The Fossil Fuel Industry Knew About Climate Change Since 1954

The Guardian reports:

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world's most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called 'Keeling curve' that has charted the upward march of the Earth's carbon dioxide levels. A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today's money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling's earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal...

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis. 'They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth's climate on a scale significant to human civilization,' said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami. 'These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years — for twice my lifetime — and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry's denial of basic climate science decades later....'

The oil and gas industry was initially concerned with research related to smog and other direct air pollutants before branching out into related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law. 'You just come back to the oil and gas industry again and again, they were omnipresent in this space,' he said. 'The industry was not just on notice but deeply aware of the potential climate implications of its products for going on 70 years.' Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages caused by the climate crisis.

'These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary implications, meaning this industry understood extraordinarily early on that fossil fuel combustion was profound on a planetary scale,' he said. 'There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years.'


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