Environ. Res. Lett. 12 (2017) 084019 Table 6. Example quotations (coding units) alluding to stranded fossil fuel assets. For each document category except advertorials, which do not discuss stranded assets, two examples are given: the first typifies an implicit, qualitative connection between fossil fuel reserves/resources/use and either greenhouse gas limits or possible climate mitigation policies; the second is characteristic of an explicit quantification of ‘cumulative emissions’ and/or ‘carbon budgets’ consistent with greenhouse gas stabilization. These quantitative examples are comparable to contemporary estimates; specifically, the IPCC indicates a carbon budget of 442 GtC (or 651 GtC) between 2015 and 2100 for limiting CO2-induced AGW to below 2 °C relative to 1861–1880 with a probability greater than 66% (or 50%) [130]. Quotations from all 24 documents that refer to stranded assets are provided in section S5, supplementary information. INTERNAL 1979 [82] 1982 [83] PEER-REVIEWED 1985 [103] 2003 [81] NON-PEERREVIEWED 2005 [133] 2003 [129] ‘The major conclusion from this report is that, should it be deemed necessary to maintain atmospheric CO2 levels to prevent significant climatic changes, dramatic changes in patterns of energy use would be required. World fossil fuel resources other than oil and gas could never be used to an appreciable extent . . . Removal of CO2 from flue gases does not appear practical due to economics and lack of reasonable disposal methods. If it becomes necessary to limit future CO2 emissions without practical removal/disposal methods, coal and possibly other fossil fuel resources could not be utilized to an appreciable extent.’ ‘Table 4 presents the estimated total quantities of CO2 emitted to the environment as GtC, the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere in ppm (v), and average global temperature increase in °C over 1979 as the base year.’ (Note that temperature anomalies appear to be calculated based on equilibrium climate sensitivity.) It also shows ‘cumulative’ CO2 ‘emitted, GtC’ as a function of time. Given roughly 0.3 °C warming by 1979 relative to 1861–1880, we read off (by interpolation) the cumulative emissions in table 4 (in [83]) corresponding to a further 1.7 °C warming, yielding a carbon budget for <2 °C of 624 GtC. Adjusting for emissions between 1979 and 2015, we obtain a carbon budget for <2 °C of 373 GtC between 2015 and 2100, which is comparable with contemporary estimates of roughly 442–651 GtC (see caption). ‘More complex scenarios . . . can be envisioned in which fossil fuel use is rapidly phased out by taxing or other policies, or in which fossil fuel use is decreased by societal feedbacks based on observations of global warming.’ Figure 9 (in [81]) shows that temperature anomalies of less than or equal to 2 °C (note that these appear to be calculated based on equilibrium climate sensitivity) are consistent with CO2 stabilization at concentrations of 450 ppm or 550 ppm. Table 3 (in [81]) explicitly quantifies fossil fuel ‘carbon budgets . . . for CO2 stabilization’ at these concentrations, with reference values of 485 GtC (450 ppm scenario) and 820 GtC (550 ppm scenario) between 2000 and 2099. Adjusting for emissions between 2000 and 2015, this yields carbon budgets for <2 °C of 357 GtC and 692 GtC, respectively, between 2015 and 2100, which are comparable with contemporary estimates of roughly 442–651 GtC (see caption). ‘Without obligations by developing countries, stabilizing at 550 ppm would require a phase out in the use of fossil fuels by the middle of the century in the annex 1 countries. That’s a huge step.’ Author introduces the idea of ‘cumulative fossil fuel use’ and ‘cumulative CO2 emissions.’ Figure 3 (in [129]) shows that a ‘550 ppm stabilization trajectory’ requires a rapid decline in annual CO2 emissions, with cumulative emissions between 2015 and 2100 (integrating area beneath curve) of roughly 490 GtC. This is comparable to contemporary carbon budget estimates for <2 °C of roughly 442–651 GtC (see caption). Author also notes that ‘cumulative fossil fuel use of 2000 GtC might not exhaust global fossil fuel reserves, but limits to fossil fuel use might be driven by better alternatives that emerge over the next century.’ He refers to ‘notional scenarios for a fossil fuel era of limited duration.’ suggesting an average readership of tens to hundreds3. Most texts are highly technical, intellectually inaccessible for laypersons, and of little interest to the general public or policymakers. Most scientific journals and conference proceedings are only circulated to academic libraries and require a paid subscription, making them physically inaccessible for the general public, too. Obtaining academic documents for this study, for example, required access to libraries at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and international interlibrary loans. By contrast, Mobil/ExxonMobil bought AGW advertorials in the NYT specifically to allow ‘the public to know where we stand’ [137]. Readerships were in the millions [29]. The company took out an advertorial 3 Citation counts were sourced predominantly from Google Scholar and, when occasionally not available there, from Web of Science. IPCC reports and a handful of non-applicable documents, such as drafts, were excluded. 13 every Thursday between 1972 and 2001 [29]. They paid a discounted price of roughly $31 000 (2016 USD) per advertorial and bought one-quarter of all advertorials on the Op-Ed page, ‘towering over the other sponsors’ according to reviews of Mobil’s advertorials by Brown, Waltzer, and Waltzer [19, 29]. ‘After [experimentally] examining the effects of an actual ExxonMobil advertorial that appeared on the pages of The New York Times,’ Cooper and Nownes observed ‘that advertorials substantially affect levels of individual issue salience . . . .’ [20] Third, ExxonMobil’s advertorials included several instances of explicit factual misrepresentation. As discussed in section 3.1.5, an ExxonMobil advertorial in 2000 directly contradicted the IPCC and presented ‘very misleading’ data, according to the scientist who produced the data [105, 106]. Another advertorial, in 1996, claimed that ‘greenhouse-gas emissions, which have a warming effect, are offset by another