The world's largest non-state oil company lashed out today saying it really is worried about climate change and just wants to help in its own way. From the Guardian article:

ExxonMobil criticised Greenpeace, the Kyoto treaty and the European carbon trading system yesterday but insisted it was not a "climate change denier" and said it wanted to play a constructive role in countering global warming.

The world's biggest non-state-owned oil group said its position on global warming had been repeatedly misunderstood and it had come to accept there should be a US federal - and preferably global - carbon tax through a cap-and-trade system.

Kenneth Cohen, vice-president of public affairs for Exxon, said: "Our company has been put in this bucket of not taking the climate issue seriously and that is flat wrong... Those who meet with us understand we are not a denier.

Ooooo, this one is almost too easy, but I'm going to do it anyway...

Then ExxonMobil CEO as quoted on climate change in the Wall Street Journal exactly two years ago:

"Our view is it's yet to be shown how much of this is really related to the activities of man."

And while their spin has come closer to the scientific mainstream since then, their tactics have not. As reported in the Washington Post a few months ago:

The company [ExxonMobil] has been the poster child of denial among those convinced of global warming. It opposed the Kyoto climate change treaty. In 2001, it pressed the Bush administration to remove an outspoken scientist from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2005, a White House official accused of altering scientific reports to cast more doubt on global warming went to work for the company.

ExxonMobil also continues to fund people to distort and water down scientific findings on climate change. They cultivated a false sense of uncertainty that's helped block real action on the issue. All the while raking in the money.

But they can't hold back the truth forever. Last January, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report finding that, "ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue."

Last September, the UK Royal Society raised, "concerns about ExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change." ExxonMobil said it would stop. Yet, as we published last month, ExxonMobil is keeping the money coming to most of the climate denyers.

Still, I found it strange that they picked us, out of all of their critics, to attack by name. I wonder, what could have possibly prompted that?

Bonus links:

Exxon secrets - Exposes Exxon's connections with groups and individuals.

Mother Jones - Did a series of articles on ExxonMobil's climate change tactics.

Exxon Still Funding Climate Change Deniers - Greenpeace USA feature on the most recent investigation of who is getting paid.