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from the "ExxonMobil"-is-not-"Exxon-Mobil" dept.
Exxon Mobil is facing an investigation by New York's attorney general:
New York's attorney general would like to know: Did Exxon Mobil lie to you about the risks of climate change and to investors about how those risks might reduce profits?
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman's office confirms that a New York Times story is correct in reporting that an investigation has been launched into Exxon Mobil. That story said Schneiderman issued a subpoena on Wednesday, seeking financial records, emails and other documents.
The goal is to examine whether back in the 1970s, Exxon Mobil funded groups to undermine scientific studies involving climate change. Also, the attorney general is investigating whether the oil giant properly informed its investors of the profit risks that might arise as countries cut back on fossil fuels.
In a statement, Exxon Mobil confirms it is under investigation and says its executives "unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research."
[More after the break.]
From that New York Times story:
According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents. The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company's own long-running scientific research. The people said the inquiry would include a period of at least a decade during which Exxon Mobil funded outside groups that sought to undermine climate science, even as its in-house scientists were outlining the potential consequences — and uncertainties — to company executives.
[...] News reporting in the last eight months added impetus to the investigation, they said. In February, several news organizations, including The New York Times, reported that a Smithsonian researcher who had published papers questioning established climate science, Wei-Hock Soon, had received extensive funds from fossil fuel companies, including Exxon Mobil, without disclosing them. That struck some experts as similar to the activities of tobacco companies. More recently, Inside Climate News and The Los Angeles Times have reported that Exxon Mobil was well aware of the risks of climate change from its own scientific research, and used that research in its long-term planning for activities like drilling in the Arctic, even as it funded groups from the 1990s to the mid-2000s that denied serious climate risks.
Related: Investigation Finds Exxon Ignored its Own Early Climate Change Warnings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Friday November 06 2015, @10:40PM
In the 1950s and ’60s, tobacco companies financed internal research showing tobacco to be harmful and addictive, but mounted a public campaign that said otherwise and helped fund scientific research later shown to be dubious. In 2006, the companies were found guilty of “a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public.”
The history at Exxon Mobil appears to differ, in that the company published extensive research over decades that largely lined up with mainstream climatology. Thus, any potential fraud prosecution might depend on exactly how big a role company executives can be shown to have played in directing campaigns of climate denial, usually by libertarian-leaning political groups.
What campaigns of climate denial? They appear to be speaking of 70s era activities not the last decade. There wouldn't have been any serious activities back then. And "campaigns of climate denial" sounds an awful lot like free speech to me. Maybe this will be an opportunity to constrain the Martin Act [wikipedia.org] on First Amendment grounds (New York state law is subject to the First Amendment), which is one of the more abusive and far reaching laws out there.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @01:54AM
Read the LA article. It seems Exxon cared about climate. Then by 1990 Exxon changed and started pushing campaigns for the opposite, because they feared the public would get an opinion that was against its bottom line. Pretty much like tobacco, maybe minus really caring at first.
Sometimes the fortune at the bottom of the page says: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! -- Upton Sinclair.
There you go, sometimes they understand, so what they do is not free of guilty, and they change from people trying to solve the problem early, to negating it because it will be someone else problem later.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:23AM
Then by 1990 Exxon changed and started pushing campaigns for the opposite, because they feared the public would get an opinion that was against its bottom line.
What campaigns? The LA story doesn't mention them and the worst anyone comes up with is the Soon research.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:57AM
Exxon channeled about $30m to researchers and activist groups promoting disinformation about global warming over the years, according to a tally kept by the campaign group Greenpeace. But the oil company pledged to stop such funding in 2007, in response to pressure from shareholder activists.
“In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner,” Exxon said in its 2007 Corporate Citizenship report.
But since 2007, the oil company has given $1.87m to Republicans in Congress who deny climate change and an additional $454,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), according to financial and tax records.
That's pretty weak given that the Guardian is spinning this as hard as they can (eg, "promoting disinformation", "deny climate change"). If they had some real dirt, you'd think they would have said something about it. Here's another example of the supposed campaigns [ucsusa.org] which credits Exxon with almost $10 million to well-known climate skeptic groups over a roughly 15 year period. The thing is, Exxon has hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue each year. If it really was funding serious climate denial campaigns, they'd dump in orders of magnitude more money than they do.
This goes back to my original assertion that there's no evidence to support the NY Attorney General's claims. This looks to me to be the worst sort of grandstanding.