After journalists first uncovered ExxonMobil’s decades-long effort to undermine scientific certainty about climate change, even though they knew how serious the problem was7. Years have passed.
Now, new analysis shows how much the company knew and how its public disinformation campaign thwarted the warnings of its own scientists.
Exxon isn’t just aware of the greenhouse effect. We had our own team of scientists developing models to predict the impact of carbon emissions on the global climate. And those models turned out to be very accurate.
“We have scientists doing good science, but the board is not listening,” said Ed Garvey, who worked in climate science at Exxon in the late 1970s, in an interview.
Analysis published in the journal on Thursday chemistry, to capture that emotion. Exxon’s model was consistent with state-of-the-art simulations used by academic researchers during the same period. And according to a study written by researchers Geoffrey Supran, Stefan Rahmstorf, and Naomi Oreskes, the company’s projections accurately predicted the warming that had actually occurred since the 1970s.
The findings deepen Exxon’s reputation for climate disinformation. It could also have legal consequences as it could serve as evidence in lawsuits and cost the fossil fuel industry hundreds of billions of dollars. His 20 cities, counties and states in the US are suing Exxon and other energy companies for misleading the public about their contribution to climate change.
The company says its critics are wrong and the findings only show that scientists were keeping pace with evolving climate research.
Spokesperson Todd Spitler said Exxon’s climate research has led to nearly 150 papers, including more than 50 peer-reviewed publications that the company has made available to the public.
“ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science has evolved with that of the broader scientific community,” said Spitler. He said, “This issue has come up several times over the years, and in each case our answer is the same. Those who say ‘Exxon knew’ are wrong. ”
He said the company is “committed to being part of the solution to climate change and the risks it poses.”
But a lawyer for the party suing the fossil fuel company suggested it would help prove that Exxon knew its products were contributing to global warming and sought to obscure the facts. .
“It shifts the conversation from ‘Exxon knew global warming was real’ to ‘Exxon was internally generating the same predictions that climate science was publicly maligning about global warming’. ‘ Colorado community suing industry.
The investigation “should have a big impact on jurors,” he added.
The lawsuit has been mired in procedural controversy for years as companies attempt to move the case from state courts to federal courts where they believe the case is likely to be dismissed.
Most of the lawsuits were filed under state consumer protection statutes, and an appeals judge in a 2022 appeal from Rhode Island to Hawaii dismissed an attempt to vacate the liability lawsuit. The industry has petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene, saying the lawsuit poses “huge financial liability” for the company.
The lawsuit has been compared to a legal battle against the tobacco industry that culminated in a $206 billion settlement in 1998 (climate wireMarch 10, 2021).
Oreskes, lead author of the paper and a lightning rod for her work on climate disinformation within the energy industry, is a paid consultant to Sher Edling LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm, and has several represent the attorneys of Challenger in climate liability litigation. Exxon has previously accused Oreskes of failing to disclose what he called a “blatant conflict of interest.”
The law firm “had no role in this or any other research by the authors, including but not limited to conceptualizing, conducting, writing, or funding the research,” the study states. .
According to Sher Edling, Oreskes was paid for 3.5 hours of consulting in 2017 and has not done any work for the company since.
Alyssa Joel, vice president of legal affairs at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports climate change litigation, said the study “reaffirms and reinforces” two key areas for litigation.
Exxon “knew with amazing accuracy how fossil fuels could trigger the climate crisis,” Joel said. And the study shows that “executives at Exxon actively hid and denied what their own scientists told them.”
She added: “If Exxon’s attorneys make false claims that the company had no such knowledge or were unaware of the damage their products would cause, they are lying in those statements. You’ll have to contend with peer-reviewed studies that show that.”
“Amazing skill”
Environmental activists hold a rally outside the New York Supreme Court in 2019.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The new analysis has its roots in a decidedly modern phenomenon: viral tweets.
A few years ago, research authors Supran and Oreskes, then collaborating at Harvard University, published a paper on Exxon’s climate communication strategy. This caught the attention of his Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He noticed a graph in the paper that visualized some of the company’s own climate projections, and decided to investigate.
Rahmstorf took the graph and overlaid it with actual temperature observations to see how well the predictions actually worked. They turned out to be an amazing match.
“I think he was surprised by the duplication,” said Sprang, an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami. “He reached out to us and tweeted about it.”
Climate Twitter took over from there. The results began to spread widely, and other scientists shared similar findings. And the idea of a more detailed analysis was born.
“Despite the scrutiny of Exxon’s climate rhetoric by us and others, we realized that the company’s actual climate projections, actual data, were hidden in plain sight, this penny drop. “There were moments like,” Sprang said.
Supran, Rahmstorf, and Oreskes combed through dozens of internal documents and peer-reviewed scientific papers published by Exxon scientists between 1977 and 2003. In the end, they found 16 individual temperature predictions published by Exxon. Most of them were from models developed by researchers. In-house. Twelve of these projections were unique to each other.
Analysis showed that they were very accurate. 10 predictions were largely consistent with the actual warming of the planet.
The predictions were also similar to those made by academic models of the time. In other words, they were as good as, and sometimes even better than, the best models used by independent scientists.
Climate model projections always incorporate some degree of uncertainty, but it is within the margin of error, so to speak. None of Exxon’s projections suggest a possible future without global warming.
“It’s actually a pretty shocking level of skill and accuracy with which they’ve predicted global warming,” Supran said. “Especially for companies that have denied climate science in the decades that followed.”
Exxon CEO on Climate: ‘Very unlikely’
This analysis quantitatively shows that the Exxon study contradicted public relations on climate change.
For years, Exxon has openly touted the uncertainties in climate science. This included the question of whether human-caused warming was actually happening. But his original model showed that warming from greenhouse gases was beyond question. The company has also challenged the credibility of its climate models when its own forecasts turned out to be highly accurate.
In his 2012 book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, journalist Steve Koll explores the battle against climate science of legendary Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, who led the company from 1993 to 2005. I am recording about
In 1997, when the Clinton administration entered final negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, Raymond flew to China to deliver a speech questioning the need to cut emissions. I was.
“Whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now, it is highly unlikely that mid-century temperatures will be affected,” Colle quotes Raymond.
A quarter-century later, Exxon management has come to recognize the science of global warming. Last year, the company announced plans to achieve net zero emissions from all the assets it owns and operates. However, this pledge does not include emissions from oil and gas burned by Exxon’s customers. This accounts for the majority of the greenhouse gases associated with the company (green wireJanuary 18, 2022).
Exxon has also begun investing in low-carbon technologies. The company announced in December that he plans to invest $17 billion in technologies such as biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration by 2027.
Alex Dewar, an analyst who tracks the oil industry at the Boston Consulting Group, said, “No matter what you think about oil companies or what they say they mean, money is always worth chasing.” “It’s a small percentage of their total capital, but their numbers are growing, and it’s an important indicator of where they’re headed.”
Exxon’s new strategy aligns with other U.S. oil companies’ focus on technology in line with existing plans, assets and expertise. This contrasts with the large European oil companies, which have invested heavily in areas outside their traditional business models, such as renewable energy and electric vehicle charging technology.
A new analysis highlights a historic disconnect between Exxon’s climate scientists and its public relations strategy. This is what former Exxon scientist Garvey described as the company’s “two-headedness.”
Garvey was hired on a research project to collect direct measurements of carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the atmosphere. Although he was not a climate modeler, his work was closely related to the company’s modeling efforts. It aims to identify the amount of carbon that the oceans absorb from the atmosphere, a process that can mitigate the warming effects of atmospheric emissions.
Garvey, now a research scientist and lecturer at Columbia University, said the company did not steer or direct his team’s research in any way. and were tasked with producing the best science they saw fit.
Garvey left Exxon a few years after his project was abandoned. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University and later he became an advisor to the EPA. Although he didn’t follow much of the company’s scientific research after leaving the company, he did notice climate-denying ads over the years.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “It was very disappointing because I knew the quality of the science being done.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
