PBS on #ExxonKnew November 11, 2015

Description:

Oil giant Exxon Mobil was recently subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general in an investigation of whether the company has intentionally downplayed the risks of climate change. Judy Woodruff hears from Eric Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, and Kenneth Cohen, vice president of Public & Government Affairs for the Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Cohen’s play is to pretend that Exxon, in it’s wisdom, has always taken climate change seriously, and is only interested in trying to head off ineffective policy responses to this very real problem.

Cohen’s statement that investigators have taken Exxon scientists statements “out of context” suggests he suffers from an irony deficiency.

So how will they separate themselves from the climate denying individuals and organizations they have funded? Cohen says outfits like the American Enterprise Institute, and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) will have to speak for themselves, – as if they were out there free-forming and making things up with Exxon’s money for 30 years.

Ken Cohen in Exxon Mobil Perspectives:

here’s just one problem with that statement: Claiming we stopped our research and suppressed the results is the central point to ICN’s exhausting series about ExxonMobil’s supposed perfidy. It’s the central point that has been repeated in other stories and op-eds, notably from high-profile activists Bill McKibben and Naomi Oreskes. Ms. Banjeera and her colleagues first claimed that Exxon stopped its research in its very first report on September 16, when they wrote (emphasis mine): Toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. Ms. Banjeera and her colleagues wrote that Exxon suppressed the results of our climate work in the “About This Series” section on the ICN website (again, emphasis mine): The story spans four decades, and is based on primary sources including internal company files dating back to the late 1970s, interviews with former company employees, and other evidence, much of which is being published here for the first time. It describes how Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and then, without revealing all that it had learned, worked at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed. One way to view Ms. Banjeera’s recent statement is that InsideClimate News now admits that ExxonMobil did not halt or suppress our research. I hope ICN will add an editorial update to its series reflecting that admission, though I won’t hold my breath waiting for it. I noted recently that InsideClimate News tends to make assertions while hoping nobody checks to see if they are correct. That’s been their strategy in selectively quoting from our documents – they have counted on people not reading the entirety of those documents, which undercut their accusations