Researchers have revealed that one of the biggest oil firms in the world, ExxonMobil correctly predicted how climate change would raise the global temperature as early as the 1970s.
The researchers, who examined data in internal company documents, found that ExxonMobil’s internal studies foresaw how using fossil fuels would warm the planet, but the company publicly denied the link.
“This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how “Exxon Knew” are wrong in their conclusions,” the company said.
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The findings of the research imply that ExxonMobil’s projections were frequently more precise than those of even top-tier NASA scientists.
Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, said: “It really underscores the stark hypocrisy of ExxonMobil leadership, who knew that their own scientists were doing this very high-quality modelling work and had access to that privileged information while telling the rest of us that climate models were bunk.”
Oreskes added that the findings show that ExxonMobil “knowingly misled the public and governments. They had all this information at their disposal but they said very, very different things in public.”
Story was adapted from BBC.
