Categories
Uncategorized

October 25, 1982 – Exxon and “Climate Processes & Climate Sensitivity” symposium

On this day, October 25 in 1982, the “Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity” symposium opened in New York.

And Exxon knew about this. How do we know Exxon knew?

Because, um, they sponsored it, and one of their guys gave a speech.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2017/David.E.E.1982.EXXON.EwingSymposium.pdf

First day of Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity . … Biennial Maurice Ewing Symposium held at Palisades, New York, October 25-27, 1982  

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 338.41ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this –  The late 70s effort to get politicians onboard had failed. The work, however, continued.

Why this matters. 

The “we didn’t know” defense is no good…

What happened next?

In 1984 a book of the same name was published https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984GMS….29…..H/abstract

Exxon? Exxon went on to help launch the Global Climate Coalition and to delay action on climate change. Of course it did.

Leave a Reply