Exxon Scientists Knew About Climate Change Since 1977

Climate scientists, activists, and many others have long accused the fossil fuel industry of falsely telling the public that fossil fuels are safe, and denying that their scientists knew how these products would cause global warming.

Most widely, people have criticized ExxonMobil for this — there’s even a campaign called #ExxonKnew, about how the oil and gas corporation Exxon knew about climate change.

Now, a new report has found that Exxon scientists not only knew about the global warming its products would case, but also that the company had its own models projecting this exact harm, providing more evidence that Exxon grossly misled the public. Keep reading for the details of these new findings.

The new study, published in the journal Science in January 2023, is the first research to assess the fossil fuel industry’s climate projections, according to the authors.

As explained in the study, 2015 was when investigative journalists first discovered documents implying that since the 1970s, Exxon knew about how fossil fuels could cause global warming — and that others in the oil and gas industry knew this since the 1950s.

During that time period, many people in the fossil fuel sector told the public that the models they used to project the connection between fossil fuels and global warming were not conclusive; they told the public that they had no proof fossil fuels would harm the planet.

In fact, as the study notes, a 1988 Exxon memo revealed that the company’s public relations approach was to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse effect.” Seriously.

So, the authors of this new study set out to find more proof that Exxon knew — and knew it well.

To conduct their research, the authors went into Exxon’s company records, and qualitatively analyzed Exxon the corporation’s global heating projections from between 1977 and 2003.

These projections included accurately: Modeling how burning fossil fuels would cause global warming; determining when humans would first detect anthropogenic global warming; figuring out that there was no chance an ice age was imminent; and even estimating that the planet would need to keep global heating below 2 degrees Celsius.

“We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations,” the authors wrote, adding that these projections were highly advanced, as well as similar to predictions made by academics and governments.

“Yet, whereas academic and government scientists worked to communicate what they knew to the public, ExxonMobil worked to deny it,” the authors stated.

“What they understood about climate models thus contradicted what they led the public to believe,” the authors also said. “On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.”