By Dominique Mosbergen
August 24, 2017
Exxon Mobil Corp. deliberately deceived the public about the dangers of climate change for four decades, a new Harvard University study finds. For the peer-reviewed study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters Wednesday, two Harvard researchers analyzed nearly 200 documents related to Exxon Mobil’s climate change communications. The researchers found that America’s largest oil producer had repeatedly made “explicit factual misrepresentations” about global warming in advertisements aimed at the general public, while simultaneously acknowledging its risks behind closed doors. “Our findings are clear: Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications,” study authors Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week. “Available documents show a systematic, quantifiable discrepancy between what Exxon Mobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change in private and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.” The discrepancy, the researchers said, was staggering. About 80 percent of Exxon Mobil’s research and internal memos acknowledged that climate change was real and caused by humans. However, 80 percent of the company’s newspaper ads regarding climate change questioned this fact, the study found.
Following the publication of the Harvard paper on Wednesday and the related op-ed, the hashtag #ExxonKnew began appearing on social media. The hashtag first gained popularity in 2015 after InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times published reports alleging that the oil had purposefully covered up what it knew about climate change. Since then, numerous investigations at the stateandfederal level have been launched and lawsuits have been filed related to whether Exxon Mobil deceived the public or its investors about the risks posed by climate change, both to the environment and to its business. Last month, three communities in California sued 37 oil, gas and coal companies including Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevron for their alleged contributions to sea level rise and for concealing the hazards posed by global warming. The companies “have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate,” the complaint reads. ″They have nevertheless engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt in the minds of customers, consumers, regulators, the media, journalists, teachers, and the public about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.”
