Despite sowing uncertainty about the existence and cause of global climate change, Exxon has privately projected global warming with frightening accuracy for decades, a new study shows.
By digitizing and analyzing internal documents produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2002, a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of Potsdam put numbers behind recent rallying cries and hashtags that “Exxon knew” that burning fossil fuels would contribute to an increase in the global average temperature.
“Our findings show that ExxonMobil didn’t just know ‘something’ about global warming decades ago—they knew as much as academic and public scientists knew,” the authors wrote in the study, which was published in Science on Jan. 12. Oil and gas multinational data directly paralleled the state-of-the-art work being done by other research institutions around the world. But instead of being made available to help support the alarm raised about climate change, the company instead chose to share its findings and publicly encourage skepticism about climate change and its causes.
This analysis demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary archival work in bringing scientific data to light, Shaina Sadai, Hitz Fellow for Litigation-Relevant Science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Daily Beast. Sadai, who was not involved in the research, said the internal climate projects reveal a level of scientific sophistication and understanding by ExxonMobil scientists about the impact of the company’s actions.
“I think this connects a lot of the dots,” she said.
In a statement, ExxonMobil spokesperson Todd Spitler told The Daily Beast, “This issue has come up several times in recent years, and in each case our response is the same: those who talk about how ‘Exxon Knew’ are wrong in their conclusions .” On a website dedicated to “Understanding the #ExxonKnew controversy,” the company takes aim at media investigations by the Columbia School of Journalism and Inside Climate News, the latter of which was named a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its stories on the deck. These stories, ExxonMobil claims, were “bought and paid for” by foundations including the Rockefeller Family Fund.
But this company line no longer holds, according to the authors of the new study. “This is the nail in the coffin of ExxonMobil’s claims that it has been falsely accused of climate misconduct,” lead author Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow at Harvard University who is now affiliated with the University of Miami, said in a press release. “Our analysis shows that ExxonMobil’s own data contradicted its public statements, which included exaggerated uncertainties; criticize climate models; mythologizing global cooling; and feigning ignorance of when—or if—human-induced global warming would be measurable, while remaining silent on the threat of stranded fossil fuel resources.”
Supran and his colleagues analyzed 32 internal documents and 72 scientific papers published by ExxonMobil scientists, mapping climate projections made from the 1970s to the peak along with observed temperature changes and carbon dioxide concentrations. They found that most estimates — between 63 and 83 percent, depending on the metric used — “were statistically consistent with later observed temperatures.”
“All told, ExxonMobil was aware of modern climate science, contributed to that science, and correctly predicted future global warming,” the researchers wrote.
But successive CEOs repeatedly downplayed the consensus on climate science. The study describes how Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson (who would later become Donald Trump’s first secretary of state) made statements while leading ExxonMobil that contradicted their own researchers’ estimates. In 2000, for example, Raymond said that “the science of climate change is inconclusive.” Thirteen years later, Tillerson repeated the company’s line on man-made global warming, saying in part “the fact remains that there is uncertainty about the climate,” including what the main drivers of climate change are.
In recent years, however, the company has changed its tune and adopted a stance that both critics and researchers have described as greenwashing. “Our scientists have been involved at the forefront of climate research, understanding and working with the world’s leading experts on climate,” Exxon Mobil’s climate change website says in part. “We are committed to providing affordable energy to support human progress while promoting effective solutions to address climate change.”
Where would we be now if ExxonMobil had joined with others to communicate to the public what ExxonMobil scientists and management knew at the time, instead of exploiting it and misusing the notion of scientific uncertainty to mislead people?
Kathy Mulvey, Union of Concerned Scientists
Had it accurately communicated internal findings to the public and not actively sought to deny the conclusions of its own researchers, we might think of ExxonMobil along with other scientific powerhouses of the 20th century. In a legal context, it’s “tremendously important” to consider how our climate trajectory might have changed if ExxonMobil had been honest about what it knew, Kathy Mulvey, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate accountability campaign director, told The Daily Beast.
“Where would we be now if ExxonMobil had joined with others to communicate to the public what ExxonMobil scientists and management knew at the time, instead of exploiting it and misusing the notion of scientific uncertainty to mislead people?” Mulvey said.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee has repeatedly looked into climate disinformation published by major energy companies including ExxonMobil — executives’ unwillingness to denounce past lies in the wake of that research undermines the companies’ credibility to this day, Mulvey said.
“This certainly puts the onus on the major oil and gas companies to regain credibility with society and politicians,” she added.
