---
title: Fossil-fuel industry climate doubt campaigns, 1977 to the 2000s
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/
description: internal documents show that Exxon scientists and an industry coalition's own science advisers described human-caused warming as well supported, while…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a Cold War intelligence-dossier collage dominated by a distressed world map with connecting routes, coordinates and highlighted regions.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-map-heavy.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Fossil-fuel industry climate doubt campaigns, 1977 to the 2000s

At a glance

Internal documents show that Exxon scientists and an industry coalition's own science advisers described human-caused warming as well supported, while paid newspaper advertorials…

- **When:** July 1, 1977
- **Actor:** Exxon…
- **Target:** U.S. newspaper readers, radio audiences in three test markets, journalists and policymakers during…
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Bothsidesism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bothsidesism/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Exxon (later ExxonMobil) and Mobil; the Global Climate Coalition; the Information Council for the Environment (National Coal Association, Western Fuels Association, Edison Electric Institute); the American Petroleum Institute
- **Target:** U.S. newspaper readers, radio audiences in three test markets, journalists and policymakers during the climate-treaty talks of 1989 to 2002

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/climate-doubt-campaigns/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** internal documents show that Exxon scientists and an industry coalition's own science advisers described human-caused warming as well supported, while paid newspaper advertorials, a coal-and-utility ad campaign and a 1998 trade-association plan presented the science to the public as unsettled.

![Diagram: internal research and an advisers' primer describe the greenhouse effect as established; a coalition trims the part answering contrarians; public channels (advertorials, a coal-industry radio test, a 1998 plan to recruit "independent scientists") present uncertainty; peer-reviewed audits and lawsuits follow](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/climate-doubt-campaigns-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **July 1977.** Exxon senior scientist James F. Black briefs the company's Management Committee. His written version says "there is 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." He gives a warming of two to three degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2. The briefing is dated to July 1977 in the documents that Inside Climate News published in 2015; the exact day is not given, so the frontmatter date uses the first of the month.
- **12 November 1982.** M. B. Glaser, manager of Exxon's Environmental Affairs Program, sends management an internal "CO2 Greenhouse Effect" technical review. It says "our best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could increase average global temperature by about 1.3 degrees celsius to 3.1 degrees celsius". The cover note says the material "has been given wide circulation to Exxon management" but "should be restricted to Exxon personnel and not distributed externally."
- **23 June 1988.** NASA scientist James Hansen tells the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the warming then observed could be attributed with about 99 percent confidence to a human-made increase in the greenhouse effect.
- **1989.** The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) forms under the National Association of Manufacturers. Exxon is a board member from the start. The coalition lobbies and campaigns on climate policy until it disbands in early 2002. BP leaves in 1997; Ford leaves later, with its chairman William Clay Ford Jr. saying "the climate appears to be changing, the changes appear to be outside natural variation."
- **1989 to 2004.** Mobil, and after the 1999 merger ExxonMobil, buy regular Thursday "advertorials" on the New York Times op-ed page. The ads are signed by the company. The **23 March 2000** advertorial, "Unsettled Science", says that against a "backdrop of large, poorly understood natural variability," "it is impossible for scientists to attribute the recent small surface temperature increase to human causes." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had concluded in 1995 that evidence pointed to a "discernible human influence on global climate."
- **February to August 1991.** The Information Council for the Environment, also styled Informed Citizens for the Environment (ICE), set up by the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association and the Edison Electric Institute, spends about $510,000 on test ads in Fargo, North Dakota, Flagstaff, Arizona and Bowling Green, Kentucky. Its plan lists the goal "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)". Its polling firm names "older, less-educated males from larger households who are not typically active information-seekers" and "younger, lower-income women" as good targets for radio. The ads ask "If the Earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?" and "Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?" After its internal memos leaked to the trade paper Energy Daily and the New York Times reported the campaign on **8 July 1991**, the council disbanded, and two of its science advisers, Robert Balling and Patrick Michaels, broke with it.
- **1995 to 1996.** The GCC's own science and technical advisory committee drafts a primer, "Predicting Future Climate Change". It says "the scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied." A section says contrarian theories "do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse emission-induced climate change." Committee minutes show the primer was approved after that section was dropped.
- **April 1998.** A draft "Global Climate Science Communications Plan", written by Joe Walker of the American Petroleum Institute (API) with people from Exxon, Chevron, the Southern Company and several policy groups, leaks. It says "Victory will be achieved when average citizens understand (recognize) uncertainties in climate science". It proposes to "identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach." The New York Times reports it on **26 April 1998**. Walker describes the plan as tentative and says no executives had yet been asked to fund it.
- **2017 and 2023.** Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes code 187 ExxonMobil documents (Environmental Research Letters, 2017). Accounting for reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused; 12% of the advertorials do, and 81% express doubt. In Science (January 2023), Supran, Stefan Rahmstorf and Oreskes find that Exxon's internal projections predicted about 0.20 ± 0.04 °C of warming per decade, in line with independent models and later observations.

![James E. Hansen speaking at a congressional hearing table with a nameplate reading DR HANSEN](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/climate-doubt-campaigns-james-hansen-nasa.jpg)

*James E. Hansen, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, speaking at a hearing table (nameplate "DR HANSEN"). The Commons file cites a NASA GISS publication as its source and does not state the hearing or the date; Hansen's Senate testimony of 23 June 1988 is described above. NASA image, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.*

## How it works

- [Bothsidesism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bothsidesism/): the "Unsettled Science" advertorial and ICE's "theory (not fact)" goal present one body of evidence as a tie. The uncertainty they lead with was real. The 2000 ad disputed whether recent warming could be attributed to human causes; the IPCC had concluded in 1995 that the evidence pointed to a "discernible human influence", and Exxon's own 1982 review gave a range of 1.3 to 3.1 °C of warming for doubled CO2, with no zero in it. The ad presents the open questions of size and timing as an open question about cause.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the GCC's operating committee approved its advisers' primer only after the section judging contrarian arguments unconvincing was removed, per the minutes. Supran and Oreskes's venue comparison describes the same selection at scale: the papers and memos say one thing, the op-ed page ads another.
- [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/): ICE ran its ads under a citizen-sounding name that does not mention coal or electric utilities. The advertorials are a milder form: they are signed by Mobil, but they are editorial-style paid ads placed on the op-ed page, which is where readers expect opinion columns. The API plan's "independent scientists" would have been a further step: industry-funded voices presented as independent. That part is a proposal, and its execution is not shown.
- [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): ICE's plan put named scientists (Balling in Flagstaff, Michaels in Bowling Green) into its radio spots, putting a scientist's credentials in front of the claim.
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): ICE's polling firm recommended radio ads that would "directly attack the proponents of global warming" by comparing warming to "historical or mythical instances of gloom and doom." The "Chicken Little" ad matches that recommendation: it labels the people making the claim rather than addressing the claim.

Why [Manufactured consensus](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/manufactured-consensus/) is not tagged: the API plan describes it, but the page has no documented record that the "team of five independent scientists" was recruited and put in front of the media under that plan.

## Then and now

![A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers (1954)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/frank-statement-1954.png)

*[A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/frank-statement-1954/), Tobacco Industry Research Committee, 1954. Public domain.*

In 1954 the tobacco companies signed a full-page ad saying "there is no agreement among the authorities." The Mobil advertorials used the same form: a signed, paid statement of doubt in the newspaper. Oreskes and Conway's *Merchants of Doubt* (2010) argues that the two campaigns share methods and, in some cases, people; see [The tobacco industry's smoking-and-health doubt campaign, 1953 to 1998](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/tobacco-doubt-campaign/). The differences are plain. The tobacco companies were found liable under federal racketeering law in 2006. ExxonMobil won the New York securities case (below), which concerned what it told investors rather than the advertorials. And the climate question carried real, openly stated uncertainty about how much warming to expect, which the industry's own scientists also reported.

## Positions on the record

- **ExxonMobil's position.** In a 23 August 2017 statement the company called the Supran and Oreskes paper "inaccurate and preposterous" and said it was paid for, written and published by activists running a campaign against the company. It says its public statements were consistent with its understanding of the science, and it has pointed to dozens of peer-reviewed papers its researchers published from the 1970s on. In 2015 it said reporting on its documents was "cherry-picked" and urged readers to read the documents. Kimberly Neuendorf, a content-analysis scholar, called the 2017 coding "unreliable, invalid, biased, not generalizable, and not replicable". Energy In Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, wrote that Oreskes had been a paid consultant to Sher Edling, a firm that represents plaintiffs in climate suits. Supran and Oreskes published an addendum to the paper in the same journal in 2020.
- **In the GCC's favour.** On 2 May 2009 the New York Times added an editor's note to its April 2009 story on the primer: a later public GCC "backgrounder" did include language conforming to the advisers' conclusion that greenhouse gases could contribute to warming.
- **Courts.** On 10 December 2019, after a 12-day trial, Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York Supreme Court ruled that the Attorney General "failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor." He added that "nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change" and that "this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case." The case concerned what the company told investors about how it managed the risks climate change posed to its business, not the 1989 to 2004 advertorials. Massachusetts's consumer-protection suit survived a 2022 anti-SLAPP appeal and was pending at the last reliable report. The U.S. Supreme Court granted review in *Suncor Energy v. Boulder County*, a suit against Suncor and ExxonMobil, on 23 February 2026, on whether federal law precludes such state-law claims; argument is set for 5 October 2026. No verdict on the deception claims in these suits is recorded here.
- **Critics' position.** Supran, Rahmstorf and Oreskes argue that the company's public doubt ran against its own research. Inside Climate News reported in October 2020 that ExxonMobil had turned to academics to contest the Harvard research. Oreskes and Conway argue that the same doubt strategy moved from tobacco to climate.
- **This archive's reading:** documented: the 1977 and 1982 internal statements, the GCC primer and its redaction, the ICE plan and ads, the API plan's text, and the advertorials' wording. Documented by peer-reviewed analysis, and disputed by the company: the gap between venues. Not shown: that the API plan was carried out as written; that any campaign here changed public opinion by a measured amount; any court finding of consumer deception.

## Same-method test

An environmental group or renewable-energy trade association that ran signed op-ed-page ads stating a contested projection as settled, set up a citizen-named council to run radio ads in test markets, or planned to recruit "independent" scientists to carry its message, would be tagged with the same ids. The tags follow the method, not the side of the energy debate.

The closest documented case from the other direction is narrower. In the 1995 Brent Spar campaign against Shell's plan to sink an oil storage buoy in the Atlantic, Greenpeace put the oil left on board at about 5,000 tonnes against Shell's estimate of about 100. After a survey by the inspection firm Det Norske Veritas, Greenpeace UK's executive director Lord Melchett wrote to Shell UK on 5 September 1995 to apologise, saying the group's estimate was inaccurate (Washington Post, 6 September 1995). The difference matters: that was one figure, which the group said came from a sampling error and withdrew within months, not a decades-long gap between internal and public statements. It is cited here as a check that an overstated certainty is scored the same whichever side states it.

![The Shell/Esso Brent Spar oil storage buoy under construction, 1975](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/climate-doubt-campaigns-brent-spar-1975.jpg)

*The Shell/Esso Brent Spar oil storage and loading buoy under construction, about 1975, the object at issue in the 1995 Greenpeace and Shell dispute described above. Photo from a slide by the uploader's late father, scanned and uploaded by Quistnix, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.*

## How to spot it

- Compare what an organization says in its technical papers and internal memos with what it says in paid space. A gap between venues is the signal.
- Check a coalition's funders before its name. "Information", "citizens" and "council" say nothing about who pays.
- When an ad says "scientists can't say", ask what range the scientists actually gave. Uncertainty about how much is not uncertainty about whether.
- A plan to recruit "independent" voices is a plan. Look for evidence that it was carried out before scoring the result.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sourced facts on this page (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| *A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers* (1954) | FRAME gallery, from Wikimedia Commons | Public domain (published without a copyright notice) |
| James E. Hansen at a hearing table (NASA GISS) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Hansen.jpg), NASA GISS | Public domain (created solely by NASA) |
| Brent Spar under construction, c. 1975 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shell_-_Esso_Brent_Spar_under_construction_(1975).jpg), Quistnix | CC BY-SA 3.0 |

### Image gaps

- **The Mobil and ExxonMobil advertorials, including "Unsettled Science" (2000).** Post-1989 corporate works, still under copyright. DocumentCloud and Climate Files host scans for reading. Not fillable here.
- **The ICE print ads and 1991 plan, the GCC primer, the 1982 Exxon memo and the 1998 API plan.** Unpublished or private corporate documents, not public domain. They can be read at Climate Files and Inside Climate News. Not fillable here.
- **James Hansen at the 23 June 1988 Senate hearing.** A NASA-sourced photo of Hansen at a hearing table is hosted above, but its Commons file page does not state the hearing or the date. No dated photo of the 1988 hearing with a PD-USGov tag was found.
- **Logos of the GCC, ICE, API or ExxonMobil.** Trademarked and not public domain.

## Sources

- [Inside Climate News: James Black 1977 presentation (document)](https://insideclimatenews.org/documents/james-black-1977-presentation/) and [story, 16 September 2015](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/)
- [1982 Exxon memo to management on the CO2 greenhouse effect (Climate Files)](https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-management-about-co2-greenhouse-effect/) and [Inside Climate News, 22 September 2015](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models/)
- [Hansen's Senate testimony, 23 June 1988 (transcript)](https://www.sealevel.info/1988_Hansen_Senate_Testimony.html)
- [GCC draft primer, 1995 (Climate Files)](https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/global-climate-coalition-draft-primer/); [Brulle, "Advocating inaction: a historical analysis of the Global Climate Coalition" (2022)](https://cssn.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GCC-Paper.pdf); [Yale Climate Connections on the New York Times editor's note, May 2009](https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2009/05/reporter-revkins-worst-misstepaftermath-of-a-climate-reporting-gaffe/)
- [ICE 1991 campaign plan and survey (Climate Files)](https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-campaign-plan/) and [ICE ads (Climate Files)](https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-ad-campaign/)
- ["Unsettled Science", New York Times, 23 March 2000 (DocumentCloud)](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705605-xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience/)
- [API Global Climate Science Communications Plan, 1998 (Climate Files)](https://www.climatefiles.com/trade-group/american-petroleum-institute/1998-global-climate-science-communications-team-action-plan/) and [DocumentCloud copy](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2840903-1998-API-Global-Climate-Science-Communications/)
- [Supran and Oreskes, Environmental Research Letters 12 084019 (2017)](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f) and [addendum (2020)](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab89d5)
- [Supran, Rahmstorf and Oreskes, Science 379, eabk0063 (2023)](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063)
- [ExxonMobil statement on the 2017 study](https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/statements/statement-on-study); [Energy In Depth on the Neuendorf critique](https://www.energyindepth.org/major-cracks-emerge-in-research-methodology-at-center-of-new-oreskes-supran-paper/); [Inside Climate News, 20 October 2020](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20102020/exxon-harvard-research/)
- [People v. Exxon Mobil, N.Y. Sup. Ct., 10 December 2019 (FindLaw)](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ny-supreme-court/2036005.html) and [NPR report](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/10/780317799/exxon-wins-new-york-climate-change-case)
- [Commonwealth v. Exxon Mobil, Mass. SJC, 24 May 2022 (Justia)](https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2022/sjc-13211.html)
- [SCOTUSblog: Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, No. 25-170](https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/suncor-energy-inc-v-county-commissioners-of-boulder-county/)
- Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, *Merchants of Doubt* (Bloomsbury, 2010).
- [Washington Post, 6 September 1995: Greenpeace admits oil rig error](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/09/06/greenpeace-admits-oil-rig-error/193e4483-1656-4d3a-8998-921738377de5/) and [Oil & Gas Journal: Greenpeace: we erred in Brent Spar controversy](https://www.ogj.com/home/article/17217152/greenpeace-we-erred-in-brent-spar-controversy)