Guest essay by Ken Cohen

Read the documents.

Go ahead, you really should. Read the documents on the InsideClimate News site purportedly proving some conspiracy on ExxonMobil’s part to hide our climate science findings.

In case you need help finding them, the link to the documents on theInsideClimate News site is right here.

Why do we want you to read them?

Because you will see that they completely undercut the allegations made by InsideClimate News in its series about ExxonMobil – allegations that were subsequently echoed by activists like Bill McKibben and Naomi Oreskes.

McKibben, for instance, wrote, “Exxon knew all that there was to know about climate change decades ago, and instead of alerting the rest of us denied the science and obstructed the politics of global warming.”

But if you read the documents, it will become clear the opposite is true.

Reading the documents shows that these allegations are based on deliberately cherry-picked statements attributed to various ExxonMobil employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions were reached decades ago by company researchers. These statements were taken completely out of context and ignored other readily available statements demonstrating that our researchers recognized the developing nature of climate science at the time which, in fact, mirrored global understanding.

What these documents actually demonstrate is a robust culture of scientific discourse on the causes and risks of climate change that took place at ExxonMobil in the 1970s and ’80s and continues today. They point to corporate efforts to fill the substantial gaps in knowledge that existed during the earliest years of climate change research.

They also help explain why ExxonMobil would work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and leading universities like MIT and Stanford on ways to expand climate science knowledge.

So read them. I am guessing that InsideClimate News is counting on readers not doing that and instead just trusting its “reporting” and “analysis.

And while you are at it, check out this 10-page document listing the over 50 peer-reviewed articles on climate research and related policy analysis from ExxonMobil scientists from 1983 to the present.

It’s replete with the titles of articles such as “Marine biota effects on the compositional structure of the world oceans,” “Testing Distributed Parameter Hypotheses for the Detection of Climate Change,” and “Strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Every one of these and the dozens of other articles listed was written with the aim of enhancing the state of the world’s knowledge on the issues surrounding climate.

Read all of these documents and make up your own mind.

Reposted from Exxon-Mobil perspectives, h/t to Matt Dempsey

WUWT has no connection to Exxon-Mobil, and was not asked to republish the article, it is provided as counter-balance to some of the ridiculous charges that are being circulated about use of the RICO act to silence and/or prosecute climate skeptics.

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