One reason the IPCC might have missed that prediction in 1982 is that the organisation didn't exist. It was founded in 1988 [1].
If you meant the scientific community as a whole, a majority was predicting anthropogenic global warming since the 1970's, but consensus only started in the 1980's [2].
You're implying that climate scientists had to have known the relative emissions per country into the far future. This is wrong for several reasons:
* It doesn't matter where the CO2 is released, only that it's released.
* Climate models don't predict human carbon emissions. They predict how the climate will respond.
* The climate has a lot of momentum, so a sudden increase in carbon doesn't immediately cause a change in temperature. For example, if we completely stop releasing carbon, the climate will still warm another 0.6C [1]
> * It doesn't matter where the CO2 is released, only that it's released.
This is the key point. The global economy grows at its own rate, and so we would have produced roughly the same amount of carbon even without China, the distribution would have just been different because similar amounts of manufacturing would have just happened elsewhere.
So even without being able to predict the rise of China, the scientists could have roughly predicted the carbon concentration.
The discussion is about Exxon, an oil company. The rise of China was fueled predominantly by coal. Thanks for admitting the submission title is an outrageous lie though.
This is kind of cherry picking evidence because it also doesn't show the rest of the world, especially the developing world, where the quickest path to GDP growth is, at least historically, to build a lot of coal plants.
Arguably, if India, which is currently the world's fastest develop major economy, goes the way of China, we are all screwed. Doubtful they will however, because they are at the ground zero of climate change and other pollution problems due to the fragility of the himalayan glaciers (which cause the monsoons), low latitude climate, and a large portion of the eastern side of country being at/near sea level, particularly at the delta of the Ganges River (not to mention neighboring extremely low lying Bangladesh, which may be the source of one of the largest sources of displaced people in human history since it's basically one big river delta).
If you meant the scientific community as a whole, a majority was predicting anthropogenic global warming since the 1970's, but consensus only started in the 1980's [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...