15.01.2023

Exxon’s Own Science Was Scary Accurate About Global Warming. So It Covered It Up.

Despite sowing uncertainty about the existence and cause of global climate change, Exxon privately projected global warming with frightening accuracy for decades, a new study reveals. By digitizing and analyzing internal documents produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2002, a team of Harvard and University of Potsdam researchers 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. The oil and gas multinational’s data outright paralleled the state-of-the-art work other research institutions around the world were pursuing. But instead of being made available to help support the alarms raised about climate change, the company chose instead to dissemble its findings and publicly call for skepticism on climate change and its causes. The analysis shows that ExxonMobil’s own data contradicted its public statements, which included exaggerating uncertainties; criticizing climate models; mythologizing global cooling; and feigning ignorance about when—or if—human-caused global warming would be measurable, all while staying silent on the threat of stranded fossil fuel assets.” Credit: THE YEARS PROJECT