industry-funded research and public relations advocacy in order to increase public skepticism about air pollution science, with the express purpose of influencing legislation and regulation on pollution issues. Credible firsthand accounts suggest the manner in which research was conducted – in the case of Harold Johnstone, to discredit Arie Haagen-Smit’s theory of smog – and suggest that unfavorable results were neither welcomed nor shared. In 1968, a Stanford Research Institute report commissioned by API, summarized the causes, nature, and consequences of global warming and climate change. The report warned the oil industry explicitly and in strong terms that the science underlying climate change was sound; that fossil fuel combustion provided the best explanation for climate change; that the impacts of climate change could be potentially significant on a global scale; and that the industry’s highest research priority should be identifying means and technologies for reducing emissions. This report was acknowledged as containing said discussion in the record of API-funded research and was relied upon in communications with the Department of the Interior, although the sections on carbon dioxide were not shared with DOI. By no later than 1968, therefore, the oil industry was receiving warnings from its own scientists that evidence of climate change was credible and that, despite uncertainties about the scale and timing of impacts, the potential risks of climate change were real and serious. Between 1977 and 1982, scientists at Exxon repeatedly acknowledged the scientific consensus that climate change was happening, was caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, and had the potential to be globally catastrophic. Exxon understood and internally transmitted this understanding in a 43-page climate change primer. An Exxon subsidiary was conducting scientific research in the Arctic no later than 1986 which examined the effects climate change would have on intended operations. We know that in 1989, Shell Oil deliberately changed the design of their offshore oil drilling platform to account for sea level rise, and that in 1991 the leader of the Imperial Oil expedition acknowledged that internal planning would need to account for climatic changes in the Arctic. In 1995, fossil fuel interests were fully aware that climate science was indisputable and that a response was urgently needed. From the 1970s forward, therefore, scientists within the oil industry not only acknowledged the scientific consensus that climate change was occurring, but took potential climate impacts into account in the companies’ own long-term plans. In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute developed a public relations strategy with the aim of sowing doubt about the certainty of climate science in the minds of the public, legislators, and regulators. We know that ExxonMobil, API, and others funded research into debunked theories to explain rising atmospheric temperatures without disclosing the source of funding. We know that in 2014, the Western States Petroleum Association fought against state-level regulation in California by misrepresenting public will through the use of “Astroturf” front groups. We know that many oil and gas companies continue to donate money to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which promotes climate-denial to this day. Finally, ExxonMobil and its executives still continue their pattern of downplaying both the severity of climate change and the role of human emissions in it. From the 1990s forward, therefore, the oil industry acknowledged climate science internally and took measures to incorporate climate risks into its own project planning, while maintaining active campaigns to promote skepticism of climate change science and climate risks among policymakers, journalists and the public. 18