Flannery, Brian

NAS got exxon attn; hired flannery, got LNC lab guy, published by IPCC 79 LR 1st ceo phd, so thot he could read the sci (plus experts saying geology is long time and we have only short data?, thus extra tricky) 79 LR shut down green efforts 80<div>
</div><div>=</div><div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Climate-Science-for-Decades-by-Stressing-Uncertainty</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>as he wrapped up nine years as the federal government's chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken lashed out at ExxonMobil for opposing the advance of climate science.</div>His own great-grandfather, he told the Exxon board, had been John D. Rockefeller's legal counsel a century earlier. "What I rather imagine he would say is that you are on the wrong side of history, and you need to find a way to change your position," he wrote.Addressed to chairman <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/lee-raymond" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Lee Raymond</a> on the letterhead of the United States Global Change Research Program, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/MacCracken%20Letter%20to%20Exxon%20%282002%29.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">his September 2002 letter</a> was not just forceful, but unusually personal.No wonder: in the opening days of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, Exxon's chief lobbyist had written the new head of the White House environmental council demanding that <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/mike-maccracken" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">MacCracken</a> be fired for "political and scientific bias."Exxon was also attacking other officials in the U.S. government and at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), MacCracken wrote, interfering with their work behind the scenes and distorting it in public.Exxon wanted scientists who disputed the mainstream science on <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">climate change</a> to oversee Washington's work with the IPCC, the authoritative body that defines the scientific consensus on global warming, documents written by an Exxon lobbyist and one of its scientists show. The company persuaded the White House to block the reappointment of the IPCC chairman,[ROBERT ----] a World Bank scientist. Exxon's top climate researcher, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/brian-flannery" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Brian Flannery</a>, was pushing the White House for a wholesale revision of federal climate science. The company wanted a new strategy to focus on the uncertainties.MacCracken had a long history of collaboration with Exxon researchers. He knew that during the 1970s and 1980s, well before the general public understood the risks of global warming, the company's researchers had worked at the cutting edge of climate change science. He had edited and even co-authored some of their reports. So he found it galling that Exxon was now leading a concerted effort to sow confusion about fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect."To call ExxonMobil's position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement," MacCracken wrote. "To be in opposition to the key scientific findings is rather appalling for such an established and scientific organization."Exxon had turned a colleague into its enemy.It was a vivid example of Exxon's undermining of mainstream science and embrace of <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-denial" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">denial</a> and misinformation, which became most pronounced after President George W. Bush took office. The campaign climaxed when Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. Taking the U.S. out of the international climate change treaty was Exxon's key goal, and the reason for its persistent emphasis on the uncertainty of climate science.This <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">in-depth series by InsideClimate New</a>s has explored Exxon's early engagement with climate research more than 35 years ago – and its subsequent use of scientific uncertainty as a shield against forceful action on global warming. The series is based on Exxon documents, interviews, and other evidence from an eight-month investigation."What happened was an incredible disconnect in people trained in physical science and engineering," recalled <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/martin-hoffert" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Martin Hoffert</a>, a New York University professor who collaborated with Exxon's team as its early computer modeling confirmed the emerging scientific consensus on global warming. "It's an untold story of how we got to the point where climate change has become a threat to the world."The Uncertainty AgendaAs the Bush-Cheney administration arrived in the White House in 2001, ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) now had partners for a climate uncertainty strategy.Just weeks after Bush was sworn in, Exxon's top lobbyist Randy Randol <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Exxon%20Lobbyist%27s%20Memo%20to%20the%20White%20House%20%282001%29.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">sent the White House a memo</a> complaining that "Clinton/Gore carry-overs with aggressive agendas" were still playing a role at the IPCC as it prepared its next assessment of the climate science consensus.MacCracken and three colleagues should be replaced, or at least kept out of "any decisional activities," he wrote. Meanwhile, U.S. input to the IPCC should be delayed.Further, two scientists highly critical of the prevailing consensus should be enlisted: John Christy of the University of Alabama should take the science lead and Richard Lindzen of MIT should review U.S. submissions to the IPCC.Exxon had been circulating a proposal to fundamentally overhaul MacCracken's global change research program, by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science.The timing was not coincidental because the administration, as required by law, was about to lay out a new federal climate research strategy. Exxon and its allies wanted the work done during the Clinton-Gore years to be marginalized.In March 2002, Flannery, Exxon's science strategy and programs manager, contacted John H. Marburger, the president's incoming assistant for science and technology, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Exxon%20Scientist%20Lobbies%20the%20White%20House%20%282002%29.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">to pitch the company's favored approach of emphasizing the uncertainty</a>. Earlier discussions, he asserted, "have not sought to place the uncertainty in the context of why it is important to public policy."Exxon's position paper, attached to his letter, took a dig at the work of the IPCC."A major frustration to many is the all-too-apparent bias of IPCC to downplay the significance of scientific uncertainty and gaps," the memo said.A Seat at the TableExxon had not always been so at odds with the prevailing science.Since the late 1970s, Exxon scientists had been <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">telling top executives</a> that the most likely cause of climate change was carbon pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels, and that it was important to get a grip on the problem quickly. Exxon Research & Engineering had <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxon-believed-deep-dive-into-climate-research-would-protect-its-business" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">launched innovative ocean research</a> from aboard the company's biggest supertanker, the Esso Atlantic. ER&E's modeling experts, by the early 1980s, had <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">confirmed the consensus</a> among outside scientists about the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide."The facts are that we identified the potential risks of climate change and have taken the issue very seriously," said Ken Cohen, Exxon's vice president of public and government affairs, <a href="http://news.exxonmobil.com/press-release/exxonmobil-says-climate-research-stories-inaccurate-and-deliberately-misleading" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">in a press release</a> on October 21 addressing the ICN reports. "We embarked on decades of research in collaboration with many parties."Exxon has declined to answer specific questions from InsideClimate News.<div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 532.188px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figure id="file-266438" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-png" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/content/exxon-science-vs-misinformation" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">[</a>grfx dialogue]</figure></div>A <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/PR%20Plan%20for%20Exxon%27s%20CO2%20Research%20%281980%29.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">1980 memo proposed an ambitious public-relations plan</a> aimed at "achieving national recognition of our CO2 Greenhouse research program.""It is significant to Exxon since future public decisions aimed at controlling the build-up of atmospheric CO2 could impose limits on fossil fuel combustion," said the memo. "It is significant to all humanity since, although the CO2 Greenhouse Effect is not today widely perceived as a threat, the popular media are giving increased attention to doom-saying theories about dramatic climate changes and melting polar icecaps."Most of all, Exxon wanted a seat at the policy-making table, and the credibility of its research had earned that. In 1979, David Slade, manager of carbon dioxide research at the Energy Department, called it "a model for research contributions from the corporate sector."Sen. Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, invited <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/henry-shaw" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Henry Shaw</a>, an early Exxon scientist, to join the policy deliberations. He was the only industry representative invited to an October 1980 conference of the National Commission on Air Quality, newly set up by Congress, to discuss "whether potential consequences of increased carbon dioxide levels warrant development of policies to mitigate adverse effects."Shaw's bosses agreed that he should attend, "both to be informed as to what actions or proposals that result and to bring objective thinking and information to the meeting," <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/harold-weinberg" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Harold Weinberg</a>, Shaw's boss in Exxon Research and Engineering, wrote in a memo. But first, he said, Shaw needed to be briefed by public affairs executives "on possible hidden agenda and individual biases of which we may not already be aware."When Shaw gave feedback to the commission in December, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Exxon%27s%20Policy%20Input%20to%20Congressional%20Commission%20%281980%29.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">he noted the uncertainties about carbon dioxide and climate change</a>. At the same time, he wrote that it was "important" to place CO2 on the nation's public policy agenda, as the commission was recommending, and supported the panel's suggestion that it was "timely to consider ways of reducing CO2 emissions now."He also backed a recommendation that the U.S. "seek to develop discussions on national and international policies."In late spring of 1981, Flannery was one of the few industry representatives at a large gathering of accomplished scientists at Harper's Ferry, W. Va., for a Department of Energy "Workshop on First Detection of Carbon Dioxide Effects." He sat on a panel with NASA's James Hansen, who was about to publish a landmark study in Science magazine warning of significant warming even if controls were placed on carbon emissions.The <a href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822016268534;view=1up;seq=14" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">workshop's proceedings</a> would declare that "scientists are agreed" that carbon dioxide was building up in the atmosphere, that the effects "are well known" and "will bring about an increase in the mean global temperature," and that it is "commonly accepted" that warming "will affect the biosphere through a change in climate."Working with Hoffert, Flannery wrote a highly technical 50-page chapter to a <a href="http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008363809" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">1985 Energy Department report</a>. Their modeling projected up to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the 21st century unless emissions of greenhouse gases were curtailed.[grfx]the influential government report said the models provided a "firm basis" for this kind of projection, and that "we are already committed to some of this warming as a result of emissions over the last several decades."The Harper's Ferry conference was chaired by MacCracken; he also edited the warming report. He recalled recently that "the underlying push was for a level of understanding that was convincing enough to let policymakers become aware of what the issue was that society faced."As Hoffert put it in a recent interview, in those days at Exxon "there were no divisions, no agendas. We were coming together as scientists to address issues of vital importance to the world."Fork in the RoadIn 1988, James Hansen told Congress that there was now enough warming to declare that the greenhouse effect had arrived. Also that year, the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.It was a moment that Exxon's climate experts had been forecasting for a decade: that as warming became unmistakable, governments would move to control it.Looking backward, one Exxon document from the early 1990s reflects a trail of research into global warming stretching back "long before the issue achieved its current prominence."An internal compendium of the company's environmental record, on file in the official ExxonMobil historical archives at the University of Texas-Austin, acknowledged the uncertainties that have always faced climate researchers, but it didn't downplay the risks."Fossil fuel use dominates as the source of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide," said one section of the encyclopedic review. "Current scientific understanding demonstrates the potential for climate change to produce serious impacts.""For Exxon and the petroleum industry, potential enhancement of the greenhouse effect and the possibility of adverse climate are of particular and fundamental concern," it said.Drilling for UncertaintyThe IPCC published its first report in 1990. Despite the scientific gaps, the panel warned that unrestrained emissions from burning fossil fuels would surely warm the planet in the century ahead. The conclusion, the IPCC said after intense deliberations, was "certain." It prescribed deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to stave off a crisis in the coming decades.At this crucial juncture, Exxon pivoted toward uncertainty and away from the global scientific consensus.At the IPCC's final session to draft its summary for policymakers, Exxon's Flannery was in the room as an observer. He took the microphone to challenge both the certainty and the remedy. None of the other scientists agreed with Flannery, and the IPCC brushed off Exxon's advice to water down the report, according to Jeremy Leggett's eyewitness account in his book, The Carbon War.At a conference in June 1991, MacCracken joined a panel chaired by Flannery to work together on a climate change project involving geo-engineering.The contact, according to MacCracken, led to an unexpected solicitation from the oil lobby in Washington. Will Ollison, a science adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, in a fax marked urgent, asked MacCracken, then at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to write a paper highlighting the scientific uncertainties surrounding global warming.The API, where Exxon held enormous sway, wanted him to write up the complex nuances in plain English – with an emphasis on the unknown, not the known.Ollison said the IPCC's 1990 report "may not have adequately addressed alternative views.""A review of these alternative projections would be useful in illustrating the uncertainties inherent in the 'consensus' views expressed in the IPCC report," Ollison wrote.MacCracken rejected the task as "fruitless.""I would caution you about too readily accepting whatever the naysayers put forth as a means of achieving balance," MacCracken wrote back.Flannery, for his part, continued to emphasize uncertainty. And so did Exxon's new chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, who spoke of it repeatedly in public."Currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate," Raymond claimed in a speech delivered in 1996 to the Economic Club of Detroit."Many people, politicians and the public alike, believe that global warming is a rock-solid certainty," he said the next year in a speech in Beijing. "But it's not."Addressing the World Petroleum Congress, which was meeting just before the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, Raymond even disputed that the planet was warming at all. "The earth is cooler today than it was 20 years ago," he said.That was false. Authoritative climate agencies declared <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1997/climate97.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">1997 the warmest year</a> ever measured. Decade by decade, the warming has continued, in line with the climate models.But Raymond, turning his back on Exxon researchers and their state-of-the-art work, mocked those climate models."1990's models were predicting temperature increases of two to five degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Last year's models say one to three degrees. Where to next year?""It is highly unlikely," he said, "that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."The Doubt IndustryExxon and its allies had been working hard to spread this dilatory message.First, they set up the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a lobbying partnership of leading oil and automobile companies dedicated to defeating controls on carbon pollution."As major corporations with a high level of internal scientific and technical expertise, they were aware of and in a position to understand the available scientific data," recounts an <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1472-5" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">essay on corporate responsibility for climate change published last month</a> in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.[grfx]"From 1989 to 2002, the GCC led an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign aimed at achieving these goals by sowing doubt about the integrity of the IPCC and the scientific evidence that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels drive global warming," says the article, by Harvard climate science historian Naomi Oreskes and two co-authors. Then, in 1998 Exxon also helped create the Global Climate Science Team, an effort involving Randy Randol, the company's top lobbyist, and Joe Walker, a public relations representative for API.<a href="http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Their memo</a>, leaked to The New York Times, asserted that it is "not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it." Opponents of the Kyoto treaty, it complained, "have done little to build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty."The memo declared: "Victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science," and when "recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom.'"Exxon wholeheartedly embraced that theme. For example, an advertisement called "Unsettled Science" that ran in major papers in the spring of 2000, prompted one scientist to complain that it had distorted his work by suggesting it supported the notion that global warming was just a natural cycle. "It's a shame," Lloyd Keigwin later told the Wall Street Journal. "The implication is that these data show that we don't need to worry about global warming."Another ad, one of a series placed in The New York Times, cast aspersions on scientists who "believe they can predict changes in climate decades from now."Then, in the heat of the 2000 presidential race between climate champion Al Gore and erstwhile oilman George W. Bush, Exxon placed an ad in the Washington Post accusing MacCracken's office of putting the "political cart before a scientific horse."Blowing the WhistleThe collaboration between Exxon, its surrogates, <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/climate-change.html#.Vijc_WSrS2x" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">and the Bush administration</a> to emphasize uncertainty and stave off action came to light in 2005. A <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/fighting_climate_science_suppression/enforcing_national_assessment_of_climate_change/pdfs/Piltz-Resignation-Memo.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">whistleblower named Rick Piltz</a> disclosed that Philip Cooney, an oil lobbyist who had become chief of staff at the White House environmental council, had been heavily editing the work of government researchers. Cooney resigned, and was hired by Exxon.But the clashes continued between the scientific establishment and Exxon's purveyors of uncertainty.The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science, harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]The Society's communications manager Bob Ward reminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.<a href="https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2006/royal-society-exxonmobil/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">The Royal Society said</a> it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but "we do have concerns about ExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change."Ward said Exxon <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Royal%20Society%20Letter%20to%20Exxon%20%282006%29.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">was funding at least 39 organizations</a> "featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science on climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge."appendix b]exxon's uncertainty campaign was detailed in three exhaustive reports published in 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project.
At a <a href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000061515956;view=1up;seq=3" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Congressional hearing in 2007</a>, Harvard scientist James McCarthy, who was a member of the UCS board and the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared: "The Bush administration and a network of Exxon-funded, ExxonMobil funded organizations have sought to distort, manipulate and suppress climate science so as to confuse the American public about the urgency of the global warming problem, and thus, forestall a strong policy response."<div>=</div></div><div>2x?  icn flannery and cohen sci sell out?</div><div>
</div><div>Spreading the Word, InternallyThe conclusions of Exxon's climate modeling were being circulated broadly within the company in the 1980s.Marvin B. Glaser, an Environmental Affairs Manager at Exxon, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/1982%20Exxon%20Primer%20on%20CO2%20Greenhouse%20Effect.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">distributed a 43-page primer</a> on climate change on Nov. 12, 1982.In a cover letter to 15 Exxon executives and managers, Glaser said the document provided guidance "on the CO2 'Greenhouse' Effect which is receiving increased attention in both the scientific and popular press as an emerging environmental issue." He continued: "The material has been given wide circulation to Exxon management and is intended to familiarize Exxon personnel with the subject.""However, it should be restricted to Exxon personnel and not distributed externally," he wrote.Glaser's primer drew from the best research of the time, including Exxon's, to explain how global temperatures would rise considerably by the end of the 21st century. Because of the warming, "there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered," including sea level rise from melting polar ice sheets, according to the document. It noted that some scientific groups were concerned "that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."  Reining in "the greenhouse effect," the primer said, "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion."Yet the report also argued against a rapid shift to non-fossil fuel energy sources, noting that "making significant changes in energy consumption...amid all the scientific uncertainties would be premature in view of the severe impact such moves could have on the world's economies and societies."Exxon's reputation for conducting serious carbon dioxide research was growing outside the company. Its scientists were frequent participants on industry and government panels.[infogr timeline gary hART]Flannery, for example, contributed to a multi-volume series of Energy Department reports published in 1985 on the state of climate change science. It concluded that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations had already increased by about 25 percent in the past century, and continued use of fossil fuels would lead to substantial temperature increases in the future.Flannery was the only industry representative among 15 scientists <a href="http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/5885458" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">who wrote the volume titled</a> "Projecting the Climatic Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide."Hoffert and Flannery co-authored a chapter that concluded that since the Industrial Revolution the Earth would warm 1°C (or 2°F) by 2000 and rise another 2 to 5°C (4 to 9°F) over the next hundred years.As it turned out, the world's temperature has risen about 0.8°C (1.4°F) and mainstream scientists continue to predict, with increasing urgency, that if emissions are not curtailed, carbon pollution would lock in warming of as much as 3 to 6°C (or 5 to 11°F) over the next several decades.Quantifying the UncertaintyThroughout its climate modeling phase, Exxon researchers, like outside scientists, grappled with the uncertainties inherent in climate model projections."Models are being used to explore physical effects (scenarios) and as a predictive tool," <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Exxon%20Climate%20Modeling%20%281984%29.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit;">Andrew Callegari said in a Feb. 2, 1984 presentation</a> for colleagues. The "validity of models [are] not established," Callegari wrote. "Complexity of carbon cycle and climate system require many approximations."Scientists, regulators and Exxon all had to ask themselves: what should be done, given that uncertainty? Should governments and corporations wait for the ambiguities to be resolved before acting to cut fossil fuel emissions? Or should the researchers recommend immediate action because of a preponderance of evidence?Since then, modeling has become an increasingly useful and reliable tool. The IPCC, the United Nations institution that compiles the scientific consensus on global warming, has issued a series of reports since 1990 based on those models. Each report has grown more certain. By the fifth report in 2013, the IPCC said it was "extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."[grfx]as the consensus grew within the scientific world, Exxon doubled down on the uncertainty. Its campaign to muddy research results placed the company outside the scientific mainstream. Some of the researchers who once led the company's modeling became vocal climate contrarians, among them Brian Flannery and Roger Cohen.Flannery survived the lay-offs of the mid-1980s that decimated the Exxon Research staff and rose in the corporate ranks to become the company's chief scientist. He attended IPCC meetings from the outset and by the early 1990s, he emerged as a prominent skeptic of the science he had once conducted. For example, in a 1999 paper based on a speech to Exxon's European affiliates, Flannery derided the second IPCC assessment that concluded in 1995 that the scientific evidence suggested "a discernible human influence on climate.""You'll note that this is a very carefully worded statement, recognizing that the jury is still out, especially on any quantifiable connection to human actions," Flannery wrote. "The conclusion does not refer to global warming from increases in greenhouse gases. Indeed, many scientists say that a great deal of uncertainty still needs to be resolved."The change in Cohen's thinking was also stark, as he acknowledged in 2008. While still at Exxon he was "well convinced, as were most technically trained people, that the IPCC's case for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is very tight." But he wrote in a 2008 essay for the Science and Public Policy Institute, a climate denial website, that upon closer inspection of the research he found it to be "flimsy."In 2007, the American Physical Society, the country's largest organization of physicists, adopted a strong statement on climate change that said "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring."Cohen, an APS fellow, helped lead a campaign to weaken the APS's official position and earlier this year succeeded in stripping out the word 'incontrovertible' from a draft text. APS members will vote on the final language in November.Flannery and Cohen declined to comment, despite multiple requests....</div><div>=</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">----</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">4</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Exxon's Business Ambition Collided with Climate Change Under a Distant Sea</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Throughout the 1980s, the company struggled to solve the carbon problem of one of the biggest gas fields in the world out of concern for climate impacts.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BY NEELA BANERJEE & LISA SONG</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/Exxons-Business-Ambition-Collided-with-Climate-Change-Under-a-Distant-Sea" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/Exxons-Business-Ambition-Collided-with-Climate-Change-Under-a-Distant-Sea</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">OCT 8, 2015</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small;">In 1980, as Exxon Corp. set out to develop one of the world's largest deposits of natural gas, it found itself facing an unfamiliar risk: the project would emit immense amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to the looming threat of <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">climate change</a>.The problem cropped up shortly after Exxon signed a contract with the Indonesian state oil company to exploit the Natuna gas field in the South China Sea—big enough to supply the blossoming markets of Japan, Taiwan and Korea with liquefied natural gas into the 21st century.Assessing the environmental impacts, Exxon Research and Engineering quickly identified Natuna's greenhouse gas problem. The reservoir was contaminated with much more carbon dioxide than normal. It would have to be disposed of somehow—and simply venting it into the air could have serious consequences, Exxon's experts warned.Exxon's dawning realization that carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect posed a danger to the world collided with the company's fossil fuel ambitions."They were being farsighted," recalled John L. Woodward, who wrote an internal report in 1981 on Natuna's climate implications."They weren't sure when CO2 controls would be required and how it would affect the economics of the project."Since 1978, long before the general public grew aware of the climate crisis, Exxon had worked at the cutting edge of emerging climate science. At first, Exxon's internal studies had described climate change as an important but somewhat distant problem. Now, sooner than expected, climate considerations were affecting strategic business decisions. Natuna was one example; another was <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/highlighting-allure-synfuels-exxon-played-down-climate-risks" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Exxon's proposed leap into synthetic fuels</a>.Releasing Natuna's carbon pollution would make it "the world's largest point source emitter of CO2 and raises concern for the possible incremental impact of Natuna on the CO2 greenhouse problem," <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/CO2%20Sparging%20Report%20%281984%29.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">declared an October 1984 report</a> from Exxon's top climate modeler, Brian Flannery, and his boss Andrew Callegari.Documents and other evidence uncovered by InsideClimate News also show that Exxon calculated that Natuna's emissions would have twice the climate impact of coal. The company spent years researching possible remedies, but found them all too costly or ineffective, ICN's eight-month investigation found.Exxon managers saw the problem as both technically vexing and environmentally fraught. Not only was there carbon dioxide to be dealt with, it was mixed with toxic, flammable hydrogen sulfide, a contributor to acid rain."I think we generally agree that we are seeking a method of disposing of the off gases in a manner which will minimize the risk of environmental damage," wrote Exxon's manager of environmental affairs Alvin M. Natkin in <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/Natuna%20Environmental%20Concerns%20Letter%20%281983%29.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">an October 1983 letter to Natuna project executive Richard L. Preston</a>.  "We must also have the data which will be convincing not only to ourselves but also to the international environmental community that the method selected is environmentally sound."The company consulted with leading scientists, including NASA's pioneering expert James E. Hansen, to understand the effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations if the gas from Natuna were released. It sent staff to facilities at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada to simulate the diffusion of the gas into ocean water. Over the years, Exxon scientists developed mathematical models to assess the options....</div></div><div>===</div>