Environ. Res. Lett. 12 (2017) 084019
(a)
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PeerReviewed
NonAdvertorials
PeerReviewed
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No position
Acknowledge
Internal
Acknowledge (including reasonable doubt)
Acknowledge and Doubt
PeerReviewed
NonAdvertorials
PeerReviewed
Reasonable Doubt
Doubt
Figure 1. Timeline of the overall positions of all 187 documents on AGW as (a) real and human-caused and (b) serious. Each line
represents an individual document. Documents are sorted by category and publication date.
cannot be stopped are a common component of
contrarian claims [42, 72].
reports, are beyond the scope of this study and a topic
for future investigation.
2.2. Risks of stranded assets
AGs and the SEC are investigating ExxonMobil’s
understanding and disclosures of the financial risks
related to either AGW or future climate policy, and
shareholders have questioned the adequacy of
ExxonMobil’s disclosures on this point. We examine
what, if anything, has been stated on this subject in the
documents examined [10, 73–75]. Across all documents, we collate and chronicle ExxonMobil’s
communications regarding the risks of stranded assets
(intercoder reliability: 100%; Kripp. a ¼ 1:0). Financial documents from ExxonMobil, such as shareholder
3. Results
5
3.1. Endorsement levels (ELs)—AGW as real and
human-caused
Figure 1(a) is a timeline of the overall positions of all 187
documents on AGW as real and human-caused, sorted
by publication date and into four categories: Internal
Documents, Peer-Reviewed, Non-Peer-Reviewed, and
Advertorials. Each line represents an individual document and is color-coded: No position (grey); Acknowledge (blue); Acknowledge and Doubt (black); and
Doubt (red). Dashed lines indicate documents that have