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Comment by keymone | Hacker News Reader

what if in 1982 there were a million such studies with predictions all over the place and that one just happens to match what really happened?

what if Exxon uses this as an explanation for why this result wasn’t taken into account? “It was not possible to predict which prediction would have turned out correct, you can’t fault us for that!”

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Why would a company with the biggest interest in a conservative estimate happen to be the one with the most accurate study? If anything, the argument should be opposite: their study doesn't hold any water because of a potential conflict of interest.

It’s a study you know about. You don’t know how many studies you don’t know about. Nobody cares about other studies if they don’t turn out to make accurate predictions.

I answered a similar question in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21369078

TLDR: That model was fairly in line with what the scientific community was saying at the time. That excuse might have carried some weight in the early 70s but it was marginalized by scientific consensus in the 80s.

Didn't we get confirmation of global warming only in the 2000s with the IPCC and all? Who would have trusted Exxon then? Who would trust it now? Would you have changed your ways had you read that Exxon report? Have you really changed your ways by now?

The first IPCC report was released in 1990 and I don't think it left many ambiguity about the existence of a greenhouse effect and its cause.

More of them followed to confirm the findings. Satellites were launched, degrees issued to thousands of new scientists to confirm this. Would you have trusted Exxon in the 1980s?

You don't think (one of) the largest oil companies in the world coming out and saying "we've got to stop using so much oil" would be convincing?

They're evil. Nothing they do is convincing. Many people would think the reality is opposite of what Exxon claims. Do you believe Exxon now?

From the first IPCC reports in 1990, to today, the IPCC's prognostications about the future became more and more clairvoyant. Yes, it wasn't till the early 2000s that there was enough observed multiple sources of information about man-made climate change that they could say that with 90% (later 99%) certainty, but they made clear the future risk. If you look at the early IPCC reports, they made it clear that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, but at least in the United States, the fossil fuel industry fought tooth and nail and spent huge amounts of money to fight a regulatory classification of it as such. It wasn't until 2009 that was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVz67cwmxTM

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