Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings 255
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."
Exxon MADE the hard decision (Score:3)
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No, people filling up their tanks made the decision for them.
Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.
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No, people filling up their tanks made the decision for them.
Exxon could have stopped refining oil and nothing in the world would have changed.
yeah, if they had gone into the solar panel business, we could be selling solar panels to china, but no.
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How many solar panels does BP sell in China?
Before making an assertion, you should check if other companies did what you suggest and look at what actually happened.
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MOST oil companies tried to go the solar route. At one point BP was the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world.
Also you fail at history. Exxon bankrolled Solar Power Corporation back in the 70s. Eventually that was sold to Royal Dutch Shell, and then divested out of the oil industry in 2006.
Most of the western oil companies had some stake in renewable energies. Solar particularly they all got their asses handed to them and divested in the last 10 years.
As a side note, I think you have an ignorant sol
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Re:Exxon MADE the hard decision (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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And the real criminals are not people who design malware, it's the people who use computers.
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Yes, but only if the beer manufacturers spent hundreds of billions of dollars making sure that pregnant women think that getting drunk while pregnant is 100% safe.
A much closer comparison would be the tobacco industry.
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Yep.
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No suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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LOL as if the black & white options are the only options. You should read 50 shades of grey. And learn how we can get fucked better.
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So, what you're saying is that not only did the market fail to address global warming, but it would punish any business who did. Color me shocked.
Same as the tobacco industry then.. (Score:2, Informative)
Another similarity; both oil and tobacco industry have huge PR and lobby efforts to continue misleading and confuse the topic and as much as possible avoid that anything is done about it.
Versus doing what? (Score:5, Interesting)
What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings? Can you describe the decision-making process you wish they'd followed?
It's the same for the rest of us as it is for Exxon -- just less existential. We've been "warned". Yet we go on with our lives. The warnings get louder and more shrill and catastrophic and angry. And we still go on with our lives. Eventually this should stop being a big surprise.
Re:Versus doing what? (Score:5, Informative)
What were they supposed to do to not be accused of "ignoring" warnings? Can you describe the decision-making process you wish they'd followed?
They are an energy company, not an oil company. Just imagine if they had invested heavily in solar technology. All that money we are paying to the Chinese for solar panels, we could be paying it to them instead. BUT NO.
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Would people buy solar panels made by Exxon? Why would anyone expect Exxon would be good at making solar panels? Why would an Exxon executive think Exxon would be good at making solar panels?
When you tell yourself a story about Exxon making solar panels, does it seem like a believable story?
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Would people buy solar panels made by Exxon? Why would anyone expect Exxon would be good at making solar panels? Why would an Exxon executive think Exxon would be good at making solar panels?
When you tell yourself a story about Exxon making solar panels, does it seem like a believable story?
Shell, Arco, and BP are all making and selling solar panels, why not?
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Shell, Arco, and BP are all making and selling solar panels, why not?
So if they sold as many solar panels as Shell, Arco, or BP, they'd be immune to criticism? It seems like environmentalists still complain about Shell, Arco, and BP.
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What evidence can you show us that there's any less complaining about Shell, Arco, and BP? How much less? Is "less complaining" a great outcome that they should spend their days working toward?
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what evidence can you show that your stupid argument has any relevance whatsoever?
My argument is relevant because Exxon is being criticized. But they're going to be criticized no matter what. They "ignored" warnings. But if they had taken action instead, there's no reason to think they'd be treated any better or be better off in any way.
"They did nothing!!!"
"What should they have done? How would that have helped them?"
"Irrelevant."
Irrelevant? Really?
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My argument is relevant because Exxon is being criticized. But they're going to be criticized no matter what. They "ignored" warnings. But if they had taken action instead, there's no reason to think they'd be treated any better or be better off in any way.
So if exxon had invested their outrageous profits in solar energy and become the #1 vendor of solar panels, nobody would think any differently of them?
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So if exxon had invested their outrageous profits in solar energy and become the #1 vendor of solar panels, nobody would think any differently of them?
That's all it takes to become the #1 vendor of solar panels?
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That's all it takes to become the #1 vendor of solar panels?
it's how they became the #1 vendor of oil
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it's how they became the #1 vendor of oil
They aren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Oil companies don't make "outrageous profits". Corporations on average make about 7% profits; Exxon fluctuates between 5-10%.
Solar panel companies have had poor profitability, and the profits they do make are largely derived from lobbying and crony capitalism. Exxon would have been foolish to switch their business to solar panels. But if you think solar panels are a great thing, by all means, invest your money in them.
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Investing in solar during the 70s wouldn't have generated a return for another 30+ years.
Energy companies invest ALL THE TIME in new chemical technologies that won't be profitable for decades.
There was plenty of time to wait and see if the prediction turned out to be correct and if some alternative energy source would come along to save the day.
plenty of time? exxon has ALREADY missed the boat on solar panel research.
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Even now it is only profitable because of government intervention in the market.
That may have been true in the 70s, but it's not today in most "industrialized" energy markets. Even with no subsidies, the cost of solar PV has dropped so much in recent years that it's now competitive with coal, when you amortize the cost of installation over the life of the system. And those gov't subsidies are disappearing rapidly anyway. Even California's will be gone in a few years.
If CO2 doubles by around 2050 the problem was literally a lifetime away.
No, the problem is already here:
- increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, worldwide
- decreased ar
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Hm... just noticed a slight error, due to ambiguity in the GP...
If CO2 doubles by around 2050 the problem was literally a lifetime away.
My brain "saw" the present-tense verb and missed the past-tense verb that followed. So I understand that my comment does not directly address the actions of Exxon in the 70s. But the broader point of my comment still stands.
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In fact, the report advised a wait-and-see attitude based on all available scientific data. So, it's not that they ignored the advice of their scientists, they actually followed it.
The scientific situation hasn't changed much in the last 30 years. (1) The planet is getting warmer (mainly at the poles). (2) That will lead to changes in climate, redistribution of arable lan
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There is little reason to believe that massive government intervention at this point is would be either beneficial or effective in the long run, and it would certainly be quite harmful in the short run.
I know, right? the government made an effort to save lives on the road, and over the decades it's only saved about a million lives, really just nothing at all.
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So you are saying that because some government regulations are useful, people should unquestioningly accept all government regulations, no matter what? Or what exactly is your point?
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... and did nothing about it.
Versus doing what? Tell us.
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What wrong with "they did nothing about it" then? Maybe they did everything they could think of. They did at least as much as you can think of. Maybe you should be congratulating them on doing everything anyone could think of at the time.
of course they ignored the evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
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)
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and without government you have far, far worse problems than all of the problems with government x100,000
if you don't understand that you are indeed, objectively speaking, a socially retarded quack
The headline is wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
Exxon didn't "Ignore Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings". It, knowing that AGW was real, defunded the research that proved it and paid professional science deniers to spread FUD claiming that AGW didn't exist.
read the report, not the spin (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of the biased article, read what the report actually concludes:
http://insideclimatenews.org/s... [insideclimatenews.org]
The report also points out that temperature increases would not be uniform, with strong increase at the polar caps and little increase near the equator.
The interesting thing is that little has changed about these conclusions in the last 30 years; science has produced a lot of new data, but the conclusions have changed little.
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Instead of the biased article, read what the report actually concludes:
http://insideclimatenews.org/s... [insideclimatenews.org]
The report also points out that temperature increases would not be uniform, with strong increase at the polar caps and little increase near the equator.
The interesting thing is that little has changed about these conclusions in the last 30 years; science has produced a lot of new data, but the conclusions have changed little.
38 years.
And things have changed, the later 21st century is 38 years closer, the uncertainties a lot smaller, and alternative sources of energy a lot more mature.
But it is somewhat surprising how close the projections were at that time.
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Things have changed, but the conclusions haven't: the temperature predictions are still pretty much the same, their consequences are still as much guesswork now as back then, and the cost of intervention is much higher now; on balance, government should still not intervene.
And the best strategy is to focus on economic growth so that they will soon become actu
Let's personalize this a bit... (Score:3)
Sometimes we have a better understanding of things when we make it a bit more personal...
Now... do you need coffee and tea more than you need electricity? more than you need manufactured goods? If you believe the answer to be "no", then this just became even more personal.
Sure, we could force all countries to have military rule and force all fossil and nuclear fuels to "end" business and switch to very very expensive alternatives. We could do that I suppose. But I think it would have to be done by force. The general populace won't give up tea and coffee easily.
With that said, a lot of these "evil" companies hedge their bets and spend a lot of money researching alternative sources just in case they are forced to change.
Now... the pain of switching, if done over a very long period of time... it's quite possible we would be ok with regards to our personal lifestyles (indeed, not talking about readers here, but the truth is, there has been some change already, just maybe not enough at a fast enough pace). However, since the "evil" potential is still out there, then the truly evil (not the current oil, gas, coal and nuclear companies) could exploit those technologies and possibly cause problems.... just saying...
With that said, if we can turn an alternative into a viable cheap and reliable solution that is economically better than oil, gas, coal and nuclear, then those big companies will change very very quickly. No sense being stuck in the past doing something more expensive.
Best solution happens at the consumer/people level. If "we" stop using "evil" energy. If "we" stop using the "evil". If we stop drinking coffee and tea... they (the evil companies) are forced to change. Are you ready? Currently the answer is a very clear "no".
Stuff to ponder...
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If everyone had to pay an extra $5 per cup of coffee, and if all that extra revenue were redistributed equally to everyone (even those who don't drink coffee), then I think we would collectively drink a lot less coffee, and nobody except the heaviest coffee drinkers would be worse financially. Poor people who don't drink coffee would benefit the most in proportion to their income.
Would people go for a revenue-neutral coffee tax where everyone gets free money?
Re:About us (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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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 [skepticalscience.net] the "first doubling of atmospheric CO2" will happen by about 2050. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies [nasa.gov] 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
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Not alarmists and not wrong (Score:2)
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 [skepticalscience.net] the "first doubling of atmospheric CO2" will happen by about 2050. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies [nasa.gov] 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.
"Still might come to pass" in 2050 is far different than "5 to 10 years" from 1978. But keep moving the goal posts and you may eventually figure out a way to prove them right.
I can't find that purported prediction for "5 to 10 years" in either of the reports referenced. To the contrary, the reports very explicitly made no predictions for 5-10 years; it said that in that time period it would not be possible to distinguish the global warming signal from the statistical fluctuations. The only explicit numerical prediction in the 1978 Exxon report [insideclimatenews.org] is on page 34 (the very last page, labeled "summary"). This stated "Doubling CO_2 could increase average global temperature by 1C to
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Please read the actual words written. It helps. Just assuming that you are not here to start fires.
The key word for a start is "might" as in "might become critical".
There are at least two levels of indirection and conditional/probability in that statement. Failing to read them is failing to understand the meaning entirely.
Damon
Comparing Prediction To Data (Score:5, Informative)
So it looks like scientists have been wrong about their global warming predictions going on four decades. Or did I miss the great, impactful Exxon global warming crash of 1988?
I'm not sure what prediction you're saying is wrong. The Exxon 1982 report [insideclimatenews.org]) being discussed said:
"If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."
Since they said the signal doesn't exceed the noise until 1995, they didn't even make a prediction for 1988.
The report did have a statement that the greenhouse effect would produce 1C warming "above present levels" by "the second to third quarter of the next century" (page 2 of the pdf.)
Here's the graph of actual measured data:
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif [nasa.gov]
Fitting a line through that data starting with "present levels" of 1980, I see a rise of about 0.8 between 1980 and 2014. So looks like their prediction was very close to the data.
If anytjhing, their prediction was slightly low, but since in the same report they list an uncertainty of over 50% on model predictions, their prediction matches the measured data to well within their quoted error bars.
Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978! (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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No, that's not what they said (even if the article leads you to believe otherwise). Read the actual report that the article is based on. What the scientists actually said was that action on climate change was "premature" because of the "large scientific uncertainties" and the "severe impact of climate change policies on the world's economies".
http [insideclimatenews.org]
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What the scientists actually said was that action on climate change was "premature" because of the "large scientific uncertainties" and the "severe impact of climate change policies on the world's economies".
They DID "take action" on climate change, they hired a PR firm to lie for them.
Their scientists also told them that drilling for oil is uncertain and fraught with risks, but that didn't stop them from "taking action".
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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
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It doesnt. It states a timeframe for making decisions that will prevent the major impact without needing "hard decisions."
Where did you go wrong? I would guess it was in elementary school, but who knows....
Re:Alarmists - wrong on global warming since 1978! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Apparently you have the same inability to read the written word.
Where exactly in my post did I say anything for or against global warming?
However, your inability to understand what people say makes it really hard to take you or your arguments seriously.
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In the end, I have faith in the species to adapt or to invent technologies that actually will be helpful.
The "species will adapt" by going extinct, mother nature will shrug and life will go on without humans
Meaningless (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a great fan of back-of-the-envelope calculations... but these aren't calculations; they are merely assertions. And worse, not merely assertions, but assertions that seem to be based on random pseudo-facts not really understood.
Europe has the longest history of solar panel installation, and has good data for energy payback time. Energy payback time for silicon panels is between 0.5 and 1.4 years. Depending on location, it can be as high as 3 years in northern Europe.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/... [cleantechnica.com]
plus the whole poisoning China thing with harvesting rare earths
Do you even know what rare earth elements are? Almost all solar panels manufactured today are crystalline silicon. Silicon isn't a rare earth element.
In the end, I have faith in the species to adapt or to invent technologies that actually will be helpful. We're not there yet. Band-aid solutions in the short term are meaningless..
I agree with you there. I'm a technological optimist; if we can identify problems, we can solve them. However, ignoring and belittling the existence of problems isn't going to help, and dismissing possible solutions with slogans and sound-bites is counterproductive.
So are gotcha-type articles about Exxon.
The point of this article was that Exxon was a major funder of the campaigns to discredit the science of global warming in the '90s and early 2000s, even though a decade earlier their own scientists were telling them that this was significant. They spent about $30 million dollars funding climate denial.
On the other hand, they did stop most of their funding to the climate-change deniers in 2007, so it does seem to me to be mostly an article about a company that isn't really the problem any more.
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/17... [ecowatch.com]
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It's silly to be fanatical when there are no viable solutions.
yeah, it's better to lie back and allow death to take over instead of trying to fight back
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You see a pattern mostly because you have been pressing your fingers in your eyes so hard you're just seeing stars.
No warming in 18 years? Try pulling your fingers out of your eyes and see actual data.
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-... [nasa.gov]
And it's gotten hotter since that data was put there. But I'm sure you'll ignore that too.
EU Greenhouse gas emissions (Score:2)
Go look it up.
OK.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-... [europa.eu]
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-... [europa.eu]
Re:And so what, people still drove cars (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, they certainly were not going to back down and hand things over to nuclear. Their propaganda machine was already in full gear, and these finding would undermine their efforts;
Nuclear power’s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil, which had no problem with nuclear weapons, but was not happy to lose its grip on the world’s major source of energy. Nuclear energy was not under their control, requiring by definition major government involvement and regulation of the industry. Its widespread use would leave Big Oil with falling profits, and would mean the end of Big Oil’s economic hegemony.
This led to a bizarre situation where oil companies both founded and funded ecology-related organisations, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others to protest the peaceful use of nuclear power. These groups have all received backing from the oil industry, notably Atlantic Richfield Oil and BP
http://www.globalresearch.ca/b... [globalresearch.ca]
Of course, many still choose to believe and support big oil's agenda to the day.
Re:And so what, people still drove cars (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, there was great uncertainty about those findings at the time. We have struggled to build good models to the day.
Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.
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Their research into where to drill for oil also had great uncertainty, but that didn't stop them.
Lots of companies did research in their own fields to support their industry, so I am not sure of your point? Drilling uncertainty had a known cost/risk associated, they price that into their product.
Re:And so what, people still drove cars (Score:4, Insightful)
they price that into their product.
just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels. The long term outlook for solar panels is better than the long term outlook for oil. Don't believe me? Ask the saudis, with all the oil in the world they are still investing heavily in solar. Watch the world bypass the USA as it adapts solar and leaves us in the dust.
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just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels.
You mean like BP who started the solar business in the 80s and closed it in 2011?
Or like Royal Dutch Shell who started in 2002 and got out of it only about 6 years later?
Yes but where did it get them? Those poor deluded people at at Exxon only made more profit than the world's top 20 solar providers combined. They really made the wrong choice didn't they? /sarcasm
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they price that into their product.
just think how much more sales they would have today if they had heeded their own research and put some profits into solar panels. The long term outlook for solar panels is better than the long term outlook for oil. Don't believe me? Ask the saudis, with all the oil in the world they are still investing heavily in solar. Watch the world bypass the USA as it adapts solar and leaves us in the dust.
Why should we buy heavily into solar now? By continuing to pump oil even though the price is very low, the Saudi's are once again giving us a period of very cheap oil. Every few years they do this to slap the competition around. In addition to attempting to make US and Canadian high-cost competition go out of business, they are also slapping down the competition from renewables. The economics for an electric car don't look so great at current car and fuel prices.
They are investing in renewables becau
The actual reports (Score:5, Informative)
Inside the article are links to the scans of the actual reports done by Exxon.
* 1977 report, from James Black: http://insideclimatenews.org/s... [insideclimatenews.org]
* 1982 report from M. B. Glaser: http://insideclimatenews.org/s... [insideclimatenews.org]
They did state that there is no unambiguous evidence yet (as of 1982), but the 1982 report said: "If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."
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...the 1982 report said: "If the earth is on a warming trend, we're not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5 needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations."
It is most interesting that even internal oil company reports stated things like this, and that there are still people fervently in denial about global warming.
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Nuclear powerâ(TM)s main energy competitor is of course Big Oil
It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. Similarly, no one has a fission engine on their car. Similarly, there is no overlap in the other uses of oil such as chemical feedstock or asphalt road systems.
Coal is the fossil fuel competing head to head with nuclear.
Re:And so what, people still drove cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, no one has a fission engine on their car.
people are using energy from nuclear fission to power their cars, whether or not the reactor is attached to the car is irrelevant.
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I think a much better explanation for Big Oil funding of environmental organizations is protection money.
Fission Reactor in car (Score:3)
people are using energy from nuclear fission to power their cars, whether or not the reactor is attached to the car is irrelevant.
It's pretty damn relevant to the guy driving around with the nuclear reactor in his car.
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It's not. Almost no one burns oil for electricity. >
To add to my other reply, going back to the days when this propoganda was full force, oil was used heavily for home heating, for trains and ships, for heat in process plants, and as I said for electrical generation where oil generators were used the world over, particularly where coal supply was limited. That combined energy market was absolutely huge.
So yes, nuclear was seen as a big threat to big oil.
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"Big oil" also pumps out gas, which IS often used for electricity, much like oil. Nuclear energy is quite literally the only credible threat to the bottom line of oil companies. Even if they went nuke, their profits would dry up very very quickly as reactors tend to need far less fuel than their fossil fuel equivalents.
Two things to note. First, natural gas has been for decades used as peaking load. That means it is complementary to nuclear power to the degree that a higher use of nuclear power, which is a very inflexible power source, results in higher demand for natural gas to cover the variability that nuclear power can't cover.
Second, it doesn't even make sense to compare nuclear to fossil fuel by amount of fuel. Nuclear fuel rods are considerably more expensive, and upkeep and liability for nuclear plants is consi
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In the mid 70's the big scare was climate cooling, not climate warming.
If you wanted to believe some fringers, and some pop culture magazines that loved the frightening headlines.
All based on a couple years of whacky weather. Which many (most?) scientists said was partially based on destabilization, based on - you got it - Global warming.
One does not look outside the window, see it is hot or cold that day, and determine that AGW is either real or fake.
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Well, unless you're in congress. And want to base public policy on a snowball outside. Then you actually do look out the window to determine if AGW is fake.
You're insane and incomprehensibly wrong, but that's what you do.
Re:Something doesn't smell right... (Score:5, Informative)
In 2008, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a review [confex.com] of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1979. They found seven papers that pointed to global cooling and forty-four that indicated global warming.
You'll find a quick, 7-min summary in this video by Peter Hadfield (aka: Potholer54):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms&index=3 [youtube.com]
Re:Something doesn't smell right... (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that one guy at one company
BULLSHIT
A survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total). Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming (Peterson 2008). The large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than 1970s scientists predicting cooling, the opposite is the case.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
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^^^ This. Back then, conventional wisdom was that the earth was cooling and potentially headed for another ice age.
That's odd - I was working with scientists back in the day, and they thought no such thing. They thought that the couple years of off weather - which was what triggered the pop culture global cooling thought by fringers - was just a temporary anomaly. Which it turned out to be.
Otherwise, they thought that the greenhouse effect did exist.
Newsweek is not a peer reviewed science journal,
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That's odd - I was working with scientists back in the day, and they thought exactly that thing. They also were 100% certain the "population bomb" would see us in a post apocalyptic, cannibalistic society living a roving mad max style existence. The problem with claiming nobody I know believed it is that you didn't know anybody. It's called the the argumentum ad populum logical fallacy.
So you were working with scientists who were 100 percent sure of anything?
Ummm, no. if they were 100 percent sure of anything - they weren't scientists. Your handy little apocryphal story is seriously doubtful in its veracity.
Because if you ask a scientist about a population "bomb" as you put it, you'll get a dissertation first about Malthus, and how and why her was wrong, eg that Malthus did not factor in human ingenuity, and things like the green revolution - which was quite mature during the 1970's
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So the 'scientists' that say they are 100% sure climate change is mostly caused by humans aren't scientists? Good to know.
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So the 'scientists' that say they are 100% sure climate change is mostly caused by humans aren't scientists? Good to know.
You have their names? they need to lose their scientific chops, because noting in the universe is 100 percent certain. Ever.
Bad Exxon... (Score:2, Insightful)
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 inspec
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Re:Bad Exxon... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad Exxon... (Score:5, Informative)
This article AND summary are perfect examples. They say Exxon this, Exxon that, but there are no names.
You obviously didn't read any further than the first few paragraphs if you think that they didn't name any names. It was littered with direct quotes and even linked documents. Here are the names that I have found (either in the article or the linked source documents):
There is also a link at the end to a summary of the cast of characters [insideclimatenews.org]. To try and claim that this was some vague puff piece is itself an attempt to spread FUD about the article.
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I wonder what these guys think of he fact there's been no warming in nearly 20 years?
Typical response when a climate change denier has their argument countered: change the subject! Of the names listed that have been shown to have changed their stance at the orders of their bosses, there is no reason to care what they have on say on any subject now. So why would you want to know what they think about the slowdown of temperature rise over the last decade? The only reason to bring that up now is to attempt to muddy the debate and remove focus from the documented manipulation of the scientific
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What is desperate and pathetic is the Zealotry of the Alarmists:
Oh dear. Did you just go and change the topic again? Thanks for proving my point.
And which is the more zealous man; the one who claims the sky is blue or the other who insists that it is brown? I think that if you are going to call someone a zealot, it surely must be the one who disagrees with the entire body of people whose job it is to study that subject. How arrogant is it to claim that you know better than all the highly educated scientists who spend their entire lives specialising in studying the clima
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What exactly was Exxon supposed to do?
Distribute their profits to their shareholders, rather than organizing and donating to denialist advocacy groups.
If Exxon had ignored climate change, and continued to pump oil, that would have been acceptable. No rationale person expects corporations to be the conscience of our society. That is not their role. But Exxon went far beyond just ignoring the problem. They spread misinformation, and actively promoted lies.
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"Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored Its Own Early Climate Change Warnings"