Two of the main drivers of the #ExxonKnew campaign are back with yet another study, this time crediting the company for being on target with climate model predictions.
These are claims that activists have seized on for years, going back to at least 2019, so the report mentions very little new information and even acknowledges that plenty of other companies and industries also knew about climate change. [emphasis, links added]
However, it does contain a stunning and long overdue admission from one author of the study, Naomi Oreskes, revealing the extent of the coordination between the climate litigation movement and supposed “academic” research.
In their decade-long climate litigation endeavor, the #ExxonKnew team, shaped in large part by the authors of this study, have lost in the New York State courtroom, came up empty in a years-long Washington D.C. House oversight investigation, and have been exposed for secret funding and activist coordination.
This is just the next page in their failing playbook as they seek to stay relevant.
Here are major items to keep in mind before cracking the study open:
The First Oreskes’ Report to Include Sher Edling Acknowledgement
In a stunning admission, Naomi Oreskes finally concedes her role in working for the law firm that has based its entire business around bringing forth climate litigation against the oil and gas industry.
In May 2021, EID Climate reported on the bombshell news that Oreskes, during a deposition in an unrelated case, revealed that she had been on retainer with Sher Edling, the plaintiffs’ law firm serving as the outside counsel for more than a dozen states and municipalities that have filed climate lawsuits around the country.
But notably, this marks the first of Oreskes’ reports that acknowledges that she “has in the past served as a paid consultant to Sher Edling law firm.”
Of course, Oreskes has been involved in the broader activist campaign to prosecute oil companies for alleged climate fraud since Day One.
The New York Times previously reported that Oreskes “conceived” the infamous 2012 La Jolla conference where the playbook for the entire campaign was developed in her role as co-founder of the Rockefeller-funded Climate Accountability Institute.
For his part, Geoffrey Supran, a colleague of Oreskes at Harvard, is an active participant in the effort to convince universities and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels.
He previously helped with the unsuccessful campaign to pressure the American Geophysical Union to disassociate with ExxonMobil and served as the Director of Climate Accountability for Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network (CSSN).
More recently, Supran was intimately involved in the House Oversight Committee investigation attempting to discredit ExxonMobil.
Supran worked behind the scenes as an advisor to staffers for the recently released two-year investigation on “Big Oil” that turned out to be a giant nothing-burger, despite the millions of documents, time, and resources spent on it by activists and House Democrats.
In September, Oreskes and Supran hosted an event on the campus of Harvard University to further discuss climate litigation and their activism against the industry, in what the Boston Globe called an “attempt to take climate accountability research to the next level.”
While the authors may claim that no biases played a role in their study, it’s clear that their work is bent with a particular objective in mind.
Supran has openly declared his anti-ExxonMobil bias, including his hope that someone “engineers Exxon out of business,” while both Supran and Oreskes signed on to amicus briefs filed to advocate on behalf of the municipalities suing fossil fuel companies for climate change.
Indeed, their prior analyses of Exxon’s internal records were deemed to be “unreliable, invalid, biased, not generalizable, and not replicable,” by Professor Kimberly Neuendorf, Ph.D., an expert in content analysis whose method was cited by Supran and Oreskes.
Neuendorf noted that Oreskes’ and Supran’s long record of a very public bias against ExxonMobil and fossil fuel companies “violates basic tenets of scientific research.”
Additionally, the report says:
“G.S. and N.O. have offered their expertise pro bono to groups and organizations combating climate change, including briefing attorneys and coauthoring amicus briefs in climate lawsuits.”
This raises questions for Supran and Oreskes about the true extent of their involvement and the blurred lines between activist and academic – red flags that any objective reader should be wary of.
Reminder: Every aspect of #ExxonKnew is bought and paid for, including this study.
The study by Supran and Oreskes is only the latest in a long series of reports and actions funded by the wealthy Rockefeller Family Fund, long-time “Keep it in the Ground” advocates who have funded the #ExxonKnew campaign at every turn, including by hosting a 2016 strategy session aimed at “delegitimizing” ExxonMobil.
From the report:
“The authors are supported by a Rockefeller Family Fund grant (G.S.) and Harvard University Faculty Development Funds (N.O.).”
This isn’t the first time Supran and Oreskes have used the Rockefeller coffers to fund their activist research. In a 2018 study, the authors accused ExxonMobil of misleading the public on climate change, but the report was broadly criticized.
The Rockefeller’s climate litigation motives can again be traced back to the La Jolla conference hosted by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Climate Accountability Institute, two groups that receive funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an additional entity used to fund various activist and litigation activity.
Importantly, activist groups also help fund Sher Edling, the for-profit law firm leading the various climate lawsuits around the country.
Fox News reported last year that the dark-money Resources Legacy Fund had funneled more than $5 million to Sher Edling between 2017 and 2020 to support these cases.
The donors to Resources Legacy Fund are veritable who’s-who in anti-fossil fuel foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
Next page of a familiar playbook
Notably, this study presents little new information and seems to be the next step in the activists’ familiar playbook to keep the climate litigation train running and attract more media attention.
The entire study seeks to fault ExxonMobil for having some type of knowledge about climate change from decades ago that only the company possessed and didn’t appropriately share.
But as EID Climate has noted, plenty of other companies, industries, and even the federal government also “knew” about climate change. In reality, it’s not #ExxonKnew, but more like “Who Didn’t Know?”
Even Oreskes and Supran – in the very first paragraph, no less – admit this fact, writing:
“Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s.”
All of this despite repeated failures, including losing what was once called “the trial of the century,” in 2020 when the New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of ExxonMobil that the business did not mislead investors on how it accounted for climate costs, despite the attorney general’s “hyperbolic” allegations.
Despite this loss, Sher Edling has been active in recruiting more states and municipalities to its climate litigation movement, including attempts with New Jersey, Baltimore County, and Annapolis.
Perhaps most notably, another case looms large on the minds of activists.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to weigh in on whether climate lawsuits should be heard in federal or state court.
SCOTUS’ directing the solicitor general to file briefs “expressing the views of the United States” on the matter comes as the Court considers whether it will take up a petition to review a Tenth Circuit ruling that sent the City of Boulder and two other Colorado municipalities’ case back to state court, a move that would have large implications on energy-related cases in the future and puts the Biden administration in a difficult spot, as they have yet to weigh in on these cases.
Some speculate the DOJ’s brief could come as soon as this month – perhaps indicating why a fresh media round for Oreskes, Supran, and climate activists is needed.
Bottom Line: Instead of being viewed as legitimate academic research, this study should be regarded as what it is: activist-generated media bait from biased and previously discredited authors bent on fulfilling their climate litigation motives – and bought and paid for by the law firm profiting off of studies like this.
Read more at EID Climate
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