Uncertainty is Exxon's friend, but it's not ours | Stephan Lewandowsky, Richard Panost, Timothy Ballard

Greater uncertainty about climate change means bigger risks and more reason to act

Beginning in the late 1970s, Exxon scientists started telling their top executives about the risk from climate change. By the 1980s, Exxon scientists shared the consensus view that the global climate was sensitive to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

However, when the issue of cuts to carbon emissions became prominent in the early 1990s, Exxon assumed a different position in public and embarked on a campaign against the increasingly clear fact that the Earth is warming from greenhouse gas emissions. This campaign was centered on scientific uncertainty: time and again, Exxon executives expressed their doubts about the science, turning their backs on their own scientists' research.