7 additional approaches and methodologies. methodologies are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, the diverse That said, there were several reasons why we adopted the methodology we did: (a) Any analysis of words is subject to interpretation. Thus, we used an established social science method of content analysis to minimize interpretive uncertainty, and subjected our analysis to peer review to verify that our claims are supported by evidence, were analyzed according to tested methods, and were inter-subjectively valid and not just a matter of subjective opinion. (b) Quantitative consensus measurement and content analysis permit a standardized approach – for example, a typology for coding – thereby making our work transparent and reproducible. Notably, our study made publicly available as supplementary material all substantiating quotations for all document codings. (c) Our method is empirical, and thereby amenable to statistical tests of significance. (d) As discussed above, our empirical approach offers an alternative line of enquiry to the historical and journalistic methods previously brought to bear on ExxonMobil’s climate change communications. Q11: How many ExxonMobil communications or documents assessed or reviewed for this study? A11: Our study comprised 187 documents generated between 1977 and 2014: 32 internal ExxonMobil documents; 53 articles labeled ‘Peer-Reviewed Publications’ in ExxonMobil’s ‘Contributed Publications’ list [12]; 48 (unique and retrievable) documents labeled ‘Additional Publications’ in ExxonMobil’s ‘Contributed Publications’ list; 36 Mobil/ExxonMobil advertorials related to climate change in The New York Times; and 18 other publicly available ExxonMobil communications – mostly non-peer-reviewed materials – obtained during our research. Q12: What were your findings and conclusions, if any? A12: Our key findings were as follows: (a) We found that from as early as the 1970s, ExxonMobil not only knew about emerging climate science, but also contributed research to it. Scientific reports and articles written or cowritten by ExxonMobil employees acknowledged that global warming was a real and serious threat. They also noted it could be addressed by reducing fossil fuel use, meaning that fossil fuel reserves might one day become stranded assets.