»Exxon Mobil wusste aufgrund eigener Studien schon seit Jahrzehnten von den Folgen des Verfeuerns fossiler Brennstoffe für das Klima«

In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos showing that oil company Exxon had known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuels could lead to global warming with "dramatic environmental impacts before 2050." While it is well known that the company downplayed the risks of global warming, the new study is the first to systematically and quantitatively evaluate the company's internal projections between 1977 and 2003.

The study concludes that "Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp.'s internal analyses [...] accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected in measured data, and even realistically estimated the 'carbon budget' for limiting warming to below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company's public statements on climate science contradicted its own scientific data."

The findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn’t just know “something” about global warming decades ago—they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew. But whereas those scientists worked to communicate what they knew, ExxonMobil worked to deny it—including overemphasizing uncertainties, denigrating climate models, mythologizing global cooling, feigning ignorance about the discernibility of human-caused warming, and staying silent about the possibility of stranded fossil fuel assets in a carbonconstrained world. 

Die vollständige Studie auf Englisch finden Sie hier.