Newly unearthed documents show that the fossil fuel industry was funding some of the world’s most fundamental climate science as early as 1954; These include early research by Charles Keeling, known as the ‘Keeling curve’, which shows the rise of global warming. Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.
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Documents reveal that a coalition of oil and automobile manufacturers provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s first study to measure CO2 levels in the Western United States.
Keeling would go on to establish continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This ‘Keeling curve’ tracked the steady increase in atmospheric carbon causing the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific studies of modern times.
Fossil fuel interests backed a group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, which funded Keeling to measure CO2 to investigate the polluted air that regularly plagued Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than previously known climate research funded by oil companies.
In the research proposal for the money, uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Center for Climate Research, and published by the climate website DeSmog, Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in weather.” The atmosphere resulting from the burning of coal and oil.
“The possible consequences of changing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, depending on climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans, may ultimately be of significant importance for civilization,” said Epstein, a researcher at the Institute of California. of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.
Experts say the documents show that the fossil fuel industry played an intimate role in the beginnings of modern climate science, warning of serious harm from climate change, but then publicly denied that science for decades and funded ongoing efforts to delay action on the issue. He says it shows. climate crisis.
“They contain definitive evidence that the fossil fuel industry warned as far back as at least 1954 about the potential for its products to significantly disrupt Earth’s climate for human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert on historical climate disinformation. University of Miami.
“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has been on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years, twice as long as my lifetime, and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. Decades later, they mock the oil industry for its denial of basic climate science.”
Previous searches of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their products, often to an uncannily accurate level. Heating in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Newly discovered documents now show the industry knew about CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954; Strikingly, Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher, was conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels in California and the waters of the United States. Pacific Ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas financing distorted his research in any way.
The findings of this study will lead the US scientist to further experiments on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, which will provide a continuous status report on the earth’s dangerously increasing carbon dioxide composition.
Keeling died in 2005, but his groundbreaking work lives on. Currently, Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million; This is almost a third higher than the first measurement taken in 1958 and is a 50% increase over pre-industrial levels.
This fundamental pursuit of the primary heat-trapping gas driving global temperatures higher than ever before in human civilization was born in part due to support from the Air Pollution Foundation.
A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, donated to the foundation. Other organizations, including banks and retailers, also contributed financing.
Separately, a 1959 memo identified the American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading U.S. oil and gas lobbying organization, and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association, as “the largest contributor to the Air Oil Funds.” defined as “providers”. Pollution Foundation”. It is not clear exactly when API began funding the foundation, but it had a representative on the search committee from mid-1955.
A 1955 policy statement from the Air Pollution Foundation calls the problem of air pollution from emissions from cars, trucks, and industrial facilities “one of the most serious urban areas in California and elsewhere” and says the problem will be solved. It must be addressed through “intelligent and effective action and diligent and honest information gathering.”
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The unearthed documents date back to the 1950s from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California, San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers, and represent the first instance in which the fossil fuel industry was informed of potentially dire consequences. part of the business model.
The oil and gas industry was initially interested in research on smog and other direct air pollutants, then turned to related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, executive director of the Center for International Environmental Law.
“You come back to the oil and gas industry over and over again, they were ubiquitous in that space,” he said. “The industry was not only aware of this, but also deeply aware of the potential climate impacts of its products that would persist for 70 years.”
Muffett said the documents add further momentum to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas companies legally responsible for harm caused by the climate crisis.
“These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary impacts, which means this industry realized extraordinarily early that fossil fuel burning was profound on a planetary scale,” he said.
“There is overwhelming evidence that the oil and gas industry has misled the public and regulators about the climate risks of its products for 70 years. It is crazy to trust that they will be part of the solution. “We have now entered a period of taking responsibility.”
API and Charles’ son Ralph Keeling, also a scientist, were contacted for comment on the documents but did not receive a response.