Global warming: 40 years ago, ExxonMobil had accurate predictions

As early as the 1980s, the major oil group ExxonMobil had remarkably accurate predictions of global warming.

AFP - ADRIAN DENNIS

Text by: RFI Follow

3 mins

As far back as the 1980s, oil giant ExxonMobil had predictions of global warming, made by its own scientists, that turned out to be precisely what happened decades later, a new study published Thursday confirmed. January.

ExxonMobil denies these accusations, but does not refute the authenticity of the documents studied.

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Despite this, the company has for years publicly cast doubt on the state of scientific knowledge on the matter, underlined this study, published in the prestigious journal

.

ExxonMobil, one of the world's biggest oil companies, " 

" Geoffrey told AFP. Supran, co-author of this work.

Double speech 

For several years now, ExxonMobil has been accused of having held a double discourse on climate change, caused by the immense quantities of greenhouse gases released by humanity into the atmosphere, in particular through the combustion of coal or oil. to produce energy.

Several legal proceedings have even been launched against the company in the United States, some of which are still ongoing.

Hearings were held in the European Parliament and the US Congress.

But this is the first time that the projections made by the group's scientists have been systematically analyzed and compared with those of other researchers at the time, as well as with the warming actually observed subsequently.

The starting point are documents - public records and scientific publications - revealed in 2015 by journalists from

and the

, showing that the company had long known that climate change was real and caused by the activities human.

Since the late 1970s, ExxonMobil's own scientists accurately projected and modeled global warming due to fossil fuel burning and produced results that were consistent with independent academic and government climate models, a new #ScienceReview finds.

https://t.co/eJLLBNNZ3W pic.twitter.com/hfXGDWQjKJ

— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) January 12, 2023

ExxonMobil has never denied the authenticity of the studies

" 

," a spokesman for the company told AFP.

However, ExxonMobil has never denied the authenticity of the documents in question.

However, the leaders of the group have done just the opposite, insists the study, which quotes the words of the former CEO of ExxonMobil Lee Raymond in 2000: " 

 .

► To read also: 

In total, the researchers analyzed 32 internal documents produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2002, and 72 scientific publications they co-authored between 1982 and 2014.

These documents contain 16 temperature projections.

“ 

” made subsequently, notes the study.

Of the other six, two predicted even greater warming.

On average, they predicted a warming of about 0.2°C per decade, which indeed corresponds to the current rate.

And the predictions made by other researchers at the time were more or less similar.

► To read also: The hole in the ozone layer could be absorbed over the next 40 years

(and with

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