Exxon Knew

 

Academics analysed data in ExxonMobil's internal documents and determined that its research predicted how burning fossil fuels would warm the planet even though the company publicly denied the link.

The findings suggest that ExxonMobil's predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading Nasa scientists.

"It really underscores the stark hypocrisy of ExxonMobil leadership, who knew that their own scientists were doing this very high quality modelling work and had access to that privileged information while telling the rest of us that climate models were bunk," Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, explained. Oreskes said the findings show that ExxonMobil "knowingly misled" the public and governments. "They had all this information at their disposal but they said very, very different things in public," she pointed out. Oreskes suggests that it showed the company was internally using climate science when publicly it called the models "speculative" or "bad science".

The findings are a "smoking gun", suggests co-author Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami.

"Our analysis allows us for the first time to actually put a number on what Exxon knew, which is that the burning of their fossil fuel products was going to heat the planet by about 0.2C of warming every decade," he said.

"Their excellent climate modelling was at least comparable in performance to one of the most influential and well-regarded climate scientists of modern history," Prof Supran said, comparing ExxonMobil's work to Nasa's James Hansen who sounded the alarm on climate in 1988.

The research, published in the academic journal Science, also suggests that ExxonMobil had reasonable estimates for how emissions would need to be reduced in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change in a world warmed by 2C or more. Their scientists also correctly rejected the theory that an ice age was coming at a time when other researchers were still debating the prospect.

ExxonMobil: Oil giant predicted climate change in 1970s - scientists - BBC News