What Exxon knew about the Earth's melting Arctic - Decades Ago

[tecelote]

Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet.

Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon’s Arctic operations and its bottom line.

---

The good news for Exxon, he told an audience of academics and government researchers in 1992, was that “potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea.

But, he added, it also posed hazards, including higher sea levels and bigger waves, which could damage the company’s existing and future coastal and offshore infrastructure, including drilling platforms, artificial islands, processing plants and pump stations. And a thawing earth could be troublesome for those facilities as well as pipelines.

http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/

________________________________________________________________________

The bottom line - more important than anything else - The American Way

[Hortensis]

1. President's Johnson's climate warning letter to Congress in 1965

only said what people in positions like Exxon executives already knew. Hardly coincidentally, that's about the time the Kochs and others went to work building the climate change denial movement and taking over our legislative bodies.

[KansDem]

2. We knew about this in 1958

Or, I might say, it was known since 1958, but I don't remember learning about it until much later in life.

[tecelote]

3. Fantastic Video!

[Dustlawyer]

4. Scary and sad. Scientist knew then and it was hushed up.

I have seen this before. 1932 the National Safety Council members, Johns Manville (JM), Owens Corning, Owens Illinois, Metropolitin Life (insured most of the members of this trade association) and many others were discussing the rise (from almost zero due to the practice of "black balling anyone who filed) of workmen compensation claims of their asbestos workers. They were falling ill with lung diseases and cancers and not able to work again, so they commissioned a study. The researcher came back and reported that asbestos dust caused mesothelioma, lung cancer, colon cancer and pulmonary and pleural scarring (reduce ability to exchange oxygen).

The President of JM threatened the life of the researcher and his family (in writing) when he tried to insist on publishing his findings. As a result generations (tens of millions) of working men and their families who became ill from the dust on their work clothes were murdered.

We will end up with these Exxon documents, and I am sure the other oil companies had studies too that demonstrated that they knew what was going to happen, but like asbestos companies, the thinking is "not on my watch" will the secret come out! They protect profits during their time as CEO and kick the can down the line to leave it to someone else to deal with. Let them have to watch the company's sales go down as alternative energy and transportation take over.

[cantbeserious]

5. Merchants Of Doubt - Naomi Oreskes

Web Page
http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/index.html

Key Documents
http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/keydocs.html

You Tube Speech