Official: Climate Change Is Not A Hoax

Current CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson

Sorry if this one's not news to you but I've only just found it....but first, some background:

It's long been said that ExxonMobil fund a lot of climate denial groups (e.g. The Heartland Institution) and much of the climate sceptic science comes from scientists with links to them too.

At least, that was the case until 2006 when the new CEO, Rex Tillerson came along. Up to that point, ExxonMobil were climate deniers, but Tillerson has since admitted that climate change is not only a reality, but it's caused by humans. He even promised that the company would stop handing out tens of millions to those climate deniers. Result!

Unfortunately, it appears ExxonMobil are still funding climate denial.

Worse still, and this brings me to the subject of this post, they're now making out that climate change won't be a big deal after all. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last July, Rex Tillerson basically said climate models were making things look worse than they'd actually be, and any climate effects could be adapted to, claiming that it was just an "engineering problem" (Whatever that's supposed to mean).

So they've gone from a position of "We want business-as-usual because climate change isn't happening" to "We want business-as-usual because climate change isn't going to be that bad". Big change.

And about his 2 basic claims: 

• As any climate scientist will freely tell you, climate models are not perfect. However, those same scientists will also tell you that most models are tested against past data (to check that they work), and on current form they've made pretty accurate predictions about the future climate. If anything, they've under-estimated the actual results.

• "It's an engineering problem". Since Tillerson's speech, the U.S. has suffered it's hottest summer ever, and superstorm Sandy, Australia is being pounded by record temperatures as I type this (45.8 C in Sydney yesterday), the Arctic sea ice shrank to it's lowest extent last summer, and even the UK has had it's wettest year since records began. This is with 'just' a 0.8 C warming in global temperatures. The climate models predict there's a lot more in the pipeline.How exactly do we "engineer" out way out of failed crops (through drought and flood), people dying from heat exhaustion, superstorms, and heaven knows what else in the future?

We can't "adapt" to the scale of climate change that would result from business-as-usual. Anybody who believes that just isn't listening.

More analysis here.