Executives privately sought to downplay link between fossil fuels and climate change despite public pronouncements, WSJ reports
ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal.
The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil.
Many of the newly released documents date back to the 2006-16 tenure of former chief executive Rex Tillerson, who oversaw a major shift in the company’s climate messaging. In 2006, Exxon publicly accepted that the climate crisis posed risks, and it went on to support the Paris agreement. Yet behind closed doors, the company behaved differently, the documents show.
Didn’t we reach this already? Or it’s supposed to be a multi-year average, not impacted by geological heating?
We averaged 1.5C for a single year, which we’ve also done in 2016. This was largely due to naturally-occurring phenomena that pushed our close-to-1.5 average up over the threshold. The global average temperature YOY has not risen to 1.5C yet.
It is likely to before 2030.
I thought that was a headline a week ago or so, but i did not find it quickly.
This article came up from a few months ago, before the summer heat domes that might have skewed things upward.
Taking one year in isolation I’m sure. The overall trend is up, and the frequency of energetic weather is up, but we’ve not hit 1.5c increase over a period longer than a year yet.
Hot years happen, and one year isn’t a trend.