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A new #ExxonKnew campaign ad released today by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) targeting a House candidate in Nevada only provides further evidence that politics is what’s driving the entire effort.

The ramifications of this ad are significant, considering that a federal district judge has just issued a discovery order raising questions about the political motivations of the Democratic Attorneys General, who over the past year, have launched extremely controversial and unprecedented climate investigations into ExxonMobil.

LCV’s #ExxonKnew ad pushes misinformation

The ad makes the claim,

“Newly released documents show oil giant Exxon had scientific evidence 40 years ago that climate change is being fueled by carbon pollution and spent millions covering it up, propping up politicians to block action to protect us.”

This claim comes directly from a series of articles by the Columbia School of Journalism (which appeared late last year in the LA Times) and InsideClimate News (ICN) – both of which are funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. But a closer look at the documents shows that ICN and Columbia simply cherry-picked them to make these claims. To provide just one example, ICN purports that Exxon scientist James Black warned Exxon executives that “if the CO₂ concentration continued to rise, it could harm the environment and humankind.” But here’s a section from Black’s presentation that ICN just left out because it didn’t go with their predetermined narrative:

“A number of assumptions and uncertainties are involved in the predictions of the Greenhouse Effect […]There is considerable uncertainty regarding what controls the exchange of atmospheric CO2 with oceans and with carbonaceous materials on the continents.”

EID has many more example...