Exxon scientists predicted global warming even though the company had doubts, a study has found

In the late 1970s, Exxon scientists outfitted one of the company’s supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and air, an early example of extensive research the oil giant was conducting into the science of climate change.

A new study The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that Exxon scientists made remarkably accurate predictions of how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet over the next several decades. Their projections were as accurate, and sometimes more accurate, than independent academic and government models.

But for years the oil giant has publicly cast doubt on climate science and warned against a drastic shift away from burning fossil fuels, the main cause of climate change. Exxon also ran a public relations program — including Ads that ran in the New York Times — Emphasizing the uncertainties in scientific research on global warming.

Global warming projections “are based on totally unproven climate models, or more commonly, pure speculation,” Lee Raymond, chief executive officer of the newly merged ExxonMobil Corp, told a company annual meeting in 1999. “We don’t have a good enough scientific understanding of climate change now, to make reasonable predictions and/or to justify drastic measures”, he wrote in a company brochure the following year.

In a statement, Exxon didn’t address the new study directly, but said “those who talk about how ‘Exxon’ knew’ are wrong in their conclusions,” referring to a slogan used by environmental activists who have accused the company have misled the public about climate science.

“ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting and reporting,” the company added, citing a judge in a favorable judgement in New York three years ago, albeit for a case involving the company’s accounting practices, not climate science.

The new study by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research builds on this reporting Shows that For decades, Exxon scientists had warned their executives about “potentially catastrophic” human-caused climate change.

The burning of oil, gas and coal raises the earth’s temperature and sea level with devastating consequences worldwide, including intensifying storms, worsening drought and deadlier wildfires.

Other fossil fuel companieselectricity supplier and automaker have come under fire for downplaying the threat of climate change, even as their own scientists have warned of its dangers. In recent years, cities, counties and states have filed dozens of lawsuits accusing Exxon and other companies of public deception and claiming billions of dollars in climate damage.

Last year a house committee grilled oil chefs, including current Exxon CEO Darren Woods, on whether companies have misled the public about climate. Mr Woods said the positions were “entirely consistent” with the scientific consensus of the time.

In the new study, Harvard’s Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes and Potsdam Institute’s Stefan Rahmstorf performed a quantitative analysis of global warming projections made or recorded by Exxon scientists between 1977 and 2003.

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 recorded by a single company, the authors said.

Overall, Exxon’s global warming projections closely tracked subsequent temperature rises of about 0.2 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, the study found.

The company’s scientists actually ruled out the possibility that human-caused global warming wasn’t happening, the researchers found.

Exxon scientists also correctly dismissed the possibility of an imminent ice age, although the company continued to refer to it in its public communications; accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected; and estimated how much carbon dioxide could be added to the atmosphere before warming reaches a dangerous threshold, the study says. Some of the Exxon studies predicted an even greater rise in temperature than what the planet has experienced.

“We now have solid, indisputable evidence that ExxonMobil accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science and scientists,” said Dr. supra. “Our findings show that ExxonMobil’s public denial of climate science contradicts data from its own scientists.”

William D. Collins, who heads the Department of Climate and Ecosystem Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was not involved in the new study, called their analysis “very solid.”

“This is the first article I’ve seen that presents a clear and quantitative comparison of ExxonMobil’s projections to the state of the public science,” said Dr. Collins, lead author of a chapter on climate projections in a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of experts convened by the United Nations.

The new research showed that Exxon’s forecasts “have been very consistent over time,” he said. “They knew all that. You’ve known it for decades.”

Edward Garvey, who was hired by Exxon in 1979 to help then-senior scientists work on its supertanker project, said he wasn’t “surprised the science was spot on.”

dr Garvey and his colleagues set up a special monitoring system on the 500,000-ton supertanker Esso Atlantic to log measurements of carbon dioxide in surface water and air as it en route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf — an ambitious and novel research effort, he said.

The wealth of data collected by the scientists, said Dr. Garvey, suggested a significant increase in ocean carbon dioxide levels near the equator and was later crucial to understanding the role the ocean played in limiting warming. Around the same time, Exxon also expanded its climate modeling research, hiring prominent scientists from academic institutions. But in 1982, when oil markets collapsed due to an oil production flood, Exxon ended its supertanker project.

“What surprises me is that despite all this knowledge within the company,” said Dr. Garvey, “they have continued on the path they have taken.”