Internal files add to evidence of an ExxonMobil climate deception campaign
insideclimatenews.org213 points by gumby 2 hours ago
213 points by gumby 2 hours ago
The memo, as linked in the OP, is here, and is worth reading, as it’s incredibly far from the sensationalized headline:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28574283-searchresul...
I’ve happened to meet a number of researchers employed by large oil companies over the years, including many involved in the result of memos like this: making research into carbon capture and other mitigations a top corporate priority. Are there optical/PR reasons for investing in this research? Absolutely. Have they also been engaging in the science in good faith, and genuine intent that… in a world where climate action is desired, and net emissions are something to optimize for, they can anticipate this by genuinely funding research, and having their own research projects already underway that can address anticipated challenges? Also absolutely true.
Now, I can’t speak for, say, lobbying efforts. But the scientists on the ground getting accused of the “deception” are some of the smartest, most caring, and highest-integrity people I’ve met. Entire labs of people working for decades to think: can we make our processes cleaner, at the same time we rise to the challenges of global demand.
We should be celebrating, not condemning, this work.
The headline may be sensationalized but the memo you link (thank you) is plenty damning on it's own. It's under 2 pages and anyone can read it. The memo quite clearly understands that Exxon has made a lot of investment in carbon resources and is entirely centered around getting the value from those resources and fighting the necessary political battles along the way.
I would not celebrate this work, it's typical corporate boss-pleasing. It's not some exhortation towards clean energy.
> Have they also been engaging in the science in good faith, and genuine intent that… in a world where climate action is desired, and net emissions are something to optimize for, they can anticipate this by genuinely funding research, and having their own research projects already underway that can address anticipated challenges? Also absolutely true.
This is a claim that is very contrary to the prevailing view. If you wish others to be persuaded by this claim, I recommend that you provide some evidence for it, because on their own your statements are unconvincing.
They are, unfortunately, being undermined by politics. I know someone who works on carbon capture facilities whose projects are being canceled because the incentives are being destroyed by the current presidential administration.
Oil and gas companies strongly lobby for Republicans they know will remove any incentive for them to need to worry about the environment.
You don't get the accolades if you do your research into a corporate black hole created by NDA's. The study may as well not have ever happened at all. Science that isn't open is just contributing to the Machiavellian cycle of amoral corporatic behavior. Get back to me when this research doesn't come to light >50 years later as part of discovery in a court case.
https://insideclimatenews.org/project/exxon-the-road-not-tak...
This nine-part history of Exxon’s engagement with the emerging science of climate change is the result of an eight months-long investigation conducted in 2015. The stories span four decades, and are based on primary sources, including internal company documents dating back to the late 1970s; interviews with former company employees; and other evidence published for the first time by ICN.
We found that decades ago, Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research and then worked at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed.
This series was named a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and earned national recognition from many other quarters.
> Most of the lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed but worked to publicly question climate science and stymie efforts to curb emissions.
"They knew the risks"
Everybody knew the risks. Climate science has been researched at universities and published openly.
If politicians have failed to regulate, and consumers have enjoyed the benefits of (relatively) cheap fuel and energy, why would the fossil energy companies be singled out as the culprits? People wanted the high material standard of living that comes from (relatively) abundant available energy, cheaper and plentiful food that comes from abundant nitrogen fertilizers (made from natural gas). We were all part of this.
The difference is that exxon knew the risks but spent time and effort to sow doubt. This is exactly like how tobacco companies tried to muddy the waters on health effects of tobacco use. The oil companies could have acknowledged the problems of burning fossil fuel but it took them almost 20 years to even admit climate change is real
If people were happy to accept the risks then why obfuscate the risks?
The word "risk" implies there's a chance the water won't heat up when you put the pot on the stove. It absolutely will, it is, and we all knew it would.
The average American does not know it would. Over 70% of them reject the assertion that climate change is caused more by humans than just natural processes by themselves.
Why shouldn’t a company be responsible for the pollution and health impacts their products have?
It’s so basic
So, who will go to jail?
That's rhetorical, obviously. The answer is absolutely nobody because money is the best insulator there is.
Nobody will go to jail. The gubmint will give them trillions of dollars for carbon removal (PR campaign that the benevolent oil companies and Govt are working for them). They will give themselves awards for saving the planet and everyone else.
The captured carbon will be used for Enhanced Oil Recovery. Fossil fuel companies add a few trillion dollars in govt money, in addition to the $7T dollars in subsidies today (yale).
Carbon capture tech a 'complete falsehood', says Fortescue Metals chairman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373538
Honest Government Ad | Carbon Capture & Storage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
So this 1000 metric ton CO2 DAC plant could offset the activities of 100-400 vehicles in a year... minus the activities of the employees to get to the plant. That's what I wanna know. When are the workers going to stop driving 60 miles round trip to work? And how many need to be at work everyday at the plant? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237920
Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970085
Big Oil Helped Shape Stanford’s Latest Climate-Research Focus. Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability recently unveiled its first institutionwide research focus: greenhouse-gas removal. Taking tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be “essential” to limiting global warming, as a news release last month explained, and ideas will be marshaled from across the school to get it done. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35829500
More importantly, when will the common folk stop delegating critical thinking to these corporations?
It's really important uphold the law, but nothing really happens if the collective attitude won't change.
> More importantly, when will the common folk stop delegating critical thinking to these corporations?
When were the times when people didn’t outsource the critical thinking to others?
Never I think, it's time we started choosing not to.
Remember what is need not necessarily continue being so.
The Center for Tobacco Studies is a top tier research organization. Nick wouldn’t deceive us. Look at that smile!
These people doomed humanity to make a buck. Jail would be too good for them.
Humanity isn't doomed. Worse, it's going to survive, and have to deal with the messes we made.
Lest you make them martys. Much better if we somehow turned them, used the one ring against them.
It's entirely possible that candidates who are not promising real consequences will be unelectable in the next democratic primaries.
The current party which holds 3 of 3 branches of the government that would be responsible for prosecuting such a crime is entirely behind the idea that climate change is a hoax.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but the number of politicians and other officials who would benefit from a successful case against one of these companies or even one of their executives is a mile long.
I don’t mean generic “throw someone in jail because we all agree they’re evil amirite” posturing, but actual cases against someone based on evidence of breaking a law. Any law. It doesn’t even have to result in jail time to be a political career builder. Saying you’ve pursued and won cases against a “bad” company or executives is a huge boon to anyone in this current political environment that is highly against establishments. It’s universal, from Elizabeth Warren campaigning on her actions against Wall St to the entire “drain the swamp” phenomenon.
Reading the actual memo, not the journalists trying to make articles out of it, reveals a little more about why there isn’t the classic smoking gun here, which is a much simpler explanation for why nobody is going to jail than assuming that money has bribed, paid off, and outlawyered everyone in the country who stands to benefit politically from going after a real crime.
This is reading American politics 100% wrong, like George Costanza "I should do the opposite of my instinct on everything" level wrong.
Who's getting punished for corruption these days? Is Elizabeth Warren the President? She ran once and was only used as a stalking horse to keep Bernie out.
That’s one reason, but also just the impracticality of jailing everyone who was a shareholder at the time. Diffuse responsibility is also a very strong insulator.
I'll settle for the executives and the board serving time.
Maybe how much time you serve correlates to how much money/stock/etc you have made?
Why would you jail every shareholder? You jail everyone who took part in the deception.
"Took part" should include those who knew about the deception and did nothing.
Reaping the benefits of the deception is taking part.
No it’s not.
A 401k that market weights is not the same as an executive actively lying.
The shareholders are literally the ones that paid for the deception and who benefitted from the deception. Why in the world would you punish the hit man but not the one who paid for the hit?
The shareholders did not pay for the deception, even though they benefitted from it. There is no legal precedence for this kind of action because we have an SEC that is meant to root out deception in public companies, that was gutted as a result of the current US administration.
If the law was "you need to hire your own private investigators and external auditors to find deception in all the companies you invest in", then yes, shareholder liability would be reasonable.
Ideally, at least the board would do time and lose any rights holding such positions for a long time.
I wonder if governments will sue to recover climate mitigation costs
That is the lawsuit that caused these documents to be released (there’s actually a cluster of such lawsuits; the Massachusetts one released these documents which they got in discovery)
Its time to finally bring in the corporate death penalty.
Agreed. The business is dissolved, assets confiscated, and the board goes to jail.
And to preempt the inevitable comments about what happens to the employees: anyone who works for an oil or gas (or tobacco or social media or junk food, etc) company who's culture is so broken that it produces such planet- or society-wrecking egregious behaviour, is part of the problem and they know it. Find a new job doing something constructive.
The concept is thrown around a lot but the most obvious interpretation is that the company is shuttered, disbanded. So who suffers more, the executives who took the decisions and bail out with golden parachutes, the people who executed knowing the implications and got a bonus for it, or the many random employees and who knows how many more in the larger ecosystem who knew nothing more about it than you do?
The fix isn’t to kill the company, it’s to hold people directly accountable for decisions like this one. Unfortunately these are close to impossible to prove especially with n the land of “best justice money can buy”.
The historical case of Enron and Arthur Andersen is instructive. No one from Andersen went to jail but it had to be argued up to the Supreme Court for their charges to be dismissed. The company was disbanded but the conviction against it was overturned afterwards. This is certainly some evidence for "killing the company" not being the right move.
Several Enron execs did go to jail: Kenneth Lay the chairman would have gone for 10+ years but died before sentencing, Jeff Skilling did 12 years, Causey did 5 years, Fastow did 5 years.
In the current environment of DOJ corruption I don't think this sort of thing would happen... unless the executives were conveniently non-supporters of the current President.
Why can’t the shareholders collectively vote to jail the execs and install new leadership?
1) Shareholders can't put people in jail. 2) People generally don't act against their interest.
Shareholders can refer to the DOJ.
They could also sue in civil court. A director lying harms the company which is breach of fiduciary duty.
So first of all I agree, definitely hold the directly responsible accountable.
But it's not an either/or thing, we can just do both!
Because I'm sorry, but who works at Exxon and doesn't know its probably not great for our planet?
That’s seems ass-backwards though. If you want to punish Exxon because they contributed to global warming by satisfying the demand of billions of people for the energy embodied in fossil fuels, it seems like you should directly attack the thing you don’t want: extraction and combustion of fossil fuels.
Don’t kill Exxon and let Shell operate.
Setting aside that demand is in no way an excuse - I take it you wouldn't come up with this justification for crack dealers - I want to kill Exxon for the specific thing this article is about.
In the (honestly, not that unlikely) event Shell has done similar, they, too should be killed.
Extraction and combustion of fossil fuels can (and IMO should!) be restricted as an orthogonal measure, but Exxon shouldn't be given the chance to reallocate its investments and pretend it never did what it did.
I don’t think selling street crack is a good thing and oppose everyone who is selling it (and to your last point in your upthread post, I wouldn’t worry about the supply chain players, because “who works to supply crack and doesn’t know that crack is probably not great for you?”)
I don’t pick and choose to punish one of the dealers more harshly than the others because that one dealer had some internal research that cast doubt as to the likelihood that he would, at some time in the future, achieve a workable solution to a healthier/safer crack substitute that he currently publicly claimed to be working on.
People seem to be conflating “this company didn’t publish everything it thought about everything” (a standard we don’t hold companies to in general) with “…and the topic was climate change, so off with the company…”
History says it's like this for decades, centuries... Until it isn't. And then it's guillotines and chaos.
I fear the Children of Men style future we're stepping into.
Yeah, I guess it’s part of doing risk/reward like the taxes thing. It works for many but sometimes it gets ugly for few either by chance or social/political reasons and of course saying everybody does it it’s not helping. I think the Dieselgate was the same thing.
Another recent take is that you could go to jail or bankrupt for sharing some content or you could become billionaire/trillionaire torrenting the whole world. It’s more about the timing and leverage you build along the way.
I got admonished by a moderator here for using that word, be careful.
Aren’t they claiming companies are people?
Doesn‘t Texas still have the death penalty?
1+1=…
In what contexts is lying to the public a crime? The closest are laws against lying in police investigations or official proceedings, but otherwise it's not a jailable offense.
And all of this is before you get into the question of whether they lied or were engaging in motivated reasoning. During COVID we had anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, seemingly without clear commercial reasons to lie. Should those people be thrown in jail as well?
> In what contexts is lying to the public a crime?
This feels like a disingenuous question. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that claiming X isn't toxic, when you know that it is dangerous. Public health, frequency, scale of impact (more often, who is impacted that has resources to compete in court) et al are all considerations.
Humans act in their own self interest. Relying purely on individual self interest is a degenerate approach in public health issues. One of the many purposes of government, is to act in the collective interest. eg Typhoid Mary
Sprow also recommended monitoring alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar and biofuels, to understand their viability as alternatives to fossil fuels or, eventually, for possible business development. Finally, he added, Exxon could look for “a research breakthrough” in one of these areas that would align with the company’s business.
Truly damning stuff.
You'd think the one place in the world where checks and balances would be understood would be the United States of America. What did anyone expect ExxonMobil to do? Release a public statement that terrible things were going to happen, shut down all operations, lay off everybody and switch off the lights. Why was the issue politicised so the two main parties could make sure it served their interests. How come institutions like the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine had to weather severe political pressure to silence them, instead of being taken seriously and something done sooner? It's not much of a system if it's so easy to derail.
The checks and balances in the US were always rather fictional, but this particular failure mode of big corporations being able to cause vast amounts of harm and suffering, completely disproportionate to any benefits to the society, seems to be intrinsic in any state of matters where big corporations are allowed to exist at all.
However, there are certain aspects of the US society and political system that appear to be particularly well suited to the rise of big corps doing big evil things.
Imagine how immensely well looked-upon they would be now if they had come public about it, with a long term transition plan. Imagine a world where executives had that kind of courage.
It's a real shame these institutions have been rendered ideologically indistinguishable from the activists who've been telling us constantly the world will end if we don't get rid of all oil in the next 5 years for the last decade and a half. "Boy who cried wolf" resulting from activist alarmism has done immense and possibly irreparable damage to the credibility of the scientific community.
It will actually take a little while to tell if they were, in fact, crying wolf.
There is a lag between when carbon is released and when the effects of it peak. If we did stop all carbon emissions today, the effects of prior emissions would play out over the next 30ish years.
We’re injecting unprecedented amounts of thermal energy into planet-scale systems, and it is hard to predict second and third order effects.
I have kids/I really hope they were crying wolf.
If I drive a car and run someone over, I am arrested, not the car.
A limited liability company is just a machine, as is a car. Yet somehow when you drive one you shift your responsibility to the vehicle.
This needs to be fixed.
In legal terms there is something called "piercing the corporate veil".
Classic example:
- guy owns a cab company
- he puts each cab in it's own LLC
- the idea is that if a cab hurts or kills someone, the liability stops at the cab and doesn't come back to him
Judges will say "that is not acceptable" and rule that the liability does indeed extend outside the single car LLC and should apply to the owner.
This is not how liability works.
* There is a company that manufactures and sells cars that supposedly brake in front of pedestrians. * The company is aware that the car's braking system is faulty. * It runs a sophisticated public relations campaign campaign to convince buyers that cars can not run people over. * Public evidence of its failed braking system emerges. * It attempts to muddy the waters, cast doubt on the victims, and shift blame to drivers. * You buy such a car and run someone over.
The car is a machine. It cannot be responsible. If you believed the company's lies, then you are the victim of a misinformation campaign, as is the person you have run over. If you did not believe the company's lies then depending on your intent, you, the company, and the people involved in obfuscating the truth about a faulty braking system may be responsible.
My car almost got arrested last year for parking without my permit tag hung up.
Corporations have more rights than people. Money wins again.
I'd like to know if there was an oil industry financed or sponsored astroturf campaign to turn the American public against electric vehicles.
It felt like that in the UK a couple of years ago. All of a sudden there was a mass of negative publicity about EV’s. Most of it was false.
Would you also like to know if there was an EV company or environmental group financed or sponsored astroturf campaign against ICE vehicles?
Frankly, I hope that both of those things happened, so that people could make their own minds up after an adversarial process.
It’s not like you can squash only PR campaigns that you happen to be misaligned with, so If you want your own biases to be able to communicated, you have to let others do the same.
> Would you also like to know if there was an EV company or environmental group financed or sponsored astroturf campaign against ICE vehicles?
I wouldn't care, because environmental groups aren't destroying the planet and covering it up (see also the article you're commenting on: "New Documents Add to Evidence in Climate Deception Case Against ExxonMobil").
> If you want your own biases to be able to communicated
Wanting to know if you're being lied to isn't a "bias".
Shocking. The people who aim to benefit the most have done something to benefit? I would be surprised if any of the big fossil fuel industries have not been doing this for decades.
Conspiracy people are like "nono, the government is lying to you", but really it was the corporations that make money all along.
Why is it when these types of releases happen, it seems like the perpetrators seem to get away with it?
This release, Epstein files, Panama papers, etc.
It's like our generation has no desire to hold people accountable.
Our generation? This is a mode of production problem, we have no real power, the perpetrators do.
It is not a mode of production problem. The people do have that power at the ballot box, and choose to give more power to corrupt leaders out of fear of the alternative.
> We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr
>It's like our generation has no desire to hold people accountable.
I don't think that's it at all, it's that capital has no desire to hold people like Epstein and company accountable. That's an uncomfortable place to be in, and so it doesn't get talked about.
Capital has plenty of desire to hold it accountable, to sustain the system. Capital is not a unified group of interests; many of them favor justice.
The people do have significant power at the ballot box, and chose to give more power to corrupt leaders out of fear of the alternative.
Let's talk about it.
Not on this forum! This forum is for TECH! And tech is apolitical. lol.
Seems like good tech could solve some of the problems and root causes, no? We can ignore the relevant distributions of political power and propaganda and focus on the science the tech enables?
Absolutely. Good tech and not working for FAANGs / big VC and yet…
Political discourse is a non starter here and everyone will continue to work for abusive companies. Gotta pay for those vacations.
Take that as a given and background noise.
What do you think is one tech deployment today that can help start to mitigate climate change?
Solar + storage is on an exponential growth curve to largely entirely replace fossil fuels (coal mostly, but eventually natural gas) for electricity generation globally. It will take decades, but at this point the economics are undeniable. Which is in part why Texas (oil country) is blanketing with utility-scale solar farms. Energy businessmen have no particular ideological wedding to what will make them more money, and Solar is a far simpler business than oil.
Poster child, solar / batteries because the economics work.
A lot of the other stuff is harder to get rolling because economics. But in general energy production / storage since that feeds everything. Trump shutting down wind projects was the wrong choice.
The mycelium experiments are interesting. Plastic is so long lasting so any alternatives, I welcome.
3D printing. Maybe minor but it’s additive instead of subtractive so theoretically less waste. The old heads said 3D would never take over machining but I didn’t agree then and I don’t agree now. Maybe some applications but 3D is superior if we can get the right materials properties and costs.
Hbu?
No, your neighbours decided that all corporate malfeasance was approved if it gets them a cheaper egg.
The Epstein Files and Panama Papers both have had significant repercussions against people in power outside of the US.
Fair callout. The past few years have really fortified the media bubble for us in the US.
Some in the US as well, but it seems to skew towards wealthy (Gates) and universities, and not politicians.
Unsurprisingly, liberal-aligned society has done a much better job of holding their own accountable than the side that moved Ghislaine Maxwell to "Club Fed", the most desirable federal prison in the US.
I mean, you know the answer, surely? In the USA, the more money you have, the more power.
It's what leads to a sort of cheat code that the Bay Area investment scene has discovered - if you burn capital quickly enough to grow your revenue fast enough (even hamstringing profit to do so), and in doing so generate more investment interest and more capital attention, you eventually become Too Big To Fail, like Uber did, or the AI companies are doing now.
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> People not taking climate change seriously
Actually, some people in the US aren't taking it seriously because of propaganda dismissing climate change wholesale.
More people recognize anthropogenic climate change is happening and is in our lap than not.
[0] Time and skeptical opinion content erode the effects of science coverage on climate beliefs and attitudes https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122069119
[1] Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31565263/
[2] AI study finds nearly 15% of Americans deny climate change is real, shaped by social media influencers https://seas.umich.edu/news/ai-study-finds-nearly-15-america...
[3] Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Fall 2025 https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-c...
[4] What the data says about Americans' views of climate change https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-...
[5] Americans on what causes climate change https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/05/28/americans-on-...
Ah yes, the "it's your fault I'm acting irrational and behaving badly" attitude.
"You didn't present this in just the right way to appeal to me, so I'm angry at you." Forgetting that of course there is no way to present this sort of information that you could accept, because the cognitive dissonance biases you against any of the actual facts.
This act is tired. You will continue to fool yourself, but nobody else is fooled by this transparent tantrum.
Agreed.
How wonderful it is when people self-select to be case studies on bad argumentation, fallacious reasoning, and poor participants in the betterment of humanity. It makes education so much simpler to point out clear examples of bad strategy and, hopefully, adds a silver lining to interactions with people determined to play the troll.
It sounds like you started from an ideological premise, built a shallow facsimile of a justification around it and then projected partisan outrage onto your creation.
It is because of coping mechanisms like yours we are unable to address this existential threat.
The fact the website you call "not serious" literally won a Pulitzer for its reporting at least adds some comedic relief to this otherwise rather irritating behavior.
I would call it anti-climate-deception-deception.