“Exxon Knew” as Historical Fallacy (Part I)

The following memorandum within the vast bowels of Exxon Corporation from 1979 has led to several fallacies that the memo represented company policy and was definitive at the time.

False and false. This memo from certain employees never made it to a company position for cause. Global cooling was the bigger concern back then, and the above memo did not investigate the SO₂ offset, much less the benefits from CO₂ fertilization and incremental warming. Peak Oil and Peak Gas was the intellectual/practical concern of this era.

Background Posts

MasterResource has opined on this subject is a series of posts, summarized here.

• A rebuttal to an op-ed by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, “The Forgotten Oil Ads that Told Us Climate Change was Nothing.”
• A critical review of Inside Climate News’s “Exxon: The Road Not Taken” (here and here)
• A three-part rejoinder of Big Oil vs The World by the BBC (Episode I; Episode II; Episode III)
• A rejoinder to Shell Knew (here)
• ‘ExxonKnew’: More Correction (Sept.

Comments: DOE Climate Science Study

Ed. Note: These comments were prepared in support of the U.S. Department of Energy study, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” For legal reasons, the DOE has disbanded the effort, inviting the authors to respond to criticisms on their own time. The comments below are for the record.

The new DOE report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate (July 29, 2025) is a welcome rebuttal to “the cause” (a Climategate term) of climate alarm and policy activism. Its optimistic view of CO₂ enrichment and climate change should be welcomed by all interested in the subject.

This comment highlights quotations from climate scientists who are not associated with the “skeptic” or “realist” school of climate science (such as the 2025 Climate Working Group), but who nonetheless rightly understand energy as the master resource and the uncertainties of climate modeling.…

Solar Books to Skip

With the bust of the rooftop solar industry in the U.S. (“Solar Bankruptcies: The New Normal“), a quick look at some of the trendy books from the political boom is illustrative. Grid solar is hanging on thanks to government intervention, but a bust is developing there.

Lisa Sachs (Columbia University): Assume, Don’t Debate, Premises

National Clean Energy Week: Re-education Please

Dessler “Unhinged” at CO2/Climate Optimism Report (“doomism” under siege)

Solar Bust: PosiGen Joins SunPower, Sunnova, Mosaic Solar

‘Climate Forward’ Conference in NYT asks for Questions (wake ahead?)

New York Times on Climate: Now (2025) and Then (1988)

A Welcome Farewell: Solar Crony Leaves Shell (false virtue on display)