By Andy May
Open letter to the authors of the Wall Street Journal article: “Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change,” by Christopher M. Matthews and Collin Eaton.
Dear Mr. Matthews and Mr. Eaton,
I was quite surprised to see your article in the news section of the September 14, 2023 issue of the Wall Street Journal and not in the opinion section. It is quite misleading, and along the lines of the fully debunked Supran and Oreskes article in Environmental Research Letters (2017, v. 12, no. 8). As I discuss in a blog post this idea was thoroughly destroyed by Kimberly Neuendorf in court.
Like Supran and Oreskes, you assume that Exxon is one being with one mind, which is very far from the truth, as I research in detail in this blog post. The causes of climate change are not known, and as a result, the spectrum of opinions within Exxon is as large as that in the general public.
Some people are under the illusion that climate change is fully understood, that humans somehow control it, and it is dangerous. All these ideas are conjecture and without foundation, as explained in this post.
You can believe what you like, but conjecture is not fact, and Exxon is not a person. Your news article is based on faulty assumptions and too much conjecture, it belongs in the opinion section.
Regards,
Andy May
Andy May Petrophysicist – Climate Change and Photography
