ExxonMobil scientists’ climate models were accurate, but hidden

Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes from Harvard University, US, have been investigating ExxonMobil’s knowledge of climate change for more than decade. Their previous work showed that there was a major discrepancy between what company spokespeople said publicly – and in advertising and marketing campaigns – and what they were saying internally. Internal documents disclosed in 2015 suggested that ExxonMobil scientists informed company executives about dangerous human-driven climate warming from at least 1977.

The researchers now show for the first time the high degree of precision and accuracy of ExxonMobil’s scientific work. With Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, the team examined numerical and graphical data related to explicit projections of future warming. This involved analysing 32 internal documents produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2002 and 72 peer-reviewed scientific publications authored or co-authored by ExxonMobil scientists between 1982 and 2014. This dataset constitutes all publicly available internal documents and research publications disclosed by the company.