Commission on Human Rights

Environ. Res. Lett. 12 (2017) 084019 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f LETTER OPEN ACCESS Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014) RECEIVED 22 June 2017 Geoffrey Supran1 and Naomi Oreskes REVISED Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States of America 1 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. 17 July 2017 ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION 21 July 2017 PUBLISHED 23 August 2017 Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. E-mail: gjsupran@fas.harvard.edu Keywords: anthropogenic global warming, climate change, ExxonMobil, disinformation, content analysis, climate communication, advertorial Supplementary material for this article is available online Abstract This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements (‘advertorials’) in The New York Times. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more publicly accessible, they increasingly communicate doubt. This discrepancy is most pronounced between advertorials and all other documents. For example, accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of advertorials do so, with 81% instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists’ academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public. Our content analysis also examines ExxonMobil’s discussion of the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets. We find the topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. Finally, based on the available documents, we outline ExxonMobil’s strategic approach to climate change research and communication, which helps to contextualize our findings. 1. Introduction In 2016, Attorneys General (AGs) of 17 US states and territories announced that they ‘are exploring working together on key climate change-related initiatives, such as ongoing and potential investigations’ into whether ExxonMobil Corporation and other fossil fuel companies may have violated, variously, racketeering, consumer protection, or investor protection statutes through their communications regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW) [1, 2]. (Unless specified otherwise, we refer to ExxonMobil Corporation, Exxon Corporation, and Mobil Oil Corporation as ‘ExxonMobil’.) As part of a probe that began in 2015, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has issued multiple subpoenas to ExxonMobil under the © 2017 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd state’s Martin Act and alleged that the company’s accounting of climate risk ‘may be a sham’ [3–6]. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is simultaneously investigating ExxonMobil, stating, ‘Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be held accountable’ [7, 8]. US Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker has said that he is investigating ExxonMobil for potentially violating the territory’s anti-racketeering law [9]. Also in 2016, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began a federal investigation into whether ExxonMobil appropriately discloses the business risks of AGW, and how it values its assets and reserves [10]. We offer no view on the legal issues raised by ongoing investigations.