Climate, Exxon, AI and the Law
A recently published article from the Centre for Climate Integrity marked ten years since “investigative journalists first exposed Exxon’s secret internal climate knowledge and campaign of deception”. The journalists were from Inside Climate News, the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism School, and their investigations and reports became known as #ExxonKnew. Exxon was not the only company which decided to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions” about climate change and to execute decades-long campaigns of climate deception (CfCI, 2025a). The article claims that Exxon and other Big Oil companies “have faced growing scrutiny and efforts to hold them accountable” during recent years, and that ten U.S. states and many communities have sought to “hold the companies accountable for their deception and make them pay for the damage they’ve caused.”
The Road Not Taken
Investigations into Exxon’s early work on climate modelling
and its later attempts to conceal the resulting predictions are described in Exxon: The Road Not Taken (Banerjee, N.,
et al., 2015). Material from the book will be used in this section to expand on
the article cited above. The documents on which the book is based are listed in
the first of its four appendices.
In July 1977 Exxon’s Management Committee was warned that there
was general scientific agreement that “the most likely manner in which mankind
is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the
burning of fossil fuels”. The following year Exxon scientists and managers were
warned that independent researchers estimated that a doubling of the atmospheric
CO2 concentration would result in an increase in average global temperatures of
2 to 3 degrees Celsius, with a rise of up to 10 degrees Celsius at the poles.
These warnings did not ignore uncertainties about effects such as the role of
the oceans in absorbing emissions but nevertheless stressed the need for “hard
decisions regarding changes in energy strategies” in the following few years. Exxon
promptly launched its own research program, which included an ambitious program
of CO2 sampling together with climate modelling. A super tanker operating
between the Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf provided a base for gathering
CO2 data, and rigorous climate models were created by 1982. Company motivation
was described in terms of corporate foresight, the reality of climate change
and the benefit to mankind: a 1982 corporate primer acknowledged the need to
make major reductions in fossil fuel combustion. However, executives remained
cautious about communicating to shareholders their concerns about global
warming.
In the mid-80s Exxon cut staff, including some working on
climate modelling. Testimony given to Congress in 1988 about climate change alarmed
Exxon, and it started financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of
climate science. It helped to found the Global Climate Coalition, a lobbying and
advertising partnership of oil and automobile companies which sought to halt
government efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. From 1989 to 2002 the GCC
sowed doubt about the integrity of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and on scientific evidence about fossil fuel emissions causing global
warming.
Accurate predictions
In 2003 the Harvard Gazette published an article on the
accuracy of Exxon’s predictions about the effects of fossil fuel emissions on
climate. Researchers from Harvard and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research showed for the first time “the accuracy of previously unreported
forecasts created by company scientists from 1977 through 2003 … Exxon
researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses
projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming
decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to
0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of
0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate.” (Harvard, 2023).
The report shows graphical comparisons between Exxon projections of temperature
increase and the observed values into the second decade of the 21st
century.
In emphasising the uncertainty of climate predictions, Exxon
would clearly not have known at an early stage how accurate its own research would
prove to be. The data shown in the Harvard article is based on Supron, Rahmstorf,
and Oreskes, 2023.
Exxon was not alone
Other major fossil fuel companies, including Shell and
industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute (API), also conducted
internal studies and produced climate modelling research decades ago, often
reaching similar conclusions about the risks of fossil fuel use.
Shell produced an internal report in 1988 called “The
Greenhouse Effect” based on a 1986 study. The report includes a review of
climate science literature, data on its own products’ contribution to global
CO2 emissions, a “detailed analysis of potential climate impacts, including
rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and human migration”, and a “warning to
take policy action early, even before major changes are observed to the climate”
(Climate Files, 1988).
“The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation’s
largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research
between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone,
was aware of its possible impact on the world’s climate far earlier than
previously known.
The group’s members included senior scientists and engineers
from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company, including
Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio as well as Standard
Oil of California and Gulf Oil, the predecessors to Chevron” (ICN, 2025).
BP and other major oil companies knew about climate risks
from fossil fuels at an early date according to the Center for International
Climate Law, but despite this knowledge BP “spent the next three decades
obstructing meaningful climate action while dramatically expanding its
production of fossil fuels.” The CIEL article refers to a “growing body of
evidence that BP and other oil companies understood not only the intrinsic
danger of their products but the specific threat to identifiable categories of
plaintiffs.” (CIEL, 2020)
AI tool for fossil fuel research
Interest in the
historical activities of fossil fuel companies is illustrated by the appearance
of a new open access AI tool. The Climate Accountability Research Assistant, or
CLARA, draws on historical fossil fuel industry documents to rapidly produce
concise reports with citations. It can answer natural language questions on
topics such as when fossil fuel companies became aware of their effect on the environment,
and how they have contributed to climate denial. It will “help researchers,
journalists and lawyers alike shine light on the past actions and statements of
fossil fuel companies with speed and accuracy,” and is a unique tool, according
to the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab, Dr Benjamin Franta (CLARA,
2025).
Lawsuits
Studies of what oil companies knew about the probable
effects of their activities on global climate, when they gained this knowledge,
and the measures they took to conceal what they knew can clearly be relevant to
legal actions taken against them. Some examples will be outlined below.
The City of Charleston sued 17 fossil fuel companies,
including ExxonMobil, in 2020, “alleging that the defendants had misled the
public for decades about the risks that fossil fuels pose to the climate,
thereby exacerbating climate change”. The defendants argued in 2023, among
other things, “that the plaintiff’s claims were precluded and preempted by the
Constitution and federal law; they were barred by the statute of limitations;
the complaint failed to state viable claims under South Carolina law; and that
the court lacked personal jurisdiction over the non-resident defendants.” The motion
to dismiss on federal preclusion and preemption grounds was granted “because
state law cannot govern disputes regarding interstate emissions.” (Paul, Weiss,
2025)
“In May 2021, a Dutch court delivered a landmark ruling that
shook the global fossil fuel industry” (Fair Planet, 2025). “For the first
time, a company was legally ordered to cut its CO2 emissions when Shell was
mandated to reduce its global emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, compared to
2019 levels.” The lawsuit brought by Milieudefensie and others is described as “a
pivotal moment in corporate climate accountability”. Nevertheless, Shell won
its appeal in 2024 but “many legal experts argue that the court’s
acknowledgment of corporate responsibility for emissions sets a powerful
precedent.” A detailed discussion of the case follows, including the positive view
that it “provides very fruitful ground for new kinds of claims going forward.”
The case of California v. ExxonMobil et al. is reported briefly
by the Centre for Climate Integrity: “California is suing ExxonMobil, Chevron,
BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and the American Petroleum Institute to
make them pay for lying to the public for decades about their fossil fuel
products’ central role in the climate crisis. The lawsuit seeks to create an
abatement fund for climate adaptation projects across the state and was amended
in 2024 to add a disgorgement remedy for profits the companies illegally earned
while lying to consumers.” (CfCI, 2025b). Links are provided to the Complaint
and the Court Filings.
References
Banerjee, N., et al., 2015, Exxon: The Road Not Taken. (Kindle
Edition) Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exxon-Road-Taken-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B017AMFLF4/
accessed 24 November 2025
CfCI, 2025a, Ten years since the world learned #ExxonKnew,
accountability marches forward, September 15th, 2025, Centre for Climate
Integrity, online, accessed 24 November 2025
CfCI, 2025b, California v. Exxon Mobil et al., Centre for
Climate Integrity, online, accessed 27 November 2025
https://climateintegrity.org/lawsuits/case/state-of-california
CIEL, 2020, BP Acknowledged Climate Risk of Fossil Fuels in
1990, CIEL Press Room, online, accessed 25 November 2025
https://www.ciel.org/news/bp-acknowledged-climate-risk-of-fossil-fuels-in-1990/
CLARA, 2025, Climate law: new AI tool produces fast,
accurate reports on fossil fuel company activities, 24 March 2025, Smith
School, University of Oxford, online, accessed 25 November 2025
Climate Files, 1988, 1988 Shell Confidential Report “The
Greenhouse Effect”, online, accessed 25 November 2025
https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1988-shell-report-greenhouse/
Fair Planet, 2025, The ruling
Shell wanted. The precedent it feared. 4th March 2025, Fair Planet, online,
accessed 25 November 2025
https://www.fairplanet.org/story/the-ruling-shell-wanted-the-precedent-it-feared/
Harvard, 2023, Research shows that company modeled and
predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ starting in the
1970s, January 12, 2023, The Harvard Gazette, online, accessed 25 November 2025
ICN, 2015, Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate
Dangers in the 1970s, Too, Inside Climate News, online, accessed 24 November
2025
Paul, Weiss, 2025, ExxonMobil Wins Dismissal of South
Carolina Litigation Over Climate Change Risks, 6th August 2025,
Paul, Weiss, online, accessed 24 November 2025
Supran, G., Rahmstorf, S., and Oreskes, N., 2023, Assessing
ExxonMobil’s global warming projections, Science, online, accessed 24 November
2025
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