Activists called a hearing this week on Capitol Hill in a desperate attempt to drive attention and enthusiasm to their flailing “Exxon Knew” campaign. But those same activists, including Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes and attorney Sharon Eubanks quickly found themselves on their heels as they struggled to respond to questions about their academic integrity and coordination with anti-energy groups. Much of the tough questioning followed lines of inquiry originally reported by Energy In Depth.

The testy exchanges in the hearing room occurred as Bloomberg reported on the New York attorney general’s trial against ExxonMobil, which noted that the “Exxon Knew” argument was falling apart after the attorney general failed to find any evidence to support their claims. “But when New York state finally got its hands on some 4 million pages of documents, they weren’t enough to make the bigger case: that Exxon lied about climate science or the future value of its yet untapped assets,” Bloomberg’s Erik Larson wrote.

Oreskes Catches Heat on Debunked Study

Naomi Oreskes, a master of manipulating research to fit her predetermined anti-energy narrative, found herself in the crosshairs during a hearing designed to give her a platform to attack energy companies. Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV-03) opened her questioning by immediately focusing on Oreskes’ deeply flawed “study” attacking ExxonMobil’s climate history.

Read full blog post at EIDClimate.org.