Good investigative work and reportage, Chris. I'll just note that the current ExxonMobil CEO's statement, reported by you in your second paragraph, is more than a little disingenuous (though, as you note, an improvement over their previous stances).

First, the CEO uses the Celsius scale, one few U.S. citizens are familiar with, rather than Fahrenheit to describe global warming over the past century. This results in a figure only half as large as the same increment in degrees Fahrenheit, when you take into account that he rounded the Celsius figure down from current estimates.

Also, the CEO's statement is very misleading since what concerns those who are actually following this issue is not the amount of global warming which has occurred so far (though this has already been sufficient to cause significant damage), but, rather, the expected global warming in the coming century - a much greater figure. That figure is expected to be in the range from double the warming of the last century to more than 8 times the last century's warming, and most recent evidence suggests a figure near or beyond the upper end of that range.

The CEO then attempts to lull us into security by suggesting the effects of the warming are limited to polar regions, where few U.S. voters live. Again, he or she makes no mention of the future in the entire statement - only the past. Near unanimous agreement among those who are experts in the subject concludes that the almost entirely negative effects will extend globally in the future.

Finally, the CEO appears to feel forced to mention the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gasses during the past century while failing to make explicit the well-known and vital fact that those gasses are what has caused by far most of the warming so far, and will cause the additional warming in the future.

On the whole, the statement appears to be the absolute minimum the company has had to admit in the face of overwhelming evidence that is likely to work against their bottom line.

Mike Williams
Arroyo Grande, CA U.S.