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PublicationAuthorHeadlineDateEditorial, op-ed, or column?Supportive or critical of Exxon investigations?Article text about Exxon investigations
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. It's Always Exxon's Fault10/27/2015ColumnCriticalHere we go again, in the form of an exposé of Exxon by the website InsideClimateNews.org, echoed by the Los Angeles Times and other media organs. See if you can follow the logic exhibited in the ICN series.
Because Exxon concerned itself with how a warming Arctic might affect the safety of its pipelines and drilling structures there, Exxon is a hypocrite on climate change.
Because Exxon refrained from developing an Indonesian gas field that would have meant releasing or capturing a large amount of associated carbon dioxide, Exxon is a hypocrite on climate change.
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The real smoking gun isn’t the Exxon revelations but the climate community’s hysterical reaction to them. Veteran campaigner Bill McKibben and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders demand the Obama administration launch a criminal investigation.
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The New York TimesTimothy EganExxon Mobil and the G.O.P.: Fossil Fools11/5/2015ColumnSupportiveWell before one hottest-year-ever was followed by yet another record-breaker, before Arctic ice vanished in real time and Pope Francis made a plea to save our troubled home, the world’s largest private oil company discovered that its chief product could cause global havoc.
As an accidental public service, this deed was little known until recently, when a trove of documents unearthed by several news organizations showed What Exxon Knew and When It Knew It. And it was reported Thursday that the New York attorney general is starting an investigation to determine whether the company lied about the risks of climate change.
It’s not surprising, given its army of first-rate scientists and engineers, that Exxon was aware as far back as the 1970s that carbon dioxide from oil and gas burning could have dire effects on the earth. Nor is it surprising that Exxon would later try to cast doubt on what its experts knew to be true, to inject informational pollution into the river of knowledge about climate change.
But what is startling is how a deliberate campaign of misinformation — now disavowed by even Exxon Mobil itself — has found its way into the minds of the leading Republican presidential candidates.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. In Exxon War, Bamboozled by Greenies11/6/2015ColumnCriticalScurry on board the Exxon prosecution express. Lest they be left behind and called “deniers,” Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, the attorney general of New York and Al Gore this week all demanded criminal investigation of Exxon Mobil as a result of recent media “exposés.”
Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire on Thursday agreed, saying, “There’s a lot of evidence that they misled people.”
Not one of these worthies likely examined the evidence, which tells a story quite different from the claim that Exxon somehow concealed its understanding of the climate debate. But the hurdle rate for “investigative” journalism has apparently become low. The allegedly damning documents that the Los Angeles Times and the website Inside Climate News (ICN) claim to have unearthed were published by Exxon itself, in peer-reviewed journals, on its website, and in archives created by Exxon for public use.
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial BoardProsecuting Climate Dissent11/8/2015EditorialCriticalSheldon Whitehouse got his man. The Rhode Island Senator has been lobbying for prosecutions of oil and gas companies over climate change, and New York Attorney General and progressive activist Eric Schneiderman has now obliged by opening a subpoena assault on Exxon Mobil. This marks a dangerous new escalation of the left’s attempt to stamp out all disagreement on global-warming science and policy.
Progressives have been losing the political debate over climate change, failing to pass cap and trade even when Democrats had a supermajority in Congress. So they have turned to the force of the state through President Obama’s executive diktats and now with the threat of prosecution. This assault won’t stop with Exxon. Climate change is the new religion on the left, and progressives are going to treat heretics like Cromwell did Catholics.
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The Washington PostRobert J. SamuelsonThe war against Exxon Mobil11/8/2015ColumnCriticalIf you care about free speech, you should pay attention to the campaign now being waged against Exxon Mobil. More than 50 environmental and civil rights groups have written Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging her to open a “federal probe” of the giant energy firm. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have also joined the chorus. The charge is that Exxon Mobil “systematically misled the public” on climate change, even as its executives recognized the dangers. New York’s attorney general has already launched an investigation.
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The advocates of a probe into Exxon Mobil are essentially proposing that the company be punished for expressing its opinions. These opinions may be smart or stupid, constructive or destructive, sensible or self-interested. Whatever, they deserve protection. An investigation would, at the least, constitute a form of harassment that would warn other companies to be circumspect in airing their views. Matters could be worse if the government somehow imposes monetary penalties or opens the floodgates to suits by plaintiffs’ attorneys, a la the tobacco industry. Significantly, the letter to Attorney General Lynch does not allege any violation of law.
Exxon Mobil (2014 earnings: $32.5 billion) does not command our sympathy. But free speech does not belong only to the sympathetic. Casting Exxon Mobil as the scapegoat for global warming’s dilemmas is historically inaccurate and a political cheap shot with troubling constitutional implications.
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial BoardNew York's Fantasy Spoilsport11/12/2015EditorialCriticalRemind us never to invite Eric Schneiderman to a party. New York's Chief Spoilsport, er, Attorney General, took a break from strip-searching Exxon this week to shut down fantasy sports in the Empire State.
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USA TodayBill McKibbenAmericans finally beat Big Oil11/12/2015Op-edSupportiveThat the oil companies would deceive and mislead to maintain their dominance is now obvious (and as the new Exxon investigation by New York's attorney general makes clear, potentially actionable). As long as figures like the Koch brothers (the largest American leaseholders in the tar sands) hand out money and political favors, we can expect the mainstream news media to keep pushing their pet projects. But happily, Americans are seeing through the deceptions.
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The Washington PostEditorial BoardExxon deserves criticism, but it didn’t commit a crime11/14/2015EditorialCriticalEXXON DESERVES criticism for playing down the danger of climate change. But was its behavior criminal? We're not convinced.
Investigations at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times found that the oil giant conducted serious climate research a few decades ago but subsequently poured cold water on the idea of responding to the sorts of scientific conclusions it helped generate. While the company studied the potential impact of global warming on its operations, it dismissed climate warnings as "sheer speculation."
The stories depict a company that once aimed to lead the way toward renewable energy but then turned from one of the greatest challenges facing the planet, in the process exerting a negative influence on the debate about climate change. This is a discouraging example of corporate irresponsibility.
Late last month, environmental groups asked Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch to launch an investigation into Exxon Mobil. Then New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced he would do so on his own, using securities and consumer fraud laws. Exxon's misdeeds, the environmentalists' letter states, "are reminiscent - though potentially much greater in scale - than similar revelations about the tobacco industry."
That's quite an accusation. A federal judge found in 2006 that tobacco companies "consistently, repeatedly, and with enormous skill and sophistication, denied [facts about smoking's risks] to the public, to the Government, and to the public health community." Moreover, the judge found, these companies "marketed and sold their lethal products with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted." The history includes secret research, hiding documents and a shocking congressional hearing at which tobacco company executives insisted that nicotine isn't addictive - in 1994, after decades of conclusive, if not always publicized, research linking tobacco to illness.
Exxon's story is more mixed. Starting in the late 1970s, the company invested in climate research, including the creation of the sorts of climate models that serve as a partial basis for the current scientific consensus on global warming. The firm changed course in the late 1980s, pushing back against the emerging scientific consensus rather than advancing it. Even so, the company released much of the research it helped conduct, it currently acknowledges climate change is a environmental risk and it favors taxing carbon dioxide emissions as a remedy. Moreover, emphasizing that predictive climate models are uncertain may be misleading, but it is not demonstrably false as is denying that smoking causes lung cancer.
Perhaps Mr. Schneiderman's investigation will turn up something damning. But there's also a risk whenever law enforcement holds the prospect of criminal penalties over those involved in a scientific debate. Legitimate scientific inquiry depends on allowing strong, even unfair, criticism of the claims that scientists make. As the Exxon investigations show, respecting that principle will not lead to positive outcomes in all cases. But it nevertheless demands that the government leave a sizable buffer zone between irresponsible claims and claims it believes may be criminally fraudulent.
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USA TodayEditorial boardExxonMobil has a right to its opinion11/22/2015EditorialCriticalTo environmentalists, ExxonMobil is the closest thing the corporate world has to a Public Enemy No. 1. The company has long fought efforts to address climate change, raising doubts long past the time when such concerns were reasonable.
But even its most ardent detractors would admit that it has a right to its opinions. Most of them that is. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has, at the urging of environmental activists, launched an investigation into whether the company’s past statements on climate change are not merely wrong — but fraudulent.
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While Schneiderman has not brought a case yet, and much of his thinking is still shrouded in uncertainty, the outlines of this investigation raise serious First Amendment concerns.
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What’s more, the notion that there is fraud in the details of ExxonMobil’s SEC findings seems far-fetched. Could the company have understated the chances that it could suffer adverse effects if and when nations begin to act on climate change? Perhaps. But that would assume the company knows what is going to happen in domestic and international politics. That has little to do with science.
ExxonMobil's history of climate denial is not a reason for prosecution. It is a lesson that the political views of big corporations are shaped by their own financial concerns. That self-interested views of multibillion dollar companies are not a great source for unbiased information on complex scientific issues or widely disputed public policy debates is not news to any investor.
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USA TodayBill McKibbenWhat if Exxon broke the law?11/23/2015Op-edSupportiveUSA TODAY has barely written about the undisputed facts of what could be the biggest corporate scandal of all time: ExxonMobil, largest fossil fuel company on earth, knew all that there was to know about climate change 25 years ago.
Its scientists sampled CO2 in the atmosphere, calculated how much the earth's temperature would rise, and even provided the data that helped the company bid on leases in the fast-melting Arctic. Meanwhile, the company helped found and fund the front groups that worked to impede action that would have let the planet react in time to this growing crisis.
This information — uncovered by award-winning journalists at Inside Climate News and at the Los Angeles Times — has inspired revulsion on every front. Even Exxon’s hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News, has editorialized that the saga “reminds us of the days when Big Tobacco adamantly insisted that science was inconclusive about the cancer-causing effects of cigarettes.”
The only question is whether Exxon’s reprehensible action also broke the law. Which is what environmental, human rights, indigenous and faith groups have asked the Justice Department to investigate.
Telling shareholders one thing when you know another to be true is illegal. So is failing to disclose information on official reports to the government. What about actually looking at the evidence, most of which still sits in Exxon’s filing cabinets? That’s the aim of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has recently conducted a successful, though much smaller, investigation of another energy behemoth, Peabody Energy.
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The Wall Street JournalDavid Rivkin Jr. and Andrew GrossmanPunishing Climate-Change Skeptics3/23/2016Op-edCriticalThe past year has witnessed even more heavy-handed attempts to enforce alarmist doctrine and stamp out dissent.
Assuming the mantle of Grand Inquisitor is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.). Last spring he called on the Justice Department to bring charges against those behind a “coordinated strategy” to spread heterodox views on global warming, including the energy industry, trade associations, “conservative policy institutes” and scientists. Mr. Whitehouse, a former prosecutor, identified as a legal basis for charges that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the federal statute enacted to take down mafia organizations and drug cartels.
In September a group of 20 climate scientists wrote to President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch encouraging them to heed Mr. Whitehouse and launch a RICO investigation targeting climate skeptics.
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Reps. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D., Calif.) followed up with a formal request for the Justice Department to launch an investigation, specifically targeting Exxon Mobil for its funding of climate research and policy organizations skeptical of extreme warming claims. Attorney General Lynch announced in testimony this month that the matter had been referred to the FBI “to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for what we could take action on.” Similar investigations are already spearheaded by state attorneys general in California and New York.
Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehouse, joined by Sens. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), sent letters to a hundred organizations—from private companies to policy institutes—demanding that they turn over information about funding and research relating to climate issues. In his response to the senators, Cato Institute President John Allison called the effort “an obvious attempt to chill research into and funding of public policy projects you don’t like.”
Intimidation is the point of these efforts.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. History of a Climate Con4/12/2016ColumnCriticalHow’s this for an irony? As state attorneys general gin up a fake securities-fraud case against oil companies over climate change, starting with Exxon Mobil Corp., the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a real securities-fraud investigation of the nation’s biggest solar power company.
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[The climate lobby's] main function today has become stringing up apostates as a distraction from Democratic unwillingness to propose policies costly enough that they would actually influence the rate of increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Take the Exxon prosecution, promoted by the attorneys general of New York and California and a host of their Democratic brethren. Though the case is never meant to be adjudicated in a courtroom, suppose it were and suppose a jury somehow found for the plaintiffs. How would Exxon pay a securities-fraud judgment? By selling oil and gas.
Attacking Exxon is not climate policy making; it’s a distraction. Its purpose is to foster an atmosphere conducive to the Gore-Obama green pork-barrel strategy.
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The Wall Street JournalKimberley StrasselBernie's Spinal Surgery on CEOs4/14/2016ColumnCriticalExxon Mobil this week filed in state court a forceful rejoinder to the state attorneys general who are pursuing the bogus claim that the oil company suppressed climate science.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. Climate Crowd Ignores a Scientific Fraud4/15/2016ColumnCriticalGreen activists, some masquerading as attorneys general of New York and California, want to prosecute Exxon as a climate heretic. Its sin? Saying impeccably true things about climate science: The range of uncertainty is high. Climate models are not the climate, and show themselves to be unreliable guides to future warming. There is a cost-benefit test that policy must pass, and it doesn't.
The AG case is a spinoff of "investigative" journalism by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News, which we now learn was directly underwritten by climate activists at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund.
"It's about helping the larger public understand the urgencies of finding climate solutions. It's not really about Exxon," explained a Rockefeller official about a January meeting to coordinate the legal and journalistic attack.
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The Washington PostGeorge F. WillScientific silencers on the left are trying to shut down climate skepticism4/22/2016ColumnCriticalAuthoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science.
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Today, debatable questions include: To what extent is human activity contributing to climate change? Are climate change models, many of which have generated projections refuted by events, suddenly reliable enough to predict the trajectory of change? Is change necessarily ominous because today's climate is necessarily optimum? Are the costs, in money expended and freedom curtailed, of combating climate change less than the cost of adapting to it?
But these questions may not forever be debatable. The initial target of Democratic "scientific" silencers is ExxonMobil, which they hope to demonstrate misled investors and the public about climate change. There is, however, no limiting principle to restrain unprincipled people from punishing research entities, advocacy groups and individuals.
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The Washington PostSam Kazman and Kent LassmanThe environmental campaign that punishes free speech4/22/2016Op-edCriticalThe March 29 news conference unveiled, according to New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, an "unprecedented" coalition to fight not only climate change but also allegedly deceptive speech about climate change. The group, which dubbed itself AGs United for Clean Power, promised to "use all the tools at our disposal" to battle for progress on "the most consequential issue of our time."
Schneiderman was blunt about his goal of shutting down debate: "You have to tell the truth. You can't make misrepresentations of the kinds we've seen here."
This isn't a law-and-order drama. It's politics clothed in messianic garb, and its primary tools are censorship and intimidation.
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On April 7, our organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was subpoenaed by coalition member and U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker for all CEI material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on our supporters, over 10 years beginning in 1997. The subpoena's purported focus is on our contacts with ExxonMobil, a former CEI donor that publicly ended its support for us after 2005. Nonetheless, the subpoena calls for practically all of our material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on any donors who directly or indirectly supported that work.
That's one hell of a burden to slap on a nonprofit. The coalition's purported justification is that the risks of global warming are so important and the scientific basis for them so settled that disputing them constitutes fraud. But the rhetoric of the AGs is blissfully oblivious to the First Amendment.
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The Wall Street JournalWilliam McGurnCurt Schilling the Science Guy4/25/2016ColumnCriticalIndeed, in this climate (pun intended), we now have moves to criminalize scientific dissent. Only last month, a collection of state attorneys general met with activists to discuss ways to go after Exxon for its alleged heterodoxy on global warming.
Which hints at the real game, which is less about the earth's warming than the hope that green enthusiasms can be used to push through a progressive economic and regulatory agenda with few questions asked. As Ottmar Edenhofer, the then co-chairman of Working Group III of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, put it a few years back: "We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy."
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial boardThe Climate Police Escalate4/29/2016EditorialCriticalNew York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman started the assault last autumn with a subpoena barrage on Exxon Mobil. His demand for documents followed reports by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times that claimed Exxon scientists had known for years that greenhouse gases cause global warming but hid the truth from the public and shareholders.
Those reports selectively quoted from Exxon documents, which in any case were publicly available and often peer-reviewed in academic journals. Some Exxon scientists changed their views over the years, and several years ago the company even endorsed a carbon tax.
Mr. Schneiderman nonetheless says he is investigating Exxon for “defrauding the public, defrauding consumers, defrauding shareholders.” He also tipped a broader assault by claiming that the oil and gas company was funneling climate misinformation through “organizations they fund, like the American Enterprise Institute,” the “American Legislative Exchange Council” and the “American Petroleum Institute.” He wants to use the Exxon case to shut down all “climate change deniers.”
Mr. Schneiderman didn’t single out CEI, and CEI doesn’t disclose its donors. But in January CEI senior attorney Hans Bader blasted Mr. Schneiderman for violating Exxon’s First Amendment rights. “Government officials cannot pressure a private party to take adverse action against a speaker,” he wrote. Mr. Scheiderman responded by inviting more than a dozen state AGs to join him in “collectively, collaboratively and aggressively” investigating fossil-fuel companies and their donations. He rolled out Al Gore for the press conference.
Mr. Walker belongs to this climate prosecution club and so he unleashed his subpoena attack on CEI, as well as on DCI Group, a Washington-based PR firm that represents free-market and fossil fuel groups. His demand for a decade’s worth of papers on climate research is a form of harassment. The process is itself punishment, intended to raise the cost of speaking freely on climate policy lest it invite legal bills and other political headaches.
Mr. Walker is also over the line in demanding the names of nonprofit CEI’s donors, who can remain secret under federal law. Anyone on the list will become a new target for the Schneiderman climate posse.
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Sometimes we wonder if we’re still living in the land of the free. Witness the subpoena from Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, demanding that the Competitive Enterprise Institute cough up a decade of emails and policy work, as well as a list of private donors.
Mr. Walker is frustrated that the free-market think tank won’t join the modern church of climatology, so he has joined the rapidly expanding club of Democratic politicians and prosecutors harassing dissenters.
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The Wall Street JournalPhilip HamburgerA Climate Courtroom Crusade Scorches Due Process5/11/2016Op-EdCriticalSix months ago, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a subpoena demanding that Exxon Mobil turn over records concerning its research on climate change. In March, Mr. Schneiderman took the predictable next step, announcing that a coalition of attorneys general will hold fossil fuel companies accountable. “The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, does not give you the right to commit fraud,” he said.
The threat to scientific inquiry and political speech is obvious. Not so widely recognized is the underlying violation of due process. Start with the fact that Mr. Schneiderman and the other attorneys general have relied, as their opening move, on a nonjudicial subpoena to force the disclosure of information.
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This is a dangerous amalgam of grand-jury and prosecutorial power in one person. Mr. Schneiderman’s subpoena to Exxon Mobil thus stands apart. His ability to demand information in this way is a quintessential case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
The threats to privacy in our society are not merely technological; they also are legal. In addition to electronic surveillance, nonjudicial subpoenas allow government to examine private documents as if they were an open book. And as shown by Mr. Schneiderman, when attorneys general can issue such subpoenas, a valuable judicial power becomes a prosecutorial threat to liberty and due process.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. Exxon is Big Tobacco? Tell Me Another5/17/2016ColumnCriticalOne wonders if New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and California’s Kamala Harris, who keep trumpeting the tobacco precedent while attacking Exxon, really have given their analogy the due diligence it deserves.
On the advice of their lawyers, tobacco executives pretended not to know what their own warning labels said, which became their main source of legal jeopardy. In allegedly parallel fashion, Exxon is accused of knowing about the science of climate change, and casting doubt on the science of climate change.
The problem is, knowing and doubting are the same when it comes to the iffy claims of climate science at its current state of development.
Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, in his latest unattended Senate soliloquy demanding a federal RICO investigation of Exxon, claims that “real science continues to prove the connection between carbon pollution and the startling changes we see in our climate and oceans.”
He certainly didn’t get this from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sharer of Al Gore’s Nobel Prize. While insisting that climate models have “improved steadily,” the group abandons its central forecast of three degrees Celsius of warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon-dioxide and offers no central forecast at all.
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Exxon never denied the risk of human influence on climate, as even the exposés generated by compliant media can’t help showing. Its real sin, aside from consorting with researchers with a penchant for realism, was criticizing policy proposals that would be enormously costly while having vanishingly small effect on atmospheric carbon-dioxide.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. To California's Insurance Regulator, Green Is Job One6/13/2016ColumnCriticalThe state's insurance commissioner, in case you haven't guessed, is an elective office. Mr. Jones already has announced plans to run for California attorney general in 2018. He will be aiming to fill the seat that Kamala Harris hopes to vacate for a U.S. Senate seat this fall, after her own yeoman work flogging an anti-Exxon crusade.
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial boardThe Climate Police Blink6/16/2016EditorialCriticalThere are few more rewarding sights than a bully scorned, so let's hear it for the recent laments of Attorneys General Claude Walker (Virgin Islands) and Eric Schneiderman (New York), two ringleaders of the harassment campaign against Exxon and free-market think tanks over climate change.
Consider Mr. Walker’s recent retreat in District of Columbia superior court. In April he issued a sweeping subpoena to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, demanding a decade of emails, policy work and donor names. The goal is to intimidate anyone who raises doubts about climate science or the policy responses.
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Mr. Schneiderman is also on defense for his subpoena barrage and claim that Exxon is guilty of fraud on grounds that it supposedly hid the truth about global warming from the public. The AG felt compelled to devote an entire speech at a legal conference to justify his actions. He accused Exxon and outside groups of engaging in “First Amendment opportunism,” which he said was a “dangerous new threat” to the state’s ability to protect its citizens. So exercising free speech to question government officials who threaten free speech is a threat to free speech.
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The Wall Street JournalKimberley StrasselExxon's Inquisitors Feel the Heat6/16/2016ColumnCriticalThe first thing to know about the crusade against Exxon by state attorneys general is that it isn't about the law. The second thing to know is that it isn't even about Exxon. What these liberal prosecutors really want is to shut down a universe of their most-hated ideological opponents.
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The 17 attorneys general participating in this cause have always been careful to identify Exxon as their only target. It’s easier to accuse a big, bad oil company of nefarious deeds, so they make the bogus claim that Exxon somehow “defrauded” the public and its shareholders by engaging in “climate denial.” All the better if they can beat Exxon into cutting a giant check to settle any future charges—a payoff for their states (and for the trial lawyers helping them).
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial boardTwo Can Play at Climate 'Fraud'6/20/2016EditorialCriticalEric Schneiderman and Sheldon Whitehouse, call your office. The New York Attorney General and Rhode Island Senator who helped to launch the prosecution of dissent on climate change may not like where their project is headed. Thirteen state Attorneys General have sent a letter pointing out that if minimizing the risks of climate change can be prosecuted as “fraud,” then so can statements overstating the dangers of climate change.
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Mr. Schneiderman and some 15 other Democratic AGs are targeting only one side of the climate debate -- i.e., fossil-fuel companies or think tanks that question climate orthodoxy. Mr. Schneiderman claims that Exxon's disclosure about the risks of climate change has been inadequate, though the oil company has discussed such risks in its 10-K disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, among other places.
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The Washington PostRobert PostExxon-Mobil is abusing the first amendment6/24/2016Op-edSupportiveExxonMobil and its supporters are now eliding the essential difference between fraud and public debate. Raising the revered flag of the First Amendment, they loudly object to investigations recently announced by attorneys general of several states into whether ExxonMobil has publicly misrepresented what it knew about global warming.
The National Review has accused the attorneys general of “trampling the First Amendment.” Post columnist George F. Will has written that the investigations illustrate the “authoritarianism” implicit in progressivism, which seeks “to criminalize debate about science.” And Hans A. von Spakovsky, speaking for the Heritage Foundation, compared the attorneys general to the Spanish Inquisition.
Despite their vitriol, these denunciations are wide of the mark. If your pharmacist sells you patent medicine on the basis of his “scientific theory” that it will cure your cancer, the government does not act like the Spanish Inquisition when it holds the pharmacist accountable for fraud.
The obvious point, which remarkably bears repeating, is that there are circumstances when scientific theories must remain open and subject to challenge, and there are circumstances when the government must act to protect the integrity of the market, even if it requires determining the truth or falsity of those theories. Public debate must be protected, but fraud must also be suppressed. Fraud is especially egregious because it is committed when a seller does not himself believe the hokum he foists on an unwitting public.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. Climate Denial Finally Pays Off6/28/2016ColumnCriticalMore to the point, never has it been the case that major legislation or policy departures are adopted only when all opposition and dissent are silenced. The premise of the assault on Exxon, the Journal, other campaigns against “deniers,” is worse than foolish. The climate crowd has turned to persecuting critics as a substitute for meaningful climate action because, as President Obama has acutely observed, voters won’t support their efforts to jack up energy prices.
Functionally, whatever advocates tell themselves, these attacks end up churning the waters and propagandizing for those niggling little things that actually can be enacted, having no impact on climate but lining the pockets of organized interests who return the favor with campaign donations.
That’s how our political system behaves, on climate and most other subjects—which perhaps explains why voters are so tired of the people who man our political system.
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial boardThe Climate Police Crack-Up7/7/2016EditorialCriticalFree-speech advocates have reason to cheer as two state attorneys general have walked back their subpoenas against Exxon Mobil Corp., tacitly admitting that their climate-change harassment lacks a legal basis.
Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker recently withdrew his subpoena of Exxon Mobil. He was a leader among the 17 AGs charging that the oil giant defrauded shareholders by hiding the truth about global warming. That's hard to prove when the company's climate-change research was published in peer-reviewed journals.
Mr. Walker also targeted some 90 think tanks and other groups in an attempt to punish climate dissent. These groups and others, including these columns, pushed back on First Amendment grounds, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute counter-sued Mr. Walker and demanded sanctions. He pulled his subpoena against CEI last month.
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That leaves California's Kamala Harris and New York's Eric Schneiderman as the two remaining AGs with outstanding Exxon subpoenas. Mrs. Harris joined this escapade to burnish her progressive bone fides as she runs to replace retiring Senator Barbara Boxer, and her office has done little investigating. Mr. Schneiderman has the most prosecutorial leeway under his state's egregious Martin Act, which doesn't require proof of intent in civil cases. But he has also been on the political defensive for trying to punish policy disagreements.
The climate police would do more for their cause if they spent more time persuading the public on the merits of climate risks and policy. Their resort to abusive government power suggests that they think they have a weak case."
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The Washington PostElizabeth Warren and Sheldon WhitehouseBig Oil’s master class in rigging the system8/9/2016Op-edSupportiveFor years, ExxonMobil actively advanced the notion that its products had little or no impact on the Earth’s environment. As recently as last year, it continued to fund organizations that play down the risks of carbon pollution. So what did ExxonMobil actually know about climate change? And when did it know it?
Reasonable questions - particularly if ExxonMobil misled its investors about the long-term prospects of its business model or if the company fooled consumers into buying its products based on false claims.
So now the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York are investigating whether ExxonMobil violated state laws by knowingly misleading their residents and shareholders about climate change. Those investigations may be making ExxonMobil executives nervous, and their Republican friends in Congress are riding to the rescue. House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and his fellow committee Republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the state officials fork over all materials relating to their investigations. They also targeted eight organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller Family Fund and Greenpeace, with similar subpoenas, demanding that they turn over internal communications related to what Smith describes as part of "coordinated efforts" to deprive ExxonMobil of its First Amendment rights.
Take a breath to absorb that: State attorneys general are investigating whether a fraud had been committed - something state AGs do every day. Sometimes AGs uncover fraud and sometimes they don't, but if the evidence warrants it, the question of fraud will be resolved in open court, with all the evidence on public display. But instead of applauding the AGs for doing their jobs, this particular investigation against this particular oil company has brought down the wrath of congressional Republicans - and a swift effort to shut down the investigation before any evidence becomes public. So far, both AGs and all eight organizations have refused to comply. We say, good for them.
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There's plenty for the AGs to investigate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, issued a 2015 report, "Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation," and a 2007 report, "Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science." Both reports document how the industry has protected its bottom line by funding front organizations and scientists to put out junk science contradicting what peer-reviewed scientists, and even the industry's own experts, were saying about how its products affected the environment. Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell rightly dismissed the committee's request, saying, "Mr. Smith makes no allegation that UCS violated any laws or regulations, and his claim, that providing information to attorneys general infringes on ExxonMobil's rights, is nonsense."
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The Wall Street JournalElizabeth Price FoleyThe Climate Prosecutors Can't Dodge Congress Forever8/21/2016Op-edCriticalFor a sense of how far the left will go to enforce climate-change orthodoxy, read the recently released "Common Interest Agreement" signed this spring by 17 Democratic state attorneys general. The officials pledged to investigate and take legal action against those committing climate wrongthink. Beginning late last year, the attorneys general of Massachusetts, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all signatories to the agreement, issued broad-ranging subpoenas against Exxon Mobil and conservative think tanks. They sought documents and communications related to research and advocacy on climate change.
Concerned that these investigations were designed to chill First Amendment rights, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology issued its own subpoenas. In mid-July the committee, led by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), asked the attorneys general to produce their communications with environmental groups and the Obama administration about their investigations.
They have indignantly refused to comply. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman claimed, in a July 13 letter to Mr. Smith, that the committee was "courting constitutional conflict" by failing to show "a due respect for federalism." Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, in a similar letter dated July 26, asserted that the subpoenas are "unconstitutional" because they are "an affront to states' rights."
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The subpoenas to state attorneys general regarding their climate crusade easily fall within Congress's legislative and oversight competence. The House Science Committee has jurisdiction over matters relating to scientific research. Its rules authorize the chairman to issue subpoenas on behalf of the committee.
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The Wall Street JournalEditorial boardSchneiderman's Climate Secrets8/31/2016EditorialCriticalWhen Eric Schneiderman and 16 other Democratic state attorneys general announced in March that they were targeting Exxon Mobil for its alleged heresy on climate change, they called themselves "AGs United for Clean Power." A better name would have been AGs United for More Power. To great media fanfare, they unleashed a series of broad subpoenas designed to intimidate dissenters from the Obama orthodoxy on climate change.
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Mr. Schneiderman, his fellow AGs and their activist pals have been trying to use the law to punish people, businesses and institutions over a difference of opinion. This is the kind of abuse that public transparency laws were designed to expose.
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The Wall Street JournalHolman Jenkins Jr. How the Exxon Case Unraveled8/31/2016ColumnCriticalNew York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigation of Exxon Mobil for climate sins has collapsed due to its own willful dishonesty.
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[Schneiderman's] initial claim, flounced to the world by outside campaigners under the hashtag “exxonknew,” fell apart under scrutiny. This was the idea that, through its own research in the 1970s, Exxon knew one thing about climate science but told the public something else.
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There simply never was any self-evident contradiction between Exxon’s private and public statements. In emphasizing the uncertainty inherent in climate models, Exxon was telling a truth whose only remarkable feature is that it continues to elude so many climate reporters.