4 November 2015
InsideClimate News and Exxon
A month and a half ago, a story was published about Exxon's internal climate scientists warning executives of the certainty of anthropocentric climate change back in 1977. The scientist's report included statements such as the general scientific agreement
that it is human-caused, the risk of agricultural output reduced or destroyed
, and that man has a time window of five to ten years before hard decisions might become critical.
Further studies conducted by their scientists reported that there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.
Ten years later, Exxon stopped funding climate research and started funding climate change denial in the form of public reporting and federal lobbying.
I'd learned of this story from On The Media the weekend after it was published. On that show, they summarized the report and confronted Exxon's Senior Adviser for Global Public Affairs with aggressive questioning (eliciting, naturally, no answers). Since its publication, I expected it to be discussed more in the public sphere than it has. Here's a timeline of what I see as key articles:
- 15 Sep 2015 - Exxon: The Road Not Taken (from InsideClimate News) - This is the original reporting.
- 18 Sep 2015 - Exxon's History of Climate Change Research (from On The Media) - OTM's interview with one of the authors of the ICN article.
- 18 Sep 2015 - Exxon Responds to InsideClimate News (from On The Media) - OTM's Bob Garfield grills Exxon's Richard Keil about their culpability.
- 26 Oct 2015 - Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago (from Scientific American) - SA reviews the evidence a month after-the-fact and finds Exxon's present-day denials echo their earlier ones.
- 27 Oct 2015 - It's Always Exxon's Fault (from The Wall Street Journal) - A counter-punch from climate change deniers. Look at this for a blueprint of how doubts will be cast on the ICN assertions. FUD.
- InsideClimate News and Exxon posted by sstrader on 4 November 2015 at 6:32:33 AM
- Just to point out the connection posted by sstrader on 31 August 2012 at 9:51:10 PM
- News stories that echo concerns expressed in The Windup Girl posted by sstrader on 18 August 2010 at 10:10:08 PM