It’s been seven years since journalists first exposed ExxonMobil’s decades-long efforts to undermine scientific certainty about climate change, even though they knew what a problem it was.
Now, a new analysis demonstrates exactly how much the company knew — and how its public disinformation campaign undermined the warnings of its in-house scientists.
Exxon isn’t just aware of the greenhouse effect. It has its own team of scientists developing models to predict the impact of carbon emissions on the global climate. These models have proven to be very accurate.
Ed Garvey, who worked on climate science for ExxonMobil in the late 1970s, said in an interview: “Our scientists do good science, but our corporate boards don’t listen.”
analyze, Published in Magazine Thursday science, captured that emotion. Exxon’s model matched state-of-the-art simulations used by academic scientists during the same period. The company’s projections accurately foresee the warming that has actually occurred since the 1970s, according to a study authored by researchers Geoffrey Supran, Stefan Rahmstorf and Naomi Oreskes.
The findings deepen Exxon’s reputation for climate disinformation. They could also have legal ramifications, as evidence in lawsuits that could cost the fossil fuel industry hundreds of billions of dollars. Two dozen U.S. cities, counties and states are suing ExxonMobil and other energy companies in an attempt to show they misled the public about their contributions to climate change.
The company says its critics are wrong and that the findings only show that its scientists are keeping pace with evolving climate research.
Exxon’s climate research has produced nearly 150 papers, including more than 50 peer-reviewed publications the company makes available to the public, said spokesman Todd Spitler.
“ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science has evolved with that of the broader scientific community,” Spitler said. He added, “This question has come up many times in recent years, and each time our answer has been the same: Those who talk about ‘Exxon knew’ are wrong to conclude.”
The company, he said, is “committed to being part of the solution to climate change and the risks it brings.”
But lawyers for parties suing the fossil fuel company said the study would help prove that Exxon knew its products were contributing to global warming and was trying to obscure the facts.
“It shifts the conversation from ‘ExxonMobil knows global warming is real,’ to ‘ExxonMobil internally generates the same global warming predictions as the climate science it publicly disparages,'” Niskanen Center chief counsel David Bookbinder said he sued the industry’s Colorado community on behalf of several companies.
He added that the study “should have a significant impact on the jury.”
The lawsuits have been mired in procedural wrangling for years as the companies try to move the cases from state to federal courts, which the companies believe are more likely to be dismissed.
Most of the cases were brought under state consumer protection laws, and appeals judges in 2022 from Rhode Island to Hawaii rejected attempts to dismiss the liability suit. The industry has asked the Supreme Court to step in, saying the lawsuits pose a “huge pecuniary liability” to the company.
The lawsuit has been likened to the legal battle against the tobacco industry, which ended in a $206 billion settlement in 1998 (Climate LineMarch 10, 2021).
The paper’s lead author, Oreskes, who became a lightning rod for his work on climate disinformation in the energy industry, was a paid consultant to Sher Edling LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm that represents several companies, the study noted. Challengers in Corporate Climate Liability Litigation. Exxon has accused Oreskes in the past of failing to disclose what it called a “blatant conflict of interest.”
The law firm “had no role (including but not limited to, study conceptualization, execution, writing or funding) in this or any other study by the authors,” the study said.
Oreskes was paid for 3.5 hours of consulting in 2017 and has not done any work for the company since then, Sher Edling said.
Alyssa Johl, vice president of law at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports climate litigation, said the study “reiterates and strengthens” two areas that are critical to litigation.
Exxon “knows with astonishing accuracy how fossil fuels are going to cause the climate crisis,” Johl said. The research showed that “ExxonMobil executives actively concealed and denied what their own scientists told them,” she said.
She added that if “the next time ExxonMobil’s lawyers falsely claim that the company didn’t know about this, or didn’t know their products could cause harm, they’re going to have to confront a peer-reviewed study showing that these statement is a lie”
“Shocking skill level”
Environmentalists rally outside the Supreme Court in New York in 2019.Drew Angler/Getty Images
The new analysis has its roots in an apparently modern phenomenon: viral tweets.
A few years ago, study authors Supran and Oreskes, then co-authors at Harvard University, published a paper on ExxonMobil’s climate communication strategy. It caught the attention of Ramstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He noticed a graph in the newspaper that visualized some of the company’s own climate projections—and decided to do some investigating.
Rahmstorf overlays the graph with real-world temperature observations to see how the predictions are actually performing. As it turned out, they were an amazing match.
“I think he’s just surprised by the overlap,” said Suplan, now an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami. “He contacted us and tweeted about it.”
Climate Twitter took over from there. The results began to spread widely, and other scientists shared similar findings. The idea for a deeper analysis was born.
“Like this penny-you-get-you-get-you-you-you-you-get-mobil moment, where despite all the scrutiny we and others put on Exxon Mobil’s climate rhetoric, we realized that the company’s actual climate forecasts, their actual data, were just hidden in the In full view,” Supran said. “So, essentially, we decided to make a peer-reviewed version of that Twitter meme.”
Supran, Rahmstorf and Oreskes combed through dozens of internal company documents and peer-reviewed scientific papers published by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2003. In the end, they found 16 separate temperature forecasts published by ExxonMobil—most of which came from models developed by the researchers within the company. Twelve of these predictions differed from each other.
Analysis found that they were remarkably accurate. Ten of those predictions were in good agreement with Earth’s actual warming.
These predictions were also similar to those produced by academic models of the time. In other words, they were as good as—and sometimes better than—the best models used by independent scientists.
While there is always some uncertainty—margin of error, so to speak—in climate model projections, none of Exxon’s projections suggests any possibility of a future without global warming.
“The skill level and accuracy with which they predicted global warming was actually astounding,” Superan said. “Especially for a company that denies climate science for the next few decades.”
Exxon CEO on climate issue: ‘highly unlikely’
The analysis showed in quantifiable ways that ExxonMobil’s research was inconsistent with its public communications on climate change.
For years, Exxon has publicly touted uncertainties in climate science, including the question of whether human-caused warming is occurring. But its own models show that the warming caused by greenhouse gases is beyond doubt. The company also challenged the reliability of climate models, as its own forecasts proved highly accurate.
In his 2012 book “Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power,” journalist Steve Kerr chronicled how legendary Exxon CEO Lee Raymond led the company from 1993 to 2005 against Climate Science Efforts.
In 1997, as the Clinton administration entered final negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Raymond flew to China to give a speech questioning the need to reduce emissions.
“Whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now, temperatures in the middle of the next century are unlikely to be affected,” Cole quoted Raymond as saying.
A quarter of a century later, Exxon Mobil executives now acknowledge the science behind global warming.company A plan was released last year Achieve net zero emissions across all assets it owns and operates. But the pledge excludes emissions from the burning of oil and natural gas by ExxonMobil customers, which account for the vast majority of greenhouse gases associated with the company (green LineJanuary 18, 2022).
ExxonMobil has also begun investing in low-carbon technologies. December, company expresses plan Invest $17 billion by 2027 in technologies such as biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage.
“No matter what you think about the oil companies or what they say their intentions are, it’s always worth following the money,” said Alex Dewar, an analyst at Boston Consulting Group who tracks the oil industry. It’s a small fraction of their total capital, but the number is increasing and is a great sign of where they’re headed.”
Exxon’s new strategy is in line with other U.S. oil companies, many of which focus on technologies that align with existing business plans, assets and expertise. This is in stark contrast to major European oil companies, which are investing heavily in areas outside their traditional business models, such as renewable energy and electric vehicle charging technology.
The new analysis highlights a historical disconnect between Exxon’s climate scientists and its public affairs strategy — what Garvey, a former Exxon scientist, described as a “duplex” at the company.
Garvey was hired to work on a research project to collect direct measurements of carbon dioxide in the ocean and atmosphere. He’s not a climate modeller, but the job is closely related to the company’s modeling efforts. It aims to determine how much carbon the oceans are pulling from the air — a process that could mitigate the warming impact of air emissions.
The company didn’t try to channel or direct his team’s research in any way, said Garvey, now a research scientist and lecturer at Columbia University. Scientists are left to work on their projects and produce the best science as they see fit.
Garvey left Exxon a few years later when his project stopped. He completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University and later served as a consultant to the EPA. After leaving, he didn’t pay attention to much of the company’s scientific research — but he did notice the company’s ads denying climate change over the years.
“I’m not surprised at all,” he said. “I’m very disappointed because I know the quality of the scientific research being done.”
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