Documents shed light on the earliest-known instance of #ClimateScience funded by the #FossilFuel industry, adding to growing understanding of #BigOil ’s knowledge of #ClimateChange . Fossil fuel industry sponsored climate science in 1954.
February 1, 2024, Rebecca John
Excerpt: "Unknown until now, however, is the fact that Keeling’s earliest research into carbon dioxide across the western U.S. was funded in part by the fossil fuel industry via a private foundation — and that in 1954 this foundation was informed of the potential impact of manmade carbon dioxide emissions on both the climate and human civilization.
"Newly discovered documents affirm that the #automobile and #petroleum industries funded early climate science #Keeling conducted at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) between 1954 and 1956. Records show that 'oil and auto companies' sponsored the scientist’s research via an organization called the Southern California Air Pollution Foundation, formed in 1953 to tackle Los Angeles’s infamous smog. American Motors, #Chrysler, #Ford, and #GeneralMotors were among 18 automotive companies that gave money to the foundation.
"A 1959 internal U.S. Public Health Service memo also identifies the #AmericanPetroleumInstitute ( #API ) and the #WesternOilAndGasAssociation — the oldest petroleum trade association in the U.S., which is now known as the #WesternStatesPetroleumAssociation — as 'major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation.' Its Board of Trustees included top-level representatives from the Southern California Gas Company, the Southern California Edison Co., Chrysler, General Motors, and Union Oil (now #Chevron).
"And from mid-1955, these trustees were also appraised of research projects by a seven-man 'technical advisory committee,' which included a senior official from API as well as scientists from the Richfield Oil Corporation (now #BP ) and #Chrysler.
"With the discovery of these Air Pollution Foundation documents, it is now possible to date the earliest sponsorship of climate science by the fossil fuel industry to 1954, approximately a quarter of a century before Exxon’s internal research program of the late 1970s. These new documents provide important evidence that the fossil fuel industry has been intricately connected to climate science from its earliest beginnings — not only as a driver of the greenhouse effect behind climate change, but also as a contributor to the scientific discoveries that would transform our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the Earth and its atmosphere. "
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