Exxon scientists predicted 415 ppm of carbon dioxide and 1 C temp rise in 1982!

[True Dough]

Turns out some of the scientific minds within the oil and gas industry were sharp as tacks, or lucky as sin! Now what are the big wig executives going to say about this?

Atmospheric carbon dioxide sets a new record every year. This year’s cracked the ominous milestone of 415 parts per million (ppm) thanks to ever rising emissions from human activities. The sharp rise might seem like something nobody could’ve predicted but there’s at least one group of scientists that were on the money 37 years ago: Exxon’s ace team of scientists.

Internal memos unearthed in InsideClimate’s Pulitzer-winning 2015 investigation into the company revealed all sorts of solid science being done even as the oil giant sowed doubt in public. Bloomberg reporter Tom Randall revisited the memos in light of the world’s new carbon dioxide milestone and tweeted a graph from one showing just how much Exxon knew what our future would look like.

It’s eerie seeing how well the company understood both climate science and the world’s patterns of economic growth built on the back of fossil fuels. Here’s that chart, annotated for ease of reading:

https://earther.gizmodo.com/exxon-predicted-2019-s-ominous-co2-milestone-in-1982-1834748763