By Randal Utech — September 19, 2024
“The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool.”
“Exxon Knew” is a political-lawyer campaign focusing on certain internal company documents to make a case that the oil major knew that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were a future threat to human betterment.
Smoking gun? Hardly.
A half century later, the IPCC is still trying to update and figure out physical climate science. Exxon did not do a study on the benefits of CO2 or the offset of sulfur dioxide emissions. The concern way back then was Global Cooling, Peak Oil, and Peak Gas. And as the company knew, fossil fuels had no viable substitute, as in wind and solar.
This historical correction has been documented in many posts here at MasterResource, including:
Big Oil, Exxon Not Guilty as Charged: Six-part Rebuttal (September 22, 2022)
‘ExxonKnew’: More Correction (September 18, 2023)
Shell Knew? No (July 19, 2023)
Climate Alarmist as ExxonMobil Whistleblower (March 27, 2024)
In Search of the “Greenhouse Signal” in the 1990s (June 21, 2023)
Unsettled Science, IPCC-style (February 18, 2020)
It became my turn when I encountered this argument by Mark Burger on social media, He stated:
As opposed to fossil fuel industries war on hiding their impacts for decades? One example: “Exxon scientists predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy,’ Harvard researchers say“
My Rebuttal
To which I respond (expanded from my reply on social media):
To say that Exxon knew the truth back in the early 80s is a laughable fallacy. Effectively they built a primitive model that is characteristically similar to the erroneous modern climate models of today.
Fundamentally their work is based on the poorly understood climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from radiative convective models and GCM models. To their credit, they actually acknowledged the high degree of uncertainty in these estimations. Today, even Hausfather (2022 vs 2019) is beginning to understand the climate sensitivity (ECS) is too high. CMIP6 is running still even hotter than CMIP5 and using ECS of 3 to 5° C rather than ~ 1.2° C as highlighted in Nick Lewis’s 2022 study.CMIP6 should have been better because it incorporated solar particle forcing (Matthes et. al.) and as they incorporate more elements of natural forcing (an active area of research as we still do not have a predictive theory for climate), the effect is highlighting more underlying problems with the models.
However, Exxon investigators fell into the same trap that climate modelers of today where they build the models to history match temperatures and then wow, because they can create a model that appears to history match temperatures, they assume it is telling them something. Truth? Anyone can create a model to do this, but it would never mean the model is correct. While the models today are much more complex, they are based on a complex set of non-linear equations, and the understanding of the various sources of nonlineararity is poor. This opens up wide degrees of uncertainty yet wide opportunity for tuning. Furthermore, natural forcing is undercharacterized and deemed inconsequential.
The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool. Current climate models, much more sophisticated, face the same problem of unknown, false causality.
————-
Randall Utech, former Advisor Geoscientist at Schlumberger, has researched climate science for nearly 30 years with emphasis on geology, paleoclimate, and the glacial cycles. An interview with him by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists can be found here. Utech is author of On the Benefits of CO2 (April 11, 2023).
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There is a copy of the Exxon report here:
https://www.juststopnetzero.com/
It is towards the bottom of the page on an orange link.
Estimates of polar ice melting were from several hundred to a thousand years.
“Estimates of polar ice melting were from several hundred to a thousand years.”
As does the IPCC …..
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/factsheets/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Regional_Fact_Sheet_Polar_regions.pdf
“At sustained warming levels between 2°C and 3°C, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will be lost almost completely and irreversibly over multiple millennia; both the probability of complete loss and the rate of mass loss increase with higher surface temperatures.”
What is it like to be so utterly whatever it is you are? Depressed? Suicidal? Just misanthropic?
Don Quixote made more sense.
Whatever you say I am.
Couldn’t give a sh**t.
Couldn’t give a sh**t.
That was clear in your original post, which prompted the question you declined to answer.
Obviously, you don’t care to listen to people smarter than you. 🙂
An ‘insecuriority complex’ – a subtle blend of insecurity and inferiority.
How about something approximating to substance about the fact that my comment shows that something Exxon said matches that of the IPCC.
(one of many)
And no, it’s just fun calling out the hypocricy.
“a subtle blend of insecurity and inferiority”
And as is often the case on here to anyone not singing with the choir and answering the dog whistle, it was responded to with an ad hom.
Does it make you feel superior accusing me of “insecurity and inferiority”?
Ok, you seem to think that just because Exxon made a comment decades ago that matched an IPCC comment that it means something, or is “significant.” However, you seem to not understand or just plain ignore spurious correlation. If you cherrypick enough comments from Exxon then search IPCC publications I’m sure (97.06% probability) that you will find many comments that match by pure randomness or chance (yes, I know “chance” is not causative. Don’t sick Briggs on me).
that’s why you’re being mocked. the correlation, or “match”, is meaningless.
Who cares what Exxon said decades ago. What with the climate alarmists screaming for decades- people continued to like fossil fuels. Go yell at them for daring to like their ICE cars and oil home furnaces. What’s to be gained by trying to bring down a big oil producer, other than drive up oil prices and inflation? And if what they said matches the IPCC- you seem to be assuming the IPCC is like the Vatican, always right on doctrinal issues. It ain’t. You should consider that maybe both were wrong.
I asked you a question. And you declined to answer it.
Perhaps that makes you feel somehow superior.
You will always be a VICTIM of your own ignorance..
… and inability to look beyond your pay-check and brain-washing.
You will always look like a brain-washed moron.
That would be the scientists collated by the IPCC.
oooo! scientists!
Collated by a baseless agenda-driven propaganda unit.
Utterly meaningless… just like your comments.
I personally only know two scientists (very top guys in relevant fields) who participated in the IPCC circus. They both became complete CAGW skeptics as evidence came to light.
The reports are written by volunteers and curated by political appointees with a clear agenda. The unpaid volunteers are giving them their money’s worth and the appointees come pre-brain-washed. RCP8.5? What a clown show. Literally no one believes it.
What did Exxon know? They didn’t even know the PDO and ENSO existed. How could they possibly have made meaningful impact projections? They knew the Earth’s temperature peaked in the 1930’s after rising 1 degree C between 1850 and 1920, then fell most of that by the 70’s.
Further, Exxon hardly emits anything. It is emitted by people who buy and use their products: us.
Poor widdle banton. !! Such a sad pathetic little worm.
Irreversibly?
And that’s assuming such higher temperatures will last- one giant assumption inappropriate for a science discussion.
So, a prediction that, over a period of an undefined thousands of years, ice will melt if it gets warmer stays warm over that undefined thousands of years, is meaningful to you?
And you want it to be meaningful to us?
I remember causing a little bit of surprise on WUWT a decade ago, when I took some government estimates of polar ice mass and rate of polar melting, then did a math division to show it would take thousands of years to melt.
Some readers had the impression that melting would be fast enough to affect them.
So, “Exxon and Sherrington knew”???
People need to distinguish between unsupported belief (including making stuff up) and scientific research.
The first is widespread,promoted by ignorant activists as it it is advertising material, while the second is structured on past experience, has rules and requires ethical considerations like truth. They are worlds apart.
I was in the global energy supply industry in Australia in the 1980s. The possibility of future harm from global warming might be caused by greenhouse gases was known but given no serious thought or research time because there was no evidence of anthropogenic CO2 causing warming when there should have been by activist numbers.
The demonization of CO2 came later when activists gained an audience for advertising. CAGW is still dependent on advertising to survive because its main predictions to date have failed. Geoff S
IPCC crystal balls .. cracked again… so painful !!
Hey nitwit-brain, check out Arctic summer sea ice extent if you dare. Tracked along with 2007 for a long time there, then it closed higher.
Your tribe’s canary in the coal mine is still chirping along very happily.
Although why you people would use Arctic sea ice extent as a proxy for global temperature is beyond me or any other scientist who has heard about more accurate proxies (like expansion of mercury in a thin tube, called a thermometer, oxygen brightness or the like, measured from a satellite, etc).
Here, I’ll be a nice guy and post your answer for you, save you the trouble:
Anthony Banton: I never said that (in a loud authoritative voice).
Wow! What a prediction. “If it gets hot ice will melt.” And two different entities came up with it. Imagine that.
So instead of “Exxon Knew”, it should be “Exxon Estimates”.
A little less certain. But Climate Alarmists can’t use that to hit Exxon over the head with in the court room, so they claim “Exxon KNEW”.
It’s so ridiculous. Nobody knows.
Nobody knows now so how could Exxon know several decades ago? Absurd.
Time travel, or in the memorable words of Agent O in MIB 3, a temporal fracture.
Exactly. Someone tell us what ECS to a doubling of CO2 is, with a number in the answer.
Take baby steps even and tell us when there was a convention of climate “scientists” who defined what ECS actually is.
For now, Wikipedia is your friend.
Especially because I asked my new friend perplexity.ai for some help with this and although I need to translate, it is quite clear that ECS is a pile of shiite:
There is no clear formal definition of ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) provided in the given search results. The results focus more on explaining what ECS is and its importance in climate science, rather than providing a formal definition.
Italics mine, from perplexity.ai. That’s funnier than even I expected. ECS, the most important number to climate crackpots and criminals has no definition.
Who woulda thought ??
Good one, Phil!
And the guesses for ECS extend from zeroC to about 5C per doubling of CO2. And nobody can say which end of the scale is closer to the truth. Even today.
Exxon had their estimates way back when, but they were just speculation, and certainly didn’t qualify as “Exxon KNEW”.
Nobody knows. Then or now.
Exxon Guessed. And that’s all it was. Claiming Exxon knew something definitive about CO2 and the Earth’s climate that they were not telling anyone is ridiculous.
Any lawsuits against Exxon on this subject should be laughed out of court by the judge.
Exactly, Joseph. We still don’t know what, if any, effects CO2 has on Earth’s temperatures or weather. So if we still don’t know this today, it is absurd to claim Exxon knew any more than anyone else, then or now.
Right on.
Exxon didn’t know squat. The IPCC doesn’t know squat now, so how could Exxon have known anything then? Exxon didn’t even estimate, they guessed and postulated. The IPCC is still guessing and postulating, and not very well, given the number of decades that have passed.
Basically the Exxon study says they looked at what was available, summarized is and concluded that nothing was certain there were too many unknowns to make a reliable estimate for the future.
If those Exxon scientists predicted with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ (the mother of all hyperboles), then what on Earth was academia doing? Twiddle their thumbs?
Mr Burger and Harvard are talking nonsense.
“then what on Earth was academia doing?”
They were speculating about CO2 just like the Exxon scientists were speculating about CO2.
The Exxon scientists were not operating on an island, cutoff from the scientific community. They were members of the scientific community, and everyone knew what everyone else was doing, as far as CO2 research was concerned.
Exxon scientists knew exactly what every other climate scientist of the era knew, and that was almost exclusively speculation, and assumptions about CO2, since there is no hard evidence for CO2’s interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. Going by climate history, CO2 has had no discernable effect on the Earth’s atmosphere. And that’s the most anyone can say about CO2. And that includes Exxon.
The Met Office predicts the next day’s weather with a complete, total and utter lack of skill and accuracy. ie Wrong.
And it really isn’t a one-off.
“Furthermore, natural forcing is undercharacterized and deemed inconsequential.”
So there was no climate change before there were humans. Didn’t know that.
As we know from the Bible, Adam and Eve were in Paradise, walking around naked- but they finally figured out sex, so God, being a mean old guy, kicked them out. Paradise of course had perfect weather- everything was perfect. Then Adam and Eve filled the world with their progeny- who raped and pillaged the planet. So we need to get back to a perfect planet- one where everyone is equal and the weather is always fine. To accomplish this, we’ll need Marxism. /s 🙂
But the garden of eden did have snakes.
So it wasn’t THAT perfect 🙂
And Marxist secular humanists playing G*d.
Oh yeah, that branch of Marxism that relies on the taxation industry. Jeeeez, I’m happy not to be participating in that one.
And we need to go back to being naked.
/s
We can grow fur for the colder weather, then shed it in warmer weather. 🙂
There was no climate change before SUVs.
From the article: ““Exxon Knew” is a political-lawyer campaign focusing on certain internal company documents to make a case that the oil major knew that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were a future threat to human betterment.”
Exxon still doesn’t know. And neither does anyone else. There is still no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth. There is no evidence that CO2 is causing the Earth’s temperatures to climb.
Climate Alarmists claim Exxon knew that CO2 would cause dangerous warming, but Exxon cannot have known this because nobody, including Climate Alarmists, know this.
CO2 climate science is made up totally of speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions. Climate Alarmists have no evidence that CO2 is doing what they claim it is doing: Disrupting Earth’s weather patterns for the worse.
Exxon doesn’t have any of this evidence, either. What Exxon had and has is just what everyone else has: Speculation and assumptions. No hard evidence whatsoever. None.
This CO2 charade had been going on for decades. And not one shred of evidence has ever been produced showing CO2 does anything to the Earth’s atmosphere/weather.
Human-caused Global Warming/Climate Change is a Mass Delusion, fed by the internet and the huge amounts of money to be made, and political power to be gained. Based on no evidence whatsoever that CO2 needs to be curtailed or manipulated in any way.
CO2-phobia = Mass Delusion.
bingo!
“knew that CO2 would cause dangerous warming“
If they did….. THEY WERE WRONG !!
But the didn’t know….not even remotely.
It was nothing but a “suggested” possibility in a minor report based on erroneous science.
Everything that Tom said.. 🙂
“”A half century later, the IPCC is still trying…””
Most universities are now more akin to mediaeval monasteries than places of open objective enquiry. They retain their place as seats of and guardians of learning, as did the old English Church, and with similar power and influence over the public realm. Excommunication (cancellation) and occasional extreme unction remain in play.
Evidence based policy – as they like to call it is in fact narrative based policy. Way back in the early noughties we were told – by New Labour – that this was their direction of travel, reason over emotion. Science over superstition.
To that end the Labour government held a review on drug policies.
“”It should be self-evident that decisions on Government policy ought to be informed by sound evidence … science research ought to be contributing a major part of that evidence base. It should be playing a key role in helping us to decide our overall strategies.”” – David Blunkett {Labour).
Blunkett duly received the evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs… and didn’t like what he saw at all (emotion over reason) and…
“”THE Government’s drugs advisory panel was in turmoil last night after the Home Secretary angered scientists by dismissing their lead…””
As a mediaeval king might say: “I like not this news, bring me some other news”.
And here we are.
My experience is that, at least here in Colorado, the university has become more like a circus, with a bunch of freak shows operating concurrently with absurdities abounding.
I was present in a small meeting a few years ago when a director told us that he did everything possible to get Roger Pielke, Jr. out of the department and made sure that he couldn’t come back. Amongst this, Pielke was pilloried, for example in one way by being forced into smaller office space that was more akin to a closet but with a hallway window, so that passerbys could scoff at the freak. The message was that settled climate narrative is sacrosanct and deviants will be punished.
I find the beauty and naivety of youth among students to be refreshing still, but I’m saddened by obvious physical and mental health degradation from the time that I walked on campus as a student.
The sight of so many 300 plus pound males and females wobbling about saddens me. Why are there so many now? What’s going to happen to them in a few short decades? I suppose that their caskets will be supersized.
The demographics of Colorado is that of a predominantly white population state and this is a challenge to departmental diversity managers. But somehow they have been able to find lots of purple and pink hair individuals to fill openings. What is most absurd to me is the plethora of male to female trans people. I saw a trans female the other day that looked more like a tight-end on the football team than a real woman. There probably is way too much soy in our diets.
All I know is that something is really amiss. University life today is some weird combination of Faulkner and Orwell.
“All I know is that something is really amiss.”
It’s all according to the Radical Left’s plans for us. They have to destroy the current society in order to rebuild it into a socialist paradise. So they begin by upsetting all societal norms.
We are in the “destroy the society” stage right now.
As for the obesity, I would have to blame fast food for that. When I was a kid, every kid in class was slim and trim with maybe one exception. One out of 30 kids.
After the Challenger explosion In 1987, I volunteered to teach astronomy and space science to elementary school students at the school where my mother taught, and was amazed to see that probably half the class was overweight.
Excess weight is a major health risk. I believe it is claimed that each pound of body fat contains about one mile of blood vessels within it, so losing weight will take a lot of stress off your heart if you reduce the number of miles of vessels your heart has to pump blood through.
And fat causes its own set of physical ailments.
The best health action anyone can do is to lose weight, if they are overweight. That will solve a lot of problems.
“and didn’t like what he saw at all”
I don’t want to make light of this and there but for the grace of God go I, but you do know that he has been blind from birth ??
This cartoon appears on page 62 of the Charleston SC lawsuit and nearly every other junk climate lawsuit:
The exact same image, including the caption is in Delaware’s recent junk lawsuit. The graph is from what is known as the “Black presentation” and supposedly reveals Exxon’s secret knowledge of climate change, which was being withheld from the public. The “infamous” 1978 Black presentation was derived from government and academic publications and conferences on the so-called greenhouse effect.
Here’s what Exxon (and/or Mobil) knew in 1978…
Exxon knew that most government and academic scientists wanted more research money.
In 1978, Exxon knew that the effects on sea level and the polar ice caps would likely be negligible, models were useless and more effort should be directed at paleoclimatology.
Black’s allegedly proprietary climate model was just a cartoon based on publicly available literature. I overlaid HadCRUT4 (Northern Hemisphere) on th Black cartoon:
If HadCRUT4 is right (it isn’t), it’s now only slightly warmer than the “approximate range of undisturbed climate in past few centuries.” Just like the models of today, the observations track at or below the 95% confidence band. Way back in 1977, Exxon Knew that the climate models overestimated warming!
What’s even funnier? The “Black presentation” was made during the height of That 70’s Climate Crisis Show. If the climate models are correct (they aren’t), ExxonMobil and other purveyors of fossil fuels saved the world from this:
Having spent the past 43 years as a geophysicist and geologist in the oil & gas industry, I can proudly say,”You’re welcome!”
HadCrud is based on URBAN temperatures.
Urban densification and expansion, bad site placement with some really bad homogenisation routines has caused a significant part of the warming in HadCrud.
It is inadmissible as a measure of actual “global” warming.
Also, the latter half of last century was a “grand solar maximum”, so the projections of cooling , were just idiotic.
That’s why I wrote:
😎
Yes chaps that 7000 yr old tree stump that got flooded by the sea concurs with the geology of Hallett Cove in South Australia which shows how the sea level rose 130 metres from 15000 years ago to around that time-
Scientists study ancient stump revealed by tide on WA’s Wharton Beach | Watch (msn.com)
According to the current Rainbow Serpent Dreaming in our venerable halls of wisdom that must have been caused by aboriginal cooking fires and burnoffs to flush out game. Keep on digging to get to the bottom of it.
And then we have the “Greta problem,” Greta whose only meaning in life is to propagandize. What has Greta Thunberg’s campaigning achieved? Hundreds of thousands of young people around the world joined the “Fridays for Future strikes. “Although Ms. Thunberg has not devised any specific environmental strategies, she is credited with raising public awareness of climate change across the world, especially amongst young people. Many commentators call this “the Greta effect” a.k.a. nothing more than propaganda. Greta has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year between 2019 … and 2023, and in 2019, she became the youngest-ever “Time Person of the Year.” She was mocked on Twitter by former U.S. President Donald Trump when she won the Time magazine award (who) said: “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem… Chill Greta! Chill !”. Russian President Vladimir Putin described her as a “kind, but poorly informed, teenager.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49918719 This is Propaganda On a Grand Scale. UN agencies should not be permitted to propagandize issues but stay with facts. Problem is the facts are based on data manipulation and modeling by persons who personally who are acting out of their own interests, to gain (a lot) by propagandizing, i.e., they are on the payroll. Data manipulated to reach a predetermined outcome, conclusions made based on a show of hands.
I’ll go one better. UN agencies should not be permitted.
The entire organization was created with a single goal, that being to cripple the West and place the planet under elite control. The IPCC, et. al. are performing exactly as designed.
The abuse of our justice/court system must stop.
…… and, on the Greta post above, child abuse too.
Did they all get rich out of her future issues ?? A-holes all of them.