Polluting fossil fuel companies have been warned their products are affecting the climate since at least the 1960s. THREAD
1959: Physicist Edward Teller tells the American Petroleum Industry a 10% increase in CO2 is enough to melt the icecap and submerge New York.
1965: The US President’s Science Advisory Committee states that “pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air”, with effects that “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings”.
1970s: Shell and BP reportedly begin funding scientific research in Britain to examine climate impacts from greenhouse gases.
1977: A recently filed lawsuit claims Exxon scientists told management in 1977 there was an “overwhelming” consensus that fossil fuels were responsible for atmospheric carbon dioxide increases.
1981: An internal Exxon memo warns “it is distinctly possible” that CO2 emissions from the company’s 50-year plan “will later produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the Earth’s population)”.
1988: Nasa scientist James Hansen testifies to the US Senate that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now”.
1988: A confidential report prepared for Shell’s environmental conservation committee finds CO2 could raise temperatures by 1C to 2C over the next 40 years. It urges rapid action by the energy industry
1989: Exxon, Shell, BP and other fossil fuel companies establish the Global Climate Coalition, a lobbying group that challenges the science on global warming and delays action to reduce emissions.
Early 1990s: Exxon funded two researchers Dr. Fred Seitz and Dr. Fred Singer, who dispute the mainstream consensus on climate science. They had previously been paid by the tobacco industry and had challenged the hazards of smoking.
1991: A public information film by Shell acknowledges there is a “possibility of change faster than at any time since the end of the ice age, change too fast, perhaps, for life to adapt without severe dislocation”.
1997: Ahead of the Kyoto climate conference, Mobil (later merged with Exxon) takes out an ad in the New York Times which misleadingly says: “Let’s face it: the science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil.”
1998: The US refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol after intense opposition from oil companies and the Global Climate Coalition.
2009: US senator Jim Inhofe (whose main donors are in the oil and gas industry) leads the “Climategate” misinformation attack on scientists on the opening day of a crucial UN climate conference.
2013: A study by Richard Heede, published in the journal Climatic Change, reveals 90 companies are responsible for producing two-thirds of the carbon that has entered the atmosphere since the start of the industrial age.
2017: Exxon, Chevron and BP each donate at least $500,000 for the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.
2019: Mohammed Barkindo, secretary general of Opec, which represents Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, Iran and several other oil states, claims climate campaigners are the biggest threat to the industry and are misleading the public with unscientific warnings about global warming.
This is what we know about the top 20 global polluters: gu.com/p/c5jg7 #ThePolluters
