An email recently unearthed by one of the their own scientists casts the blame on ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company in the world, as they had data pertaining to climate change as early as 1981 – seven years before it became public issue. They chose to fund deniers of the problem for the next 27 years.

Oh, the climate-change induced irony.
Image via: princeofoil.org

In the email Bernstein, a chemical engineer and climate expert who spent 30 years at Exxon and Mobil and was a lead author on two of the United Nations’ blockbuster IPCC climate science reports, said climate change first emerged on the company’s radar in 1981, when the company was considering the development of south-east Asia’s biggest gas field, off Indonesia.

The email provides evidence that the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its profits, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.

The Natuna hydrocarbon fields.
Image via: www.ogj.com

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” wrote Lenny Bernstein in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.

Bernstein claims that the information was seven years ahead of other major oil companies and the public.

Exxon’s public position has ever since decidedly against acknowledging the dangers brought about by climate change, and even appeals by their founding family, the Rockefellers, to change company policy, fell on deaf ears. Exxon went ahead and spent more than US$30m over the years to thinktanks and groups that advocated and promoted climate change denial, according to Greenpeace.

Climate change was largely confined to the realm of science until 1988, when the climate scientist James Hansen told Congress that global warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due to the burning of fossil fuels. By that time, it was clear that developing the Natuna site would set off a huge amount greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – effectively a “carbon bomb”, according to Bernstein.

“When I first learned about the project in 1989, the projections were that if Natuna were developed and its CO2 vented to the atmosphere, it would be the largest point source of CO2 in the world and account for about 1% of projected global CO2 emissions. I’m sure that it would still be the largest point source of CO2, but since CO2 emissions have grown faster than projected in 1989, it would probably account for a smaller fraction of global CO2 emissions.”

The excerpt comes from Bernstein’s email, in response to the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University’s inquiry into business ethics.

“What it shows is that Exxon knew years earlier than James Hansen’s testimony to Congress that climate change was a reality; that it accepted the reality, instead of denying the reality as they have done publicly, and to such an extent that it took it into account in their decision making, in making their economic calculation,” the director of the institute, Alyssa Bernstein (no relation), told the Guardian.

“One thing that occurs to me is the behavior of the tobacco companies denying the connection between smoking and lung cancer for the sake of profits, but this is an order of magnitude greater moral offence, in my opinion, because what is at stake is the fate of the planet, humanity, and the future of civilisation, not to be melodramatic.”

Bernstein’s response, posted on the institute’s website last October, was released by the Union of Concerned Scientists on Wednesday as part of a report on climate disinformation promoted by companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Peabody Energy, called the Climate Deception Dossiers.

In response to Bernstein’s comments, Exxon said climate science in the early 1980s was at a preliminary stage, but the company now sees climate change as a risk.

“The science in 1981 on this subject was in the very, very early days and there was considerable division of opinion,” Richard Keil, an Exxon spokesman, said. “There was nobody you could have gone to in 1981 or 1984 who would have said whether it was real or not. Nobody could provide a definitive answer.”

He rejected the idea that Exxon had funded groups promoting climate denial in the past.

“I am here to talk to you about the present,” he said. “We have been factoring the likelihood of some kind of carbon tax into our business planning since 2007. We do not fund or support those who deny the reality of climate change.”

According to Bernstein, Exxon was already well aware of climate issues well ahead of other oil companies, and of the prospect of regulation that would directly impact the company’s expansion plans in the area:

“In the 1980s, Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects. They were well ahead of the rest of industry in this awareness. Other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988, when it first became a political issue,” he wrote.

“Natural resource companies – oil, coal, minerals – have to make investments that have lifetimes of 50-100 years. Whatever their public stance, internally they make very careful assessments of the potential for regulation, including the scientific basis for those regulations,” Bernstein wrote in the email. “Corporations are interested in environmental impacts only to the extent that they affect profits, either current or future. They may take what appears to be altruistic positions to improve their public image, but the assumption underlying those actions is that they will increase future profits. ExxonMobil is an interesting case in point.”

Harvard University professor Naomi Oreskes, who researches the history of climate science, said it was unsurprising Exxon would have factored climate change in its plans in the early 1980s – but she disputed Bernstein’s suggestion that other companies were not.

She also took issue with Exxon’s assertion of uncertainty about the science in the 1980s, noting the National Academy of Science describing a consensus on climate change from the 1970s. The White House and the National Academy of Sciences came out with reports on climate change in the 1970s, and government scientific agencies were studying climate change in the 1960s, she said. There were also a number of major scientific meetings on climate change in the 1970s.

I find it difficult to believe that an industry whose business model depends on fossil fuels could have been completely ignoring major environmental reports, major environmental meetings taken place in which carbon dioxide and climate change were talked about,” Naomi Oreskes said in an interview with the Guardian.

The East Natuna gas field, about 140 miles north-east of the Natuna islands in the South China Sea and 700 miles north of Jakarta, is the biggest in south-east Asia, with about 46tn cubic ft (1.3tn cubic metres) of recoverable reserves.

However, Exxon did not go into production on the field. Keil, the ExxonMobil spokesman, confirmed that the company had decided not to develop Natuna, but would not comment on the reasons. “There could be a huge range of reasons why we don’t develop projects,” he said.