Guest post by David Middleton
Maybe ExxonMobil should file a RICO lawsuit against the “Shukla 20”, Inside Climate, the LA Times and this gentleman…
Exxon Knew Everything There Was to Know About Climate Change by the Mid-1980s—and Denied It
And thanks to their willingness to sucker the world, the world is now a chaotic mess.
By Bill McKibben YESTERDAY 12:13 PM
A few weeks before the last great international climate conference—2009, in Copenhagen—the e-mail accounts of a few climate scientists were hacked and reviewed for incriminating evidence suggesting that global warming was a charade. Eight separate investigations later concluded that there was literally nothing to “Climategate,” save a few sentences taken completely out of context—but by that time, endless, breathless media accounts about the “scandal” had damaged the prospects for any progress at the conference.
Now, on the eve of the next global gathering in Paris this December, there’s a new scandal. But this one doesn’t come from an anonymous hacker taking a few sentences out of context. This one comes from months of careful reporting by two separate teams, one at the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News, and other at the Los Angeles Times (with an assist from the Columbia Journalism School). Following separate lines of evidence and document trails, they’ve reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.
[…]
These folks are so desperate to create a tobacco company analogy that they really must thing that the ends do justify the means.
After a cursory review of “the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News” and part one of their “bombshell conclusion,” I can safely conclude that Exxon didn’t know anything that wasn’t already known, published and available to the public.
Part 1: “Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago“
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
[…]
Exxon’s research laid the groundwork for a 1982 corporate primer on carbon dioxide and climate change prepared by its environmental affairs office. Marked “not to be distributed externally,” it contained information that “has been given wide circulation to Exxon management.” In it, the company recognized, despite the many lingering unknowns, that heading off global warming “would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”
Unless that happened, “there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered,” the primer said, citing independent experts. “Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.”
[…]
The “1982 corporate primer” was sourced from publicly available materials from Arrhenius (1896) to Ehrlich & Holdren (1977) to Wang, Yung, Lacis & Hansen (1976). It appears that Exxon relied heavily on a National Research Council publication for this primer, Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment (1979).
The closest thing to a “smoking gun” that I could find was figure 3 on page 7 of the corporate primer. It is sort of a climate model… It’s a cartoon derived from the NRC publication…
Out of curiosity, I plotted the Mauna Loa CO2 and HadCRUT4 temperature data at the same scale and overlaid it on Exxon’s “climate model”…
Way back in 1982, Exxon knew what Hansen knew. They knew that CO2 would cause nearly twice as much warming as would actually transpire over the subsequent 30 years.
I don’t know if I will follow this up with future posts… My ribs still ache from laughing at part one of this very bad joke.
OT… Calling all Aussies.
All Ex-Liberal voters MUST MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE that Turnbull NEVER gets elected as PM. !!
Even if it means putting Shorten/Labor in for 3 years. !!
I’m with you Andy.
Another big corporation, also “knew” the climate future, and worked to take economic advantage of it – Ken Lay / Enron excited about cap-n-trade. Lay previously had experience in Dept of Interior, so he knew a thing or two about govt regulation…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/610650/posts
Technically, Enron (Ken Lay and his “creative” oil-and-gas manipulators) DESIGNED the carbon trading methodolgy and sources and political foundations.
31 trillion a year moving from financial institute to government to government to financial institution to government in carbon trading money, plus 1.3 trillion a year in new taxes to the government, plus 800 billion a year in new “designated and directed” government “freebates” to its chosen few voters and donors buys a lot of government “self-called” scientists. And thousands of peer-reviewed papers, doesn’t it?
Not saying you’re wrong, but when you start talking trillions… ears perk up.
Specially, those that might get a piece of that pie.
@ur momisugly David Middleton October 23, 2015 at 4:33 am
Not my recollection.
Anachronism
The clock hath stricken three. Julius Caesar, Act 2 Scene 1
There were no clocks in Rome during the reign of Julius Caesar.
Similarly:
1) Global Warming did not become an active issue until after the fall of the old USSR in 1989.
2) Climate Change was not talked about until the 21st Century when it became apparent that “Global Warming” was not taking place according to plan.
Bill McKibben is guilty of an anachronism.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was drafted in 1992. They did not invent the term “Climate Change”.
I love the phrase from McKibben’s article: “…according to a written version he recorded later.”
So James Black (who died in 1988) supposedly had a “detailed set of slides” from which he presented “without a text”. He then recorded a written version later. The slides from the meeting aren’t available. The written version recorded later is.
We are supposed to believe that this written version recorded later, by someone long dead, accurately represents what was presented in the meeting.
Doesn’t wash. Hearsay evidence (IANAL, but I watch Judge Judy). Would get laughed out of court.
Classic smear campaign from known compulsive climate liar with a propensity for histrionics, Bill McKibben.
‘Inside Climate News’ posted these statements in ‘Exxon – the Road Not Taken’:
“”As the international community moved in 1997 to take a first step in curbing emissions with the Kyoto Protocol, Exxon’s chairman and CEO Lee Raymond argued to stop it.
“Let’s agree there’s a lot we really don’t know about how climate will change in the 21st century and beyond,” Raymond said in his speech before the World Petroleum Congress in Beijing in October 1997. “We need to understand the issue better, and fortunately, we have time,” he said. “It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now.””
World Oil posted this statement in the recent article ‘ExxonMobil Hits Back…’
“Exxon Mobil scientists have been selected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ most authoritative body on the subject, as authors of their past four major assessment reports, and have contributed to National Research Council boards and committees on climate change.”
Assuming all these statements are accurate, and given the growing demand to end alarmist speculation – I think ExxonMobil’s actions have been reasonable.
Reblogged this on The Arts Mechanical and commented:
Yet another of those “proofs” that only a true fanatic would believe and that’s essentially irrelevant anyway. What Exxon believes or does isn’t really important and it’s certainly not criminal. It looks as if Exxon was using the best material available and changing as better data became available.
OMG! The US Army ran simulated exercises for dealing with a zombie apocalypse! THEY KNEW, MAN! ZOMBIES ARE REAL!
Or, they just run an awful lot of simulations, some plausible, some… less plausible.
McKibben would fail as a sleuth. The actual conspiracy was energy monopolies funding junk science to hype “the climate change danger” so they could sucker people into going for (far more expensive than fossil fuels) so called “renewable energy” sources, which of course they’ve long been invested in. Just like the way Apple convinces you that you “need” an iCrud when a plain old flip phone will do.
I wonder if these warmest could be liable for defamation.
That is a conspiracy theory. Like the maddest conspiracy theorists, McKibben will not recognize it, as he has a monopoly on truth. It is others who fail in their perceptions of the real world.
Bill McKibben is composed of made up stuff all the way down- from his deliberate deception about his heritage to his cynical money hunt dressed up as climate concern.
But McKibben, and Gleick, and so many others, are the best and brightest the climate consensus have to offer. And at this point there is no reason to believe they will not prevail.