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Exxon is out with its annual forecast for a world dominated by fossil fuels and thrown into climate chaos. Why are we not surprised?

For twenty five years there has been one company that beyond all others has tried to undermine the UN Climate talks. For those twenty five years it has obfuscated the truth about climate by pouring millions into the funding of a network of climate sceptic and denial think tanks and politicians.

One of the most detailed studies of climate denial has concluded what many researchers have long known - that funding by the fossil fuel industry created a corrosive “ecosystem of influence” on both the content and language of the climate debate, especially in the US.

To start with one huge, massive, significant step forward. Victories do not come sweeter than this. After years of campaigning by millions of people from grass-roots activists, First Nations, farmers and ranchers to environmental groups such as Oil Change International, Sierra Club, 350.org and many others, President Obama announced on Friday that the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline is dead.

Would you take it seriously if tobacco companies announced that smoking trends weren’t expected to change much over the next 30 years? And imagine then, that this is what governments used to make tobacco policy: “Forecasts show that people aren’t going to quit smoking, steady rates of smoking around the world are inevitable, so all anti-smoking policies will assume not much is going to change.”

Earlier this month, BP’s beleaguered Chief Executive Bob Dudley warned that the falling oil price had created a “raging gale” for the oil industry which could last for years.

Last week we exposed ExxonMobil’s Outlook for Energy as a corporate fantasy rather than a forecast. ExxonMobil's head of public affairs called our work ill-informed and "odious" but chose not to answer our arguments...

Exxon published its Outlook for Energy today. We show why it should be viewed as the corporate propaganda it is.

For the oil industry business comes first. After years of preparation, on Saturday Exxon began drilling a $700 million well in the Kara Sea in Russia's Arctic. It is Russia’s most northerly well.