Climate change denied: Exxon knew this for a long time

Oil company Exxon Mobil has denied climate change for decades. In fact, Exxon was conducting its own research on the effects of fossil fuels on climate and providing very accurate predictions. The results were deliberately kept secret.

In the 1970s, the American oil giant Exxon Mobil still believed that a new ice age was coming. It was CEO Lee Raymond who claimed in 1999 that climate change warnings were based on “completely unproven models” and were “pure speculation”. His successor, Rex Tillerson, who became US secretary of state under Donald Trump, spoke out in 2013 about “unreliable climate models”. He called climate change a purely “engineering problem”.

Exxon has done extensive research

But really, the group should have known better, as studies by scientists at Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) show. The researchers evaluated 32 internal Exxon documents and 72 scientific studies by Exxon researchers from the years 1977 to 2014. The result: Exxon scientists were convinced that the indefinite burning of fossil fuels would lead to massive global warming with drastic consequences. for life on Earth. The Exxon studies, like the Harvard and PIK studies, have been peer-reviewed to scientific standards.

PHOTO AFP/ NICHOLAS KAMM Nicholas KAMM / AFP

Rex Tillerson as CEO of Exxon in 2015.

Some of Exxon’s survey results were even better than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or NASA, and Exxon managers were also informed of the results. Yet they denied human-caused climate change for decades, as Harvard University professor Naomi Oreskes writes.

deliberately denied

The new study proved that the oil multinational was fully aware of the importance of its business to global warming and understood its role. The company’s own scientists described their findings as sophisticated and “state of the art”. His first discoveries have now also been confirmed by reality, namely the global rise in temperature. The other projections largely match those of their independent peers.

In 2019, Exxon was on trial in New York – precisely because of its public relations strategy of publicly denying climate change even though it knew better. The judge acquitted the group at the time – for lack of evidence. With the Harvard PIK study, the process could have ended differently.