Why didn’t you tell the world??
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.
Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.
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“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” [Samuel] Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.
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.
Fascinating. They were among the earliest to know, I guess so that they could get a head start on hiding it.
The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his research in any way.
The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide composition.
Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on pre-industrial levels.
This essential tracking of the primary heat-trapping gas that has pushed global temperatures to higher than ever previously experienced in human civilization was born, in part, due to the backing of the Air Pollution Foundation.
Of course, this is a wonderful mirror of the tobacco industry’s awareness of the dangers of smoking, and the junk food industry’s effort to hide their own research about the addictiveness of certain ingredients common in such foods.
So instead of having lost about four decades of lead time (based on the previous revelations from archived documents from the late 70s, early 80s), we’ve lost seven. Thanks, Almighty Dollar! (Not that I would have placed bets on things having been better under the Glorious Five Year Plan either, given, among other environmental crimes, the horrific record of illegal Soviet whaling: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/history-of-soviet-whaling-greenpeace-twentieth-century.html
not Bruce, that was what went through my head every time my boss had a meeting to work on our five year plan. This isn’t uncommon in schools; actually doing the most important things on the five year plan? Well, let’s just say there are a lot of school administrators who are a lot like oil companies.
I suspect there was a thought process similar to other issues. It is rare that the high poobahs of a company actually live where shit is being spewed, so polluting the lakes, rivers, air, soil, etc, isn’t a problem for them. Their lakes, rivers, air, soil, etc, aren’t being spewed into. It’s so hard to get anyone to give a damn about what is not hurting them. And somehow they managed to convince many of the people who are being harmed that the scientists are lying to them, so they maintain their little charade with the blessing of the people who should be screaming at them to stop.
If that doesn’t work, just tell them it’s all about their jobs. For some reason, it’s impossible to convince people that their ability to breathe the air and grow the food is more important than the shit job they’re working. Jobs are important, of course, but if we got even a fraction of the proper attention to the issue, we might be able to find ways to balance the problem. I have some suggestions, but they aren’t going to lead to anything.
1. Reduce the population. Not through genocide, I’m not saying that. Attrition. Fewer births than deaths.
2. Ensure that everyone has their basic needs met, even if they can’t find a job.
3. Get rid of the social acceptability of obscene profits; there was a time when a 10% profit would be considered enormous. Now it’s treated almost like a loss.
4. Tax emissions…not just greenhouse gases, but all other emissions that harm something.
5. Get rid of automobile subsidies so people know how expensive it really is to drive.
6. Promote mass transit, make it convenient, affordable, and pleasant. And don’t require it make a profit; after all, no one insists the highways make a profit.
Sounds simple, but of course it isn’t. And there are other things that would need to be done, but once we get started with that, the rest will sort of flow from it.