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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."
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?
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?
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."
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.
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)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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
http://m.earth.org.uk/
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!
Do you have ESP?
And the real criminals are not people who design malware, it's the people who use computers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Exxon's PR said exactly what the report says: there are big scientific uncertainties and it's too early to take 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.