By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.
More excellent reporting by Neela Banerjee at the award-winning site InsideClimate News on the “Exxon Knew” story. Turns out, they all knew, all the big oil companies. Their industry group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), had been running a task force for years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at which scientists from all of the big oil companies shared their information.
(Side note: Of course that had to be true. Just like any industry, Big Oil is a very small club at the top. What matters to one of the companies, especially one as big as Exxon, matters to all of them. Their execs all know each other, go to each other’s parties, ride each other’s jets to St. Andrews and Val-d’Isère, share names of the best Confirmation and Bar Mitzvah caterers — so of course when one gets a bug in the behind about maybe CO2 is dangerous, they talk about that bug until they’ve decided what to do. This story was just waiting to be dug out. Kudos to Ms. Banerjee for doing the digging.)
InsideClimate News with the details (my emphasis):
Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too
Members of an American Petroleum Institute task force on CO2 included scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell.
Beginning in 1979 the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s most powerful lobbyist, together with the country’s largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research.
The American Petroleum Institute [API] together with the nation’s largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world’s climate far earlier than previously known.
The group’s members included senior scientists and engineers from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company, including Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio and Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil, the predecessors to Chevron, according to internal documents obtained by InsideClimate News and interviews with the task force’s former director.
An InsideClimate News investigative series has shown that Exxon launched its own cutting-edge CO2 sampling program in 1978 in order to understand a phenomenon it suspected could harm its business. About a decade later, Exxon spearheaded campaigns to cast doubt on climate science and stall regulation of greenhouse gases. The previously unpublished papers about the climate task force indicate that API, the industry’s most powerful lobbying group, followed a similar arc to Exxon’s in confronting the threat of climate change.
Just as Exxon began tracking climate science in the late 1970s, when only small groups of scientists in academia and the government were engaged in the research, other oil companies did the same, the documents show. Like Exxon, the companies also expressed a willingness to understand the links between their product, greater CO2 concentrations and the climate, the papers reveal. Some corporations ran their own research units as well, although they were smaller and less ambitious than Exxon’s and focused on climate modeling, said James J. Nelson, the former director of the task force.
“It was a fact-finding task force,” Nelson said in an interview. “We wanted to look at emerging science, the implications of it and where improvements could be made, if possible, to reduce emissions.”
The group was initially called the CO2 and Climate Task Force, but changed its name to the Climate and Energy Task Force in 1980, Nelson said.
A background paper on CO2 informed API members in 1979 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was rising steadily, and it predicted when the first clear effects of climate change might be felt, according to a memo by an Exxon task force representative.
In addition, API task force members appeared open to the idea that the oil industry might have to shoulder some responsibility for reducing CO2 emissions by changing refining processes and developing fuels that emitted less carbon dioxide….
Those prediction weren’t far off. The whole ICN report is worth reading, but this, however, is especially damning:
At [the urging of task force member Henry Shaw, Exxon’s lead climate researcher in the late 1970s], the task force invited Professor John A. Laurmann of Stanford University to brief members about climate science at the February 1980 meeting in New York. Shaw and Laurmann had participated in the same panel at the AAAS climate conference in April 1979.
Like many scientists at the time, Laurmann openly discussed the uncertainties in the evolving climate research, such as the limited long-term sampling data and the difficulty of determining regional effects of climate change, according to a copy of his presentation attached to the meeting minutes [pdf].
Still, Laurmann told his audience several times that the evidence showed that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is likely “caused by anthropogenic release of CO2, mainly from fossil fuel burning.”
In his conclusions section, Laurmann estimated that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would double in 2038, which he said would likely lead to a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperatures with “major economic consequences.” He then told the task force that models showed a 5 degrees Celsius rise by 2067, with “globally catastrophic effects.”
Here are those conclusions in full, from the next-to-last page of the report linked in the quote:
CONCLUSIONS• AT A 3% PER ANNUM GROWTH RATE OF CO2, A 2.5°C RISE BRINGS WORLD ECONOMIC GROWTH TO A HALT IN ABOUT 2025.
Even if this estimate is grossly wrong it is still probable that
• WHETHER THERE ARE GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE RESPONSE TO THE THREAT DEPENDS ON THE VALIDITY OF THE LONG MARKET PENETRATION [of new energy sources] TIME CONCEPT.
• EVEN IF THE LATTER IS APPLICABLE, PRESENT DAY SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMPACT DEPENDS STRONGLY ON CHOICE OF A FUTURE [social] DISCOUNTING FACTOR.
• NEED FOR IMMEDIATE POLICY ACTION HINGES ON THESE LAST TWO FEATURES.
Page 10 of the pdf is damning as well. This behavior borders on the criminal, wouldn’t you say? Or maybe crosses it, given the consequences we now face, by the distance of a hemisphere or so. About those consequences:
Climate translation:
“I know what you’re thinking, Mr. & Ms. American. You’re thinking, ‘Do we have until 2020 to stop making Big Oil richer, or can we wait till 2040 to take them on?’ Now, to tell you the truth, no one really knows. But being this is civilization-ending CO2 emissions we’re talking about, which will blow your grandchildren right back to the stone age while you watch, you’ve got to ask yourselves a question — Do you feel lucky?”
Nope, still not feeling lucky. Perhaps it’s time to act decisively and treat this like the emergency it is. After this gets going, life won’t be fun for anyone, even the wealthy who caused it. After all, if Val-d’Isère is all melted by then, where will they ski?
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@What, you mean others knew that AGW is pure BS? Stop calling people who disagree with you propagandists and stop trying to criminalize those who disagree with you.
The AG of NY is engaged pure Stalinist assaults on freedom and liberty. There is no excuse for covering for hi,m.
Nothing more clearly articulates what a fraud AGW is than this vile attempt to silence critics of this latest attempt of Marxist to destroy the West. Shame on you,
Up at 3:52 AM with predigested drivel…better trolls, please.
Teh AGW want to tqke oure freedumbs and tax our productivity…
Skippy…. now back to your temple of choice and obey your Master’s writ… and don’t forget to pay HIS taxes…
Who can blame for-profit oil companies doing what for-profit oil companies do? Instead I blame the politicians who abdicated their responsibility and allowed themselves to be bought off by lobbyists.
Perhaps you are confused by the legal pretense that a company is a ‘person’ who has agency and the agreed upon responsibility for moral behaviour. A company is that – a company- a group of people that only exists as a group of people. No company can be blamed but the people who run it certainly deserve to be held accountable.
You ask “who can blame , , , ?”
An honest person would accept responsibility for the harm done wilfully and stop the nonsense of lies that justifies his initial wrongdoing and the consequences. Each person in the company who knew the truth is responsible whether a scientist, an executive or the politician whose pretense of stupidity was paid for.
Every goddamned trick in the book has been used by these monsters in order to acquire and keep their misfortunes. And when one lie is found out another is told.
I think the question isn’t so much one of who to blame, but rather what we do about it now. The past is past, regardless of who’s at fault. What tomorrow will be like will be dictated by how we react to the situation now. Sadly, I don’t see us doing much of anything. Apart from the real “radicals,” most people don’t seem to be treating this like a real impending disaster. In general, the limiting factor for behavior is, as it has been for some time, “can I afford it?” not “can the earth/environment/humanity/my grandchildren afford the consequences?”
‘Dems what got ears to hear, let ’em hear…but most people are deaf as posts…c’est la vie
We’ve been bombarded with propaganda for generations, now, about the quality and glory of the ‘western lifestyle’, yet I know many people who live lives full of illusion, without proper shelter, food and healthcare. All of it is justified by lies.
Do you confuse blame with acknowledgement of responsibility and truth? History is not bunk but a record of how we got where we are and truth is always currently necessary if our history is to be meaningful.
The people who are currently in charge of your country expend a great deal of wealth and energy to maintain their dominance and to steal the will of those who wish for better. Why do you now join in the despair they attempt to create?
No, I think they should be tried and if found guilty, put in jail. It has nothing to do with being vindictive but is rather to illustrate how serious the situation is. Climate change KILLS. These people have put humanity and many species, not just a few of us, but all of us at risk of death/extinction and/or great suffering – for financial gain. It is criminal on so many levels. They should be in jail so others know, mostly that climate change is a serious and impending threat but also so that people who knowingly put others at risk (in this case great risk and large numbers of people) of serious harm face consequences..
The same should go for bankers and many others as well, but I see no need for a pass simply because addressing climate change is more critical than punishing the perps. We have the resources for both and they go together.
The cover up is the initial crime, and behind its veil incorporation is no proof against human rights obligations (which are universal), particularly when degradation of such rights is done knowingly for profit.
Oil companies were central to funding The US Chamber of Commerce which sponsored Lewis Powell’s infamous 1971 Memo that outlined the impending NeoLiberal take over of governmental process. Read that memo and try and claim the highjacking of US democracy in the years sense has not been a vast plutocratic conspiracy: the men with the money have re-made all the rules for themselves.
You’re awfully quick to let them off the hook.
“Who can blame for-profit oil companies doing what for-profit oil companies do? Instead I blame the politicians who abdicated their responsibility and allowed themselves to be bought off by lobbyists.”
That attitude raises question about the supremes settling personhood on corporations. They have protected speech and religious rights but no liability?
Above and beyond US jurisdiction, international criminal courts might try colluding and knowledgeable executives for crimes against humanity.
Politicians do bare some responsibility though that begs the question, how many of them are anti science, flat earthers who actually never believed the science and are in office only because of legal campaign contributions from big oil? Are they as guilty as the oil execs who knew and covered up?
This dilemna is a function of the power of private interests that seize control of the commons and by doing so gather and concentrate great wealth (arguably belonging to all) and concomitantly foist planet sapping and zapping externalities on us all.
i also knew about the potential impact of greenhouse gases since the 70s; a lot of people did…i have congressional committee prints from 1976 on the increase in atmospheric CO2, talked about it with my congressman, so i assume the knowledge was fairly widespread back then…we didn’t do anything about it then, just as not much is being done about it today…to me it’s a bit of a strawman to be blaming the oil companies when 3 out of 4 US built light vehicles that Americans bought in November were built on on truck body – ie, pickups or SUVs… if we really want to deal with climate change, we have to deal with that, not with what the oil companies did 50 years ago…
Two things:
First, “Big Oil” pay out great dividends and have so for decades, so good luck on that front, especially politicians who have had oil in their portfolios.
Second, which is it, a deep freeze or massive heat waves? It tends to change decade to decade and I want to prepare for either the next great flood or the next great desert.
The world is a big place. Can’t it be both?
the science doesn’t change “decade to decade”–a magazine cover from the 70’s notwithstanding.
Companies are run by people and people are supposed have ethics and responsibilities to society.
The idea that you are absolved from this and can just loot things at random and lie about the impact of your activities because you work in a for profit company is ludicrous beyond belief.
THIS x 1000
But, but, but…What about the shareholders?
It’s all about “the best interests of our shareholders” don’tcha know.
When the coastal refineries fail because of rising sea level, the “what about the shareholders” become a litigious question of willful negligence.
This. So many refineries are at or near sea level, to make for easy loading and unloading by tanker ship. Short term greedy, in this case, means long term ruination.
It would be relatively inexpensive to fund and announce a new “Disprove Climate change” prize.
This could be a $1 billion dollar prize awarded to the first group/individual to prove to a group of scientists/mathematicians that climate change concerns are bunk.
The judging group could be drawn from the living Nobel winners of Chemistry and Physics and the mathematicians from prior Fields Medal winners.
No judges would be pulled from the Nobel Economics winners, a faux-Nobel prize the Nobel family has protested.
$1 billion is chump change to prove the world doesn’t need to worry about climate change would be a great public service.
But I don’t see this prize being offered.
Perhaps climate change is now showing up in non-government subsidized insurance rates for natural disasters and crop insurance?
This would be similar to the asbestos related deaths manifesting to life insurance companies well before asbestos was widely known to be a concern.
I suspect the elite money is betting that AGW (climate change) is real and they are building financial (via subsidized government insurance), religious (it’s god’s will), media propaganda and physical moats to protect themselves and their future.
Hardly worth pointing out that Goldman and the rest of the investor class have already explained to their money how to invest in the upsides of the Climate Badness disruption and innovation. http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/goldman-sachs-provides-climate-change-investment-advice/There's profit to be made! Cue the jokes about going short on waterfront property, and the more serious sh_t about buying “enforceable legal title” to land that still has topsoil, in areas that will become arable as the “temperate” area migrates… Hmmm, how to price those oats, peas, beans and barley you have your sharecroppers or slaves grow, as scarcity and desperation set in…
The whole complex of the imperial milk-itary is all over this — climate is just an element of the Global Networkcentric Interoperable Battle Space that they have unilaterally decreed the world is now one of. Business and hegemony opportunities galore! Read ’em and weep! http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/climate.pdf
Just love the people here who excuse the “corporations” because “that’s just what they are supposed to do,” and of course the notion that “we have to look forward, not backward,” where have I heard that before, and how well has failing to impose deterrent-quality retribution-heavy restitutionary consequences, on the INDIVIDUALS who individually and collectively perform them for prior really bad acts, done a damn thing to change the downward arc of our species’ tenancy on this rock? Yeah, “we,” whoever the “we” is that “we” always speak to when “we” are talking about what “we” ought to or need to be doing to amend “policy” in “our” favor, with an eye to that “agency” meme that gets harped on here and elsewhere so regularly, “we” ought to be doing stuff to try to mitigate what looks to be an irreversible immensely complex process that comes mostly from “the gift of fire…” Them old Greeks, or those among them who crafted their tales, really understood a lot about the nature of the beast, a quaint little take on the myth of Prometheus the Fire-Giver is an illuminating read, http://www.prometheas.org/mythology.html
I’m a pessimist. All the systems and policies and reinforcing feedback loops point toward the currently Big People just doing more of doing what they do, siphoning more wealth of all sorts, more of what ought to be “the Commons,” into their pockets, to be used to buy them ever more esoteric pleasures and insulation… “We” do not have a clue how to change the vectors by more than a smidgen, because “we” need and are accustomed to political structure and hierarchy and hand over the mass of “legitimacy” to people who have a focus and constant reinforcement and unitary purpose (MORE, more pleasure, more wealth taken, more combustion via the “gift of fire”) that us Squishies do not. They have no problem with a single demand, with subheads. “We” mostly are afraid to make one, to voice one. “Community recycling” and bike paths and LED bulbs and composting toilets ain’t gonna do it. Whatever the needful “it” is.
JTMcPhee,
For some background, google “US military views on climate change.”
The region forecast to be viable is above 45 deg latitude.
In the Northern hemisphere that’s Northern Europe, Siberia, Canada, and possibly Tibet. In the southern hemisphere the Cape Area of South Africa and a small bit of Argentina and Chile.
I’d think the highveld will be livable, due to the mitigating effect of altitude.
I saw a prediction that Colorado and other unlikely places would become the new grain belt. But it is unpredictable. Austin, where I live, may become a desert or may become nearly tropical if the heat generates more el ninos along with moisture flows from the Gulf.
Here’s a book entitled “Understanding Climatic Change”, issued by the National Research Council in 1975. Not only did the highest level of scientists in the United States not have sufficient evidence for global warming at the time, they were just getting organized in terms of identifying information that they needed to collect to come to a scientific opinion. It’s clear the scientists themselves were decades away from any type of consensus at the time.
https://ia801806.us.archive.org/7/items/understandingcli00unit/understandingcli00unit.pdf
Why are you claiming that the oil industries were so far ahead at the time in understanding global warming that they started to release misinformation for the consumption of the public?
In fact, our nation’s best climate scientists at the time were more concerned about the possibility of global cooling than global warming. Here is an extract:
“No one doubts that there are such impacts, for the specter of drought or the consequences of persistently severe winter weather are all too familiar in many parts of the world.”
From your source [PAST CLIMATIC VARIATIONS—PROJECTION OF FUTURE CLIMATES]:
Seems they were on the right path.
1)Can a working model be created that projects what’s to come and can it be proven?
2)Can the civilized world demand immediate stop of carbon producing products?
3)can civilization change direction so dramatically accepting the hardships to come as the global the economy will no longer exist and the substance of trade shifts and food and water becomes very expensive ?
4) can we avert the anarchy that is sure to come?
I promise you this when the world begins to fail it will be at the hands of all humanity because it’s up to us to make changes before we destroy ourselves. This article is only good if people are provoked to make a stand. If your a scientist find a way for life to continue on.
You didn’t post my comment?
I’m guessing that some pigs are just a little more equal than others.
Good luck with your blog, that was my last comment…
It seems a little strange to me, that every climate change story uses Celsius temperatures.
Everything else in the new uses Fahrenheit.
A lot of people I take to simply do not see what all the fuss is about over a couple of degrees.
Just a bunch of liberals make noise over nothing.
When I point out is is not 2-5 degrees it is 5 – 10, they instantly become more concerned.
If I did not know better, I would say there was some effort by the MSM to down play the risk.
Googled information states that 5 countries use Fahrenheit scale but that Celsius has been used increasingly since the seventies. Ditto the metric system vs. the sae or British. The USA and Brazil are the two largest countries still using the older method. The metric system of measurement is more rational. more easily figured out, than the sae or British system with its inches and feet and yards, etc although many people in Canada who first learned the one insist that metric is confusing.
Not part of any plot I still think in terms of Celsius and British but need to rephrase my comments to younger people. I believe that the USA refusal to change was motivated partly by concerns of cost in converting but also the much talked about exceptionalism; why should the rulers o’ the world conform to the world’s wishes
The results you speak of may be so but I’m sceptical that the issue was plotted.
Really? Please divide a meter into three equal parts.
33.3 repeating centimeters. 0.333 meters, with the decimal point moved over, because the units work on base 10 like our numbering system in general.
Why is “divisible evenly by three” a more useful and rational requirement for a unit of measurement than “divisible evenly by ten”?
Anyone who has worked with both always agrees- Metric. So much simpler, for everything.
It takes a bit to get used to eyeballing stuff, but math is simplified 20x, at least.
It’s a lot easier to make a meter three parts than it is to make 167″ into feet.
I see that the question was answered by Will.
Is turnabout fair play?
Divide an inch into three equal parts. Divide a league. A chain.
Better yet, define the things. Define inch, foot, yard: you’ll note that the imperial units were defined in 1959 (should you be curious) in relation to the metric system which, I think, refers to an unchanging distance related to the speed of light and the distance light travels in a specific time.
Tell you what – divide a dollar into three equal parts. I’ll send you one if you can explain the relevance of your challenge to metric system of measurement beyond your preference.
http://gizmodo.com/5786004/these-are-the-three-countries-who-dont-use-the-metric-system
base ten is easier, period.
What should the oil companies have done? And when?
What should the oil companies do now?
Media is basically innumerate, no news flash here.
Surtt’s point was that the news stories in the US, where people are used to thinking of temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, quote the science in degrees Celsius, which has smaller numbers and thus gives the quick impression that there is less warming, a psychological effect. Surtt is not questioning the use of Celsius, just the failure of the reporters to present the information in the temperature scale the audience is accustomed to using.
Or MSS (main stream scientists) that use the metric system when reporting data.
Can you ask them to imagine how much energy it requires to raise the global surface temperature those degrees?
Toil & Pain…it’s in your (our) future! Everybody’s ox is gonna get gored ,no matter who, so start preparing for a harder, more physical lifestyle….. and I don’t care who is to be anointed the next potus; all this blather about restoring the U. S. to greatness(Trump), or promising everything to the masses(Sanders) is just a pipe dream, a mirage, wishful thinking, If Humanity was rational, we’d have already scaled down to a lighter footprint, with regard to the natural world, of which we humans are a part! Unfortunately, humans aren’t rational, so,…..looks like humanity will do it’s damnedest to initiate a world war instead. Buckle Up….and try to learn how to live like our predecessors did……become more self-reliant; I can’t stress this enough!
No matter how I’ve looked at it there just doesn’t seem any kind of preparation is going to do. Living rough is one thing but you do understand as the ecosystem fails we don’t just starve we get sick. I don’t think humanity has ever faced what is coming. As dramatic as that is, I don’t think we can reverse the effects of what we’ve done, its just going to have to play out. You and I won’t even suffer it like our kids and their kids. Look at the full picture here. Global warming and water crisis around the world that has already begun to show in undeniable ways. Do you have any idea how long it will take to stop the momentum of effects waste products are having on the ecosystems around the world? I feel paralyzed by the reality of how we humans do not think past what goes in our bank accounts and what we can shovel into our mouths. We are all guilty not just left or right wings, not just America! All of humanity! Look at the reality I drive a truck for work, how shall I make money to take care of my family? How about you ? We have created a system we can’t back out of for a long time and then even if we find a better way do you know how long it will take before humanity can accomplish the change over? We don’t need to just cut emissions we need to plant whole forests to help filter out the carbons. Capital extremists won’t pay for that because they can’t make money on it. What also scares me is that we don’t have any clue as to the underground ramifications of drilling and extracting oil. Try extracting all the fluid in your kneecap and walk around on that, let me know what effect that causes for you. What of nuclear waste? If global warming was the only issue we faced I would still feel doom for life on this planet. We have been destroying our environments on so many levels there is no way we are going to live through it.
Change never happens until we hurt because we ignorantly go only where pleasure can be found. We have a humanity problem and I haven’t heard anyone here talk about solutions. A bunch of nowhere going information and gee we got guys in here worried about the use of fahrenheit scale. I swear with this kind of thinking no wonder we are in the mess we are in. If you want to be taken seriously working models showing that is happening need to happen and working models of a solution need to happen. Until them you can’t get people to understand enough to join the cause because the majority of people don’t know the science or haven’t the ability to reason the realities we face in the future.
I don’t want to be the one talking about a problem all the time. I want to be someone involved with figuring out a solution and the guy who becomes part of carrying out the solution. So report on groups that do this and you’ll be providing a real service to humanity that people can act on. Just don’t report the bad ! Report the good give us some damn hope and direction to place our energy.
So how does your more physical lifestyle look for the old or the disabled? Oh the same rules as neoliberalism: shut up and die. I’d rather vote for Sanders. FWIW, no I don’t think Sanders has the answer to climate change, he’s merely the best choice in the duopoly at present, and better than “hey prepare physically, and let the disabled die!” as an ideology.
Ya know, the sad part is that technological solutions have existed for *decades* It is possible to build an engine that is near 100% efficient and creates near-zero pollution. This was done (and patented) in the early 80’s. You may want to search for the name “Henry Yunick”. The patents were sold to GM who just happened to have interlocking directorships with certain oil companies…
My qualifications? Just a guy who has been doing industrial and auto maintenance and general technology for 30 yrs. I follow thias kind of thing out of general interest, but I also do it for a living.
Intelligence as we practice it appears to be an evolutionary dead end.
10,000 years since the invention of agriculture.
The dinosaurs lived in various stage for millions of years. Some still live as birds and reptiles. The insects have lived longer.
Who is the winner now?
Actually this was not a bad conclusion. Consider the reality that 1. China is outright faking their economic numbers 2. Japan has been at zero growth essentially for over two decades and 3. Europe and the US are both trending towards 0-1% growth at best (and have to increasingly resort to shenanigans like bogus CPI calculations and counting “hookers and blow” just to make that bogey,) I’d say this one has a good shot at verifying.
A tobacco style settlement against oil companies to fund climate change remediation would be a good start. Some billions for solar, nuclear, etc,etc.