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
Related Stories
PBS Reports the Exxon Ignored their own internal climate change warnings:
Despite its efforts for nearly two decades to raise doubts about the science of climate change, newly discovered company documents show that as early as 1977, Exxon research scientists warned company executives that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere and that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame.
The internal records are detailed in a new investigation published Wednesday by InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization covering energy and the environment.
The investigation found that long before global warming emerged as an issue on the national agenda, Exxon formed an internal brain trust that spent more than a decade trying to understand the impact of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere — even launching a supertanker with custom-made instruments to sample and understand whether the oceans could absorb the rising atmospheric CO2 levels. Today, Exxon says the study had nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but an Exxon researcher involved in the project remembered it differently in the below video [Ed: in linked story.], which was produced by FRONTLINE in association with the InsideClimate News report.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2015, @10:33PM
After "Terrorism," the next big government grab of rights and money..."Climate Change."
I wonder what it will be next?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @10:49PM
It's those jack-booted Federal agents knocking on our doors and demanding our guns, just like they warned us!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:11PM
"Dey took 'ur guns!" (took 'ur guns!)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:23AM
terk er gu!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 06 2015, @11:15PM
You forgot "financial system bailout", and the renewed interest in being ready for WWIII against both Russia and China (because Iran is not big enough).
But, really, nothing gets even close to the ongoing April 15th "fair contribution to your government" scam.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday November 06 2015, @11:16PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Friday November 06 2015, @11:51PM
I wonder what it will be next?
After "Energy Crisis" will be Self Radicalized "anti-government" Extremists. [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @06:48PM
No, it's global warming you are referring to.
It is the republican party with their conservative wordsmiths that came out with "Climate Change". If you are going to diss the big government, make sure you don't mind losing a few windows in your glass house, because your stones are gonna break them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:52PM
...will diminish the greenhouse effect.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:01PM
didn't realize that exxon-mobil was charged with studying and alerting the public to the risks of climate change
i thought they were in the oil business
when the bureaucrats give up gas guzzling cars, plastics, and anything else made from petroleum products, all the oil companies can drop their tools and go into the climate change navel-gazing business instead
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:10PM
We saw those leaked documents a big deal was made of on here a few months ago. There was nothing in there at all, nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:32PM
they lied?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:01AM
Cell division causes cancer. Also, quitting smoking may cause cancer in the first few years since cancer rates are reported rise.[1] The only paper they look at including data in the first year after smoking reports a 20x increase. Most report around 1.5-2x, but bin the first few years (eg 1-4 years after quitting).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15913904 [nih.gov]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:46PM
Seems to me that back then the environmental problem de jour was global cooling, not global warming. So, how does this correlate to today's witch hunt?
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:29PM
The last 10.000 years we had no global cooloing.
Only a few unexplained (3 I believe) short warm periods of a few 100 years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grayswan on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:31AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:49AM
The goal is to examine whether back in the 1970s, Exxon Mobil funded groups to undermine scientific studies involving climate change.
Sure, that's great, but is anyone investigating the current effort by Exxon-Mobil (and/or the entire petroleum industry) for more recent, including current undermining of science? If not, why not?
(It's quite possible they are and I'm just out of the loop. But I think it's an important question)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:59AM
Sure, that's great, but is anyone investigating the current effort by Exxon-Mobil (and/or the entire petroleum industry) for more recent, including current undermining of science? If not, why not?
Why are we concerned about that rather than the current undermining of science by the better funded government agencies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:34AM
Gov't agencies? Better funded than the petroleum industry? I'mma bustagut laughing....
Newsbreak: Petroleum industry owns the government.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:36PM
Gov't agencies? Better funded than the petroleum industry? I'mma bustagut laughing....
The petroleum industry doesn't do a thing with climate research any more than the US military does. If you're going to compare like to like, you need to compare who's actually doing stuff in climate research or the associated propaganda. For example, much has been made (as in this story) of Wei-Hock Soon's funding by the fossil fuel industry. But almost nothing has been said about Jagadish Shukla [wikipedia.org], the initiator of the recent "RICO" letter [nationalreview.com] who received about ten times as much funding over a similar period from the US government for climate research that swings the other way.
Petroleum industry owns the government
Which, if you think about it, is a completely delusional thing to say. There wouldn't even be climate research in the US government, if that were the case. There wouldn't be onerous OSHA and EPA regulations on oil drilling or refining. The Keystone XL pipeline expansion wouldn't be blocked for transparently bogus reasons, but would have been hustled through to approve seven or more years ago. The US government has cost the petroleum industry (including the big companies) a lot of money which just wouldn't happen, if your assertion were even remotely correct.