Environ. Res. Lett. 12 (2017) 084019 INTERNAL DOCUMENTS ExxonMobil internally acknowledged the business threat and uncertainties of AGW. Set up research team: conducted in-house research published in peer-reviewed journals; monitored scientific literature. Corporate awareness and ‘public relations value.’ PEERREVIEWED PUBLICATIONS IN G IE S C ES R N EA TI R CFIC H L B OB Y Other inside and outside lobbying to influence policy and legislation, both directly and through third-party organizations. Outside lobbying: PR strategy targeting non-scientific ‘opinion leaders’ includes advertorials in The New York Times and other newspapers. Aim to ‘emphasize the uncertainty.’ ADVERTORIALS ExxonMobil scientists predominantly acknowledged that AGW is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, while recognizing uncertainties. ExxonMobil’s advertorials overwhelmingly expressed doubt that AGW is real, human-caused, serious, or solvable. Figure 3. Summary of ExxonMobil’s strategic approach to AGW communication. Inside lobbying and outside lobbying are two classes of special interest group spending: inside lobbying is direct access to and contact with those who make and implement public policy, whereas outside lobbying aims to bring the views of the special interest and the pressure of public opinion to bear on decision makers [19–21, 29]. Advertorials are one technique of outside lobbying. Quotation sources: ‘public relations value’ [145], ‘opinion leaders’ [146], ‘emphasize the uncertainty’ [147]. combustion product–particulates–which leads to cooling’ [138]. In 1985, ExxonMobil scientists had reported being ‘not very convinc[ed]’ by the argument that ‘aerosol particulates . . . compensat[e] for, and may even overwhelm, the fossil-fuel CO2 greenhouse warming’ [103]. By 1995, the IPCC had rejected it [71]. We acknowledge that textual analysis is inherently subjective: words have meaning in context. Particular coding assignments may therefore be debatable, depending on how the meaning and context of individual quotations and figures are interpreted. However, the intercoder reliability and agreement of our content analyses are consistently high (section S1.7, supplementary information). While one might disagree about the interpretation of specific words, the overall trends between document categories are clear (table S3, supplementary information). In figure 3, we summarize ExxonMobil’s strategic approach to AGW research and communication. Internal documents show that by the early 1980s, ExxonMobil scientists and managers were sufficiently informed about climate science and its prevailing uncertainties to identify AGW as a potential threat to its business interests. This awareness apparently came from a combination of prior research and expert advice. For example, in 1979 and 1980, university researcher Andrew Callegari co-authored two peerreviewed articles acknowledging that ‘the climatic implications of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions have been recognized for some time’ [139, 140]. The 14 authors articulated the ‘climatically huge’ temperature increases and ecological impacts that would result ‘if a significant fraction of the fossil fuel reserve is burned’ (section S5, supplementary information). In 1980, Callegari joined Exxon, and the next year took over its CO2 research efforts [141]. His papers were frequently cited in company publications [97, 142–144]. Around this time, ExxonMobil set up two parallel initiatives: climate science research, and a complimentary public relations campaign (left and right branches of figure 3). According to a 1978 ‘Request for a credible scientific team,’ these initiatives targeted four audiences: the scientific community, government, Exxon management, and the general public and policymakers [145]. 4.1. Scientific community From approximately 1979 to 1982, the Exxon Research and Engineering (ER&E) Company pursued three major AGW research projects. ExxonMobil’s 2015 statement that two of the projects ‘had nothing to do with CO2 emissions’ [148] is contradicted by internal documents [111, 149, 150]. In the early 1980s, these major research initiatives were discontinued amidst budget cuts [111, 151]. In 1984, ER&E characterized its approaches: ‘Establish a scientific presence through research program in climate modeling; selective support of outside activities; maintain awareness of new scientific developments’ [152]. In 1986, scientist Haroon Kheshgi joined ER&E [153], and was