ExxonMobil
Premeditation
In 1957, Hans Suess and Roger Revelle, of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, published a landmark paper that contradicted the longstanding assumption that the oceans would absorb a large majority of artificial carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. Revelle and Suess predicted large increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, especially if fossil fuel combustion continued to increase exponentially. They noted that “[w]ithin a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.”
Two months after the Revelle and Suess paper was published, scientists at Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) submitted their own study for publication on the same question. Significantly, the Humble Oil study acknowledges not only rising levels of atmospheric CO2, but also the evident contribution of fossil fuels to that increase and the continuing and projected rise in that fossil fuel combustion.46 In acknowledged disagreement with Revelle, however, the paper suggests that CO2 would be retained in the oceans much longer before returning to the atmosphere, which would delay the impact of fossil fuel emissions by decades or centuries.
The Revelle and Suess study emphatically stated that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were likely to increase significantly over the following several decades. Moreover, the report provides definitive evidence that, by 1957, at least one oil company—a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil)—was aware that the byproducts of fossil fuel combustion were accumulating in the atmosphere and would likely continue to do so.[1]
When the major petroleum companies began expanding their operations offshore into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1940s, they realized that hurricanes posed a significant challenge to the safe and reliable operation of offshore oil rigs. In 1947, Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) contracted with A.H. Glenn, a meteorological consultant, to develop wave and weather forecasting techniques. In a paper from 1951, Glenn notes that “the oil industry is several years ahead of the other American industries in applying meteorology and oceanography.” He further comments that even the government’s own services in the space are too broad for industry needs and typically trail industry’s own science by years.[1]
Climate Denial
In an interview with Chief Executive Magazine in October 2002, Lee Raymond, the CEO of ExxonMobil was quoted as saying "The mainstream of some so-called environmentalists or politically correct Europeans isn’t the mainstream of all scientists or the White House. The world has been a lot warmer than it is now and it didn’t have anything to do with carbon dioxide."
ExxonMobil has long sponsored a network of advocacy organizations and lobbyists that deny the existence of climate change and its human causes. These are not scientific centres for the study of climatology, but lobby groups and policy think-tanks including the American Council for Capital Formation, the Fraser Institute, the Center for Policy Research, the George C. Marshal Institute, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and Foundation, the Centre for the New Europe, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Policy Network.[2]
In 2004, Greenpeace published a database called 'Exxon Secrets' exposing the extent to which ExxonMobil was funding climate denial. In 2006, they published that ExxonMobil has paid $3.5 million to 49 different organizations all of which actively campaigned against policies to address global warming in the year 2005. Subsequent research into this elaborate network of funding revealed that Exxon has paid out over $22 million to the climate change denial industry since 1998.
Private Intelligence
Stratfor provided intelligence:
1. on shale gas activism for Exxon
2. on environmental activists and journalists for the American Petroleum Institute (of which Exxon is a key member) described by Stratfor’s then-vice president as “our biggest client”
Targets of Stratfor’s espionage have included ProPublica, Earthworks, grassroots organizers and individual activists. Stratfor was contacted by the Rocky Mountain Energy Security Group in regards to a nationwide direct action campaign organized by Rising Tide. [3]
Tech Industry
ExxonMobil and Microsoft announced in February 2019 that they are partnering in the “largest-ever oil and gas” deal to use cloud computing, which the corporations say will boost production up to 50,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.[4]
Litigation
The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit October, 2022 against ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Company, Chevron, British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's most powerful lobbying group in which the five oil companies were members.[5]
The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public. [6]
The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.
Sources
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "SMOKE AND FUMES: THE LEGAL AND EVIDENTIARY BASIS FOR HOLDING BIG OIL ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE CLIMATE CRISIS" Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), November 2017. <https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Smoke-Fumes-FINAL.pdf>
- ↑ https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/4767068/Information_Warfare_2013_MacKay_and_Munro_OS.pdf
- ↑ http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/stratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups/
- ↑ https://thinkprogress.org/amazon-google-microsoft-oil-climate-b8b1dd15f115/
- ↑ https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/18/new-jersey-sues-shell-exxon-api-oil-public-deception-climate/
- ↑ https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases22/2022-1018_NJ-Climate-Complaint-FILED.pdf