In Their Own Words: The Dirty Dozen Documents of Big Oil’s Secret Climate Knowledge

By Paul D. Thacker

“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes,” said ExxonMobil lobbyist Keith McCoy. “Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that.”

These are the words McCoy was caught saying on a secretly recorded video released by Unearthed, Greenpeace U.K.’s investigative journalism arm, and the British Channel 4 News this summer exposing how the oil giant and lobby groups such as the American Petroleum Institute seed doubt about climate change and undermine legislation to stop global warming. 

These revelations quickly spurred calls for Congress to investigate Exxon’s and other fossil fuel companies’ efforts to obstruct climate action. On July 26, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to McCoy requesting his voluntary appearance before the committee. And on October 28, Congress questioned the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute on their history of blocking climate policy.

For years, academics, journalists, and activists have been unearthing documents proving that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change since the late 1950s. That’s many, many years before McCoy was even twinkle in his daddy’s eye and decades before he came to Washington to join in Exxon’s campaign to deny science and delay action to save the planet from “catastrophic climate change” — a term Exxon used back in 1981.

These documents show how companies worked to erode public acceptance of climate science over the years — including Exxon corporate reports from the late 1970s, revealed by DeSmog in 2016, which stated “There is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem.”

To explain the long history of what the fossil fuel industry knew and when they knew it, Stanford University science historian Ben Franta has collected a dozen of his favorite documents. 

The fossil fuel industry was first warned about climate change back in 1959 by famed physicist Edward Teller, known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, oil and gas companies continued to gather evidence that burning fossil fuels was going to change the planet, perhaps even catastrophically. By the early ‘80s, the science was clear enough that oil and gas companies began to strategize on ways to control messaging about climate change and regulations. In 1989, they launched the Global Climate Coalition, a massive lobbying effort to undermine science and attack any attempt to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Franta and I recently discussed these key documents, what they say, how they were found, and what this means for the fossil fuel industry. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Document 1: 1959

At a Columbia University symposium, physicist Edward Teller warns oil executives about rising levels of carbon dioxide and the likelihood of global warming and sea level rise by the end of the century.