Report: Exxon knew of climate risks decades ago

Executives at oil giant Exxon Corp. knew nearly 40 years ago the fossil fuels it was producing were warming the planet, according to a new report.

James Black, a scientist with the company, told leaders that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was exacerbating the greenhouse effect and would eventually threaten people, the economy and more, InsideClimate News reported Wednesday.

{mosads}Over the next decade, the company embarked on an ambitious, multimillion-dollar research agenda to better understand climate change and how its operations were contributing.

“Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical,” Black said in 1978.

But by the 1990s, Exxon dramatically shifted course and funneled money into science aimed at sowing doubt about climate change and its relationship to fossil fuels, InsideClimate said, citing documents and interviews with former employees.

Exxon, which has since merged with Mobil Corp., told InsideClimate that its research has always “been solidly within the mainstream of the consensus scientific opinion of the day and our work has been guided by an overarching principle to follow where the science leads” and that it believes climate change is real “and warrants action.”

Wednesday’s report is the first product of an eight-month investigation by InsideClimate that it said will detail how Exxon chose to move away from seeking solutions to climate change.