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Power Earth

How Exxon Tried to Undermine Climate Change Science (npr.org) 70

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal.

The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York's attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil... In 2008, Exxon pledged to stop funding climate-denier groups. But that very same year, company leadership said it would support the company in directing a scientist to help the nation's top oil and gas lobbying group write a paper about the "uncertainty" of measuring greenhouse gas emissions...

The documents could bolster legal efforts to hold oil companies accountable for their alleged attempts to sow doubt about climate science. More than two dozen U.S. cities and states are suing big oil, claiming the industry knew for decades about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas but hid that information.

More context from NPR: Earlier investigations found Exxon worked for decades to sow confusion about climate change, even though its own scientists had begun warning executives as early as 1977 that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels were warming the planet, posing dire risks to human beings. By the late 1980s, concern was growing domestically and overseas that fossil fuel use was heating the planet, increasing the risks of extreme weather. In response, the Journal reported, Exxon executive Frank Sprow sent a memo to colleagues warning that if there were a global consensus on addressing climate change, "substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur." According to the Journal, Sprow wrote: "Any additional R&D efforts within Corporate Research on Greenhouse should have two primary purposes: 1. Protect the value of our resources (oil, gas, coal). 2. Preserve Exxon's business options."

Sprow told the Journal that the approach in his memo was adopted as policy, in "what would become a central pillar of Exxon's strategy," the paper said. A few years after the memo, Exxon became the architect of a highly effective strategy of climate change denial that succeeded for decades in politicizing climate policy and delaying meaningful action to cut heat-trapping pollution...

Last year, Exxon said it plans to spend about $17 billion on "lower emission initiatives" through 2027. That represents, at most, 17% of the total capital investments the company plans to make during that period. Exxon recently said it is buying a company called Denbury that specializes in capturing carbon dioxide emissions and injecting them into oil wells to boost production. It's also planning to build a hydrogen plant and a facility to capture and store carbon emissions in Texas.

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How Exxon Tried to Undermine Climate Change Science

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  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @01:54PM (#63853608)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Aren't PBS and NPR basically the same organization? They both fall under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

      • The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is really just a vehicle for distributing grants. I know that they set up NPR, and maybe PBS as well, but those are separate organizations which each receive money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They act independently.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Deserves the... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @01:56PM (#63853610)

    NO SHIT award, closely followed by an award for Fossil fuels industry funding the anti-nuclear movement [wikipedia.org]

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They will fund anything that makes people use more oil and gas. They have been pushing gas as a "greener" source of electricity for years.

      Maybe it's time we thought about nationalizing these companies. They clearly can't be trusted. We could prosecute them for crimes against humanity, but we do still need oil and gas products as we transition so we need them to keep operating. Having them nationalized with all the profit put into building up replacement renewables is one way to do that.

  • If the CxO's determine the direction of a company, and a company can have no direction or purpose without the executives, then why are the companies held accountable instead of the executives? Corporate veil popping.

    • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @02:23PM (#63853644)

      If corporations are people for the purpose of free speech, then why should they not be convicted like people for committing crimes?

      • then why should they not be convicted like people for committing crimes?

        For the same reason we don't deal with drunk drivers by putting the car on trial.

        Corporations can face civil fines, but only people can commit crimes. If the CEO breaks the law, the CEO should go to jail, not the file cabinet with the articles of incorporation.

        • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @03:25PM (#63853720)

          When was a car granted free speech rights held for a "person"? (and this does not count [wikipedia.org])

          Either we recognize SCOTUS rulings as absurd, or we follow the letter of the law on all "persons"

          • Here's the 1st Amendment:

            Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

            The only place it mentions "people" is about the right to assemble.

            For free speech, it just says "no law".

            That seems clear to me.

            • IANAL and I am pretty sure you are not either, let the professionals explain it

              HUMAN RIGHTS - Does “We the People” Include Corporations? [americanbar.org]

              "Courts continue to this day to wrestle with the basic question of who or what counts as a person with protectable rights. Flash forward to 2010 when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations have First Amendment political rights to buy ads in all American elections. If the logical flaw in Dred Scott was mistaking a person (Mr. Scott) f

  • Downmod me instead, just to show how you're scared of the truth. Yes, everything you believe about climate change came from Exxon and the likes.

    You know who I'm talking to.

  • How does one undermine settled?
    • by jsonn ( 792303 )
      By pretending that fringe voices matter. See flat earth advocates or creationists.
  • Surprised, anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @03:59PM (#63853752)
    The salaries and fortunes of many are threatened by the climate change data coming from the scientific community. That the former will be fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo - within the law and without it, if they can get away with it - will come as no surprise to anyone living in the real world.
    • by jsonn ( 792303 ) on Saturday September 16, 2023 @04:40PM (#63853800)
      The sad part is that conservatives all around the world love catering to the fossil industries and want to protect those jobs at any cost when there are more jobs and often more lucrative jobs to be gained in renewable energies.
      • by Njovich ( 553857 )

        Politicians from all sides are in bed with big oil and gas. In some places you may legitimately have left wing parties that aren't, but overall, ruling politicians love money and can give away policy decisions, and fossile companies have a lot of money and they need some policy decisions. That's just a logical partnership for them.

    • unfrozen and brought back to life by your scientists.

      Your world frightens and confuese me.

    • They question in my mind is what is the difference between corporations having free speech rights and criminal conspiracy?

      Borrowing from libertarian arguments against unions, every person working for a corp. is forced into support for positions they may not have.

      And then you get to the hard-on libertarians have for public sector unions affecting their work conditions. How is this any different?

    • If there were actual leadership in these companies it would not be so, they would have transitioned to energy companies working in nuclear and renewables.

      • If there were actual leadership in these companies it would not be so, they would have transitioned to energy companies working in nuclear and renewables.

        Instead they continue to be highly profitable.

    • Exxon Tried? they succeeded and it's not past tense, they continue to win and if Exxon somehow decided to pivot to another less profitable income stream they couldn't stop the Frankenstein monster they created! Big tobacco delayed the science at least 30 years and they are so tiny by comparison.

      Just look at the posts on /. by their rubes who have made it part of their identity and without it impacting their income are as devoted as they are to compensating for their small penises.
      As soon as anything favor

  • Of energy we can get out hands on. Burn every barrel of oil, every cubic meter of gas and every kilogram of coal we can pull out of the ground. In addition to using every watt of solar, wind, nuclear and geothermal. There will be no stopping. No slowing down. As a species, we are following our biological programming and consume every resource we can get our opposable thumbs on, and we wont stop until some external force limits us.

    I’m not making any judgements here. Right or wrong, good or bad. Wha
    • And yet, Amish will have had nothing to do with it, billions in the third world will have had nothing to do with it, all the other life forms will have nothing to do with it, etc. The retarded world destroying while self aggrandizing western *success* tard is not a product of biology, but of ideology. There is no other time in human history where a society was thought of as good and successful for having large empty homes with people living outside in tents on the streets. The isolation of successtards from

      • There is no other time in human history where a society was thought of as good and successful for having large empty homes with people living outside in tents on the streets.

        I'm pretty sure that's not true. You might not be aware of any other such time in history but that doesn't mean it hasn't ever happened before.

    • by Whibla ( 210729 )

      The idea that we would close an oilfield or coal mine before the resource has been fully mined to the point that it's no longer profitable? Ridiculous. Every barrel of oil that gets displaced by solar power? Some other part of the world will purchase and burn it instead.

      You were saying? [bbc.co.uk]

      This single exception aside, however, I fear your opinion is more likely than not to be broadly correct, for the next ~20 years. Once more scientists and green politicians have shot themselves in the foot by pushing for "net zero by 2050". Businesses then interpreted this as "there's no need for us to stop doing anything until 2050, phased transition be damned".

      The insanity (on both 'sides') is mind boggling!

      • Interesting link. But the closure date is in the future. Wait and see if it actually closes. Or it might close for a short spell and reopen. Generally its hard or impossible for a population to sit next to a pile of $$$ in the ground and not dig it up.
  • If your industry is threatened by a lot of popular tripe theories and you don't defend yourself, you deserve to get hosed.

  • Seriously? That word doesn't belong there.
  • Just this year I've seen two studies that have brought questions regarding whether or not it's actually man that's causing the increase in temperature and named a few natural phenomenons that may be creating the problems. I've read articles from scientists who have come forward to say they left out key facts from published papers that lessen the impacts of man-made climate change because of peer pressure.

    But of course, the climate fanatics won't mention those items because they don't support their cause
    • > That's not how science is supposed to work

      Exactly. It's why I dont believe any of this.

      I was told to suspend my belief that we are still in the last days (geologically speaking) of an ice age, the cause of which nobody can explain, yet it apparently happened so obviously we can expect to still be warming up as we are nowhere near the temperatures we were at before the ice age.
      I've been told that everything about the sun is understood and there is no way in hell that in the short time we have monitored

  • by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Sunday September 17, 2023 @10:38AM (#63855204) Homepage

    People are going on and on about suburbs and sprawl and all that, and it's beside the point. You can design cities that way after switching fuels.

    Exxon did not just promote oil for cars, but oil for everything. American power was much more about oil-burning before the 1973 spike of oil prices by five hundred percent. That caused a huge recession because we were so dependent on one fuel for nearly everything. We switched power generation away from oil, dropping use for that by 70% within a few years, all of it gone in a decade.

    If Exxon had told the truth, or just admitted to the truth when others told it instead of harassing them, calling them liars, we could have switched away many years earlier. It was always technically possible.

    Exxon is not just some corner store. It has a huge place in our society, has many privileges that come from that size and power. They should be held to correspondingly greater account.

  • So the complaint is that they were promoting their product while downplaying its failings, call me shocked. NPR seems to think this is something unique to the fossil fuel industry. It's not like solar/wind companies provide overly rosy energy production figures while downplaying the environmental/decommissioning costs. Or pharmaceutical companies praise their drugs effectiveness in certain cases while quietly paying people hush money on the side in the cases where the side effects maims/kills someone.

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