The Republican Party continues to insist that there is no climate change. Like a screaming toddler with his hands pressed firmly against his ears, the GOP refuses to hear the truth.
Now maybe they’ll have to start facing some facts.
It turns out that the oil industry itself has known for nearly 50 years that the burning of fossil fuels would raise global temperatures to dangerous levels.
InsideClimate News, a non-profit online climate news source, has reported that as far back as 1968 scientists working for the American Petroleum Institute were advising the oil industry that the carbon dioxide being released from burning fossil fuels was an area of serious concern. In fact, scientists from Stanford University said then that CO2 was:
“The only air pollutant which has been proven to be of global importance to man’s environment on the basis of a long period of scientific investigation.”
This report, along with many other related documents, was discovered by the Center for International Environmental Law, (CIEL), based in Washington, D.C. These records reveal that as far back as the 1950’s the oil industry was researching the effects of CO2 on the global environment. The rise in carbon dioxide had been measured and reported, and oil industry scientists had turned to the question of cause. Where did the increased CO2 come from?
The same Stanford scientists said:
“Although there are other possible sources for the additional CO2 now being observed in the atmosphere, none seems to fit the presently observed situation as well as the fossil fuel emanation theory.”
The oil industry knew in 1968 that atmospheric CO2 was increasing. They knew that it would cause dangerous climate change. And they knew that their industry was causing it.
So why has all this factual, scientific information been covered up for so long?
InsideClimate News reports that Exxon Corporation launched its own intensive research into the problem in the 1970’s. They found what everyone else was finding: that the entire human population of the planet was being put at risk, and that time was running out. They needed to decide how to proceed.
By the late 1980’s, Exxon had dropped its climate studies and thrown its considerable power into leading the charge for climate change denial.
These documents are going to lead, hopefully, to some serious fallout for the fossil fuel industry. They knew what their product was doing 50 years ago, but they didn’t change a damn thing. Profits before human survival.
The biggest question now is, “How are the Republicans gonna explain this?”
Featured image by Laurie Avocado, available through a Creative Commons license 2.0.
