Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings

[Rhiannon12866]

Newly found documents from the 1980s show that fossil fuel companies privately predicted the global damage that would be caused by their products.

<snip>

America’s amoral military planning during the Cold War echoes the hubris exhibited by another cast of characters gambling with the fate of humanity. Recently, secret documents have been unearthed detailing what the energy industry knew about the links between their products and global warming. But, unlike the government’s nuclear plans, what the industry detailed was put into action.

In the 1980s, oil companies like Exxon and Shell carried out internal assessments of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels, and forecast the planetary consequences of these emissions. In 1982, for example, Exxon predicted that by about 2060, CO2 levels would reach around 560 parts per million – double the preindustrial level – and that this would push the planet’s average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels (and even more compared to pre-industrial levels).

Later that decade, in 1988, an internal report by Shell projected similar effects but also found that CO2 could double even earlier, by 2030. Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming, and ecological calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.

Shell’s assessment foresaw a one-meter sea-level rise, and noted that warming could also fuel disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in a worldwide rise in sea level of “five to six meters.” That would be enough to inundate entire low-lying countries.

Shell’s analysts also warned of the “disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction,” predicted an increase in “runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland,” and said that “new sources of freshwater would be required” to compensate for changes in precipitation. Global changes in air temperature would also “drastically change the way people live and work.” All told, Shell concluded, “the changes may be the greatest in recorded history.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings

[Bluepinky]

1. Nice. It's okay to destroy the planet as long as you keep making money.

[pazzyanne]

2. Al Gore is the Rachel Carson of climate change.

He has been involved in environmental activism for decades. I have been aware of Al Gore's environmental stand since he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He became a spokesperson for climate change when he was Vice President of the USA, and now acts as the chairman of The Climate Reality Project, which he helped establish in 2005. I am a great fan of his, can you tell?

[Rhiannon12866]

4. I certainly agree with you, how different life would be if only he had taken office.

And if not for Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court, he would have.

[pazzyanne]

5. I know!

[Rhiannon12866]

6. Of course, if that had happened, none of us would be here

It was that stolen election that inspired DU. It launched on Inauguration Day 2001...

[pazzyanne]

8. I didn't know that.

Thanks for the touch of history.

[Rhiannon12866]

9. The story, as I understand it

Was that Skinner and EarlG stood outside The Today Show with a large banner that read democraticunderground.com on the day that George W Bush* was sworn in and Democratic Underground was launched. The rest is history.

[Silver Gaia]

7. Me, too, pazzyanne. I'm a huge fan of Al Gore.

I moved to rural Tennessee in 1976, and he was my Congressman. He quietly listened to a small group of us (at a meeting we'd called that, as I recall, he had attended unnanounced) who were worried about a proposed garbage dump that would have poisoned our wells and springs (which many of us used for drinking water), and the streams and creeks in our small valley. The site for the dump was moved. No fanfare, no big fight, it just happened. He was also my Senator later on while I lived there. I have been a fan of Al Gore for a very long time now. I was pleased to still be able to cast my vote for him at the national level even after I moved away from Tennessee. Needless to say, I was absolutely devastated by the events of the 2000 presidential election, and really haven't been the same since.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Great article ... that describes some pretty deplorable and despicable sh*t (nt)

[The_jackalope]

10. So who deserves to pay the price?

CEOs and corporations who make and sell the planetary poison? Consumers who constantly scream for more of it at cheaper prices?

We all so deserve what's coming.