{"id":50091,"date":"2019-12-12T10:06:25","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T15:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50091"},"modified":"2019-12-12T10:06:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T15:06:32","slug":"canadian-oilsands-firm-denied-its-own-science-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50091","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Oilsands Firm Denied Its Own Science On Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2019\/12\/11\/Canadian-Oilsands-Firm-Denied-Own-Science\/\">Canadian Oilsands Firm Denied Its Own Science On Climate Change<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>While Imperial Oil was calling the link between fossil fuels and global warming an \u2018unproven hypothesis,\u2019 internal reports had confirmed the connection.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2019\/12\/10\/SmokestacksSunset.jpg\" alt=\"SmokestacksSunset.jpg\"\/><figcaption>Contradicting the company\u2019s own assessment of CO2 from 1970, Imperial Oil\u2019s then chairman wrote in 1998, \u2018Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient of life on this planet.\u2019&nbsp;Photo by Jonathan Franson, the Canadian Press.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Oilsands giant Imperial Oil continued to call the link between fossil fuels and global temperature rise an \u201cunproven hypothesis\u201d decades after its own research confirmed the industry\u2019s role in global warming, newly released documents show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That decision made Imperial Oil, which is majority-owned by Exxon, an early supporter of an oil industry campaign of climate denial that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2019\/may\/07\/us-hotbed-climate-change-denial-international-poll\">continues<\/a>&nbsp;to slow progress in combating the greatest existential challenge of our time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brendan DeMelle, executive director of the research group DeSmog, said the documents show that as early as the 1970s Imperial Oil had confirmed the link between fossil fuels and global warming. DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center last week&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/climateinvestigations.org\/imperial-oil-document-trove\/\">published<\/a>&nbsp;thousands of pages of official Imperial Oil documents found in an archive in Calgary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DeMelle said that with pressure building in the late 1990s for Canadian climate change solutions that might reduce fossil fuel consumption and hurt the company\u2019s business model, \u201cthey start talking about scientific uncertainties and doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Imperial Oil declined to provide comment for this story, instead pointing The Tyee to its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperialoil.ca\/en-CA\/Sustainability\/Environment\/Climate-change\">website<\/a>, which states that \u201cWe believe that climate change risks warrant action and it\u2019s going to take all of us \u2014 business, governments and consumers \u2014 to make meaningful progress.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was not what the company was arguing in the late 1990s, however, as its 1996 Annual Report makes clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian Oilsands Firm Denied Its Own Science On Climate Change While Imperial Oil was calling the link between fossil fuels and global warming an \u2018unproven hypothesis,\u2019 internal reports had confirmed the connection. Oilsands giant Imperial Oil continued to call the link between fossil fuels and global temperature rise an \u201cunproven hypothesis\u201d decades after its own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6],"tags":[28663,1517,4390,12878,369,28664],"class_list":["post-50091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-canadian-oilsands","tag-climate-denial","tag-exxon","tag-geoff-dembicki","tag-global-warming","tag-imperial-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50092,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50091\/revisions\/50092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}