Exxon’s Big Secret
Every 2016 Republican Presidential candidate is a climate-change denier or skeptic. Apparently, for them, it’s easier to ignore evidence of the greatest threat facing humanity than it is to run for the highest office in the land without funding from the ruthless profiteers jeopardizing the future of our planet.
The GOP clown car climate claptrap is well known. Less so, however, is the fact that the fossil fuel industry—including ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable corporations in the history of civilization—knew full well, decades ago, that the consumption of its products was releasing dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
According to internal documents and interviews with former employees, Exxon was aware of fossil fuels’ role in climate change back in the 1970s! The company, which merged with Mobil in 1999, proceeded to explore the potential impact of global warming. But then Exxon turned tail, deciding it was better for the bottom line to spend millions to obscure what its own scientists had discovered.
After a recent eight-month investigation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News delivered a blockbuster report. In 1978 an Exxon senior scientist warned that “a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2 ) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 de grees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles.” The warming would ultimately induce torrential rainfall and unstoppable sea rise and turn some areas into deserts.
