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We've known about the greenhouse effect and it's threat potential for nearly 2 centuries. Exxon just helped add to a growing body of evidence that we ignore. h

• eitland 7y ago
  > and it's threat potential for nearly 2 centuries. Did you mean decades?
  • paulannesley 7y ago
    > The existence of the greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824 From the linked wikipedia article on Greenhouse effect
  • baq 7y ago
    this article https://medium.com/@cimuir/we-ve-been-talking-about-climate-change-for-a-long-time-8e6eefa232a5 https://medium.com/@cimuir/we-ve-been-talking-about-climate-... has a picture of a newspaper commenting on the possibility, dated July 17th, 1912.
• maxlybbert 7y ago
  I remember articles in “Scholastic” and the “Weekly Reader” when I was in elementary school (1980s) that said at the time scientists were worried about a 1°-2°C increase in temperature over a 50-100 year period. I’m sure that’s the same information Exxon had in the ‘70s. Nowadays the predictions are much higher, because scientists started asking “if the oceans get warmer, what changes will that cause, and how will those changes affect the temperature?” In 1970, Exxon wasn’t suppressing research on whether warmer oceans mean more water vapor in the air, more carbon dioxide outgassing from the oceans, etc. They were only asking “should we really make drastic changes to head off a 1°-2°C temperature change that may not happen for a century? Is there a reason to believe that nothing will change in that time to make the prediction irrelevant?”