Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus in 1982 with In-House Climate Models The company chairman would later mock climate models as unreliable while he campaigned to stop global action to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Lisa Song, Neela Banerjee, David Hasemyer Sep 22, 2015 Steve Knisely was an intern at Exxon Research and Engineering in the summer of 1979 when a vice president asked him to analyze how global warming might affect fuel use.