The first post on this website was titled A Letter to the Future concerning the loss of a glacier in Iceland.
This post looks at the report prepared in November 1982 by Exxon’s Environmental Affairs Program Manager for company management. That’s nearly forty years ago. It contains many prescient facts and forecasts. Lets look at some of them, from the report summary alone.
“The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is of concern as it can affect global climate.”
“Our best estimate is doubling of the current concentration [of CO2] could increase average global temperature by about 1.8 to 3.1oC”
“The increase would not be uniform across the earth’s surface with the polar caps likely to see temperature increases on the order of 10oC”
“If the earth is on a warming trend, we’re not likely to detect it before 1995”
“The ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is unlikely to cause substantial climate changes until the average global temperature rises at least 1oC above today’s levels.
“Mitigation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ would require major reductions in fossil fuel consumption.”
It concludes by saying that “making significant changes in energy consumption patterns” may be premature given ‘scientific uncertainties’ and the severe impacts this would have on economies and societies.
Well those scientific uncertainties have turned out not to be so uncertain.
Lets look at a key graph from the report.
It predicts a CO2 concentration of just under 420ppm in 2019. The 2019 peak concentration was about 415ppm.
For temperature rise it forecasts a warming of around 0.95oC by 2019. According to NASA the increase has been approximately 0.9oC since 1975.
Fast forward to today. ExxonMobil has spent $9 billion since 2000 on low emission R&D. Impressive huh? In the same time frame they have spent $469 billion on capital and exploration1. Maybe not so impressive after all.
Chances are that these voices from the past will come to haunt the fossil fuel industry and their key leaders. But not before the damage has been done.
1 https://blog.ucsusa.org/nicole-pinko/2019-year-in-review-the-times-when-fossil-fuel-companies-misled-investors Photo credit: Counterpart
