Exxon Scientists

[Cypress]

Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better

Research shows that company modeled and predicted global warming with 'shocking skill and accuracy' starting in the 1970s

Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to an analysis published Thursday in Science by a team of Harvard-led researchers.

Despite those forecasts, team leaders say, the multinational energy giant continued to sow doubt about the gathering crisis

The Harvard team discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate.

“This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.”


https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/

 

[Phantasmal]

Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better

Research shows that company modeled and predicted global warming with 'shocking skill and accuracy' starting in the 1970s

Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to an analysis published Thursday in Science by a team of Harvard-led researchers.

Despite those forecasts, team leaders say, the multinational energy giant continued to sow doubt about the gathering crisis

The Harvard team discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate.

“This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.”


https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/

I wish they could be sued like the tobacco industry.

 

[Cypress]

I wish they could be sued like the tobacco industry.

There have been efforts to sue Exxon for it's climate deception,but I don't think they have gained traction.


Can you please delete my other thread on Exxon? Somehow two threads got posted

 

[Phantasmal]

Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better

Research shows that company modeled and predicted global warming with 'shocking skill and accuracy' starting in the 1970s

Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to an analysis published Thursday in Science by a team of Harvard-led researchers.

Despite those forecasts, team leaders say, the multinational energy giant continued to sow doubt about the gathering crisis

The Harvard team discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate.

“This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.”


https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/

Remember Jimmy Carter putting solar panels on the WH and Ronnie Raygun taking them off.

 

[Cypress]

Remember Jimmy Carter putting solar panels on the WH and Ronnie Raygun taking them off.

I do indeed. Even as a teenager I wondered what the harm was in leaving those solar panels in place

 

[Phantasmal]

I do indeed. Even as a teenager I wondered what the harm was in leaving those solar panels in place

Right! It was just another Republican making a point. Dumb

 

[AProudLefty]

Here comes the usual suspects.

 

[Cypress]

Right! It was just another Republican making a point. Dumb

Dick Cheney said something about conservation being some kind of virtue signaling, but not viable public policy.

 

[Phantasmal]

Dick Cheney said something about conservation being some kind of virtue signaling, but not viable public policy.

Don’t you hate it when you have to agree with Cheney!

 

[Cypress]

Don’t you hate it when you have to agree with Cheney!

I saw internal staff memos at Exxon which stated that undue attention on climate change and global warming was a threat to our business model.

 

[Saint Guinefort]

I wish they could be sued like the tobacco industry.

Exxon's researchers were working at a time when the corporation was thinking of diversifying away from fossil fuels and going into greener fuels as well. The change happened in early 1980's when a new CEO came in and decided that the company was going to double down on fossil fuel energy and shuttered the climate research ongoing.

The scientists at Exxon were doing a pretty good job and they were finding ample evidence of AGW as a real thing.

 

[Noking]

It is well known that the fossil fuel companies have been buying-off our elected officials and funding anti-green gas dis-information for years.

 

[serendipity]

Don’t you hate it when you have to agree with Cheney!

Not this old chestnut yet again, it's bullshit which is why you lap it up!!

If you, like most of your fellow compatriots, have been consumed lately by the gripping impeachment drama in Washington (yawn), or the scurrilous accusation that the New England Patriots would actually cheat to win (groan), or the news that back-broken Harvey Weinstein has bribed his way out of prison (phew) … then you probably weren’t paying attention a few weeks ago when a significant, long-awaited court case was decided in New York City.

If so, you’re to be forgiven, because The New York Times also buried the court decision—New York State v. Exxon Mobil—even though that paper had engaged in a five-year, front-page crusade to, well, bury the oil company for its alleged role in perpetuating global warming.

In a day marked by “alternative facts” and “false assertions” and “Pinocchio fact checks” and “fake news,” the fact that dreaded Exxon prevailed despite a tidal wave of relentless negative publicity should be welcome news to any communicator who believes in the power of truth over distortion, bullying and hysteria.

In case you missed it, here’s a brief synopsis of the campaign—not-so-subtly engineered by the formally-objective New York Times—to bring Exxon down.

The Times’ anti-Exxon march began in 2015, when it ran a glowing profile—how many times has that happened? —of Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, a prominent climate change advocate and virulent Exxon enemy (although she demurely denies it).

The Times gushed over Prof. Oreskes’ book, “Merchants of Doubt,” which questioned the motives and morals of scientists, such as those at Exxon who played down the dangers of climate change.

Later that year, the Times announced breathlessly that New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, drawing liberally from Prof. Oreskes’ research, had subpoenaed Exxon to investigate whether the company lied to the public and investors about the risks of climate change. After the uber-ambitious Schneiderman was "#MeTooed" out of his job, his AG successors passionately picked up the anti-Exxon cudgel.
Over the next five years, the Times—a notoriously difficult medium for publicity-seeking public relations representatives to crack—nonetheless dutifully awarded Prof. Oreskes ample space to publish both “research studies” that challenged Exxon’s knowledge of climate change as well as op-ed articles elaborating on why her research was right.

The Times next appointed a full-time climate change reporter, a decent chap named John Schwartz, to focus on Exxon as the ringleader of climate change deniers.

It was Schwartz’s task to remind readers periodically of Exxon’s alleged deceit … first revealing that other state AGs had joined the New York Exxon investigation … then reporting on the “seminal” Oreskes’ research of how Exxon misled the public … and finally announcing on Page One in 2018 that New York State had filed suit against Exxon for defrauding shareholders about the risks of climate change.

Triumphantly, in October 2019, Mr. Schwartz and the Times informed its readers—on the front page—that at long last, “New York Sues Exxon Mobil, Saying it Deceived Shareholders on Climate Change.”

During the trial’s three months, the Times remained in attack mode, periodically allowing Exxon enemies to hyperventilate on the op-ed page, hoping against hope to influence the judge to find the company guilty of sins against humanity.

Typical of the op-ed opprobrium was a hysterical rant by a notorious Exxon hater halfway through the trial that called out the company and its industry for knowing full well that they were the primary culprits for a “planet headed toward a climate catastrophe, but they keep drilling away, trying to squeeze the last nickel from their deadly product.”

The writer concluded by applying a bit of what might graciously be characterized as “good-natured pressure” on the judge in the case by calling him out by name and beseeching him to “determine whether Exxon’s misrepresentations violated New York securities law.”

In the end, of course, as the Times reported in a short piece hidden inside the paper that you likely missed, the judge found in favor of Exxon. Indeed, despite the hysterical rantings of its critics, aided and abetted over the years by The New York Times, the judge concluded that the state “failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence” that Exxon had done anything wrong.

After the verdict, the company commented that the case affirmed its position from the beginning that it had reported accurately over the years as the science on climate change became more certain and that the whole orchestrated campaign against it was, therefore, baseless.


https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/13560/2019-12-23/exxon-wins-truth-prevails.html

 

[serendipity]

I must just post climate scientist Roy Spencer's view on all this back in 2015.

Well Bam, There it Is: Exxon Mobil Investigated by NY Attorney General

I suppose this was inevitable, and Exxon Mobil probably expected it as well.

According to the Justin Gillis NYT story, the New York attorney general’s “investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research.”

The thing that astounds me about this is, as far as I know, Exxon Mobil “scientific research” would not have uncovered anything that was not already widely hypothesized (not “known”) by the scientific community, Al Gore, Greenpeace, school teachers, Hollywood actors, your 8 yr old son, et al.

How one compares a tobacco company cover-up of evidence that smoking kills millions of people, to human-caused climate change, which cannot be demonstrated to have occurred let alone cause even one death (or even inconvience) is beyond me.

But then, we live in a brave new world, don’t we.

That this was coming can be seen from the popular meme that conflates “climate change” with “human caused climate change”. For example, a few months ago The Guardian had a headline which crowed, “Exxon knew of climate change in 1981“.

What a stupid headline. Of course “climate change” exists. Medieval farmers enjoyed the fruits of it. Vikings in Greenland cursed it.

We knew about climate change long before Al Gore earned his “D” in Natural Science and decided to become an expert on the subject.

Natural climate change has caused (or at least contributed to) millions of deaths over the centuries. But our use of fossil fuels has enabled a level of prosperity which has made us much more resilient to climate change and weather disasters, maybe akin to the prosperity enjoyed in Medieval times when warmer conditions prevailed.

Where are the studies to investigate the possibility that modest warming has actually prevented severe weather? Major tornadoes and hurricanes in the U.S. have certainly seen a downturn in recent years. Maybe Exxon Mobil should be charging extra for this ‘positive externality’?

What about all the prevented cold weather, which still kills many more people than hot weather?

Instead, every bad thing that happens in weather is now blamed on carbon dioxide emissions. Too hot. Too cold. Not enough snow. Too much snow. It’s all our fault.

Medieval witchcraft. Time to burn some CEOs at the stake.

Even though sea level was slowly rising long before CO2 could be blamed, we now blame it on your SUV. In order to even begin to blame it even partially on CO2, the rise should be accelerating, which it (arguably) hasn’t.

Investigating Exxon Mobil for some sort of undisclosed knowledge of “climate change” is like investigating the agricultural industry for undisclosed knowledge that too much food can make people fat…except that there isn’t even any human fingerprint of global warming, like there is a stomach-print of overeating.

Or, maybe a better analogy is an investigation into the Mexican or Italian food industry for their secret knowledge that their spicy food causes peptic ulcers…except that theory was finally debunked, despite a 99% consensus in the medical community.

It’s easy to go after corporate giants, since they have so much money. Too bad people don’t realize the reason these corporations are so rich is they provide us with a standard of living we want more than other things we could have spent that money on. Econ 101.

And natural climate change is Climatology 101.

Or, at least it used to be.

DISCLOSURE: I’ve been known to give Exxon Mobil money in exchange for gasoline. But I usually use Chevron gas, which contans Techron which keeps my intake manifold and valves clean.

https://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/1...on-mobil-investigated-by-ny-attorney-general/

 

[serendipity]

I wish they could be sued like the tobacco industry.

Why don't you sue the Mexican and Italian food industries for their secret knowledge that their spicy food causes peptic ulcers? Except that theory has been comprehensively debunked, despite a 99% consensus in the medical community at one time. Phanny, you're a moron as are your fellow camp followers. You're also a stinking hypocrite as your hubby Bud worked in the oil industry which gave you a comfortable living and allows you to lie down next to your swimming pool smoking white Havanas all day.