ExxonMobil's own scientists doubted climate fixes the company hyped

What happened

Court filings reveal new details about Exxon's decades of internal climate deliberations. If there was a year the world began waking up to climate change, it might have been 1988.

Sprow’s memo is part of a batch of previously undisclosed documents released earlier this year without fanfare as part of an ongoing lawsuit Massachusetts filed against ExxonMobil in 2019. That June, the NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress that the climate was warming and would continue to do so as long as humans pumped fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere. Months later, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Key facts

• Sprow’s memo is part of a batch of previously undisclosed documents — released: earlier this year without fanfare as part of an ongoing lawsuit Massachusetts filed against ExxonMobil in 2019