Climate Change and Our Future

Guest Opinion

By Peter Bormuth | July 19, 2025

Climate change was first brought to the attention of the oil companies in 1959 at a symposium called “Energy and Man” organized by the American Petroleum Institute. Edward Teller (yes, Dr. Strangelove himself) told the industry’s most important executives that temperatures would rise, and when it did, “there is a possibility the ice caps will start melting and the levels of the ocean will rise.”

The hypothesis was ignored for a couple of decades until July of 1977 when James F. Black, one of Exxon’s senior scientists, addressed the oil giant’s top leaders: “There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.”

A year later, he spoke to a larger pool of the company’s top executives and warned that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures between 2 and 10 degrees Celsius.

So by 1978, Exxon knew that climate change was real and understood that continued use of their product would destroy the current climate epoch of the planet. They decided to ignore it.

After NASA scientist James Hanson’s 1988 testimony before the U.S. Senate that global warming was real and very dangerous, Exxon’s public affairs manager issued an internal memo that recommended the company “emphasize the uncertainty” in the scientific data. Mobil Exxon proceeded to hire scientists and PR companies to do exactly that.

As Rex Tillerson told his last Exxon shareholder meeting before becoming Trump’s first-term Secretary of State, “the world is going to have to continue using fossil fuels, whether they like it or not.”

This recipe for apocalypse is the current Trump Administration’s policy. It is only possible because certain Christian voters who disbelieve science and believe in biblical “dominion over the earth” and “forgiveness of sins” accepted the oil companies PR as truth and voted for Trump.

The attitude is exemplified by Republican congressman Tim Walberg, who told his constituents in 2017 that God will “take care of” climate change if it proves to be a “real problem.”

The reality is climate change is going to be a “real problem” unless we immediately change our technologies and behavior.

The continued emission of CO2 is triggering a methane release feedback loop. The CO2 released by burning fossil fuels is increasing Arctic temperatures and thawing the Arctic permafrost. When the permafrost melts, it releases methane that was trapped beneath the frozen soil. Methane has a short life-cycle compared to CO2 but has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first decade after it reaches the atmosphere.

Recent studies suggest that the Greenland ice caps will melt and that the process is already irreversible. Recent studies also show that Antarctic ice shelves are in danger of collapse. Should both Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt, sea levels could rise between 200-300 feet. Thirty percent of the world’s human population lives within 50 miles of the ocean. So they will either perish or be refugees.

Throughout most of the Holocene (the last 11,000-12,000 years), the ocean’s pH was a steady 8.2. In chemistry, pH is a scale used to specify how acidic or basic a water-based solution is. Absorbing carbon dioxide makes the oceans more acidic. The ocean’s pH has now dropped to 8.1. Note that pH is a logarithmic scale. That 0.1 of change means the ocean’s acidity has increased by about 30 percent. At current emission rates, the pH of the oceans will drop to 7.8 by 2100.

Oceanographer Eelco Rohling of the Netherlands, who has studied this phenomena, says that the shift is “well beyond what fish and other marine organisms can tolerate in the laboratory without very serious implications for health, reproduction, and mobility.”

When ocean temperatures rise, the possibility exists that they might get warm enough to stop oxygen production by phytoplankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis. Over half of the Earth’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton. A reminder: We need oxygen to breathe.

You should also worry about food production. (Socrates said “no man is qualified to become a statesman who is ignorant of the problems of wheat.”) In June of 2018, researchers found that a two-degree Celsius rise in temperature could cut U.S. corn yields by 18 percent. A four-degree increase (which is our current trajectory) would cut the corn corp by almost 50 percent. Consider also that many insects that plague staple crops enjoy heat.

An August 2018 study by a University of Colorado researcher projecting a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temp predicted that pests will cut wheat yields by 46 percent, corn by 31 percent, and rice by 19 percent.

Only one policy goal of the Trump Administration should be supported by all Americans: purchasing Greenland. While the fossil fuel companies want it for the oil, gas, and mineral deposits under the ice, there will also be virgin topsoil that can help feed our people when our Great Plains agriculture is destroyed by heat waves, insects, and climatic drought. Think about it.

Peter Bormuth is a Pagan Druid living in northern Michigan.