News

Ever since the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – an international coalition of scientists – announced last April that it would be “continuing our current engagement [with] ExxonMobil,” activists spearheading the #ExxonKnew campaign have been working pretty hard to convince the AGU to change its mind and cut ties with the company entirely.

But late last week, AGU’s board of directors announced that after looking at the evidence again, it would not be ending its relationship with Exxon. “After another careful and systematic review of hundreds of pages of both newly provided and previous documentation and a thoughtful and comprehensive discussion,” AGU said, the group will “continue engagement” with ExxonMobil.

Not only did AGU reject activists’ wishes, it also took the #ExxonKnew argument to task. As the AGU explains,

“As we have said previously, we are very interested in the investigations by the Attorneys General, and will be carefully monitoring their progress and evaluating their findings. We will continue to welcome new information that comes to us directly or otherwise becomes available. If there were concrete evidence that could be independently verified that ExxonMobil is communicating scientific misinformation, then that evidence would be cause for the Board to reconsider our decision regarding acceptance of their sponsorship. We define concrete evidence as documentation that is either publicly accessible (such as online or published material of an organization); a direct quote in full context from someone at ExxonMobil that demonstrates an official connection to misinformation about science; or non-public and independently verifiable material that has been collected by a disinterested, unbiased source, such as via a legal investigation or academic study.” (emphasis added)

In other words, AGU is saying what just about everyone has said about the #ExxonKnew campaign: they do not have “concrete evidence” to back up their claims. AGU even doubled down by noting that this decision to ...