Lenny Bernstein, who has worked at the position of climate scientist for many years with Exxon, has unveiled that Exxon was aware about the climate change as early as 1981. However, then also the oil company remained in denial about the phenomenon.

Lenny wrote the email as a response to a query from Alyssa Bernstein, the director of the Institute of Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University. An environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, carried out a project called Exxon Secrets, as per which, Exxon has invested more than $30 million in climate change denying and research.

Lenny’s email has been included by the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report titled, Climate Deception Dossiers. The report is based on the big oil companies like ExxonMobil, BP and Shell.

Richard Keil, an ExxonMobil spokesman, said that the company now considers climate change as a threat. “The science in 1981 on this subject was in the very, very early days and there was considerable division of opinion. There was nobody you could have gone to in 1981 or 1984 who would have said whether it was real or not”.

The report has also unveiled that the other companies have become aware of climate change in 1988, when it became a political issue. It has also been found that the companies have taken part in discrediting the science.