In 2005, science writer Chris Mooney documented the company's years of financial support of individuals and groups fighting policies and government actions to address global warming, typically by instilling doubt about climate science. InsideClimate News in 2015 laid out the discrepancies between Exxon Mobil's "cutting-edge climate research" and its public stance of climate change denial. Oreskes, co-author of the book "Merchants of Doubt" about the tobacco industry's decades-long effort to undermine research on smoking's health effects, that same year showed the similarities between that effort and Exxon Mobil's campaign of "disinformation, denial and delay."
"It's pretty clear that their strategy was the same as tobacco's," Oreskes told me this week. "Delay looked to them as a smart business choice, and it may have been."
Of the company's internal reports and peer-reviewed papers, more than 80% acknowledged that global warming was real and human-caused. Only 2% expressed doubt, and in those cases the doubt reflected a conventional scientific caution about making categorical findings. Of the advertorials taking a position, however, 81% expressed doubt. Typical, Supran and Oreskes say, was a 1997 advertorial citing a "knowledge gap" in climate science and suggesting that a scientific consensus had not been reached — although by then it had.
Exxon Mobil has responded to the reporting by denying that its scientists reached firm conclusions about climate change that the company hid or suppressed while it was placing skeptical "advertorials" in the press. In a statement issued after the signing of the Paris climate agreement in 2016, the company said it "unequivocally" rejected allegations that it "suppressed climate change research," and said it understands that "climate change is real."
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-exxonmobil-20170822-story.html
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