''Smoking gun proof'': fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger by 1954

There was an interesting thread on a legal blog (which I can’t find at the moment), but essentially the thread related to US and state regulations over the years creating complicity in any “wrongdoing”. For example in California the CARB was/is setting standards and regulations based on their own analysis and science, and for the state to then turn around and proclaim the oil industry as evil seemed to be political posturing more than anything.

The CARB was created in 1967. The ''smoking gun'' document described in this article was written in 1954. Presumably it was not provided to Reagan's state government prior to his establishment of CARB.

> which I can’t find at the moment

I swear I wouldn't bookmark a lot of things because I was confident I could quickly find them again using search. Recently, it's been a nightmare. Search engines have definitely changed.

Man-made climate change was being discussed in the 1800s. It is not a new idea.

https://theconversation.com/scientists-understood-physics-of...

That's important to note, but not what this is about. In this case, a direct link is seen between what might be the birth of climate change science as we know it by the petroleum industry that has fought so long to denounce it.

> It is not a new idea.

Lying to the public and funding astroturf campaigns to deny it on the other hand…

> The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day.

[…]

> Between 1996 and 1998, for instance, Mobil ran 12 advertorials timed with the 1997 UN Kyoto negotiations that questioned whether the climate crisis is real and human-made and 10 that downplayed its seriousness. “Reset the alarm,” one ad suggested. “Let’s not rush to a decision at Kyoto … We still don’t know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in warming the planet.”

* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forg...

(The article has scans of the various ad campaigns.)

> A dominant public narrative about climate change is that “we are all to blame.” Another is that society must inevitably rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. How did these become conventional wisdom? We show that one source of these arguments is fossil fuel industry propaganda. ExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers. They also said that climate change was a “risk,” rather than a reality, that renewable energy is unreliable, and that the fossil fuel industry offered meaningful leadership on climate change. We show that much of this rhetoric is similar to that used by the tobacco industry. Our research suggests warning signs that the fossil fuel industry is using the subtle micro-politics of language to downplay its role in the climate crisis and to continue to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism.

* https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21)00233-...

> "It's incredibly subtle, and frankly, a bit patronizing because it's gaslighting to insist that consumers are responsible, and then present the company as a trustworthy innovator who we should rely on to make things better," Supran said.

* https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/exxonmobil-blames-clima...

Some additions for the pile:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-deniers-s...

Climate Deniers Shift Tactics to ‘Inactivism’ - Fossil fuel interests are trying to blame climate change on individuals while also sowing division, says Michael Mann, one of their prime targets

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-i...

Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public - As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change

Will you drive any less today?

Waaaaah, I want all my modern conveniences with none of the costs.

In order to be enjoying our way of life we must be destroying it?

The proof described in the Guardian piece is that the petroleum industry was warned as early as 1954 of CO2 risks vis-a-vis Climate Change. From the article:

  “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,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

I find it strange to blame the industry just to absolve everyone else. As if they had been in a somehow privileged position to know. To me it seems like there was some early research and then more and more research, so that by the 80s there was a clear picture that included the likely scope of the consequences. Despite that, the technology to move away from fossil fuels at scale was just not there yet.

Now we have the means and yet it is extremely difficult to get even moderate measures passed if it means a car needs a few minutes longer to charge or shower can‘t take as long or the energy is just more expensive and so perhaps something else has to give. Like the second car per family.

So I see no need to look far back. It‘s a bit like the diabetic regretting that nobody told them how harmful all the donuts were, all while they still don‘t diet because „now it‘s too late anyway“.

> As if they had been in a somehow privileged position to know

That's the very point of this ''smoking gun'' article: the petroleum industry had an originators' view of the birth of climate change science, while suppressing and ridiculing its findings over the decades since.

How is this „originators‘ view“ relevant? It isn‘t. Since nobody seem to like my example of the diabetic, here‘s another one: If someone publishes an article in 30 years that describes how search engine or social media companies had internal research that shows that their products have privacy issues and are addictive to the young, would that be a scandal? Probably, but it shouldn‘t be. Because these companies have no special secret access to these facts and everyone knows them. But it nevertheless takes 10 or 15 years to get people to switch from Chrome to Firefox or to get them off social media and the products are like that because nobody wants to pay for them.

Your saying <X> knew <Y> was harmful for decades, and <X> continued to do <Y> while gaslighting everyone by claiming <Y> is fine, even as evidence continues to mount just how bad <Y> is because someone else could have also studied <Y> is a really weird hill to die on.

Yes, if someone knows something is bad, and lies about it for decades, while attempting to discredit everyone studying that thing and finding out it's bad, it's going to be a scandal when it finally comes out they've been lying to everyone for decades and knew it. As it should be.

"Hey guys, technically you could have found the same information I did and known I was lying" doesn't and shouldn't excuse it.

>So I see no need to look far back. It‘s a bit like the diabetic regretting that nobody told them how harmful all the donuts were, all while they still don‘t diet because „now it‘s too late anyway“.

Except that, in this case, the diabetic's immediate family learned early on that the donuts might be bad and told the diabetic, but the diabetic kept eating them. And when the evidence further grew that the donuts were bad, the diabetic kept making them and eating them, while evangelizing about the wonders of donuts to others. Then there came a time where people called the diabetic on their crap, and folk came to their defense saying, "Don't be mad at them, how could they have known!?".

The diabetic was a major stockholder in Acme Donuts and saw internal Acme documents in 1954 directly linking consumption of the donuts with diabetes and other health problems. Subsequently, the diabetic denied and disavowed any knowledge of such links and actively worked to thwart any acknowledgement of such as being threats to share prices and a way of life. That'd be my comparison.

What has to give is 100% the now understood-to-be-god-given right of every affluent person in the world to live with their current footprint.

I don't mean their BP BS "personal footprint," I mean, with all the aggregate affordances of a late-stage capitalism fueled (ha ha!) by non-renewable energy and resource usage.

With things like https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-... and the similar trends in renewable energy sourcing, the step down in expectation and afforded life style is however growing ever smaller.

How much smaller, how quickly? Not nearly enough to prevent gray swan catastrophes of all sorts, it seems. Oh well.

The technology to massively reduce carbon dioxide emissions has existed for a long time.

Coal power plants could have been replaced with natural gas much sooner. We could have actually spent the last 50 years building nuclear power plants instead of trying to get rid of them.

In transportation, all we had to do was unwind the disastrous expansion of the automobile and return to superior technologies that preceded it, like trains, trolleys, busses, and bicycles.

Buildings could have been made more insulated and efficient using the exact same tools we've had for generations.

> Coal power plants could have been replaced with natural gas much sooner.

Gas is better but still terrible and chances are that this would have just slowed down the urgency and therefore nobody would have acted on anything. We would end up at exactly the same point just 50 years later.

> We could have actually spent the last 50 years building nuclear power plants instead of trying to get rid of them.

So? The major force for getting rid of them (rightfully in my opinion) was the Green party (in Germany, similar groups elsewhere). Do you want to imply they did this in order to prop up the fossil industry or because there was insufficient public knowledge? Quite simply the priorities of the movement were different in the 70s and even 80s because climate change as a major issue had not yet sufficiently made it into the collective consciousness even of the green party.

> In transportation, all we had to do was unwind the disastrous expansion of the automobile and return to superior technologies that preceded it, like trains, trolleys, busses, and bicycles.

You may think so, but most people disagree that these technologies are superior. In almost every imaginable way they are worse - except for their ecological footprint. The only exception being big cities. Rest assured that no majority of the population will give that up and so the car will remain the primary means of transport even in 50 years. All we can hope for is that it will be produced mostly carbon neutral.

> I find it strange to blame the industry just to absolve everyone else.

Putting the blame on "everyone else" was (is?) actually a propaganda strategy:

> A dominant public narrative about climate change is that “we are all to blame.” Another is that society must inevitably rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. How did these become conventional wisdom? We show that one source of these arguments is fossil fuel industry propaganda. ExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers. They also said that climate change was a “risk,” rather than a reality, that renewable energy is unreliable, and that the fossil fuel industry offered meaningful leadership on climate change. We show that much of this rhetoric is similar to that used by the tobacco industry. Our research suggests warning signs that the fossil fuel industry is using the subtle micro-politics of language to downplay its role in the climate crisis and to continue to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism.

* https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21)00233-...

> "It's incredibly subtle, and frankly, a bit patronizing because it's gaslighting to insist that consumers are responsible, and then present the company as a trustworthy innovator who we should rely on to make things better," Supran said.

* https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/exxonmobil-blames-clima...

Especially because at the same time 'the industry' was actively spreading FUD about climate change:

> The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day.

[…]

> Between 1996 and 1998, for instance, Mobil ran 12 advertorials timed with the 1997 UN Kyoto negotiations that questioned whether the climate crisis is real and human-made and 10 that downplayed its seriousness. “Reset the alarm,” one ad suggested. “Let’s not rush to a decision at Kyoto … We still don’t know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in warming the planet.”

* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forg...

(The article has scans of the various ad campaigns.)

> As if they had been in a somehow privileged position to know. To me it seems like there was some early research and then more and more research, so that by the 80s there was a clear picture that included the likely scope of the consequences.

They were in a privileged position, as their models from the 1970s are as accurate (or more so) than many of the models that are available academically today. They knew what would happen in the 1970s and spent the last forty years denying it.

> Despite that, the technology to move away from fossil fuels at scale was just not there yet.

Perhaps the technology was not developed because no one felt a need for it—partly because the reality of climate change was downplayed or denied. And if we (as a society) had known about its importance we could have allocated more resources in R&D.