As far back as the 1980s, oil giant ExxonMobil had remarkably accurate global warming predictions made by its own scientists that turned out to be precisely what happened decades later, a researcher has confirmed. new study published this Thursday, January 12.
Despite this, the company has for years publicly cast doubt on the state of scientific knowledge on the subject, underlined this study, published in the prestigious journal “Science”.
“Who could have predicted the climate crisis? Well, many people, Mr. President…
ExxonMobil, one of the largest oil groups in the world, has “modeled and predicted global warming with uncanny accuracy, only to end up spending decades denying that same climate science”told AFP Geoffrey Supran, co-author of this work.
The company has long known the causes of global warming
For several years now, ExxonMobil has been accused of having held a double discourse on climate change, caused by the immense quantities of greenhouse gases released by humanity into the atmosphere, in particular through the combustion of coal or oil. to produce energy. Several legal proceedings have even been launched against the company in the United States, some of which are still ongoing. Hearings were held in the European Parliament and the US Congress.
But this is the first time that the projections made by the group’s scientists have been systematically analyzed and compared with those of other researchers at the time, as well as with the warming actually observed subsequently.
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, climate watch
The starting point are documents – public archives and scientific publications – revealed in 2015 by journalists from “Inside Climate News” and the “Los Angeles Times”, showing that the company had long known that climate change was real and caused by human activities.
A first scientific study, carried out in 2017 by the same researchers as that published Thursday, had extended this journalistic investigation by precisely analyzing the language used by the company first in these documents, then publicly. “But even though in the past we had focused on the language and the rhetoric contained in these documents, suddenly we realized that there was […] all those charts and tables that no one had ever looked into”explained Geoffrey Supran.
Temperature projections that correspond to the current rate
“This question has surfaced several times in recent years”a spokesman for the company told AFP. “Each time, our answer is the same: those who evoke what “Exxon knew” are wrong in their conclusions. » ExxonMobil has never denied the authenticity of the documents in question.
Climate: + 1.5 degrees or the lost illusion
In total, the researchers analyzed 32 internal documents produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2002, and 72 scientific publications they co-authored between 1982 and 2014. These documents contain 16 temperature projections. “Ten of them are consistent with the observations” subsequently carried out, notes the study. Of the other six, two predicted even greater warming.
On average, they predicted a warming of about 0.2°C per decade, which indeed corresponds to the current rate. And the predictions made by other researchers at the time were more or less similar.
But the oil company hammered home its “uncertainties”
ExxonMobil “didn’t just vaguely know something about climate change decades ago”underlined Geoffrey Supran, a professor currently at the University of Miami, but who carried out this work at Harvard. “They knew as much as independent and government scientists, and presumably enough to take action and alert the public. »
However, the leaders of the group have done just the opposite, hammers the study, which quotes the words of the former CEO of ExxonMobil Lee Raymond in 2000: “We don’t have enough scientific understanding of climate change to make reasonable predictions. » In 2013, then-CEO Rex Tillerson said there were “uncertainties” around the “main drivers of climate change”.
“Global warming is going much too fast, not all species will be able to adapt”
Some of the researchers employed by the company have testified before the US Congress. One of them, Martin Hoffert, questioned in 2019 by the elected Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who underlined how accurate his predictions had turned out, then simply replied: “We were excellent scientists. »
On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that the past eight years have been the hottest on record. During a press conference on these annual temperature reports (during which the study was not mentioned), NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt estimated that “denounce and shame” to individual companies “didn’t help much” to find appropriate solutions to do without fossil fuels.
“It’s not like we can say, ‘ExxonMobil, stop producing fossil fuels’ and solve the problem”he pointed out. “All these products are used by people. »
