Analysis of 187 documents concludes Exxon misled the public on climate change
A review of 187 ExxonMobil documents, published by two Harvard researchers on Wednesday, has found that the company ”misled the public” on climate change.
The documents included internal papers published by journalists at InsideClimate News as well as 50 “peer-reviewed articles on climate research and related policy analysis” written by ExxonMobil researchers. The oil and gas company made the internal papers public and challenged anyone to “read all of these documents and make up your own mind,” accusing journalists of cherry-picking data.
Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, from Harvard's Department of the History of Science, took up that challenge, comparing the information in the documents cited by ExxonMobil against the information conveyed in the publicly-available advertorial columns published by the company on anthropogenic (or human-caused) climate change in the New York Times. They found that “83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12 percent of advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt.”
The research comes at a tricky time for ExxonMobil, when Attorneys General from 17 states as well as the officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched investigations of the company due to allegations that ExxonMobil misled the public and investors on the risks of anthropogenic climate change. Recently, investors voted that the company should produce an annual report on the risks that climate change policies might pose to ExxonMobil’s global businesses, despite opposition from the company’s executives.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/review-of-documents-suggests-exxon-mobil-misled-public-on-climate-change/
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