11 clear the variable and “unpredictable” character of some values. In contrast, characteristic examples in ExxonMobil’s advertorials in The New York Times (an example of a non-peer-reviewed document is also given) include: • A 1997 Mobil advertorial entitled “Reset the Alarm,” which argues “Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil” [31]. The company added, “We still don’t know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in warming the planet.” • A 2000 ExxonMobil advertorial entitled “Unsettled Science” (also in The Wall Street Journal) says “fundamental gaps in knowledge leave scientists unable to make reliable projections about future changes” [32]. “Scientists remain unable to confirm,” it claims, “that humans are causing global warming”: “Against this backdrop of large poorly understood natural variability, it is impossible for scientists to attribute the recent small surface temperature increase to human causes.” • A 2004 ExxonMobil advertorial focuses on uncertainty, stressing the “gaps and uncertainties that limit our current ability to know the extent to which humans are affecting climate and to predict future changes caused by both human and natural forces” [33]. • A 1998 non-peer-reviewed Exxon pamphlet, whose preface was written by then CEO Lee Raymond, stated that the IPCC’s “discernible human influence” conclusion was “not peer-reviewed,” though it was [34]. This was despite the fact that Exxon’s chief climate researcher, Haroon Kheshgi, was a contributing author to the IPCC chapter in question. Finding: On the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets, we found this topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. Examples: The number of times the concept of stranded fossil fuel assets is mentioned varies statistically significantly across document categories. In total, 24 of the analyzed documents allude to the concept of stranded fossil fuel assets: seven peer-reviewed publications, ten non-peer-reviewed publications, and seven internal documents. No advertorials address the issue. Stranded assets are discussed in two ways (see table 6 and supplementary information of Supran and Oreskes (2017) for all examples): (i) Implicit, qualitative connections between fossil fuel reserves/resources/use and either greenhouse gas limits or possible climate mitigation policies; and (ii) explicit quantifications of “cumulative emissions” and/or “carbon budgets” consistent with greenhouse gas stabilization. Examples of (i) include: