You might be tempted to think that some multinational oil companies think that the global warming is not occurring. Particularly if you read articles like this one in The Guardian. It covers the oil company ExxonMobil funding a climate-change-sceptic, who seems to make a living attacking the scientific consensus that our world is getting warmer. But there is one way in which global warming is very useful to oil companies like ExxonMobil.

The reason is that they want to drill for oil in the far north. Annoyingly for them, in these Artic seas there is a lot of sea-ice which gets in the way. But here global warming comes to the rescue of these companies. The Artic sea-ice is melting! See here for a blog post with some striking graphs. And with this sea ice less of a problem, they are then free to get on with signing deals to extract oil in the Artic.

I guess from one perspective, as large oil companies have contributed more than most to global warming and so to melting of the Artic sea-ice, maybe it is appropriate that they are taking advantage of it. But it does seem a bit of a double whammy for our climate. We extract oil, burn it, heat up our atmosphere and so melt some sea-ice, which then allows us easier access to more oil, which we burn, …..

More seriously, oil companies are forced to take global warming into account. They are going after oil in the artic, and they cannot pretend that the artic sea-ice is present at the same level that it was in the 80’s. These companies employ many scientists of course, and doing business in a changing climate will probably force even those companies that might be reluctant to admit it, that global warming is real.