Exxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming, Even as Company Cast Doubts, Study Finds

In the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon fitted one of the company’s supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the oceans and in the air, an early example of important research that the oil giant conducts on climate change science.

One new research published Thursday in the journal Science shows that in the coming decades, Exxon scientists have made amazingly accurate predictions about how much burning fossil fuels will heat the planet. go up. Their predictions were just as accurate, and sometimes more so, as predicted by independent academic and government models.

For years, however, the oil giant has publicly cast doubt on climate science and warned against any drastic move from burning fossil fuels, a major cause of climate change. Queen. Exxon also operates a public relations program — which includes Ads run on The New York Times — highlights the uncertainty in scientific research about global warming.

Lee Raymond, chief executive officer of the newly merged ExxonMobil Corp., said at the company’s annual meeting in 1999. “Global warming projections “are based on climate models entirely. unproven, or more often based on pure speculation.” an adequate scientific understanding of climate change to make reasonable predictions and/or justify drastic measures,” he said. wrote in a company brochure The next year.

In a statement, Exxon did not refer to the new study directly but said “those who talk about ‘Exxon Knew’ are wrong in their conclusions,” referring to a slogan by environmental activists. accused the company of misleading the public about climate science.

“ExxonMobil has a disciplined culture of analysis, planning, accounting and reporting,” the company added, quoting a judge in a favorable verdict in New York three years ago, although it was a case of corporate accounting practices rather than climate science.

The new study, from researchers at Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, builds on Report Shows For decades, Exxon scientists have warned their executives about “potentially catastrophic” human-caused climate change.

The burning of oil, gas and coal is raising Earth’s temperature and sea level with dire consequences worldwide, including intensifying storms, worsening droughts and more dangerous wildfires.

Other fossil fuel companieselectrical utilities, and car manufacturer has been criticized for downplaying the threat of climate change, even as its own scientists have warned of its dangers. In recent years, cities, counties and states have filed dozens of lawsuits accusing Exxon and other companies of misleading the public, and demanding billions of dollars in climate damages.

Last year, a House committee chief of baking oil, including Exxon’s current chief executive, Darren Woods, on whether the companies misled the public about climate. Mr Woods said the views were “completely consistent” with the scientific consensus at the time.

In the new study, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard, and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute, conducted a quantitative analysis of global warming predictions made or recorded by Exxon scientists since 1977. to 2003.

Those records, which include internal memos and peer-reviewed articles published with outside academic researchers, constitute the largest public collection of global warming projections ever published. recorded by a company, the authors said.

Overall, Exxon’s global warming projections closely track the subsequent temperature increase of about 0.2 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, the study found.

The company’s scientists have, in fact, ruled out the possibility of human-caused global warming not happening, the researchers found.

Exxon scientists also correctly dismissed the possibility of an impending ice age, even as the company continued to mention it in public communications; accurately predict when anthropogenic global warming was first detected; and estimate how much carbon dioxide could be added to the atmosphere before warming reaches a dangerous threshold, the study found. Some Exxon studies predict even sharper increases in temperatures than the planet has experienced.

“We now have solid, indisputable evidence that ExxonMobil correctly predicted global warming years before it turned around and openly attacked climate science,” said Dr Supran. and scientists”. “Our findings show that ExxonMobil’s public denial of climate science contradicts its own scientists’ data.”

William D. Collins, head of the Division of Climate & Ecosystem Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and who was not involved in the new study, called its analysis “very plausible”.

“This is the first paper I’ve seen that clearly and quantitatively compares ExxonMobil’s projections to the state of science,” said Dr. Collins, lead author of a chapter on climate prediction in a 2018 report. in the public domain”. by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of experts convened by the United Nations.

New research shows that Exxon’s forecasts are “very consistent over time,” he said. “They know all that. They’ve known it for decades.”

Edward Garvey, who was hired by Exxon in 1979 to help senior scientists at the time working on their supertanker project, said he was “not surprised that science got attention”.

Dr. Garvey and his colleagues set up a dedicated monitoring system aboard the 500,000-ton supertanker Esso Atlantic to record measurements of carbon dioxide in surface water and air as it traveled from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf. Persia — an ambitious and novel research endeavor, he said.

“The rich amount of data that scientists have collected points to a significant increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean near the Equator, and is subsequently important for understanding the role of carbon dioxide,” said Dr. oceans in limiting warming. At the same time, Exxon also expanded its research into climate modeling, hiring prominent scientists from academic institutions. But in 1982, when the oil market crashed due to excess oil production, Exxon ended its supertanker project.

Dr Garvey said: “What amazes me is that despite all this knowledge within the company, they continue to follow the path that they did.”