Big Oil knew about this in the 1970s
Reading time: 3 minutesTL;DR
In the 1970s ExxonMobil internal research by scientists predicted global warming from extended burning of fossil fuels. by the 1980s other oil majors also knew. By the 1990s they decided to downplay it and delay climate action efforts.
We know this because of lots and lots of documents. Their science was also scarily accurate.
Firstly, the excellent Climate Files website has lots of these historic documents. But let’s look at some highlights.
Exxon
In 2015 investigative journalists found out top executives had been warned about global warming in 1977. Then again in 1978. The scientists were Exxon employees, they wrote it down after presenting it to formal management committees. Not just “Ah hey boss, I found something whacky in the numbers”, like formally advised what was happening.
I don’t want to rip off this article so just read it directly.
They then went on to do their own research measuring carbon-dioxide in the air and ocean from a supertanker!
If you want to see how their predictions tracked against reality, check out the graph in this article. Pretty eery stuff.
They went to work to protect their own interests to maximise their profits for as long as possible. They spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to slow any actions that were going to slow down the industry. Straight up villain shit.
Shell
“In 1986, Dutch oil company Shell finished an internal report nearly 100 pages long, predicting that global warming from fossil fuels would cause changes that would be “the greatest in recorded history,” including “destructive floods,” abandonment of entire countries and even forced migration around the world.” - https://www.greenbiz.com/article/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-1959
This 1998 Shell report further reinforces the findings of the 1986 study - literally titled “The Greenhouse Effect”. Amazingly Shell recommends not delaying action, in their words: “With very long time scales involved, it would be tempting for society to wait until then to begin doing anything. The potential implications for the world are, however, so large, that policy options need to be considered much earlier. And the energy industry needs to consider how it should play its part.”
But it all falls apart in the 1990s.
Total
This research paper documents how “Total personnel received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971, became more fully informed of the issue in the 1980s, began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s, and ultimately settled on a position in the late 1990s of publicly accepting climate science while promoting policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control.”
Further reading
Books
- Merchants of Doubt - Naomi Oreskes & Erik M Conway. This is also a film.
- The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change - Geoff Dembicki
Media coverage
- Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago
- Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.
- Exxon climate predictions were accurate decades ago. Still it sowed doubt
- Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago (2015)
- Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s
- What Big Oil knew about climate change in 1959
Big Oil Websites
Thanks to the excellent Climate Town YouTube channel, here’s a link to current acknowledgments by Big Oil companies about the existence of climate change.