a demand. What I do fault them for is funding misinformation campaigns about anthropogenic climate change. Much like the tobacco companies they spent money to keep the public in the dark regarding the dangers of their product. It will be interesting to see if Exxon (and others) face lawsuits in the future over their spreading of misinformation.

Re:Versus doing what?

[gzuckier]

Investing in solar during the 70s wouldn't have generated a return for another 30+ years.

Energy companies invest ALL THE TIME in new chemical technologies that won't be profitable for decades.

There was plenty of time to wait and see if the prediction turned out to be correct and if some alternative energy source would come along to save the day.

plenty of time? exxon has ALREADY missed the boat on solar panel research.

through the early 80s, while the research in question was being conducted, Exxon was actively planning what to get into in the post-petroleum era. Between the Reagan Revolution, the reduction in government oversight, and the general change to emphasis on short-term profits over long-term, there was quite a significant change of the guard in the Exxon boardroom, and with it a change of direction.

Re:Versus doing what?

[Namarrgon]

See themselves as an Energy company rather than an Oil company; investigate, develop, and diversify into alternative energy sources; don't bury their report or fund deniers; instead fund more research into when & how much of a problem it would become; use that data to steer the company's evolution away from long-term risks towards a safer and more socially responsible profit base; point publicly at those efforts in order to gain the moral high ground over their competitors and encourage more shareholder investment.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you have oil stocks then? Because, really, the only fucking morons who still claim this isn't a real thing are the assholes who stand to make money.

Everybody else has pretty much figured out this is real.

So either you're too fucking stupid, or blinded by your own short-term greed.

of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

they have a vested interest in ignoring it

that's what you need *regulations* for

you know, evil, evil job destroying regulations. because a guy having a job on an oil field is more important than his grandkid able to grow food crops

what's that? companies write their own regulations through congresscritters?

yes, that's called *regulatory capture*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

in which case you clean up your government, remove the corruption. which is unfortunately legal in the usa. so you vote for the guys who are actually going to do something about that rather than the professional prostitutes who talk about tax cuts for "job creators" (aka, their rich friends who park their money in an offshore banking accounts, rather than a tax cut for the middle class and poor, who immediately spend their cash, actually growing the economy)

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure if you just vote really hard you'll "get it right this time!". Government is the problem you idiot.

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

and without government you have far, far worse problems than all of the problems with government x100,000

if you don't understand that you are indeed, objectively speaking, a socially retarded quack

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[thegarbz]

they have a vested interest in ignoring it

They didn't ignore it at all. Most of the oil companies started seriously investing in alternate and green energies in the 70s. Unfortunately most of them failed to materialise all important profits and they divested the other parts of their energy business over the past 20 years. Something to do with the fact that the world is going to shit but people are still buying tanker loads of oil.

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

that's really amazing how you completely absolve the guy digging up and selling the oil of any responsibility

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[thegarbz]

And why wouldn't I? Think it through. What would honestly happen in the world if tomorrow Exxon decided to cease all operations?
The market would get upset, oil price would skyrocket, petrol price would sky rocket. People will drive to work swearing. and .... some of the buffered stock piles that most nations hold would be released to ease the market, the Saudis would ramp up oil production even further, and if the other companies didn't instantly pick off all of Exxon's drilling licenses like vultures a new competitor will likely emerge. 2-3 months later the entire thing is forgotten, the oil is still being pumped, and we as a species are still screwing up the world.

The only way to control an entire market from the supply side is to have a monopoly, and the only people who have anything close are the nationalised Arabian oil companies. But even their grip on the market is dwindling.

Now I pass the question back to you. Let's go full theory on this one: You're the CEO of a company with 100k employees. You extract and produce the single most sought after and profitable commodity in the business. You're a big player in a cut-throat market where everyone is trying to outdo the other person for extracting oil, and you suddenly formed a conscience. What would you do to stop global warming? I mean other than investing heavily in alternate energy sources which was already tried.

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

it's the fault of supply AND demand

but keep talking retard, you're only convincing yourself of something other than the fucking obvious

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[thegarbz]

Fault of supply? Man now you're just inventing economics that doesn't exist. But nice retort. I really enjoyed this little chat.

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

yes, suppliers never mess with the market or manipulate it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

you're a fucking economics genius

why don't you try educating yourselves on the basics of a topic, then acting like you have something valuable to add

let me help you start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.americanhistoryusa....

want a couple dozen more examples from history?

you're a moron on the topic of economics currently. objectively so, not a baseless insult. you believe suppliers bear no blame for the state of markets., what a crackpot

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[thegarbz]

Ahhh now you're redefining the word moron too since every link to supply side market manipulation that you've given has been the result of a monopoly, cartel, or had the assistance of the legislative branch. Keep it up, you're really showing your understanding of the concepts quite well.

Also don't bother replying unless you can answer the theoretical question I originally asked. Anyway I'm going to go talk to the wall behind me, I think it may have something more constructive to add to the discussion.

Have a fantastic day.

Idiot.

Re:of course they ignored the evidence

[circletimessquare]

the result of a monopoly, cartel, or had the assistance of the legislative branch

in other words, every single fucking market that has ever existed or ever will

i suppose you're one of those retards who believe if you remove regulations the free market fairy will make large players dance and sing and not crush smaller players and consumers

you don't understand a fucking thing about economics. really

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[oh_my_080980980]

Wow head up your ass....brilliant.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[DamonHD]

Please read the actual words written. It helps. Just assuming that you are not here to start fires.

The key word for a start is "might" as in "might become critical".

There are at least two levels of indirection and conditional/probability in that statement. Failing to read them is failing to understand the meaning entirely.

Damon

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[BillCable]

It's silly to be fanatical when there are no viable solutions. Even the most extreme proposals to cut CO2 would have an impact of around 1/10th of a degree temperature reduction. It's laughable. The second someone comes up with an effective, viable solution to drop 2 degrees, I'm on board.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[BillCable]

So then the article is effectively meaningless. It's about as damning of Exxon as if some scientist for them had predicted within 5 or 10 years pigs might sprout wings and fly to adapt to increases in atmospheric CO2.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[BillCable]

Where am I wrong?

Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, bad Exxon and others (like Union Carbide, because of Bhopal) have caused so many problems that one wonders how such things didn't get a more adequate treatment by society.

In these, and in other cases (like BP's oil spill), we are forced to the conclusion that we are not able to implement proper controls on any organization activity.

There's nothing wrong with the political system, be it capitalism or anything else. The problem is akin to accident prevention: we know it's important to have safety inspections to prevent the loss of a few lives, but we fail to have businesses cooperate in adequate disaster prevention -- which too often means loss of many lives.

And yet, even after those catastrophes, schemes are prepared for cleansing of the aftermath, like:
- hiring trolls to discredit everyone trying to call for a saner view on facts;
- ideological contamination, either calling people names ("capitalists" or "socialists", used as derogatory qualifiers);
- suggesting doubt on issues that are quite obvious, creating a feeling on people that we are weak of mind and fate was inevitable;
- procrastinating until a favorable setting allows the culprits to "lose" their case without really being punished;
- or manipulating punishments in ways to render them ineffective or even change them into new business opportunities.

So, it's not really just Exxon, or Union Carbide (now Dow's) or BP.

it's us, humans. We allow that.

We allow that when we have a nuclear reactor explode because it's old, when we choose dangerous technologies like nuclear reactors in a place subject to earthquakes and tsunamis, when we accept innovations that involve a certain risk of deaths (as if progress makes these acceptable).

It's great that we have Liberty; but as everything in this life, that, too, must be used with responsibility to help mankind -- not to harm some of us so that others gain advantages.

I wonder why those who still claim global warming is not our responsibility, that we cannot do anything, that throw mud on respectable scientists (not to mention other even more heinous methods) do not gain the same treatment as all other trolls (e.g. here).

Even now as I write these words, other humans are writing about how it's always the same (citing other examples) and we cannot do anything about it; or that companies do that because the general public wants the products at any cost etc. etc.

The way things go, we going to rationalize that deaths are unavoidable and protection equipment actually hurts profits, so we'd better just have a percentage die.

I think we fail -- even at being human.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone doesn't have to work for a living...

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

the statism is strong with this one.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

"bad Exxon and others (like Union Carbide, because of Bhopal) have caused so many problems that one wonders how such things didn't get a more adequate treatment by society."
Because of reporters and politicians.
This article AND summary are perfect examples. They say Exxon this, Exxon that, but there are no names. Who was the one behind the decision to start those climate denial programs, who read those reports and chose to ignore them?
What are their names? There are actual individuals that caused this, actual murderers that walk free because they're allowed to hide behind a corporate logo.

From the article ...
Exxon responded swiftly.
Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research.
Exxon's ambitious program
Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial.
Exxon assembled a team of climate modelers
Etc ...

Exxon ... is a concept, an idea, a piece of paper in some government office at best. It does not make decisions, it does not do anything. It doesn't even exist.

This is the worst kind of journalism possible. Dozens of FUD articles would do less damage than this piece of crap.

Re: Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly was Exxon supposed to do? They are a supplier. It is like your butcher learning that meat in large quantities causes heart disease.

They can't just stop supplying because they will just mean they close their doors and a competitor takes over. Fossil fuel usage is a consumer-side problem.

Now cue all the crazies saying "big oil" conspired with the illuminati and Free masons to prevent alternative energy techs from taking off...

I just don't understand what people are thinking Exxon should have done as a result of this study... Quit selling oil?

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Mr D from 63]

And we, as humans, must also accept risks and trade-offs, and objectively assess them, and not spread FUD.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

We allow that when we have a nuclear reactor explode because it's old, when we choose dangerous technologies like nuclear reactors in a place subject to earthquakes and tsunamis, when we accept innovations that involve a certain risk of deaths (as if progress makes these acceptable).

You are not practicing what you preach here. No reactor ever exploded because it was old. And you forgot to mention the tremendous amount of lives saved and clean air energy produce by nuclear (as if that's not acceptable). Or maybe taking something that needs improvement and improving it rather than abandonment for the hope of something yet to be proven.

Re: Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Quit selling oil?

That isn't the only option. Perhaps...sharing the studies? That would have been a different choice.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Gadget_Guy]

This article AND summary are perfect examples. They say Exxon this, Exxon that, but there are no names.

You obviously didn't read any further than the first few paragraphs if you think that they didn't name any names. It was littered with direct quotes and even linked documents. Here are the names that I have found (either in the article or the linked source documents):

• James F. Black
• Richard D. Keil
• Harold N. Weinberg
• Henry Shaw
• Edward E. David
• M B Glaser
• M J Connor Jr
• C M Eidt Jr
• W R Epperly
• R L Hirsch
• T G Kaufmann
• D G Levine
• G H Long
• J R Riley
• H R Savage
• A Schriesheim
• J F Taylor
• D T Wade
• H N Weinberg
• Roger Cohen
• Lee Raymond

There is also a link at the end to a summary of the cast of characters. To try and claim that this was some vague puff piece is itself an attempt to spread FUD about the article.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Layzej]

I think that's key here. They spent a small sum of money to determine the negative impact of their product. Once they learned the truth they then decided to invest orders of magnitudes more in FUD to convince the world otherwise.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Mr D from 63]

I agree. And so many are still to willing to accept that Big Oil FUD regarding nuclear, not knowing they are still doing big oil a favor as it grows its natural gas market.

Re: Bad Exxon...

[ShanghaiBill]

What exactly was Exxon supposed to do?

Distribute their profits to their shareholders, rather than organizing and donating to denialist advocacy groups.

If Exxon had ignored climate change, and continued to pump oil, that would have been acceptable. No rationale person expects corporations to be the conscience of our society. That is not their role. But Exxon went far beyond just ignoring the problem. They spread misinformation, and actively promoted lies.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Gadget_Guy]

I wonder what these guys think of he fact there's been no warming in nearly 20 years?

Typical response when a climate change denier has their argument countered: change the subject! Of the names listed that have been shown to have changed their stance at the orders of their bosses, there is no reason to care what they have on say on any subject now. So why would you want to know what they think about the slowdown of temperature rise over the last decade? The only reason to bring that up now is to attempt to muddy the debate and remove focus from the documented manipulation of the scientific and political debate by a vested interest.

You just know that if the scientists from the article had been at academic institutions then the deniers would be alleging that they were just trying to get government grants. But when it is shown to be the opposite, the people who are so obsessed with following the money remain silent; or worse, they try to hijack the debate by switching to a topic that they hope they can win.

It's like the Wizard of Oz telling us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That is desperate and pathetic!

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Gadget_Guy]

What is desperate and pathetic is the Zealotry of the Alarmists:

Oh dear. Did you just go and change the topic again? Thanks for proving my point.

And which is the more zealous man; the one who claims the sky is blue or the other who insists that it is brown? I think that if you are going to call someone a zealot, it surely must be the one who disagrees with the entire body of people whose job it is to study that subject. How arrogant is it to claim that you know better than all the highly educated scientists who spend their entire lives specialising in studying the climate?

Aren't you just a little bit angry that some of the people that probably influenced your beliefs (either directly or indirectly) were actually being paid to lie about climate change by a multinational oil and gas corporation? That is what this discussion is about.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no reason to care what they have on say on any subject now.

The Exxon documents are 30 years older than the sources quoted above. The Exxon documents gave a time window of 5 to 10 years "before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." That was 35 years ago.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[cbeaudry]

Its about FUD. From the Rockefeller foundation, the UN, the governments of the west, who all want in on this new bandwagon.

Your appeal to authority only impresses those that have already bought into your ideology.

The sky is blue. The brown you are talking about is invisible and has no demonstrated any harm so far. But you and your "specialists" assure us we are doomed.
I know another body of people who assure us we are doomed, and they have a big report out called The Bible, its true, because all the Bible experts say its true.

The UN and associated governments have been outspending 10 to 1 any moneys put forth by those "big oil" companies, in propaganda in the last few decades.

Not to mention the big oil companies have been funding both sides.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is killing people called work? (whatever the profits involved)

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

> the statism is strong with this one.

And you seem to be in favor of Liberty.

You seem to be pro Libertinism.

Now, tell me truth, you love the State, too, don't you? It makes it easier to find the right people to buy...

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: check the Wikipedia page about Chernobyl.

> No reactor ever exploded because it was old.

Nuclear reactors carry fuel that melts. To explode it should be of another kind (enriched).

Old here does not mean only age -- though time certainly can play a role in a variety of danger situations involving the cooling subsystems -- so, yes, it could explode if a valve gets old and fails to work.

Old can also mean an older project as compared to a newer, safer design. So a reactor may present problems because it has an old design, so it is "old" in a sense.

Regarding whether nuclear can provide a cleaner air, of course it can. And we should use it, provided we can make sure there won't be a catastrophe of some kind. Put it on a platform in the middle of the ocean -- not in a highly populated area. I was talking about disaster prevention, nuclear ones included -- not about avoiding the use of nuclear energy.

But, for the record, I'd oppose nuclear fission if fusion became available.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Anonymous Coward]

> No reactor ever exploded because it was old.

Also, check this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis-Besse_Nuclear_Power_Plant

It's about an old (as in aged) reactor.

Seriously, you don't want a nuclear reactor next to your house. Alas, we should group everyone who's in favor of nuclear energy and sell them houses near to reactors at a discount price, just to see who eats his own dog food.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Gadget_Guy]

The Exxon documents are 30 years older than the sources quoted above. The Exxon documents gave a time window of 5 to 10 years "before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." That was 35 years ago.

So what? It sounds like you are trying to make a meaningful statement, and yet you are actually saying nothing. If you are trying to say that they were wrong about their predictions then you still haven't shown why we should care about what they had to say on the most recent records

And if you are attempting to imply that there has been no global warming since 1978, then that is a big whopping lie. But no, you are not really saying that are you. You are just making a vague statement in the hope that we think that there must actually be something wrong with the climate predictions when you are offered no specific claim that this is the case. That is another typical denier FUD technique.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[Gadget_Guy]

Its about FUD. From the Rockefeller foundation, the UN, the governments of the west, who all want in on this new bandwagon.

Which bit exactly is the FUD? That Exxon scientists went from publicly backing the rest of the scientific world's ideas of climate change to silence (and even championing the denier's cause) on the matter at the direction of their company masters? Which is more likely; that the entire scientific community, the UN, the governments of the world have all worked together to produce an enormous set of fake theories and data without a single whistle-blower or leak coming out to provide evidence of this monumentally huge conspiracy, or that the corporate interests have turned to the same right wing think thanks who attempted to debunk the link between smoking and cancer to spout exactly the same anti-science claims about global warming?

Where is your evidence then? Remember, without evidence your claims are just FUD. With all the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit the best "evidence" came down the some terminology (eg. the word "trick") and some out of context statements that the scientists didn't have all the answers yet. With the ability to accept such vague non-evidence as proof of nefarious activities, it is amazing how demanding the deniers are of the need for perfection and not a single amount of uncertainty from the scientific community.

Your appeal to authority only impresses those that have already bought into your ideology.

Incorrect. It only doesn't impress the people who are so anti-science that they have their head in the sand on this matter. Frankly, nothing is going to get through to people like you.

The sky is blue. The brown you are talking about is invisible and has no demonstrated any harm so far. But you and your "specialists" assure us we are doomed. I know another body of people who assure us we are doomed, and they have a big report out called The Bible, its true, because all the Bible experts say its true.

Seriously? This is supposed to be your evidence that it all a lie? The entire scientific world has it wrong because the Bible got it wrong too? Is that supposed to be a better appeal to authority?

The UN and associated governments have been outspending 10 to 1 any moneys put forth by those "big oil" companies, in propaganda in the last few decades.

Do you any even a shred of proof of this statement? You assume that what the scientific world is saying is propaganda because you have presupposed that greenhouse gases do not linger in the atmosphere and that they don't result in a warming effect on the planet. Without that presupposition, all the scientific community is doing is their job. Coming up with theories and looking at the data to see if it is true - just like any other group of scientists do. Or do you think cosmologists, physicists, biologist, botanists all have their own agendas that they are each attempting to foist on the world. Hmm, maybe that explains quantum physics.

Re:Bad Exxon...

[tehcyder]

Exxon ... is a concept, an idea, a piece of paper in some government office at best. It does not make decisions, it does not do anything. It doesn't even exist.

That's like saying the Government or the Army don't exist.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[DamonHD]

Life is not binary.

The bods in white coats said: burning oil (etc) may be bad news and furthermore it may be bad if you don't change your business strategy in the light of that soon.

It seems evident that the first part was true.

It is clear also that Exxon also chose not to alter its business model but instead to try to spread FUD.

The second is poor long-term business and poor ethics, and may well bite us all in the rear.

So as it happens the bods in white coats were right then and the trust of the summary is right now.

You seem to be trying to skip the caveats in the statement and ignore tha Exxon clearly failed to change direction when given the (basically correct) warning.

Damon

It'll all irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

And life will continue on the same way it has for decades.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[dave420]

Aaah - now I get it. You are scientifically illiterate, hence your confusion.

A Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change is a hoax. I demand cheap gas for my truck.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

There hasn't been the "major impact on the company’s core business" that the scientist warned.

You say that like it has any relevance. It does not. Why does it not? Because you are incorrectly conflating that with the "five to ten years" line, when the two are not related.

We've smashed the atom. Hell, we've smashed the things that make up the atom! We've put a man on the moon, rovers on mars, and satellites outside of our own solar system. And yet you think it impossible for us to screw with the climate. That's fine, but you really need to think about your arguments before speaking them. Because right now, they are well too full of holes.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[MrTester]

Where in the article did it state anything about the timeframe of the "major impact on core business?"
It doesnt. It states a timeframe for making decisions that will prevent the major impact without needing "hard decisions."

Where did you go wrong? I would guess it was in elementary school, but who knows....

The actual reports

[Geoffrey.landis]

Inside the article are links to the scans of the actual reports done by Exxon.

* 1977 report, from James Black: http://insideclimatenews.org/s...
* 1982 report from M. B. Glaser: http://insideclimatenews.org/s...

They did state that there is no unambiguous evidence yet (as of 1982), but the 1982 report said: "If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."

Re:The actual reports

[Gr8Apes]

...the 1982 report said: "If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."

It is most interesting that even internal oil company reports stated things like this, and that there are still people fervently in denial about global warming.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[NatasRevol]

How delusional do you actually have to be to say something like this when August was the hottest month of the hottest summer of the hottest year (so far) on record?

HOW FUCKING DELUSIONAL DO YOU HAVE TO BE?

But please tell us where NCDC/NOAA/etc are wrong.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp...

The headline is wrong.

[Eunuchswear]

Exxon didn't "Ignore Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings". It, knowing that AGW was real, defunded the research that proved it and paid professional science deniers to spread FUD claiming that AGW didn't exist.

Comparing Prediction To Data

[Geoffrey.landis]

So it looks like scientists have been wrong about their global warming predictions going on four decades. Or did I miss the great, impactful Exxon global warming crash of 1988?

I'm not sure what prediction you're saying is wrong. The Exxon 1982 report) being discussed said:

"If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."

Since they said the signal doesn't exceed the noise until 1995, they didn't even make a prediction for 1988.

The report did have a statement that the greenhouse effect would produce 1C warming "above present levels" by "the second to third quarter of the next century" (page 2 of the pdf.)

Here's the graph of actual measured data:
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif

Fitting a line through that data starting with "present levels" of 1980, I see a rise of about 0.8 between 1980 and 2014. So looks like their prediction was very close to the data.

If anytjhing, their prediction was slightly low, but since in the same report they list an uncertainty of over 50% on model predictions, their prediction matches the measured data to well within their quoted error bars.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone has figured out that this is real, then why HAS THE EU INCREASED THEIR CO2 EMISSIONS EVERY YEAR? Go look it up. Are they making money, or are they just insane?

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[FranTaylor]

In the end, I have faith in the species to adapt or to invent technologies that actually will be helpful.

The "species will adapt" by going extinct, mother nature will shrug and life will go on without humans

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[FranTaylor]

It's silly to be fanatical when there are no viable solutions.

yeah, it's better to lie back and allow death to take over instead of trying to fight back

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[BillCable]

So you're seriously going with "some scientist in 1978 warned Exxon that sometime in the upcoming CENTURY there will be an increase in CO2 that'll have a major impact on core business"? OK then...

This just in ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Burgers make you fat, but McDonald's still sells them. What do you expect from a major corporation, close its doors?

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[BillCable]

When your model for fighting back is Sisyphus... yup!

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[NatasRevol]

You see a pattern mostly because you have been pressing your fingers in your eyes so hard you're just seeing stars.

No warming in 18 years? Try pulling your fingers out of your eyes and see actual data.

http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-...

And it's gotten hotter since that data was put there. But I'm sure you'll ignore that too.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[MrTester]

What Im going with is that the previous commenter was not able to correctly parse the words in the article.
Apparently you have the same inability to read the written word.

Where exactly in my post did I say anything for or against global warming?
However, your inability to understand what people say makes it really hard to take you or your arguments seriously.

read the report, not the spin

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Instead of the biased article, read what the report actually concludes:

Overall, the current outlook suggests potentially serious climate problems are not likely to occur until the late 21st century or perhaps beyond at projected energy demand rates. This should provide time to resolve uncertainties regarding the overall carbon cycle and the contribution of fossil fuel combustion as well as the role of the oceans as a reservoir for both heat and carbon dioxide. [...] Making significant changes in energy consumption patterns now to deal with this potential problem amid all the scientific uncertainties would be premature in view of the severe impact such moves could have on the world's economies and societies.

http://insideclimatenews.org/s...

The report also points out that temperature increases would not be uniform, with strong increase at the polar caps and little increase near the equator.

The interesting thing is that little has changed about these conclusions in the last 30 years; science has produced a lot of new data, but the conclusions have changed little.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[quantaman]

Instead of the biased article, read what the report actually concludes:

Overall, the current outlook suggests potentially serious climate problems are not likely to occur until the late 21st century or perhaps beyond at projected energy demand rates. This should provide time to resolve uncertainties regarding the overall carbon cycle and the contribution of fossil fuel combustion as well as the role of the oceans as a reservoir for both heat and carbon dioxide. [...] Making significant changes in energy consumption patterns now to deal with this potential problem amid all the scientific uncertainties would be premature in view of the severe impact such moves could have on the world's economies and societies.

http://insideclimatenews.org/s...

The report also points out that temperature increases would not be uniform, with strong increase at the polar caps and little increase near the equator.

The interesting thing is that little has changed about these conclusions in the last 30 years; science has produced a lot of new data, but the conclusions have changed little.

38 years.

And things have changed, the later 21st century is 38 years closer, the uncertainties a lot smaller, and alternative sources of energy a lot more mature.

But it is somewhat surprising how close the projections were at that time.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

And things have changed, the later 21st century is 38 years closer, the uncertainties a lot smaller

Things have changed, but the conclusions haven't: the temperature predictions are still pretty much the same, their consequences are still as much guesswork now as back then, and the cost of intervention is much higher now; on balance, government should still not intervene.

and alternative sources of energy a lot more mature.

And the best strategy is to focus on economic growth so that they will soon become actually competitive with fossil fuels. Carbon taxes and other government mandates, as well as government subsidies, are counterproductive if the goal is to get economically efficient alternative sources of energy.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of makes you wish that we had invested money into solutions instead of studying the problem during the past 20 years or so this has been a hot topic.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[riverat1]

The thing about not making changes now is that the effects of anthropogenic global warming are not something we can stop in a short time period. Even if we get extremely serious about it right now it will take 30 or 40 years to implement the necessary changes. Meanwhile the ultimate effects will continue to get worse. For instance the melting of the great ice sheets is way behind the curve of warming and it will take several centuries for them to reach a new equilibrium so the concomitant sea level rise will continue for that whole time period.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Even if we get extremely serious about it right now it will take 30 or 40 years to implement the necessary changes. [...] The thing about not making changes now is that the effects of anthropogenic global warming are not something we can stop in a short time period.

Any democratic nation would lynch its leaders given the devastating economic consequences such policies have; it's not going to happen.

Meanwhile the ultimate effects will continue to get worse.

There are no "ultimate effects". The climate is changing, like it always has been. Sea levels have been rising more than 400 ft over the last 10000 years; did civilization end? Did humans become extinct? No, of course not. Even if all the ice on the planet melts, they can only rise another 200 ft, and that would still take centuries, if not millennia.

Furthermore, between 200 ft sea level rise and the kind of totalitarian government necessary to impose worldwide carbon neutrality, I take the 200 ft sea level rise any day.

For instance the melting of the great ice sheets is way behind the curve of warming and it will take several centuries for them to reach a new equilibrium so the concomitant sea level rise will continue for that whole time period.

And that's the reason it's not much of a problem: climate change and sea level rise may be fast on geological time scales, but they are slow on human time scales.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[riverat1]

Any democratic nation would lynch its leaders given the devastating economic consequences such policies have; it's not going to happen.

You presume there will be devastating economic consequences. Other economic analysis including a recent report from Citibank that says it will be cheaper to do something than to not. Link (PDF)

There are no "ultimate effects". The climate is changing, like it always has been. Sea levels have been rising more than 400 ft over the last 10000 years; did civilization end? Did humans become extinct? No, of course not. Even if all the ice on the planet melts, they can only rise another 200 ft, and that would still take centuries, if not millennia.

It's more like 130 feet over the last 10,000 years (400 feet over the last 20,000 years). But of course that was before we developed our modern civilization, before we had trillions of dollars in infrastructure built near sea level. Over the last 7,000 years the rise around 6 feet and over the last 4,000 years it's been less than a foot. I agree that melting all the rest of the ice will take millennia but with up to 6 feet of SLR by 2100 it's going to be pretty costly to move all of the affected infrastructure and 2100 won't be the end of it.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

You presume there will be devastating economic consequences. Other economic analysis including a recent report from Citibank that says it will be cheaper to do something than to not. Link [citi.com] (PDF)

The cost voters are concerned with is what they have to pay for right now, not how the books balance in a few centuries. So even if the Citibank analysis (and similar analyses) were true, they don't get to the point I was making. (In reality, such analyses are meaningless guesswork even for what they purport to show.)

It's more like 130 feet over the last 10,000 years (400 feet over the last 20,000 years).

If you want to be picky, it was about 390 feet over 14000 years, depending on the estimate you look at.

before we had trillions of dollars in infrastructure built near sea level. ... I agree that melting all the rest of the ice will take millennia but with up to 6 feet of SLR by 2100 it's going to be pretty costly to move all of the affected infrastructure and 2100 won't be the end of it.

You're thinking of infrastructure as something permanent with an enduring, fixed value, but that doesn't reflect reality. Infrastructure stays around because it constantly gets rebuilt. After a few decades, you have basically paid for an entirely new structure. The actual cost of abandoning a coastal city over a time span of a century and moving it somewhere else is tiny relative to the construction cost of a new structure, and irrelevant compared to the actual sales price of the structure. In fact, often, rebuilding would be cheaper, but people simply avoid it because they value the location and don't want to risk disruption. Westerners need to understand much more that every glass is already broken, instead of clinging to a delusion of permanence and eternity.

There are other problems with your reasoning. For example, sea level rise doesn't mean that many coastal areas get flooded; coast lines are not at a fixed level, they adapt to sea level changes. Bangladesh is currently gaining land area despite being largely at sea level and despite sea level rise. Furthermore, citizens of advanced economies seem to have no significant problems living below sea level to begin with; a quarter of the Netherlands is already below sea level. Given the choice, Bangladeshi people would be far better off living below sea level at Dutch living standards than maintaining their current living standards and not experiencing sea level rise.

Re:read the report, not the spin

[riverat1]

I think you're overly optimistic about our ability to adapt to the changes but I could be wrong. It you're young enough you'll find out in time how right or wrong you are (at 63 I'll probably miss the worst of the effects).

Re:read the report, not the spin

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

I think you're overly optimistic about our ability to adapt to the changes but I could be wrong.

Well, it's not my optimism, it's what the latest IPCC report effectively says: climate change in 2100 amounts to a couple percent loss of income for everybody if we do nothing (about the same as doing something according to the IPCC). Note that this is a couple of percent lower from a massively higher (in real terms) worldwide average income after decades of growth. So, no falling skies even under the IPCC scenarios. In reality, the IPCC estimates scenarios are actually far too pessimistic, so it only gets better than that.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

The bods in white coats said: burning oil (etc) may be bad news and furthermore it may be bad if you don't change your business strategy in the light of that soon.

No, that's not what they said (even if the article leads you to believe otherwise). Read the actual report that the article is based on. What the scientists actually said was that action on climate change was "premature" because of the "large scientific uncertainties" and the "severe impact of climate change policies on the world's economies".

http://insideclimatenews.org/s...

So, Exxon followed the advice of its scientists.

(In addition, little has changed in the intervening 30 years, so the conclusions are arguably still valid.)

Surprised?

[ExXter]

If anyone is then he/she may has been either ignorant, sleeping under a rock or simply wasn't paying attention to what fossil fuels do to climate in a short amount of time.

I, again, could be called a demon, as I studied geodesy, climate technologies and environmental change. I can tell now that we are already over the precipice. I call it the "Delaying phase", other scientist may call it differently but basically it describes the effect of nature compensating head by having chemical and physical reactions equalizing cold and warm to an equilibrium which will stay stable for one or two centuries. That's we are in now, cold water and ice compensate most of the warmth produced by this planet due to CO2 intake in atmosphere. The problem comes after, once water reaches a certain temperature and ice is melted and gone, the surface will be bare. After that, well I could write a scientific paper about it but its not getting published nor being read by the right persons thus I ll skip it (giving my regards to all who did already). Hell there is also the issue with the magnetic field but how Mark Watney says: " One problem at a time. "

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[FranTaylor]

What the scientists actually said was that action on climate change was "premature" because of the "large scientific uncertainties" and the "severe impact of climate change policies on the world's economies".

They DID "take action" on climate change, they hired a PR firm to lie for them.

Their scientists also told them that drilling for oil is uncertain and fraught with risks, but that didn't stop them from "taking action".

This again ?

[cbeaudry]

How many times will they make articles about this as if it was something new?

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

I know we are leading up to COP 21 in Paris and they feel there is a need to spread the propaganda thick, but this is getting ridiculous.

Contrary to what the media is spreading, Exxon and other oil companies have been funding both sides fro decades.
i.e. http://news.stanford.edu/news/...

Rockefeller has been behind this push and drive on climate alarmism from the get go. Funding research and organisations like 350.org.

Those that believe the fallacy that big oil is all alone and behind only the "denier war machine" are keeping their heads in the sand.

Besides, the governements of the west outspend the supposed denial money by 10 to 1.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

the technological solution is liquid fluoride thorium reactors, and advanced battery technology.... wind is total crap.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

The viable solution is Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (a type of molten salt reactor). That's the bloody solution that needs to be implemented! All the electricity could be made with those, and you could run water desalination off them. All with no CO2 created.

Meaningless

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'm a great fan of back-of-the-envelope calculations... but these aren't calculations; they are merely assertions. And worse, not merely assertions, but assertions that seem to be based on random pseudo-facts not really understood.

Europe has the longest history of solar panel installation, and has good data for energy payback time. Energy payback time for silicon panels is between 0.5 and 1.4 years. Depending on location, it can be as high as 3 years in northern Europe.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/...

plus the whole poisoning China thing with harvesting rare earths

Do you even know what rare earth elements are? Almost all solar panels manufactured today are crystalline silicon. Silicon isn't a rare earth element.

In the end, I have faith in the species to adapt or to invent technologies that actually will be helpful. We're not there yet. Band-aid solutions in the short term are meaningless..

I agree with you there. I'm a technological optimist; if we can identify problems, we can solve them. However, ignoring and belittling the existence of problems isn't going to help, and dismissing possible solutions with slogans and sound-bites is counterproductive.

So are gotcha-type articles about Exxon.

The point of this article was that Exxon was a major funder of the campaigns to discredit the science of global warming in the '90s and early 2000s, even though a decade earlier their own scientists were telling them that this was significant. They spent about $30 million dollars funding climate denial.

On the other hand, they did stop most of their funding to the climate-change deniers in 2007, so it does seem to me to be mostly an article about a company that isn't really the problem any more.

http://www.theguardian.com/env...
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/17...

Re:Meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

plus the whole poisoning China thing with harvesting rare earths

Do you even know what rare earth elements are? Almost all solar panels manufactured today are crystalline silicon. Silicon isn't a rare earth element.

He was likely referring to what's needed by the wind generators.

Re:Meaningless

[Dixie_Flatline]

This is useful information the next time someone talks about 'following the money' because scientists are just trying to get rich off of sweet, sweet grant money. (These are people that have never met a scientist and don't know how grants work.)

Anyway, even such a direct and obvious link will probably still change very few minds, but it's nice to have as an additional thing to bring out.

Re:Meaningless

[cbeaudry]

And you think 30 million dollars is a significant sum?

The USA alone has been spending billions every year for the past 2-3 decades on AGW.

The western governments and the UN have been outspending 10 to 1 all the skeptics for the last few decades.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

I see man, you never wash your cloths.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

They DID "take action" on climate change, they hired a PR firm to lie for them.

Exxon's PR said exactly what the report says: there are big scientific uncertainties and it's too early to take action.

Their scientists also told them that drilling for oil is uncertain and fraught with risks, but that didn't stop them from "taking action".

Correct. But their scientists also told them that the expected benefits outweigh the risks, so they took a chance with their own money and invested in drilling.

The problem with climate change action is that the expected benefit is likely no larger than doing nothing even according to the IPCC; furthermore, the people making a profit on climate change action are not the people paying the costs.

EU Greenhouse gas emissions

[Geoffrey.landis]

Go look it up.

OK.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-...

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-...

Let's personalize this a bit...

[theendlessnow]

Let's say that coffee and tea cause global warming (climate change). In other words, let's make the "evil" bit more personal. Are you ready to give up coffee and tea?

Sometimes we have a better understanding of things when we make it a bit more personal...

Now... do you need coffee and tea more than you need electricity? more than you need manufactured goods? If you believe the answer to be "no", then this just became even more personal.

Sure, we could force all countries to have military rule and force all fossil and nuclear fuels to "end" business and switch to very very expensive alternatives. We could do that I suppose. But I think it would have to be done by force. The general populace won't give up tea and coffee easily.

With that said, a lot of these "evil" companies hedge their bets and spend a lot of money researching alternative sources just in case they are forced to change.

Now... the pain of switching, if done over a very long period of time... it's quite possible we would be ok with regards to our personal lifestyles (indeed, not talking about readers here, but the truth is, there has been some change already, just maybe not enough at a fast enough pace). However, since the "evil" potential is still out there, then the truly evil (not the current oil, gas, coal and nuclear companies) could exploit those technologies and possibly cause problems.... just saying...

With that said, if we can turn an alternative into a viable cheap and reliable solution that is economically better than oil, gas, coal and nuclear, then those big companies will change very very quickly. No sense being stuck in the past doing something more expensive.

Best solution happens at the consumer/people level. If "we" stop using "evil" energy. If "we" stop using the "evil". If we stop drinking coffee and tea... they (the evil companies) are forced to change. Are you ready? Currently the answer is a very clear "no".

Stuff to ponder...

Re:Let's personalize this a bit...

[Ichijo]

If everyone had to pay an extra $5 per cup of coffee, and if all that extra revenue were redistributed equally to everyone (even those who don't drink coffee), then I think we would collectively drink a lot less coffee, and nobody except the heaviest coffee drinkers would be worse financially. Poor people who don't drink coffee would benefit the most in proportion to their income.

Would people go for a revenue-neutral coffee tax where everyone gets free money?

Re:Let's personalize this a bit...

[cbeaudry]

So you are saying this IS about redistribution of wealth?

Re:Let's personalize this a bit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I became a vegetarian/vegan last year at 30 years of age because of personal research. I LOVE the smell and taste of creatures and their by-products but I can no longer consume them due to ethics. A portion of that choice was due to the ecological damage farm animals do to the environment and their contribution to climate change, but mostly due to ethics of consuming another life. I also pay for 100% green energy for my house, costs more but I have to do it! I question anyone who can't put the good of the many ahead of their own selfish needs (not an attack on meat eaters, but in climate change considerations)

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing he never brushes his teeth, or wipes his ass, either.

Fission Reactor in car

[Etherwalk]

people are using energy from nuclear fission to power their cars, whether or not the reactor is attached to the car is irrelevant.

It's pretty damn relevant to the guy driving around with the nuclear reactor in his car.

Re:Fission Reactor in car

[samwichse]

Ford Nucleon FTW!

Re:First Post!

[MagickalMyst]

"Off topic? Really?"

"Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings"

Not alarmists and not wrong

[Geoffrey.landis]

So it looks like scientists have been wrong about their global warming predictions going on four decades.

Except that their criteria for a 2-3 C increase hasn't passed yet. The IPCC apparently thinks the "first doubling of atmospheric CO2" will happen by about 2050. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies thinks that global temps. have so far risen by 0.8 C since 1880. This means that the Exxon researcher's warning that "a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius" could still come to pass. Several of the projections in the IPCC's figures suggest a 2C rise by ~2050 is possible, so they could still be proven right.

"Still might come to pass" in 2050 is far different than "5 to 10 years" from 1978. But keep moving the goal posts and you may eventually figure out a way to prove them right.

I can't find that purported prediction for "5 to 10 years" in either of the reports referenced. To the contrary, the reports very explicitly made no predictions for 5-10 years; it said that in that time period it would not be possible to distinguish the global warming signal from the statistical fluctuations. The only explicit numerical prediction in the 1978 Exxon report is on page 34 (the very last page, labeled "summary"). This stated "Doubling CO_2 could increase average global temperature by 1C to 3C by 2050 A.D. (10C predicted at poles)."

So I don't know what you mean about "moving the goalposts" on predictions. The goalpost in the 1978 prediction was "by 2050". This has not changed. The prediction in 1978 (based on the 1977 presentation) overlaps the IPCC's current prediction of 2C by 2050-- neither the prediction nor the "goalposts" have changed.

(The 1982 Exxon report had a slightly different timespan for doubling, stating that "We estimate doubling could occur around the year 2090 based upon fossil fuel requirements projected in Exxon's long range energy outlook". This report, however, is by a different author and dated 3 years later, so it's not unexpected that it would have a slightly different fossil fuel use model.)

The only reference to "five to ten years" in 1978 report is the statement on page 2 "Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical".

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[wbr1]

"Still might come to pass" in 2050 is far different than "5 to 10 years" from 1978. But keep moving the goal posts and you may eventually figure out a way to prove them right.

Lets not use ad hominem, lets instruct the troll:

5-10 years in 1970 was for a time to start making hard decisions, from a report with limited data by experts in 1978

2050 is current estimate of OMG this is now a juggernaut we cant stop and everyone is in deep shit (except coastal areas, they are washed clean by the waters.

They are different milestones in a progression. Cherry picking and saying someone is moving the goalposts is ignorant at best or willfully negligent at worst.
If the worst does come to pass, it should be people like you who are strung up right after the boards of companies who willfully chose to do nothing.

Wrong, as well as Meaningless

[Geoffrey.landis]

plus the whole poisoning China thing with harvesting rare earths

Do you even know what rare earth elements are? Almost all solar panels manufactured today are crystalline silicon. Silicon isn't a rare earth element.

He was likely referring to what's needed by the wind generators.

Perhaps that is what he might have been referring to, if he knew what he was talking about, but it is not what he did say. Or he might have seen a blog post about indium or gallium, which aren't a rare-earth elements and aren't used in silicon panels, but are often brought up in the same discussions in which people talk about rare earths.

Either way, though, I'd advise not paying much attention to anything he posts until you have verified it against a reputable source.

Five to ten years

[roc97007]

> 'Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical,' one scientist wrote in an internal document."

And we know that global temperatures rocketed up several degrees in the 1980's and we're all dead now.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual data or what's gone through their fudge factor algorithm to reduce the temperatures of the past? Which is how they got around the "no warming for 18 years" inconvenience.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[NatasRevol]

Nice source you got there.

Brilliant insight into your conspiracy theory.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said I thought it was impossible to screw with the climate. It'd be easy. Want a temperature decrease? Drop a few nukes in Siberia. That'd throw a ton of matter into the atmosphere, causing dramatic global cooling. Sure there'd be radiation poisoning to those who lived around there and global famine, but we'd solve that whole global warming thing for a few decades.

Why would you want to nuke Siberia and release all the methane that's in the permafrost? If you're going to nuke something, nuke the Middle East. You'd get rid of most of the Islamic terrorists and probably thin out India & Pakistan a bit with fallout. The resulting famine would depopulate most if not all of Africa and other areas with food supply issues. It would solve three problems: global warming, over population and terrorism.

Based on incorrect conclusions=fail post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we now know that climate change is largely natural this is simply another fail post.

NEXT!

Arctic Ice disappeared in 2014

[rothschildt]

Just as the "science" had predicted.

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

The bods in white coats said: burning oil (etc) may be bad news and furthermore it may be bad if you don't change your business strategy in the light of that soon.

No, that's not what they said (even if the article leads you to believe otherwise). Read the actual report that the article is based on. What the scientists actually said was that action on climate change was "premature" because of the "large scientific uncertainties" and the "severe impact of climate change policies on the world's economies".

http://insideclimatenews.org/s...

So, Exxon followed the advice of its scientists.

(In addition, little has changed in the intervening 30 years, so the conclusions are arguably still valid.)

Um, yeah that "premature" "uncertainty" language wasn't forced in by PHB post facto ... (A/C post 'cause I'm modding this story)

bought and paid for...

[steak]

by big oil. You can't trust them they were oil company shills.

Analogy fail

[Radical Moderate]

No one is being asked to give up electricity, and nobody cares if they're electricity comes from burning coal or unicorn farts. There all alternatives to burning fossil fuels, and we should be pursuing them. No one has to "give up" anything....except maybe some profits for oil companies. Boo-hoo.

Re:Analogy fail

[cbeaudry]

You mean except for skyrocketing costs of energy for EVERYONE.

Made up information

[Geoffrey.landis]

citation needed.

Re:Made up information

[cbeaudry]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sit...

You can find the others on your own.

Who said they ignored the warnings?

[marciot]

The acted on it. The report was hidden and the researchers were made to sign an NDA, killed, or relocated to Siberia.

Am I right?

Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978!

[Anonymous Coward]

...kinda reminds you of the tobacco companies doesn't it?

It's obviously not them that have the money

[dbIII]

It's obviously not them that have the money since they need governments to put it up, so where on earth are you going with what you've written above? It makes no sense as written.

not that simple

[gzuckier]

The country took a determined turn to the right in the 1980s, with the Reagan Revolution and all. In addition, the attention of corporate leaders changed from long term issues to quarterly profits. Less well known is that the corporate leaders of Exxon-Mobil did as well. The team that supervised actual research into the effects of fossil fuel consumption (and was also investigating long term strategies for the company for after the oil biz was dead) was replaced by executives that doubled down on petroleum now, petroleum forever.

How about this?

[Lord Dreamshaper]

1) Pollution is bad mmmkay, kids?

2) Burning fossil fuels creates pollution

3) Don't believe 1) & 2)? breathe deeply off the exhaust pipe of your car long term and see what happens to your health

4) Therefore burning fossil fuels is bad and we don't have to bring climate into the equation

5) Profit?!