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This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change....
Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it.
However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did....
Available documents show a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public. The company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications consistently tracked evolving climate science: broadly acknowledging that AGW is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, while identifying reasonable uncertainties that most climate scientists readily acknowledged at that time. In contrast, ExxonMobil's advertorials in the NYT overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil's own. This is characteristic of what Freudenberg et. al. term the Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method —a tactic for undermining public understanding of scientific knowledge. Likewise, the company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents acknowledge the risks of stranded assets, whereas their advertorials do not. In light of these findings, we judge that ExxonMobil's AGW communications were misleading; we are not in a position to judge whether they violated any laws. (en) |
