AI Shows ExxonMobil Downplayed Its Role in Climate Change

Between 1977 and 2014, 80 percent of ExxonMobil's internal research supported the idea that human activity was a contributor to climate change. But during that same period, 80 percent of the oil and gas provider's public statements instead expressed doubt whether climate change was caused by humans--or even real in the first place. To draw this conclusion, Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes used machine learning to review more than 200 internal documents, peer-reviewed research, and public statements from Exxon Mobil. The newly released paper, "Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications," exposes a decades-long pattern of public statements that sanitize the company's role in contributing to CO2 emissions. Oreskes and Supran used machine learning analysis to support two claims.