A recent article posted on the Inside Climate News website reports that Exxon’s scientists were as “skillful” as independent experts in predicting how the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and bring about climate change.
Recent academic research lends statistical rigor to this concept by showing that the company’s own climate projections, dating back decades, consistently predicted the warming that was to come primarily from burning fossil fuels. The peer-reviewed paper analyzed all known climate predictions produced or reported by scientists at ExxonMobil and its predecessor from 1977-2003, and found that they were “at least as skillful” as those by independent experts (Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999). Like those independent models, most of Exxon’s proved to be accurate.
The researchers found that company scientists predicted overall warming with a degree of certainty, leaving no doubt that burning fossil fuels was warming the planet. They also accurately predicted that human-induced warming would be detectable by 2000, a fact confirmed that year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet in 2004, Exxon said publicly that “scientific uncertainties continue to limit our ability to make objective, quantitative determinations” about humanity’s role in climate change. “We now have this airtight, unimpeachable evidence that Exxon accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science,” said Geoffrey Supran, the paper’s lead author.
Read the full article here: bit.ly/3Yh99WI
