previously on drilled.

When we left off, Exxon had sent most of its scientists packing and seemed determined

to spend millions not conducting climate science, but undermining it.

When I first started doing this and I would talk about climate change, it was like another

subject like geology, hydrology, meteorology and it was well received and then at some

point it got politicized and then it got more difficult to convey the science.

Exxon as a company was putting ads in the newspaper that were contrary to the research

that they were paying us to be doing.

So this is an experiment in shifting public opinion away from urgency because they know

by 1991, we're on the verge of a call to arms.

There is legislation being proposed.

There's hearings in Congress.

There's going to be an international meeting about this and international body has been

formed to study it.

The world is waking up.

A key element to this new approach was media manipulation, but not just the sort of

garden variety PR we'd seen before.

This was more like psychological warfare, the targeted journalists.

They may not have created false equivalents.

That thing the media does where it gives equal coverage to both sides of a story, even

when those two sides are not at all equally valid, but oil companies and the consultants

they hired certainly weaponized it.

...