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January 31, 2024
“This pushes back the fossil fuel industry’s knowledge of the climate crisis a full two decades,” one campaigner wrote.
The fossil fuel and automotive industries knew that their products could destabilize the climate as early as 1954, new research published by DeSmog on Monday reveals.
The Southern California Air Pollution Foundation, whose contributors included major oil and car companies, helped to fund the early climate research of Charles David Keeling, who went on to create the famous Keeling curve tracking the rise in global concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, DeSmog reported. The foundation was also informed of the potential implications of Keeling’s research.
“This pushes back the fossil fuel industry’s knowledge of the climate crisis a full two decades,” Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media posted on social media in response to the news. “Think of the damage and lives that could have been saved if we started researching and moving to clean energy back then.”
“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.”
The revelations were based on documents found in the California Institute of Technology Archives, the U.S. National Archives, the Charles David Keeling papers at the University of California, San Diego, and Los Angeles newspapers, which established that the foundation helped finance Keeling’s early measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the U.S. West from 1954-56.
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