Guest post by David Middleton
This morning’s edition of Real Clear Energy brought to my attention the dumbest attack on ExxonMobil and the oil industry that I have ever seen.
- New Offshore Rules Debut
- …Industry Fears New Costs
- Pressure On Exxon Amps Up
- 1st Offshore Export For Exxon
- Russia’s India Beachhead
So, I clicked on the link and it took me to an idiotic article in the New York Times…
Pressure on Exxon Mobil and the energy industry increased on Wednesday with the release of a new cache of decades-old industry documents aboutclimate change, even as Exxon pushed back against efforts to investigate the company over its climate claims through the years.
The new documents were released by an activist research organization, the Center for International Environmental Law, which published the project on its website.
The documents, according to the environmental law center’s director, Carroll Muffett, suggest that the industry had the underlying knowledge of climate change even 60 years ago.
“From 1957 onward, there is no doubt that Humble Oil, which is now Exxon, was clearly on notice” about rising CO2 in the atmosphere and the prospect that it was likely to cause global warming, he said.
[…]
I just had to see what documents were so damning, so I clicked the link to “the project.”
When I began perusing the “documents,” I just about fell off of my chair laughing. Here are a couple of examples…
The Robinson Report for the API, 1968
This document basically concludes that CO2 might be a greenhouse gas and might have some effect on the climate, or not…
An Emerging Science, as told by the scientifically illiterate, 1955-1958
This section contains three papers. The first two, written by Humble Oil Company employees, deal with radiocarbon dating…
The third is a paper published by the International Meteorological Institute. It was authored by Bert Bolin and Erik Eriksson and sponsored by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Office of Naval Research… I have yet to figure out the connection to the oil industry with this one.
The Smoking Gun?
1957
BRANNON: EXXONMOBIL ON NOTICE
Even as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rose and climate science expanded, during the first half of the 20th century, many researchers assumed that most excess CO2 would be absorbed by the ocean, minimizing impacts on atmospheric temperature. In 1957, a landmark paper by Roger Revelle and Hans Suess of the Scripps Institute upturned that conventional wisdom, demonstrating that far more CO2 would remain in the atmosphere than previously assumed, potentially accelerating the impact of global climate change.Two months after the Revelle and Suess paper was published, Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) scientists led by H.R. Brannon submitted their own study for publication on the same question. Building on the team’s earlier work on radiocarbon dating, and submitting under the company’s name, the Brannon paper provides the earliest indisputable evidence we have yet found of oil company knowledge of climate science and climate risk. Significantly, the Brannon report acknowledges not only rising levels of atmospheric CO2, but also the evident contribution of fossil fuels to that increase. In acknowledged disagreement with Revelle, however, the Brannon paper suggests that CO2 would be retained in the oceans much longer before returning to the atmosphere, which would delay by decades or centuries the impact of fossil fuel emissions.
We’ll skip the Revelle and Suess paper because ExxonMobil had nothing to do with it and it was published in a manner accessible to the public. We’ll focus on the *secret* document prepared by H. R. Brannon, the radiocarbon dating guy…
The idiocy of this report is mind boggling. The rest of the documents deal with oil industry studies of paleo-sea level, an integral part of sedimentary geology, efforts to understand hurricanes, kind of important in offshore drilling and production and the industry’s efforts to ensure that pollution regulations and laws were crafted in a wise, efficient and economically sustainable manner.
A paper in a scientific journal is “hiding information”?
Oh for heaven’s sake.
OTOH, perhaps a group of concerned sceptics could take action against Mann, Jones, UEA and Penn State for hiding evidence of the MWP? That would have some basis in fact.
I am disappointed that these progressives and environmentalist don’t have a clue as to how America was built and Rockerfeller among others while aggressive, highly competitive business men played a huge part in bringing us out of poverty for all but the elites into and age of everyone having the opportunity to have electricity, transportation energy, and a bounty of food including economic prosperity and military security.
Of course Kerosene, oil and natural gas was one of the keys without which steel, electricity,railroads, automobiles and trucks, modern farming, etc would not have arrived on our doorstep.
Of course much of the rest of the world benefited from this technology from the competition between the men who built America.
While each played an important part when I watched this program, it was clear the Rockefeller’s kerosene brought light to many homes of the average person (also saved the whales too) and when electricity began replacing kerosene lighting, Rockefeller realizing that he was going out of business, he developed gasoline which modernized auto transportation, because electric cars were inadequate as they are today.
For history buffs this is an interesting story that should be taught in our schools.
Finally the MSM failse to mention that the “oil” business played a najor role in defeating the axis in WW II because without the technology that produced an abundance of Aviation fuel, the Allies air superiority whould not have existed. .
http://www.amazon.com/The-Men-Who-Built-America/dp/B00A2XTHYU
“Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford are names synonymous with innovation and big business in America. They all built empires and created advances in technology. They helped shape the country in its early days by doing things such as developing the m… More”
For more information as to how the US oil business played major role in winning world War II.
This video was created as an anniversary celebration of the “Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Process and some of the inventors that developed this technology breakthrough (process) in the 1940’s.
Esso ( Now Exxon Mobile) led the consortium of many that made this possible.
The claim is that “now” at the time of the video, there are over 300 such units around the world upgrading crude oil and providing transportation fuel.
Now the progressives want to forget these contributions and dismantle tho oil companies that helprd save our butts.
sorry the video was left out
Doesn’t seem to say anything about the fictional 2C rise being a catastrophe. Nevertheless, Australia’s environment minister is sneaking into New York this week to sign up to the Paris Agreement.
He has been in Perth, Western Australia, spruiking a new suburban development based solely on renewable energy. What he leaves out is that each house is subsidised $45,000 aud from the government.
What happens when the subsidies run out?
I believe it shows that Exxon was initiating studies about environmental issues decades before the 1970’s global cooling scare was being promoted by the scientific community and Time magazine for example .
What ever happened to that campaign ? It was much more scary .
If it is determined that Exxon was aware of a “possibility” of climate change due to CO2, what were they supposed to do about it? Were they supposed to commit hari–kari and go out of business? Would the demand for fossil fuels have instantly dried up if Exxon had left the fossil-fuel business? Or would other companies have taken their place to meet the demand? I just don’t see how any action Exxon might have taken would have made any difference in the long run.
The US government did nothing about this as well. Perhaps the A.G. should sue the US government, as they were in the position of responsibility.
My goodness, the science was certainly not settled then or now.
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-04-16234416-1.png
The 1941 science looks be a winner.
When a religious extremist looks at anything, they always find evidence to support their extremist views. This effort to make the oil industry “guilty’ of a great conspiracy is a perfect example of the climate extremists doing just that.
Decades ago Democrat Senator Danial Patrick Moynihan wrote a very astute paper showing the connection between the, then expanding, welfare state and the deterioration of the black family. Perhaps the left should be sued for ignoring this, much more destructive, policy.
The claim includes that Humble Oil know that a CO2 increase was likely to cause global warming. How much? Detectable? Is the rise in CO2 cause by the oceans or burning fuels? Will the warming cause harm or good? Or both?
It was also known that increasing the level of CO2 would increase crop yields. Is the benefit of this also-known-fact to be balanced against the putative harm claimed by the accusers?
On that basis, the benefit to the food supply, the ‘fine’ for conspiring with stupendous foreknowledge that is still unavailable to modern researchers, would have to include whether or not, on balance, increased CO2 causes any net harm at all.
Because the CO2 level was lower and temperatures higher 8500 years ago, and because food grows faster now all over the world, even in tropical jungles at risk from deforestation, the overall benefits will easily outweigh any putative and as yet unprovable ‘damage’. It might end up with Exxon sending a bill to the people of the world for all that CO2. Better yet, a CO2 tax on the beneficiaries payable to Big Oil and Big Coal so that they may long continue to benefit all the peasant agriculture that the developed nations have barely helped with, save selling them hybrid seeds at high prices.
The Robinson Report cites Moller (1963) as the source of a 1-7°F rise in temperature due to a 25% ris in. The abstract of the paper says…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877/abstract?systemMessage=Subscribe+and+renew+is+currently+unavailable+online.+Please+contact+customer+care+to+place+an+order%3A++http%3A%2F%2Folabout.wiley.com%2FWileyCDA%2FSection%2Fid-397203.html++.Apologies+for+the+inconvenience.