The trouble is, the leaked internal documents point to Exxon actually genuinely believing the climate change doubt narrative they were pushing externally. So an

The trouble is, the leaked internal documents point to Exxon actually genuinely believing the climate change doubt narrative they were pushing externally. So any argument to the contrary has to make clever use of tricks like selective out-of-context quotation, emotional appeals, and plausible-sounding but logically nonsensical arguments to trick the reader. For example, this lawsuit. The overall tactic is to argue that Exxon knew fossil fuels could potentially cause catastropic climate change but decieved people by sowing uncertainty about whether they would cause climate catastrophe, which isn't even a contradiction, but let's put that issue to one side. They then hit it out the park with a humdinger - in May 2019, CO2 concentrations hit 415 ppm, and 37 years ago Exxon's scientists predicted this in a graph. This astonishing accuracy shows Exxon's scientists knew exactly how much CO2 emissions and warming they were causing. Here's the leaked document this graph was taken from: https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/1982%20Exxon%20Primer%20on%20CO2%20Greenhouse%20Effect.pdf https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/... Some choice quotes from it that somehow didn't make it into the complaint: "There is currently no unambiguous scientific evidence that the earth is warming", "Overall, the current outlook suggests potentially serious climate problems are not likely to occur until the late 21st century or perhaps beyond at projected energy demand rates", and also apparently coastal flooding wouldn't happen for centuries even in the worst case scenario. There's quite a bit more too. The supposedly super-accurate secret internal report didn't contradict Exxon's external talking points, it matched up with them exactly. (There's also weirdly gratuitous dishonesty. For instance, the Exxon document argues that if a rapid move away from fossil fuels was necessary to prevent climate catastrophe, nuclear power was the only feasible option and renewables such as solar were completely infeasable since it'd take at least 40-50 years to achieve significant power production using them. For some reason, the complaint claims that Exxon recognised measures such as energy conservation and shifting to renewable sources were the only viable options. I guess the prosecutor reckoned renewable power was more sympathetic and popular than nuclear... The complaint also goes on to accuse Exxon of misleading the public by claiming that efficiency improvements in their products reduce greenhouse gas emissions because producing and using them still emits greenhouse gases. Do they want to actively discourage energy efficiency improvements?)