Comments by 123andy

As a practicing scientist I continue to be amazed by both the leadership of the broad scientific community and of the journalist who cover climate science to accept the notion that a flawed process does not compromise the product of that process. We do not accept that in pharmacological research, medical research, physical sciences, etc. The reason that many in the science community and the broad general public question the validity of the climate science results is that none of the principal players have had the honesty and integrity to say that they did wrong, accept responsibility for it and commit to put processes in place that ensure these abuses will not happen again. There also has not been a credible, independent review to ensure the general public that all is well with the conclusions of climate science. To fail to recognize that all the so called "independent and impartial" investigations actually were seriously flawed and acknowledge that publicly continues to damage the credibility of the scientific community as a whole, and climate science specifically.

Lee Raymond contributed a lot more to XOM than riding crude prices. He was the key architect of the transformation of Exxon from a 75% US company to one whose business in 75% outside the US and 25% domestic. He was responsible for keeping the largest R&D investment in basic science among oil companies. He led the creation of the safest and most reliable industrial company after Valdez spill by leading the creation of Operations Integrity Management System that covers all aspects of XOMs business. He also lead the merger with Mobil, arguably the most efficient and effective merger of two oil giants. Those are higlights of Lee Raymond's contributions. The Economist has done a great injustice by including him on the list of failed CEOs.

A fundamental problem with all this is that human contribution via fossil fuel use simply does not control the climate. It makes a 20-30% contribution at most and thus attempts like Cap and Trade, or whatever simply will not have the impact the politicians and some scientists hope for. Hope does not trump nature. We do need funds to manage the impact of climate change, which may well have significant negative impact on some parts of the world. How to provide funds to mitigate the problems remains a major issue, not addressed by any of these attempts.

I am a scientist. This article is not just reporting scientific observations but also SWAG (Some wild ass guess) whch we all do, BUT if this becomes a prediction taken seriously than we have a problem. I would feel more comfortable if there was some attempt to maybe clarify which part of the story is advocacy and which part is science.