ExxonMobil's scientists projected global warming for decades
But they worked to deny it.
ExxonMobil’s scientists have accurately projected global warming in response to rising emissions for decades, but Exxon worked to deny it.
The figure above shows a collection of projections that ExxonMobil scientists made about temperature change dating back to the 70s (from Supran, Rahmstorf & Oreskes, 2023 - link below). The red line on each shows the historically observed temperatures, and how closely they map to the predictions.
Supran, Rahmstorf & Oreskes show that:
Between 70s–90s ExxonMobil knew as much about the plausible effects of fossil fuel burning on global temperature as academic and government scientists knew.
At the same time as accurately predicting the threat of human-caused global warming, ExxonMobil lobbied and ran campaigns to delay climate action.
Despite decades of producing high-quality predictions, ExxonMobil insisted that the science was too uncertain.
And all this is against a backdrop of ExxonMobil consistently challenging climate models and climate science in general.
Read the infuriating but important article in Science