At the end of the decade of the seventyscientists in exxons adapted one of the company’s vessels with state-of-the-art technology equipment to measure the carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the air, a pioneering example of the oil giant’s important research into the science of climate change.
A new study published Thursday in the journal Science found that, over the decades that followed, scientists at exxons They made extraordinarily accurate projections of how much the planet would warm from burning fossil fuels. Their projections were as accurate as government models and independent academics, at times even more precise.
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Still, for years, the oil giant publicly questioned climate science and warned against taking any drastic steps to steer clear of burning fossil fuels, the root cause of climate change. exxons also launched a public relations program (which included advertisements published in The New York Times) to emphasize the uncertainties of scientific research about global warming.
At an Exxon annual meeting in 1999Lee Raymond, the then CEO of the newly merged ExxonMobil Corp.., stated that global warming projections “are based on completely unfounded climate models or, more often, pure speculation.” The following year, in a company brochure, he wrote: “At this time, we do not have sufficient scientific understanding of climate change to make reasonable predictions or justify drastic measures.”
In a statement, Exxon did not discuss the new study directly, but did say that “those who say that ‘exxon knew‘, they are wrong in their conclusions,” a reference to a slogan by environmental activists who have accused the company of misleading the public about the climate science.
Beginning in the 1970s, scientists working for Exxon made very precise projections of how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet.
The company added: “ExxonMobil has a culture of discipline in analysis, planning, accounting and reporting,” citing a judge’s favorable verdict in NY three years ago, though it was in a case that addressed the company’s accounting practices, not climate science.
The new study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard University and the Institute Potsdam for Research on the Impact of Climate changeis based on reports showing that, for decades, Exxon scientists warned their executives about “potentially catastrophic” climate change caused by humans.
The burning oil, gas and coal is raising the Earth’s temperature and sea level with devastating consequences around the world, including storms more intense, droughts more serious and deadlier forest fires.
Other fossil fuel, electric utility and auto companies have been criticized for downplaying the threat of climate change, even as their own scientists warned of the dangers. In recent years, cities, counties, and states have filed dozens of lawsuits charging exxons and other companies to mislead the public into demanding billions of dollars in weather damages.
An undated photo shows Edward Garvey, left, with another scientist, Richard Werthamer, aboard the Esso Atlantic in 1980. (Richard Werthamer via The New York Times)
Last year, a US House committee questioned the heads of oil companies, including the current chief executive of exxons, Darren Woods, on whether companies misled the public about the weather. Woods stated that the positions were “completely in line” with the scientific consensus of the time.
In the new study, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard, as well as Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute, conducted a quantitative analysis of global warming projections made or recorded by scientists at Exxons between 1977 and 2003.
The authors claim that these records, which include internal memos and peer-reviewed articles published with outside academic researchers, make up the largest public collection of global warming projections that have been filed by a single company.
Overall, the study found that projections of exxons closely monitored subsequent temperature increases of about 0.2 degrees Celsius due to global warming per decade.
In fact, the researchers found that the company’s scientists ruled out the possibility that a global warming caused by humans was not happening.
The study revealed that scientists at exxons They also rightly rejected the possibility of a next ice age, even as the company continued to refer to it in its public communications; accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would be first detected and estimated how much carbon dioxide it could be added to the atmosphere before warming crossed a dangerous threshold. Some of the studies of exxons predicted an increase in temperature even greater than the planet has experienced.
Supran opined: “We now have solid and undeniable evidence that ExxonMobil accurately predicted global warming years before it occurred and publicly attacked climate science and the scientific community. Our findings show that the public denial ExxonMobil’s view of climate science contradicted the data of their own scientists.”
William D. Collins, who leads the Division of Climate and Ecosystem Sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and who was not involved in the new study, called the analysis “very sensible.”
Collins, lead author of a chapter on climate projections in a report from 2018 of the Intergovernmental Group of experts on Climate Change, a think-tank convened by the United Nations, noted: “This is the first article I have seen that makes a clear and quantitative comparison of ExxonMobil’s projections with the state of the science in the public domain.”
The climatologist also said that the new research showed that projections of exxons “They were very consistent through the years. They knew all that. They’ve known for decades.”
Edward Garvey, whom exxons hired in 1979 to help leading scientists of the day work on his ship project, he said he was not “surprised that the science was right.”
Exxon CEO Darren Woods appears before the House Oversight Committee in Washington via video link on April 6, 2022. (Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times)
Garvey and his colleagues created a dedicated monitoring system on the ship Esso Atlantic, from 500 thousand tons to record measurements of carbon dioxide in the surface water and air as it traveled from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf — an ambitious and novel research effort, he said.
According to Garvey, the wealth of data that scientists collected pointed to significant increases in carbon dioxide levels in the ocean near the equator and was later crucial to understanding the role the ocean played in limiting warming. At the same time, exxons also expanded his research into modeling of the weather, for which it hired leading scientists from academic institutions. However, in 1982, as oil markets plunged from a glut of oil production, Petroleum, exxons terminated his ship project.
Garvey concluded: “What surprises me is that despite all this knowledge within the company, they continued down the same path.”
