Wow. The seven warmest three-month periods since 1880 have all happened in 2015. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/...015/8/supplemental/page-2 …

Wow. The seven warmest three-month periods since 1880 have all happened in 2015. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/...015/8/supplemental/page-2 …
- BingoLady

We're not experiencing global warming - get a clue.

- said one.

Dopps,

What is your opinion on the environmental impact of factory farmed animals and the sustainability of providing an expanding population with a product that has proven to consume more resources then it produces?

Thank you in advance

Dopps,

What is your opinion on the environmental impact of factory farmed animals and the sustainability of providing an expanding population with a product that has proven to consume more resources then it produces?

Thank you in advance
- Cape Breton Bruins

dude

dude
- kicksave856

im sorry you had to find out this way

im sorry you had to find out this way
- Cape Breton Bruins

he'll correct you if you're right.
- kicksave856

“The sulfur dioxide (SO2) emitted from the Holuhraun eruption has reached up to 60,000 tons per day and averaged close to 20,000 tons since it began,” notes Pall Stefanson, in a September 25 report for Iceland Review Online. “For comparison, all the SO2 pollution in Europe, from industries, energy production, traffic and house heating, etc., amounts to 14,000 tons per day.”

And the Holuhraun eruption, which began in late August, is but one of many active volcanic eruptions that Iceland, the land of fire and ice, has been experiencing lately. A few miles away, Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano is also causing concern. A September 12 report for Iceland Review Online noted that SO2 from the eruption was four times the previous record and that residents were complaining of sore throats, stinging eyes, and headaches from the sulfur pollution.

Weather.com reported that sulfur fumes from the Icelandic volcanoes are even bothering people on Norway’s coast 800 miles away.

Dopps,

What is your opinion on the environmental impact of factory farmed animals and the sustainability of providing an expanding population with a product that has proven to consume more resources then it produces?

Thank you in advance
- Cape Breton Bruins

you mean wind turbines or mass produced solar panels?

I will dedicate the next few months with a variety of poems copy and pasted from the internet....

I don`t want my children to see the Earth die,
Without fish swim and without birds fly,
With no air for breathing, no water to drink,
When global conditions will make the land sink.

I don`t want emissions to stay in the air,
To fill our lungs and to spread everywhere,
To cause global warming, submerging the land!
To stop all this mess we should lend our hand!

The nature is dying together with us,
We wouldn`t exist here but for the green grass…
We must prevent nature from saying «farewell»-
In case it is dying, we`re dying as well!

What could human beings` activities mean –
To make our planet one big rubbish bin?!
No matter that you may be only a teen –
It`s never too early or late to be green!

To show our children the beauty of life;
To help polar bears and pandas survive;
To claim to the world that this talk should gain weight
Let`s firstly take part in the global debate

you mean wind turbines or mass produced solar panels?
- dt99999

yes

I will dedicate the next few months with a variety of poems copy and pasted from the internet....

I don`t want my children to see the Earth die,
Without fish swim and without birds fly,
With no air for breathing, no water to drink,
When global conditions will make the land sink.

I don`t want emissions to stay in the air,
To fill our lungs and to spread everywhere,
To cause global warming, submerging the land!
To stop all this mess we should lend our hand!

The nature is dying together with us,
We wouldn`t exist here but for the green grass…
We must prevent nature from saying «farewell»-
In case it is dying, we`re dying as well!

What could human beings` activities mean –
To make our planet one big rubbish bin?!
No matter that you may be only a teen –
It`s never too early or late to be green!

To show our children the beauty of life;
To help polar bears and pandas survive;
To claim to the world that this talk should gain weight
Let`s firstly take part in the global debate
- the_cause2000

is this about the Mars thing?

you mean wind turbines or mass produced solar panels?
- dt99999

The technology JUST isn't sufficient yet. But yeah eat some plants in the meantime or don't whateva

Global Warming isn’t hard to explain
It leaves Mother Earth crying with excruciating pain.

This hurts our planet in every single way
The changes could leave us all in sorrow and dismay.

We need to stop it now so the temperature doesn’t rise
People, plants, and animals would be in demise.

Changes in temperature due to the depleting ozone layer
We really don’t need it so show us that you care.

Mother Nature can’t do it all so let’s give her a rest.
We all need to try and do what is best.

Our planet earth is precious and can’t be replaced
We need to act now or our home will be erased.

Global Warming isn’t hard to explain
It leaves Mother Earth crying with excruciating pain.

This hurts our planet in every single way
The changes could leave us all in sorrow and dismay.

We need to stop it now so the temperature doesn’t rise
People, plants, and animals would be in demise.

Changes in temperature due to the depleting ozone layer
We really don’t need it so show us that you care.

Mother Nature can’t do it all so let’s give her a rest.
We all need to try and do what is best.

Our planet earth is precious and can’t be replaced
We need to act now or our home will be erased.
- the_cause2000

For several years, those who publish every story, no matter how obscure, that implies the world is facing catastrophe as a result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have focused on the loss of sea ice in the Arctic regions during the summer and early fall periods.

This year, after the shortest melt season on record, Arctic sea ice extent has grown almost two million square kilometres and is now approaching the highest extent for the date in the last ten years.

Funny, I saw no news stories about this????

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old_icecover.uk.php




The graph shows three things clearly. First, it shows the wide seasonal variation in the areal extent of ice in the Arctic region over the last eleven years, the continuation of a seasonal variation that goes back centuries if not millennia. Second, it shows that, contrary to the predictions of the IPCC, these is no progressive reduction in Arctic ice over time. Third, it shows that the current season is on track to produce the largest areal sea ice extent during the period shown, totally contrary to the alarmist headlines we read every day. The graph shows what is actually happening, not some theoretical, model-based projection. It does not "prove" anything, but it strongly contradicts the "Man made" global warming story line.

For several years, those who publish every story, no matter how obscure, that implies the world is facing catastrophe as a result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have focused on the loss of sea ice in the Arctic regions during the summer and early fall periods.

This year, after the shortest melt season on record, Arctic sea ice extent has grown almost two million square kilometres and is now approaching the highest extent for the date in the last ten years.

Funny, I saw no news stories about this????

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old_icecover.uk.php




The graph shows three things clearly. First, it shows the wide seasonal variation in the areal extent of ice in the Arctic region over the last eleven years, the continuation of a seasonal variation that goes back centuries if not millennia. Second, it shows that, contrary to the predictions of the IPCC, these is no progressive reduction in Arctic ice over time. Third, it shows that the current season is on track to produce the largest areal sea ice extent during the period shown, totally contrary to the alarmist headlines we read every day. The graph shows what is actually happening, not some theoretical, model-based projection. It does not "prove" anything, but it strongly contradicts the "Man made" global warming story line.

What Exxon knew about
the Earth's melting Arctic

By Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust

Oct. 9, 2015

Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet.

Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon’s Arctic operations and its bottom line.
Top, the loss of sea ice due to climate change has taken a toll on wildlife. (Mike Lockhart / U.S. Geological Survey, Associated Press) Bottom, rapidly thawing permafrost is changing the landscape in Canada’s Northwest Territories. (Scott Zolkos / The Canadian Press)

“Certainly any major development with a life span of say 30-40 years will need to assess the impacts of potential global warming,” Croasdale told an engineering conference in 1991. “This is particularly true of Arctic and offshore projects in Canada, where warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels.”

Between 1986 and 1992, Croasdale’s team looked at both the positive and negative effects that a warming Arctic would have on oil operations, reporting its findings to Exxon headquarters in Houston and New Jersey.

The good news for Exxon, he told an audience of academics and government researchers in 1992, was that “potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea.

But, he added, it also posed hazards, including higher sea levels and bigger waves, which could damage the company’s existing and future coastal and offshore infrastructure, including drilling platforms, artificial islands, processing plants and pump stations. And a thawing earth could be troublesome for those facilities as well as pipelines.

As Croasdale’s team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company’s operations, Exxon and its worldwide affiliates were crafting a public policy position that sought to downplay the certainty of global warming.

The gulf between Exxon’s internal and external approach to climate change from the 1980s through the early 2000s was evident in a review of hundreds of internal documents, decades of peer-reviewed published material and dozens of interviews conducted by Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.

Documents were obtained from the Imperial Oil collection at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and the Exxon Mobil Historical Collection at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History.

“We considered climate change in a number of operational and planning issues,” said Brian Flannery, who was Exxon’s in-house climate science advisor from 1980 to 2011. In a recent interview, he described the company’s internal effort to study the effects of global warming as a competitive necessity: “If you don’t do it, and your competitors do, you’re at a loss.”

::
Imperial Oil’s Dartmouth refinery in Halifax, Canada. Exxon Mobil owns about 70% of the company. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press, Associated Press)

The Arctic holds about one-third of the world’s untapped natural gas and roughly 13% of the planet’s undiscovered oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. More than three-quarters of Arctic deposits are offshore.

Imperial Oil, about 70% of which is owned by Exxon Mobil, began drilling in the frigid Arctic waters of the Canadian Beaufort Sea in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, it had drilled two dozen exploratory wells.

The exploration was expensive, due to bitter temperatures, wicked winds and thick sea ice. And when a worldwide oil slump drove petroleum prices down in the late 1980s, the company began scaling back those efforts.
Changes in Arctic sea ice from 1984 to 2013
Before: Arctic ice coverage in 1984. After: Receding coverage in 2013.

But with mounting evidence the planet was warming, company scientists, including Croasdale, wondered whether climate change might alter the economic equation. Could it make Arctic oil exploration and production easier and cheaper?

“The issue of CO2 emissions was certainly well-known at that time in the late 1980s,” Croasdale said in an interview.

Since the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Exxon had been at the forefront of climate change research, funding its own internal science as well as research from outside experts at Columbia University and MIT.

With company support, Croasdale spearheaded the company’s efforts to understand climate change’s effects on its operations. A company such as Exxon, he said, “should be a little bit ahead of the game trying to figure out what it was all about.”

Exxon Mobil describes its efforts in those years as standard operating procedure. “Our researchers considered a wide range of potential scenarios, of which potential climate change impacts such as rising sea levels was just one,” said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil.

The Arctic seemed an obvious region to study, Croasdale and other experts said, because it was likely to be most affected by global warming.

That reasoning was backed by models built by Exxon scientists, including Flannery, as well as Marty Hoffert, a New York University physicist. Their work, published in 1984, showed that global warming would be most pronounced near the poles.

Between 1986, when Croasdale took the reins of Imperial’s frontier research team, until 1992, when he left the company, his team of engineers and scientists used the global circulation models developed by the Canadian Climate Centre and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to anticipate how climate change could affect a variety of operations in the Arctic.

These were the same models that — for the next two decades — Exxon’s executives publicly dismissed as unreliable and based on uncertain science. As Chief Executive Lee Raymond explained at an annual meeting in 1999, future climate “projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation.”

One of the first areas the company looked at was how the Beaufort Sea could respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which the models predicted would happen by 2050.

Greenhouse gases are rising “due to the burning of fossil fuels,” Croasdale told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. “Nobody disputes this fact,” he said, nor did anyone doubt those levels would double by the middle of the 21st century.

Using the models and data from a climate change report issued by Environment Canada, Canada’s environmental agency, the team concluded that the Beaufort Sea’s open water season — when drilling and exploration occurred — would lengthen from two months to three and possibly five months.

They were spot on.
Seismic lines are used to detect natural gas and other underground deposits on the frozen Beaufort Sea. (Tom Cohen / Associated Press)

In the years following Croasdale’s conclusions, the Beaufort Sea has experienced some of the largest losses in sea ice in the Arctic and its open water season has increased significantly, according to Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

For instance, in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort, the season has been extended by 79 days since 1979, Serreze said.

An extended open water season, Croasdale said in 1992, could potentially reduce exploratory drilling and construction costs by 30% to 50%.
Members of the environmental group Greenpeace work to hang a banner protesting oil drilling at the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Valdez, Alaska terminal, on August 5, 1991. (Carey Anderson / Associated Press)

He did not recommend making investment decisions based on those scenarios, because he believed the science was still uncertain. However, he advised the company to consider and incorporate potential “negative outcomes,” including a rise in the sea level, which could threaten onshore infrastructure; bigger waves, which could damage offshore drilling structures; and thawing permafrost, which could make the earth buckle and slide under buildings and pipelines.

::

The most pressing concerns for the company centered on a 540-mile pipeline that crossed the Northwest Territories into Alberta, its riverside processing facilities in the remote town of Norman Wells, and a proposed natural gas facility and pipeline in the Mackenzie River Delta, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

The company hired Stephen Lonergan, a Canadian geographer from McMaster University, to study the effect of climate change there.

Lonergan used several climate models in his analysis, including the NASA model. They all concluded that things would get warmer and wetter and that those effects “cannot be ignored,” he said in his report.

As a result, the company should expect “maintenance and repair costs to roads, pipelines and other engineering structures” to be sizable in the future, he wrote.

A warmer Arctic would threaten the stability of permafrost, he noted, potentially damaging the buildings, processing plants and pipelines that were built on the solid, frozen ground.

In addition, the company should expect more flooding along its riverside facilities, an earlier spring breakup of the ice pack, and more-severe summer storms.

But it was the increased variability and unpredictability of the weather that was going to be the company’s biggest challenge, he said.

Record-breaking droughts, floods and extreme heat — the worst-case scenarios — were now events that not only were likely to happen, but could occur at any time, making planning for such scenarios difficult, Lonergan warned the company in his report. Extreme temperatures and precipitation “should be of greatest concern,” he wrote, “both in terms of future design and … expected impacts.”

The fact that temperatures could rise above freezing on almost any day of the year got his superiors’ attention. That “was probably one of the biggest results of the study and that shocked a lot of people,” he said in a recent interview.

Lonergan recalled that his report came as somewhat of a disappointment to Imperial’s management, which wanted specific advice on what action it should take to protect its operations. After presenting his findings, he remembered, one engineer said: “Look, all I want to know is: Tell me what impact this is going to have on permafrost in Norman Wells and our pipelines.”

As it happened, J.F. “Derick” Nixon, a geotechnical engineer on Croasdale’s team, was studying that question.

He looked at historical temperature data and concluded Norman Wells could grow about 0.2 degrees warmer every year. How would that, he wondered, affect the frozen ground underneath buildings and pipelines?

“Although future structures may incorporate some consideration of climatic warming in their design,” he wrote in a technical paper delivered at a conference in Canada in 1991, “northern structures completed in the recent past do not have any allowance for climatic warming.” The result, he said, could be significant settling.

Nixon said the work was done in his spare time and not commissioned by the company. However, Imperial “was certainly aware of my work and the potential effects on their buildings.”

::

Exxon Mobil declined to respond to requests for comment on what steps it took as a result of its scientists’ warnings. According to Flannery, the company’s in-house climate expert, much of the work of shoring up support for the infrastructure was done as routine maintenance.

“You build it into your ongoing system and it becomes a part of what you do,” he said.

Today, as Exxon’s scientists predicted 25 years ago, Canada’s Northwest Territories has experienced some of the most dramatic effects of global warming. While the rest of the planet has seen an average increase of roughly 1.5 degrees in the last 100 years, the northern reaches of the province have warmed by 5.4 degrees and temperatures in central regions have increased by 3.6 degrees.

Since 2012, Exxon Mobil and Imperial have held the rights to more than 1 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, for which they bid $1.7 billion in a joint venture with BP. Although the companies have not begun drilling, they requested a lease extension until 2028 from the Canadian government a few months ago. Exxon Mobil declined to comment on its plans there.

Croasdale, who still consults for Exxon, said the company could be “taking a gamble” the ice will break up soon, finally bringing about the day he predicted so long ago — when the costs would become low enough to make Arctic exploration economical.

Amy Lieberman and Elah Feder contributed to this report.
Coast Guard crew members at work on a mission with NASA to study changing Arctic conditions. Exxon has used such studies to help plan future operations. (NASA / Kathryn Hansen / Rex Features)

About this story: Over the last year, the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, with the Los Angeles Times, has been researching the gap between Exxon Mobil’s public position and its internal planning on the issue of climate change. As part of that effort, reporters reviewed hundreds of documents housed in archives in Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and at the University of Texas. They also reviewed scientific journals and interviewed dozens of experts, including former Exxon Mobil employees. This is the first in a series of occasional articles.

Additional credits: Digital producer: Evan Wagstaff. Lead photo caption: Ice in the Chukchi Sea breaks up in open water season, making oil exploration cheaper and easier.

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Wondering what the next phase in Alaska will be?

Attached graphic from the Alaska Climate Research Center shows a cool cycle - then a flip to a warm cycle.

Next?

39 minutes ago

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Images

Arctic sea ice extent, illustrated on a map supplement, in Oct 1971 is attached.

Interesting to note that in the captions on the map, it is noted: "the Northwest Passage was navigated in 1903-1906, 1940-1942, and in 1944"

Wow - with radar, satellite data, gps, etc.

54 minutes ago

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It's a curious point: there is no reference in this article (that I can find) to man-made, anthropogenic, human footprint, etc., on global warming. It's presented as if all global warming and all climate change - all regional climate cycles - are man-made. No climate scientist in the world would go on the record stating that all global warming since 1950 (birth of any predicted observational human influence on GW) was caused by man, and that none of it was naturally occurring - as was all of the... » more

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swisschoco25
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Exxon falls into the category of too big to fail...if the government is not going to let one of these big wallstreet firms fail or prosecute them, then they really aren't going to let one of these oil companies fail or prosecute any of their CEO's or VPs. There is Capitalism at its finest..companies who put there bottom line and profits over people.

1 hour ago

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LAMary
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LAMary Rank 0

This information is being spread widely. Who is really responsible for getting the story. Columbia and LA Times or Inside Climate News or NY Times. Were all these files made available and many have been poring over the information? Who would get the Pulitzer if this turns into one? How is it that determines who gets it? Different tack I know but I'm curious since no else is attributing the story to the efforts of the LA Times and Columbia.

1 hour ago (edited)

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@LAMary

There's really not much here.

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spirited102960
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spirited102960 Rank 0

Considering that Exxon-Mobile had made business history in the midst of the escalating oil prices after Katrina, I am likely to believe that they also misled us about what they know regarding climate control.

2 hours ago

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mark00000244
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mark00000244 Rank 0

Why not prosecute the executives who made these decisions? It's one way to stop them from deciding in favor of their bottom line and against the future of humanity. Fines to corporations never touch them, but seeing their peers doing a perp walk might.

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jschmidt12
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Numerous commenters want the Exxon executives persecuted for "lying". I can't find anything in the article that constitutes a lie.

2 hours ago

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Tython
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Tython Rank 14

@jschmidt12 What about deceptive disingenuousness perhaps...?

1 hour ago

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@jschmidt12

Many of the commenters are being persecuted, in the moment, as their comments are being censored. Curious scientific points, empirical evidence, and astute observations are not allowed.

People's civil rights are being squashed.

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jdiehldargle
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The North Pole is melting more quickly than the South pole because the ice in the Arctic sits in Arctic Ocean and when it melts The Arctic Ocean exposed to the sun absorbs more heat from the sun, because the open ocean is a darker color than ice. Ice reflects more of the sun's heat back into the upper atmosphere than open ocean (dark green). Antarctica sits on its own land mass, one of the seven continents and the ice on top of the continent is so old and thick that it melts from the top down... » more

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@jdiehldargle

Antarctica - the ice also melts from the bottom from the heat generated by volcanic forces/geothermal.

3 hours ago

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andthetruthshallsetyoufree
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The deed is done. A wave of change has been created that will cause global disaster for not just the human race but to all life on Earth. Now, if we as a world, start to make changes in how we "coexist" with the world and start working on projects to help our children and grandchildren to survive maybe we can lessen their demise. The horrific environmental changes that will effect our food, our air, our water...all aspects of survival, will determine whether or not humanity or even any other... » more


Tython
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Tython Rank 14

@andthetruthshallsetyoufree But, republicans DON'T change, so now what...

What Exxon knew about
the Earth's melting Arctic

By Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust

Oct. 9, 2015

Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet.

Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon’s Arctic operations and its bottom line.
Top, the loss of sea ice due to climate change has taken a toll on wildlife. (Mike Lockhart / U.S. Geological Survey, Associated Press) Bottom, rapidly thawing permafrost is changing the landscape in Canada’s Northwest Territories. (Scott Zolkos / The Canadian Press)

“Certainly any major development with a life span of say 30-40 years will need to assess the impacts of potential global warming,” Croasdale told an engineering conference in 1991. “This is particularly true of Arctic and offshore projects in Canada, where warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels.”

Between 1986 and 1992, Croasdale’s team looked at both the positive and negative effects that a warming Arctic would have on oil operations, reporting its findings to Exxon headquarters in Houston and New Jersey.

The good news for Exxon, he told an audience of academics and government researchers in 1992, was that “potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea.

But, he added, it also posed hazards, including higher sea levels and bigger waves, which could damage the company’s existing and future coastal and offshore infrastructure, including drilling platforms, artificial islands, processing plants and pump stations. And a thawing earth could be troublesome for those facilities as well as pipelines.

As Croasdale’s team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company’s operations, Exxon and its worldwide affiliates were crafting a public policy position that sought to downplay the certainty of global warming.

The gulf between Exxon’s internal and external approach to climate change from the 1980s through the early 2000s was evident in a review of hundreds of internal documents, decades of peer-reviewed published material and dozens of interviews conducted by Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.

Documents were obtained from the Imperial Oil collection at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and the Exxon Mobil Historical Collection at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History.

“We considered climate change in a number of operational and planning issues,” said Brian Flannery, who was Exxon’s in-house climate science advisor from 1980 to 2011. In a recent interview, he described the company’s internal effort to study the effects of global warming as a competitive necessity: “If you don’t do it, and your competitors do, you’re at a loss.”

::
Imperial Oil’s Dartmouth refinery in Halifax, Canada. Exxon Mobil owns about 70% of the company. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press, Associated Press)

The Arctic holds about one-third of the world’s untapped natural gas and roughly 13% of the planet’s undiscovered oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. More than three-quarters of Arctic deposits are offshore.

Imperial Oil, about 70% of which is owned by Exxon Mobil, began drilling in the frigid Arctic waters of the Canadian Beaufort Sea in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, it had drilled two dozen exploratory wells.

The exploration was expensive, due to bitter temperatures, wicked winds and thick sea ice. And when a worldwide oil slump drove petroleum prices down in the late 1980s, the company began scaling back those efforts.
Changes in Arctic sea ice from 1984 to 2013
Before: Arctic ice coverage in 1984. After: Receding coverage in 2013.

But with mounting evidence the planet was warming, company scientists, including Croasdale, wondered whether climate change might alter the economic equation. Could it make Arctic oil exploration and production easier and cheaper?

“The issue of CO2 emissions was certainly well-known at that time in the late 1980s,” Croasdale said in an interview.

Since the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Exxon had been at the forefront of climate change research, funding its own internal science as well as research from outside experts at Columbia University and MIT.

With company support, Croasdale spearheaded the company’s efforts to understand climate change’s effects on its operations. A company such as Exxon, he said, “should be a little bit ahead of the game trying to figure out what it was all about.”

Exxon Mobil describes its efforts in those years as standard operating procedure. “Our researchers considered a wide range of potential scenarios, of which potential climate change impacts such as rising sea levels was just one,” said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil.

The Arctic seemed an obvious region to study, Croasdale and other experts said, because it was likely to be most affected by global warming.

That reasoning was backed by models built by Exxon scientists, including Flannery, as well as Marty Hoffert, a New York University physicist. Their work, published in 1984, showed that global warming would be most pronounced near the poles.

Between 1986, when Croasdale took the reins of Imperial’s frontier research team, until 1992, when he left the company, his team of engineers and scientists used the global circulation models developed by the Canadian Climate Centre and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to anticipate how climate change could affect a variety of operations in the Arctic.

These were the same models that — for the next two decades — Exxon’s executives publicly dismissed as unreliable and based on uncertain science. As Chief Executive Lee Raymond explained at an annual meeting in 1999, future climate “projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation.”

One of the first areas the company looked at was how the Beaufort Sea could respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which the models predicted would happen by 2050.

Greenhouse gases are rising “due to the burning of fossil fuels,” Croasdale told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. “Nobody disputes this fact,” he said, nor did anyone doubt those levels would double by the middle of the 21st century.

Using the models and data from a climate change report issued by Environment Canada, Canada’s environmental agency, the team concluded that the Beaufort Sea’s open water season — when drilling and exploration occurred — would lengthen from two months to three and possibly five months.

They were spot on.
Seismic lines are used to detect natural gas and other underground deposits on the frozen Beaufort Sea. (Tom Cohen / Associated Press)

In the years following Croasdale’s conclusions, the Beaufort Sea has experienced some of the largest losses in sea ice in the Arctic and its open water season has increased significantly, according to Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

For instance, in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort, the season has been extended by 79 days since 1979, Serreze said.

An extended open water season, Croasdale said in 1992, could potentially reduce exploratory drilling and construction costs by 30% to 50%.
Members of the environmental group Greenpeace work to hang a banner protesting oil drilling at the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Valdez, Alaska terminal, on August 5, 1991. (Carey Anderson / Associated Press)

He did not recommend making investment decisions based on those scenarios, because he believed the science was still uncertain. However, he advised the company to consider and incorporate potential “negative outcomes,” including a rise in the sea level, which could threaten onshore infrastructure; bigger waves, which could damage offshore drilling structures; and thawing permafrost, which could make the earth buckle and slide under buildings and pipelines.

::

The most pressing concerns for the company centered on a 540-mile pipeline that crossed the Northwest Territories into Alberta, its riverside processing facilities in the remote town of Norman Wells, and a proposed natural gas facility and pipeline in the Mackenzie River Delta, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

The company hired Stephen Lonergan, a Canadian geographer from McMaster University, to study the effect of climate change there.

Lonergan used several climate models in his analysis, including the NASA model. They all concluded that things would get warmer and wetter and that those effects “cannot be ignored,” he said in his report.

As a result, the company should expect “maintenance and repair costs to roads, pipelines and other engineering structures” to be sizable in the future, he wrote.

A warmer Arctic would threaten the stability of permafrost, he noted, potentially damaging the buildings, processing plants and pipelines that were built on the solid, frozen ground.

In addition, the company should expect more flooding along its riverside facilities, an earlier spring breakup of the ice pack, and more-severe summer storms.

But it was the increased variability and unpredictability of the weather that was going to be the company’s biggest challenge, he said.

Record-breaking droughts, floods and extreme heat — the worst-case scenarios — were now events that not only were likely to happen, but could occur at any time, making planning for such scenarios difficult, Lonergan warned the company in his report. Extreme temperatures and precipitation “should be of greatest concern,” he wrote, “both in terms of future design and … expected impacts.”

The fact that temperatures could rise above freezing on almost any day of the year got his superiors’ attention. That “was probably one of the biggest results of the study and that shocked a lot of people,” he said in a recent interview.

Lonergan recalled that his report came as somewhat of a disappointment to Imperial’s management, which wanted specific advice on what action it should take to protect its operations. After presenting his findings, he remembered, one engineer said: “Look, all I want to know is: Tell me what impact this is going to have on permafrost in Norman Wells and our pipelines.”

As it happened, J.F. “Derick” Nixon, a geotechnical engineer on Croasdale’s team, was studying that question.

He looked at historical temperature data and concluded Norman Wells could grow about 0.2 degrees warmer every year. How would that, he wondered, affect the frozen ground underneath buildings and pipelines?

“Although future structures may incorporate some consideration of climatic warming in their design,” he wrote in a technical paper delivered at a conference in Canada in 1991, “northern structures completed in the recent past do not have any allowance for climatic warming.” The result, he said, could be significant settling.

Nixon said the work was done in his spare time and not commissioned by the company. However, Imperial “was certainly aware of my work and the potential effects on their buildings.”

::

Exxon Mobil declined to respond to requests for comment on what steps it took as a result of its scientists’ warnings. According to Flannery, the company’s in-house climate expert, much of the work of shoring up support for the infrastructure was done as routine maintenance.

“You build it into your ongoing system and it becomes a part of what you do,” he said.

Today, as Exxon’s scientists predicted 25 years ago, Canada’s Northwest Territories has experienced some of the most dramatic effects of global warming. While the rest of the planet has seen an average increase of roughly 1.5 degrees in the last 100 years, the northern reaches of the province have warmed by 5.4 degrees and temperatures in central regions have increased by 3.6 degrees.

Since 2012, Exxon Mobil and Imperial have held the rights to more than 1 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, for which they bid $1.7 billion in a joint venture with BP. Although the companies have not begun drilling, they requested a lease extension until 2028 from the Canadian government a few months ago. Exxon Mobil declined to comment on its plans there.

Croasdale, who still consults for Exxon, said the company could be “taking a gamble” the ice will break up soon, finally bringing about the day he predicted so long ago — when the costs would become low enough to make Arctic exploration economical.

Amy Lieberman and Elah Feder contributed to this report.
Coast Guard crew members at work on a mission with NASA to study changing Arctic conditions. Exxon has used such studies to help plan future operations. (NASA / Kathryn Hansen / Rex Features)

About this story: Over the last year, the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, with the Los Angeles Times, has been researching the gap between Exxon Mobil’s public position and its internal planning on the issue of climate change. As part of that effort, reporters reviewed hundreds of documents housed in archives in Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and at the University of Texas. They also reviewed scientific journals and interviewed dozens of experts, including former Exxon Mobil employees. This is the first in a series of occasional articles.

Additional credits: Digital producer: Evan Wagstaff. Lead photo caption: Ice in the Chukchi Sea breaks up in open water season, making oil exploration cheaper and easier.

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Wondering what the next phase in Alaska will be?

Attached graphic from the Alaska Climate Research Center shows a cool cycle - then a flip to a warm cycle.

Next?

39 minutes ago

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Images

Arctic sea ice extent, illustrated on a map supplement, in Oct 1971 is attached.

Interesting to note that in the captions on the map, it is noted: "the Northwest Passage was navigated in 1903-1906, 1940-1942, and in 1944"

Wow - with radar, satellite data, gps, etc.

54 minutes ago

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It's a curious point: there is no reference in this article (that I can find) to man-made, anthropogenic, human footprint, etc., on global warming. It's presented as if all global warming and all climate change - all regional climate cycles - are man-made. No climate scientist in the world would go on the record stating that all global warming since 1950 (birth of any predicted observational human influence on GW) was caused by man, and that none of it was naturally occurring - as was all of the... » more

1 hour ago

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swisschoco25
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Exxon falls into the category of too big to fail...if the government is not going to let one of these big wallstreet firms fail or prosecute them, then they really aren't going to let one of these oil companies fail or prosecute any of their CEO's or VPs. There is Capitalism at its finest..companies who put there bottom line and profits over people.

1 hour ago

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LAMary
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LAMary Rank 0

This information is being spread widely. Who is really responsible for getting the story. Columbia and LA Times or Inside Climate News or NY Times. Were all these files made available and many have been poring over the information? Who would get the Pulitzer if this turns into one? How is it that determines who gets it? Different tack I know but I'm curious since no else is attributing the story to the efforts of the LA Times and Columbia.

1 hour ago (edited)

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@LAMary

There's really not much here.

1 hour ago

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spirited102960
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spirited102960 Rank 0

Considering that Exxon-Mobile had made business history in the midst of the escalating oil prices after Katrina, I am likely to believe that they also misled us about what they know regarding climate control.

2 hours ago

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mark00000244
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mark00000244 Rank 0

Why not prosecute the executives who made these decisions? It's one way to stop them from deciding in favor of their bottom line and against the future of humanity. Fines to corporations never touch them, but seeing their peers doing a perp walk might.

2 hours ago

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jschmidt12
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jschmidt12 Rank 0

Numerous commenters want the Exxon executives persecuted for "lying". I can't find anything in the article that constitutes a lie.

2 hours ago

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Tython
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Tython Rank 14

@jschmidt12 What about deceptive disingenuousness perhaps...?

1 hour ago

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@jschmidt12

Many of the commenters are being persecuted, in the moment, as their comments are being censored. Curious scientific points, empirical evidence, and astute observations are not allowed.

People's civil rights are being squashed.

1 hour ago

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jdiehldargle
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The North Pole is melting more quickly than the South pole because the ice in the Arctic sits in Arctic Ocean and when it melts The Arctic Ocean exposed to the sun absorbs more heat from the sun, because the open ocean is a darker color than ice. Ice reflects more of the sun's heat back into the upper atmosphere than open ocean (dark green). Antarctica sits on its own land mass, one of the seven continents and the ice on top of the continent is so old and thick that it melts from the top down... » more

3 hours ago

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@jdiehldargle

Antarctica - the ice also melts from the bottom from the heat generated by volcanic forces/geothermal.

3 hours ago

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andthetruthshallsetyoufree
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andthetruthshallsetyoufree Rank 0

The deed is done. A wave of change has been created that will cause global disaster for not just the human race but to all life on Earth. Now, if we as a world, start to make changes in how we "coexist" with the world and start working on projects to help our children and grandchildren to survive maybe we can lessen their demise. The horrific environmental changes that will effect our food, our air, our water...all aspects of survival, will determine whether or not humanity or even any other... » more


Tython
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Tython Rank 14

@andthetruthshallsetyoufree But, republicans DON'T change, so now what...
- BingoLady

is this your version of a cat tail?

is this your version of a cat tail?
- watsonnostaw

lol.

(frank)ing cat tail.

lol.

(frank)ing cat tail.
- kicksave856

A mother;
Whose eyes were bright like a glacier, are wet now.
Whose skin was golden like desert’s sand, is full of cracks now.
Whose throat was sweet like a lake’s water, has dried up now.
This is all because;
A child sitting on her shoulders has removed umbrella over her in sunshine.
But she is still carrying the child.
Hoping that;
The child will again carry umbrella for her.
The child will take care of her.

A mother;
Whose eyes were bright like a glacier, are wet now.
Whose skin was golden like desert’s sand, is full of cracks now.
Whose throat was sweet like a lake’s water, has dried up now.
This is all because;
A child sitting on her shoulders has removed umbrella over her in sunshine.
But she is still carrying the child.
Hoping that;
The child will again carry umbrella for her.
The child will take care of her.
- the_cause2000

Hands all over the Eastern border
You know what? I think we're falling
From composure
Hands all over Western culture
Ruffling feathers and turning eagles into vultures

Got my arms around baby brother
Put your hands away
You're gonna kill your mother, kill your mother
And I love her

Hands all over the coastal waters
The crew men thank her
Then lay down their oily blanket
Hands all over the inland forest
In a striking motion trees fall down
Like dying soldiers

Hands all over the peasant's daughter
She's our bride
She'll never make it out alive
Hands all over the words I utter
Change them into what you want to
Like balls of clay
Put your hands away
You're gonna kill your mother
And I love her

Trudeau's predecessor Stephen Harper was a climate change skeptic. But the new prime minister brings a different attitude

For years, climate change activists have criticized the Canadian government as a global warming laggard. The Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been in power since 2006, has never taken climate change seriously. When Canada failed to meet carbon cuts set in the Kyoto Protocol—a treaty Canada signed and ratified under a previous government—Harper simply withdrew his country.

But the surprise election of Justin Trudeau yesterday promises to change that perception. The Liberal Party leader emphasized the very real danger of climate change and pledged his support for what he called a “pan-Canadian” approach to the issue. “In 2015, pretending that we have to choose between the economy and the environment is as harmful as it is wrong,” he said in a speech earlier this year.

Even with a resounding win, however, it may provide surprisingly difficult for new Prime Minister Trudeau to enacting strong environmental and energy policy at the federal level in Canada. Control over Canadian environmental and energy policy rests largely with the country’s powerful provincial leaders. Indeed, the country explicitly leaves authority over natural resource management to the provinces. And many Canadians still recall an ill-fated attempt in the 1980s by the federal government to grab a larger share of the profits from energy resources in individual provinces. That program was championed by none other then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father.

“Provinces have enormous authority in so many areas and there are huge regional differences on this issues,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “Canadians have struggled mightily to put together a federal policy that address emissions.”

Read More: Why Restoring Nature Could Be the Key to Fighting Climate Change

For these reasons, Trudeau appears keen on implementing a carbon pricing scheme that would set targets for emissions reductions at the federal level and allow for provinces to design programs independently to meet those goals. The program, which still needs to be fleshed out, might bear some similarity to the President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, said Rabe, which sets emissions reductions standards for each state based on its current energy sources.


Relying on sub-national governments to act also makes sense given what many Canadian provinces have accomplished already. Authorities in Quebec, the second-largest province in Canada, instituted a cap-and-trade program which allows for the trade of carbon credits with California. The west coast province of British Columbia has the country’s only carbon tax.

Trudeau’s victory comes just in time for a major United Nations meeting on climate change that begins next month in Paris. Under Harper, Canada declared that it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2005 level—a commitment widely viewed as inadequate. Trudeau’s election won’t change that commitment given the short timeframe before negotiations begin, but the new Prime Minister has already said he plans to attend the conference along with the country’s provincial and territorial leaders, in a show of support for the international process.

Stronger climate action from Canada won’t stop globe warming on its own—the country emits only 2% of the world’s carbon emissions from the consumption of energy, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, though it has one of the highest per-capita rates in the world. But experts say the defeat of a high-profile climate skeptic like Harper plays an important role in the global debate over climate change. Like other conservatives, Harper doubted that it was possible to take strong action on climate change without damaging his country’s economy. Low-income countries that wanted to drag their feet on climate change could always point to the example of high-emitting nations like Canada that refused to change their ways.

“It makes it easier for other nations of the world to shirk or not take action on this issue when they can point to Canada not really doing anything,” said Rabe. “Now the question is where does Trudeau fit in to all of this?”