Exxon Knew. And Lied About Knowing. (Climate Denial Worth Billions)

A paper just published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

From the Abstract:

This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more publicly accessible, they increasingly communicate doubt.

So as Exxon was "talking to itself" it was acknowledging something Donald Trump has yet to: that climate change is real. And yet as it was talking to the public Exxon was saying something very different:

For example, accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of advertorials do so, with 81% instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials.

Exxon was lying to the public.

Something to ponder: the researchers looked at Exxon documents dated between 1977 and 2014 and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of Exxon from 2006-2016. (He joined the company in 1975 as engineer.)

I wonder if someone will be asking him (or his president) about this Harvard study that:

conclude[d] that ExxonMobil misled the public.

I wonder.