The co-author of a new paper that accuses TotalEnergies of burying its early understanding of climate change declares authoritatively that he has “no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in their paper.”

Unfortunately, this statement appears to be false, raising questions about the motives and objectivity of his research.

Benjamin Franta, a PhD student at Stanford University, is a self-proclaimed anti-oil and gas activist, which should raise eyebrows about the objectivity of his paper. But it’s another disclosure within the same paper that more directly refutes his claim of a lack of competing interests:

“[Benjamin Franta] has served as a consulting expert for climate change litigation, and the findings reported in this article may be relevant to such litigation.”

It seems to defy common sense that Franta can state in one moment that he’s a “consulting expert for climate change litigation” and that his paper may be “relevant to such litigation” and then in the next moment state he has “no known competing financial interests or personal relationships” that could have impact the findings of his research.

If Franta is consulting on climate litigation, then the laws of physics (and he is a recovering physicist) make it clear that he has a “personal relationship” (and possibly a “financial interest”) with plaintiffs’ lawyers who would benefit from such a paper attacking the energy industry being published and who were likely seeking to “influence” the paper’s outcomes.

Furthermore, Franta is featured in a photo on the website of plaintiff’s firm Sher Edling on its “Meet Our Team” page with the caption “2019 Staff fishing trip aboard the F/V Outer Limits.”

Sher Edling has become the leading plaintiffs’ law firm in the climate ligation campaign and is serving as the lead outside counsel for more than a dozen climate lawsuits around the country including for the state of Minnesota and New York City.

If being included in the “staff fishing trip” with the leading plaintiffs’ attorneys doesn’t qualify as a “personal relationship” and possibly a “financial interest,” then what does?

The firm also has Harvard researcher Naomi Oreskes – another well-known activist who publishes plenty of anti-energy “research” – on retainer as well, exemplifying its penchant for working with university students and academics.

Major Flaws with Franta’s Research

Beyond his conflict of interest, Franta’s paper is filled with several major flaws.

First, the entire paper is based on a single quote from a single article from a Total company magazine from 1971 where scientists began to explore the reality and effects of climate change.

Yet, Franta seemingly attempts to use the quote to imply that the company was hiding what it knew about climate change from the public.

However, the quote never stated that TotalEnergies had any proprietary knowledge about climate change that it wasn’t disclosing, but instead reflected the growing, if still very much uncertain, public understanding of greenhouse gas emissions at the time.

In a statement, the company said:

“Elf’s and Total’s knowledge of climate risk since the 1970s has been no different from that published in scientific journals at the time, which the scientific paper published today fully confirms. It is therefore wrong to claim that the climate risk was concealed by Total or Elf, either in the 1970s or since.

“… The contents fully reflect the state of public scientific knowledge at the time on the links between human activity, rising CO2 levels and climate change.”

In fact, Franta’s own paper acknowledged the growing public awareness of climate change in France at the time, which undercuts his own arguments of Total hiding the science:

“In the French scientific community and public space, the climate issue was less prominent than in the United States. Yet the word was spreading in French decision-making circles. In 1968, a high-level symposium on technological forecasts and economic planning held discussions comparing the problem of nuclear waste with ‘the increase of carbonic gas in the whole atmosphere which might, in a decade or half a century, start to pose problems of global modifications in terrestrial climate.’ In the face of this dilemma, top scientists, senior public administrators, and heads of major French companies including the CEO of Elf-ERAP (then a state-owned French oil company, absorbed by Total in 1999) agreed on the need to develop nuclear energy both for economic and climatic reasons.” (emphasis added)

Second, Franta attempts to apply the knowledge we now posses about climate change in 2021 to decision making in 1971, implying that Total should have dramatically changed its business operations 50 years ago.

But why would a major, international energy company justify radically overhaul its operations around the still uncertain science at the time and based around a single quote?

In its statement, Total makes this exact point, criticizing the attempt by Franta to armchair quarterback energy policy decisions with the benefit of hindsight:

“TotalEnergies deplores the process of pointing up at a situation from fifty years ago, without highlighting the efforts, changes, progress and investments made since then.”

Indeed, Franta criticizes Total for not heeding the warning of a single article in an in-house magazine from 50 years ago. Many companies have in-house newsletters or magazines but how many of those companies have ever changed the entire course of their operations based on the projections published in the newsletter or magazine?

Franta appears deeply skeptical of the commitments TotalEnergies has made to transition to net-zero emissions by 2050 and invest heavily in EV charging infrastructure and other new technologies. For example, Franta balks at the fact that “the company continued to spend the bulk of its capital expenditures on upstream oil and gas production” up to 15 years ago, adding, “This fossil-fuel-focused strategy was broadly in line with those of other major fossil fuel companies.”

Imagine that – fossil fuel companies investing in fossil fuels! We can’t wait for his next paper to find that Hasbro is spending the bulk of its expenditures on producing toys, or that an airplane manufacturer like Boeing would spend most of its money on – wait for it – making airplanes.

The question this paper raises is not “Why didn’t Total do more on climate change?” The contemporary evidence included in the paper itself shows that there was a robust scientific debate ongoing in public at the time. Nothing was hidden, and the abundant contemporary examples shows that the researchers were blinded by their own pre-determined conclusion.

The real question raised by this paper is how Benjamin Franta and his colleagues can be viewed as objective researchers when they publish papers or file amicus briefs in support of the climate lawsuits, yet are also being paid by the law firm whose complaints they are supporting? It is difficult to imagine a clearer conflict of interest.