DragonI

Exxon Duped Public Over Climate Concerns, Harvard Research Says

Exxon Mobil Corp. spent the last 40 years undermining public concern over climate change, even as its own scientists determined man-made global warming was real and a serious threat, according to Harvard University researchers writing in a peer-reviewed journal.

www.bloomberg.com

“Exxon Mobil contributed to advancing climate science -- by way of its scientists’ academic publications -- but promoted doubt about it in advertorials,” the Harvard researchers wrote in the journal Environmental Research Letters. “Given this discrepancy, we conclude that Exxon Mobil misled the public.”

The findings could add fuel to lawsuits brought against the world’s largest oil explorer by market value. New York’s attorney general is probing whether Exxon lied to investors and the public for almost four decades about the impact of climate change on profits. Exxon is one of the world’s largest sources of fuels responsible for climate change, producing 10 million gallons of gasoline and other fuels every hour of every day.

The study’s authors, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, both scholars of scientific history at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reviewed 187 climate change communications issued by Exxon between 1977 and 2014. Their article, “Assessing Exxon Mobil’s climate change communications,” was published Wednesday.