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BIG OIL KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE FAR EARLIER THAN WE THOUGHT  
[[link removed]]


 

Rebecca John
January 30, 2024
DeSmog
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_ Documents shed light on the earliest-known instance of climate
science funded by the fossil fuel industry, adding to growing
understanding of Big Oil’s knowledge of climate change. Fossil fuel
industry sponsored climate science in 1954. _

(National Park Service photo),

 

In 1955 in the wilds of Big Sur, a young Caltech researcher named
Charles David Keeling gathered carbon dioxide samples among Northern
California’s towering redwoods. Crawling out of his sleeping bag
several times a night on research trips conducted over the course of
18 months, from January 1955 to June 1956, Keeling measured background
levels of carbon dioxide
[[link removed]] across
the western United States — at Big Sur, but also at desert and high
mountain stations, in forests and grassland, above the city of Los
Angeles, and over the waters of the Pacific Ocean. 
 
Charles David Keeling with Keeling Curve graphs.  (Credit: Keeling
Papers, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego  //  DeSmog)
Keeling’s findings would lead him to conduct a separate series of
experiments from the top of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa resulting
in the famous Keeling Curve — a visual depiction of rising
atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by the burning of fossil
fuels. His work underpins our understanding of manmade climate
change. 
 
The California coast near Big Sur in the 1980s.  (Credit: Rebecca
John  //  DeSmog)
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”
[[link removed]] sponsored
the scientist’s research via an organization called the Southern
California Air Pollution Foundation
[[link removed]],
formed in 1953 to tackle Los Angeles’s infamous smog. American
Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were among 18 automotive
companies
[[link removed]] that
gave money to the foundation. 

 
Screenshot from the November 7, 1953, issue of the Los Angeles Times
announcing the formation of the Air Pollution Foundation.  (Credit:
Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1953  //  DeSmog)
A 1959 internal U.S. Public Health Service memo
[[link removed]] also
identifies the American Petroleum Institute
[[link removed]] (API) and the
Western Oil & Gas Association — the oldest petroleum trade
association in the U.S., which is now known as the Western States
Petroleum Association
[[link removed]] — as
“major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation.”
Its Board
[[link removed]] of Trustees
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]],”
which included a senior official from API
[[link removed]] as
well as scientists from the Richfield Oil Corporation (now BP
[[link removed]])
and Chrysler
[[link removed]]. 

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. 

It’s important to know that the oil industry sponsored climate
science research in the 1950s because it reveals a picture of a much
more nuanced, closely connected world of science and the frontiers of
scientific discovery than the oil industry has admitted to.

In addition, despite being warned about the potential climate impacts
of CO2 in 1954, 35 years later numerous members and sponsors
[[link removed]] of
the Air Pollution Foundation (including API, the Automobile
Manufacturers Association, Chevron, and BP) participated in
a multi-million dollar campaign attacking climate policies
[[link removed]] aimed at tackling
global warming and promoting denial of the science they themselves had
helped to fund. 

Previously unseen correspondence
[[link removed]] between
Caltech and the Air Pollution Foundation shows that the potential
climate impact of fossil-fuel-generated CO2 emissions was communicated
to the foundation in November 1954. Caltech’s research proposal
[[link removed]],
sent to the foundation by Keeling’s research director, Samuel
Epstein, emphasized both the potential impact on Earth’s climate
[[link removed]] of
burning “coal and petroleum
[[link removed]],”
and the prospect of using newly developed carbon isotope analysis at
Caltech to identify “changes in the atmosphere
[[link removed]].” 

The “possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in
the atmosphere with reference to climate
[[link removed]] …
may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization
[[link removed]],” Epstein
wrote. 

By December 1954, the Air Pollution Foundation had approved an
allocation of $13,814
[[link removed]] (approximately
$158,000 in today’s money) to fund Keeling’s earliest CO2
investigations.

These never-before-seen documents from the Caltech Archives and the
U.S. National Archives, along with material from the Charles David
Keeling papers at the University of California, San Diego, and local
Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s, establish the Air Pollution
Foundation’s sponsorship of Keeling’s research at Caltech as the
earliest-known instance of climate science funded by the fossil fuel
industry. It’s possible it was also the first time that the oil
industry was directly informed about CO2-induced climate change —
five years before physicist Edward Teller
[[link removed]] warned
the API
[[link removed]] of
the disruptive consequences of burning fossil fuels.

FOSSIL FUEL FINGERPRINTS

Carbon atoms contain a combination of the isotopes carbon-12 (C12),
carbon-13 (C13), and carbon-14 (C14). Carbon atoms from fossil fuels,
however, contain relatively little C13 and almost no C14, which is
radioactive and decays over time. 

In the 1940s and early 1950s, a carbon isotope scientific revolution
was underway in the United States. Scientists had learned that they
could measure the different ratios of carbon isotopes in materials to
accurately determine the age of ancient objects: carbon dating. By
analyzing the isotopic fingerprint of carbon atoms in tree rings,
scientists could also identify whether the carbon dioxide absorbed by
trees through photosynthesis had been produced naturally or as a
result of burning fossil fuels. And, by measuring the isotopic ratios
in tree rings of various ages, researchers could also estimate how far
CO2 concentrations had risen since the Industrial Revolution as a
result of burning fossil fuels
[[link removed]]. 

In a proposal
[[link removed]] sent
to the Air Pollution Foundation in November 1954, Keeling’s research
director Epstein
[[link removed]] wrote,
“It is clear that several factors contribute to the variations in
the isotopic composition of carbon in trees.” Among these factors,
Epstein explained, were the various ecological conditions under which
the tree grew, including the isotopic composition of the carbon in
the atmosphere
[[link removed]].
“Since 1840, the carbon-isotope ratio (C12/C13) has increased in the
trees so far investigated,” he continued — an increase which could
be explained by a change in the carbon-isotope ratio in atmospheric
carbon dioxide “resulting from the burning of the C12-enriched coal
and petroleum
[[link removed]].”
 
Samuel Epstein’s Proposal to the Southern California Air Pollution
Foundation for the Study of Carbon Isotopes in the Atmosphere, 1954.
(DeSmog)
_Read the entire document on DocumentCloud
[[link removed]]._

Epstein’s research proposal for the Air Pollution Foundation left no
doubt about the potential significance of this research. Approximately
sixty years before the Paris Agreement, he described
the “concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere
[[link removed]]” as
a matter “of well recognized importance to our civilization” and
explained that the possible consequences of “a changing
concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate
[[link removed]]”
may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization
[[link removed]].” 
 
Samuel Epstein’s Proposal to the Southern California Air Pollution
Foundation for the Study of Carbon Isotopes in the Atmosphere, 1954.
 (DeSmog)
_Read the entire document in DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

His proposal also detailed how the Air Pollution Foundation’s money
would be spent. “A thorough investigation of the distribution of the
isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere” would be conducted via the
comparison of atmospheric samples
[[link removed]] gathered
“over the ocean, over mountain areas, and from industrial localities
similar to the Los Angeles Basin.” Such a study would be
“important to geochemistry and should be relevant to the smog
problem
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he wrote, referring to the foundation’s stated mission of tackling
smog. This reference alluded to the possibility that isotope analysis
might reveal the source of Los Angeles’s smog by identifying carbon
ratios attributable either to the burning of fossil fuels, such as
automobile exhaust, or to other sources, such as backyard garbage
fires.  

The Air Pollution Foundation had been established to tackle smog.
However, Epstein cautioned that a “contribution to the solution of
the smog problem” from Caltech’s proposed research was “not
assured at present
[[link removed]].” Nothing
in the historical record suggests that the foundation was interested
in funding CO2 research for its own sake. But Epstein’s caution,
paired with his comments on the potential impact of CO2 on the climate
and our civilization demonstrates that the foundation knowingly
approved funding for Caltech’s CO2 studies on the understanding that
the research might contribute to addressing the smog problem — and
also potentially had significance that went beyond local air
pollution. 
 
Samuel Epstein’s Proposal to the Southern California Air Pollution
Foundation for the Study of Carbon Isotopes in the Atmosphere, 1954.
 (DeSmog)
_Read the entire document in DocumentCloud
[[link removed]]._

A foundation press release, “Background for Twelve-Month Research
Program
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dated November 16, 1954, also suggests that this distinction was clear
to its members. Itemized under the category of “Fundamental Research
in Physics, Meteorology and Chemistry
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— separate from other purely smog-related research — is an entry
for “Study of Carbon Isotopes: In LA Atmosphere $5,000
[[link removed]]”
and also “In General $10,000
[[link removed]].”
 
Background for Twelve-Month Research Program, Southern California Air
Pollution Foundation, November 1954.  (DeSmog)
_Background for Twelve-Month Research Program, Southern California Air
Pollution Foundation, November 1954. __Read the entire document on
DocumentCloud._
[[link removed]]
 

Due to the complexity of the investigations and the lack of guaranteed
results, Epstein suggested the request for funds be limited to
support one full time research worker
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Keeling. 

Documents show that on December 1, 1954, the Air Pollution Foundation
signed an agreement
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Caltech approving Epstein’s budget request of $13,814
[[link removed]] for
the isotope study. A month later Keeling would begin his program of
CO2 sampling, starting in California’s desert.

AIR POLLUTION FOUNDATION 

Established by the city’s businessmen, industrialists, and civic
leaders in November 1953 to tackle Los Angeles’s “smog problem
[[link removed]],”
the Southern California Air Pollution Foundation’s financing details
were not initially made public. However, between November 1954 and May
1955, various local newspapers disclosed that “oil and auto
companies
[[link removed]]”
along with banks, the aircraft industry, and even department stores
[[link removed]] had
all contributed “to the Air Pollution Foundation’s $1,250,000
[[link removed]] fund
for smog research.” Supplementing these private donations, the Los
Angeles Times also related that the foundation sought public funding
[[link removed]] from
federal, state, and county sources, while a May 1955 “Statement of
Policy
[[link removed]]” from
the foundation announced that “trade associations
[[link removed]]” were
also among its 150 donors.

The foundation had obvious ties to local fossil fuel interests. Among
its founding trustees were the president of Union Oil
[[link removed]] (Chevron)
and the president of the Southern California Gas Company
[[link removed]] (SOCAL). Additional
[[link removed]] trustees
[[link removed]] included
top executives of the Southern California Edison Co, Western Airlines,
North American Aviation, Southern Pacific Railroad, Western
Consolidated Steel, and Chrysler, as well as the director of General
Motors’ research laboratories, the famous Charles F. Kettering
[[link removed]].
University presidents (including Caltech’s), the president of the
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the studio head of Paramount
Pictures, and a future director of the C.I.A. were among the other
influential trustees.

According to the 1955 Statement of Policy, the Air Pollution
Foundation’s managing director and staff of experts conducted its
day-to-day activities under “the general supervision of the Board of
Trustees
[[link removed]].” The
policy statement explained that the principal reason for the
trustees’ membership on the Board was to make certain that they
would be party “to all facts and evidence
[[link removed]] brought
to light on the problem” so that they “and their colleagues in
like enterprises” might work toward a solution.
 
Statement of Policy of the Air Pollution Foundation, May 1955.
 (DeSmog)
_Statement of Policy of the Air Pollution Foundation, May 1955. Read
the full document on DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

Approximately one-third of the trustees came from industries “which
are or may be contributors in some degree to air pollution,” the
statement explained. It fully outlined the trustees’
responsibilities, expanding on the above statement: “The principal
reason for their membership on the Board, in addition to their
recognized standing in the community, is to make certain that they
will be parties to all facts and evidence brought to light on the
problem so that they and their colleagues in like enterprises can
continue to devote their best efforts toward the abatement of air
pollution.”

It is not known at this time how closely individual trustees read the
reports shared with them. However, if they were carrying out their
duties faithfully, they would have been acquainted with “all facts
and evidence brought to light on the problem.”

While the trustees did not contribute personally to the foundation,
some represented “companies or organizations” that provided
“financial support
[[link removed]].” 

The foundation’s full financial details do not seem to have been
published. However, some specifics are available. For instance,
records show that between 1954 and 1956, the automobile industry gave
at least $280,000
[[link removed]] (equivalent
to $3.3 million today) to the Air Pollution Foundation. Eighteen
automotive companies were listed as having contributed to this total,
including the so-called “Big Three”: Chrysler, Ford, and General
Motors
[[link removed]].
More specifically, the Los Angeles Times reported that the foundation
received $50,000 from the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association
[[link removed]] (an
automobile industry trade group) and $5,000 from the Ford Motor Co
[[link removed]]. in
June 1954; and a further $72,500 from the Automobile Manufacturers
Association
[[link removed]] and $27,500
from Ford
[[link removed]] in
April 1955. 

The Air Pollution Foundation also had close ties with the oil
industry, particularly the American Petroleum Institute
[[link removed]] (API). An Air
Pollution Foundation newsletter described the creation in August 1955
of a “technical advisory committee of seven men with broad
scientific experience and knowledge in air pollution to advise its
Board of Trustees on research projects.
[[link removed]]” According
to the newsletter, this high-level committee met regularly and its
members included top engineers and scientists of “the auto industry
[[link removed]]”
and “the oil industry
[[link removed]].” Contemporary
newspaper sources reveal that one of these seven men was executive
secretary of the API’s Smoke & Fumes
[[link removed]] Committee, William
A. Claussen
[[link removed]],
and that two others came from the Richfield Oil Corp
[[link removed]].
(now BP) and Chrysler
[[link removed]]. 

 
Coverage in the August 12,1955, edition of the Pasadena Independent
details the seven members of the Air Pollution Foundation’s
technical advisory committee.   (DeSmog)
_Coverage in the August 12,1955, edition of the Pasadena Independent
details the seven members of the Air Pollution Foundation’s
technical advisory committee. Read the entire document on
DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

Although precise details of the API’s financial support for the Air
Pollution Foundation are not yet available, a 1959 U.S. Public Health
Service document stated that “The American Petroleum Institute
[[link removed]] and
the Western Oil & Gas Association have been major contributors to the
funds of the Air Pollution Foundation.” It’s not clear from this
document exactly when the API and the Western Oil & Gas Association
(now called the Western States Petroleum Association
[[link removed]]) began
funding the Air Pollution Foundation. However, Claussen’s
appointment to the foundation’s technical advisory committee on
August 10, 1955, suggests that API funding may have begun by this
date. The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to questions
about its support of and involvement with the Air Pollution
Foundation.
 
An excerpt from Programs Related to Air Pollution Problems of the
Petroleum Industry, Records of the Public Health Service, U.S.
National Archives and Records Administration.  (DeSmog)
_An excerpt from Programs Related to Air Pollution Problems of the
Petroleum Industry
[[link removed]],
Records of the Public Health Service, U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration. Read the entire document on DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

 

Another senior figure at the Air Pollution Foundation, its vice
president and chief engineer W. L. Faith
[[link removed]],
also had links to the API. In addition to his role at the Air
Pollution Foundation, Faith was simultaneously a member of
the Coordinating Research Council
[[link removed]], a
joint research venture controlled by the American Petroleum Institute
[[link removed]] and
the Society of Automotive Engineers
[[link removed]].
By 1956 Faith would become the Air Pollution Foundation’s
overall managing director
[[link removed]]. 

On June 28, 1955, Faith
[[link removed]] authored
an internal memo sent to the Research Committee of the Air Pollution
Foundation’s Board of Trustees containing details of the
foundation’s proposed “Research Program for 1956
[[link removed]].”
A “Special Category” listed “Continuation of carbon isotope
studies
[[link removed]] …
currently being carried out at Caltech with APF funds.” 

Historian Benjamin Franta has shown in 2022’s “Big Carbon’s
Strategic Response to Global Warming, 1950-2020”
[[link removed]] that in 1955 the API also
funded research, code named “Project 53,” at Keeling and
Epstein’s Caltech lab under the overall guidance of Epstein’s
boss, Professor Harrison Brown. Brown’s proposal to the API
explained that fossil fuels were causing atmospheric CO2 levels to
rise but did not mention the possible climate impacts of this rise.
Nevertheless, as Franta also demonstrates, the potential global
warming effect of this increasing atmospheric CO2 could be inferred
from already established science. Documents discovered by Franta show
that the API-sponsored research primarily focused on other things but
included work on CO2 in tree rings. While Caltech’s researchers
informed the API that they were using their equipment to make around
2,300 CO2 tree ring measurements per year, the API does not appear to
have published the results. 

What’s certain is that in December 1955, the Air Pollution
Foundation approved a one-year extension of its sponsorship of
Keeling’s work — a decision likely overseen by Faith as well as
the API’s Claussen and the other members of the foundation’s
technical advisory committee, according to their appointed role as
advisors to the Board of Trustees’ research projects
[[link removed]].

AFTERNOON SURPRISE 

Almost a year later, in the fall of 1956, Samuel Epstein sent the Air
Pollution Foundation an informal research update prepared by Keeling
titled, “The Variation in the Concentration and Isotopic Composition
of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
[[link removed]].”
Epstein told the Air Pollution Foundation that, having used its grant
to support Keeling’s research, it had been possible to establish the
“concentration and isotopic composition of CO2 in different types of
localities.” 

Epstein’s papers at the Caltech Archives do not contain a copy of
Keeling’s report. However, the Charles D. Keeling papers, held at
the University of California, San Diego, contain a paper by Keeling
from the same year, 1956, with an almost identical title, “The
Concentration and Isotopic Composition of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
[[link removed]].”
This paper contains the data
[[link removed]] Keeling
compiled using the Air Pollution Foundation’s grant, and shows his
findings of consistently similar average carbon dioxide levels at
varying locations across the United States and above tropical
waters. 

_A table from Keeling’s paper “The Concentration and Isotopic
Composition of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
[[link removed]]”
showing the average concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. Credit: Charles D. Keeling, 1956; Charles David Keeling
papers, University of California San Diego. Read the entire document
on DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

Keeling’s later writings in the Annual Review of Energy and the
Environment
[[link removed]] (1998)
describe his surprise at finding that everywhere he went, the
“afternoon air” seemed “always to have nearly the same amount of
CO2, about 310 parts per million (ppm).” Based on existing
scientific literature, Keeling had expected daytime concentrations to
vary. Instead, he found that a concentration of 310 ppm of CO2 seemed
to prevail over large regions of the northern hemisphere. In addition
to this, Keeling noted that the carbon isotopic ratios in the
afternoon were also “all about the same.” If CO2 concentrations
were similar across the globe, it would be possible, using continuous
measurements over an extended time period, to estimate how much CO2
produced by burning fossil fuels was being absorbed by natural carbon
sinks (forests, oceans) and how much was being emitted into the
earth’s atmosphere. 

Keeling’s 1956 paper emphasized the wider significance of his work
in predicting this atmospheric impact of burning fossil fuels. He
wrote, “The factors which control the concentration and isotopic
composition of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere have been
studied with the view of predicting the effect of terrestrial plants,
of surface ocean water, and of the burning of coal and petroleum
[[link removed]] on
atmospheric carbon dioxide.” 

AHEAD OF THE KEELING CURVE

Confident in the accuracy of his measurements, Keeling communicated
his findings to an employee of the U.S. Weather Bureau and, in the
summer of 1956, its director of meteorological research, Harry Wexler,
invited him to Washington, D.C., to present his data. Impressed,
Wexler suggested that the young researcher continue his investigations
by measuring CO2 at the newly built observatory on the Hawaiian
volcano Mauna Loa. Keeling secured federal sponsorship for this work
and measured atmospheric CO2 on Mauna Loa, observing a rising trend of
CO2 increasing year on year from approximately 313 ppm in 1957 to 320
ppm in 1967. Caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, the
depiction of this trend would come to be known as the Keeling Curve
[[link removed]] — a key piece of evidence that
climate change is human caused. 

_Credit: Charles David Keeling, Rewards And Penalties of Monitoring
The Earth, Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
[[link removed]] (1998)_

Keeling’s summer 1956 trip to D.C. came shortly before the Caltech
project’s end; in October 1956, the university’s carbon dioxide
investigations for the Air Pollution Foundation concluded. Epstein’s
letter to the foundation’s senior physicist, Nicholas
Renzetti, declared that while using the isotopic ratio of carbon
dioxide as an “index to the relative contribution of industrial
activity
[[link removed]]”
to the atmosphere “may be worth while pursuing in more detail,” it
was felt “that such a survey could not be done here at present.”
Epstein informed Renzetti that Keeling was preparing a detailed paper
for publication and that a copy would be forwarded as a final report
on this research. He also asked permission to spend the remaining
$9,000 of the APF’s grant on constructing equipment more pertinent
to analyzing the Los Angeles atmosphere. 
 

_Letter from Nicholas Renzetti of the Air Pollution Foundation to
Samuel Epstein, October 1956. Read the entire document on
DocumentCloud.
[[link removed]]_

Epstein did not elaborate on why further research could not be
conducted at Caltech. By the fall of 1956 Keeling had moved from
Caltech to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography where he would pursue
his work on CO2 under Scripps’ Director and climate scientist, Roger
Revelle. Keeling’s departure may have played a part in Caltech’s
stated decision not to pursue further investigations into the
contribution of fossil fuels to atmospheric CO2 levels. In any case,
the Air Pollution Foundation’s main aim was to sponsor research
directly related to solving local air pollution problems rather than
fundamental research into CO2 despite the “significance to
civilization” it posed. What is clear however is that the foundation
— including its members with links to the fossil fuel industry —
was informed of the potential to identify the contribution of fossil
fuel emissions to atmospheric CO2 levels. The foundation chose not to
pursue this research further. 

Responding to Epstein on October 16, 1956, Renzetti, expressed the
foundation’s understanding that further research on carbon isotopes
“of possible utility to the Los Angeles smog problem
[[link removed]]”
did not “lie within the interest or scope” of Caltech’s
activity. Instead, Renzetti accepted Epstein’s proposal to use the
remaining funds for Caltech’s work on hydrogen isotopes that might
“bear on the Los Angeles atmosphere
[[link removed]].”

The Air Pollution Foundation’s 1956 response to Keeling’s carbon
isotope research foreshadowed Exxon’s response in the 1980s to its
own in-house scientists seeking to explore “past and future growth
of atmospheric CO2 emissions
[[link removed]].”
As revealed by Inside Climate News
[[link removed]],
in the late 1970s Exxon scientists suggested a program of research
that would “help evaluate the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’
[[link removed]]”
Some of this in-house work proposed investigating the isotopes of
vintage wine to see whether the blame for rising CO2 levels could be
placed on deforestation rather than fossil fuel emissions. These
isotope studies, however, appear to never have started, falling victim
to Exxon’s 1982 cuts
[[link removed]] to
its CO2 research once it became clear that fossil fuels were indeed
the leading cause of CO2 emissions.

In 1962, a few years before the now-famous curve, Keeling would be
asked to present his work at a forthcoming conference
[[link removed]] on
the “Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere” sponsored by the
Conservation Foundation. This philanthropic conservation group was
partly funded
[[link removed]] for
1962, the year in which the conference was organized, by Standard Oil
of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil), Standard Oil of California (Chevron)
and Richfield Oil (BP). This long-overlooked event would help
transform awareness of the carbon dioxide problem from a relatively
unknown area of pure scientific inquiry to a matter of pressing
national and international urgency, ultimately bringing the issue to
the attention of one of the most powerful men in the world
[[link removed]].

_[REBECCA JOHN is a Research Fellow at the Climate Investigations
Center. She is also a freelance journalist and award-winning
documentary film maker. As a Producer and Director of the
acclaimed “Extreme Oil” / “Curse of Oil”
[[link removed]] series for PBS
/BBC her work was awarded a Cine Golden Eagle for News Analysis.
Other award-winning and nominated series and films
include “Churchill” for PBS & ITV, “The Secret World of
Richard Nixon” for The History Channel/BBC and “Ambush In
Mogadishu” for PBS Frontline/ BBC (winner of the Edward R. Murrow
Overseas Press Club of America ‘Best Documentary on Foreign Affairs
Award’). Follow her on X at @rebecca_John1.
[[link removed]]]_

_Read Parts 2
[[link removed]] and 3
[[link removed]] of
our investigation to learn about the forgotten conference that sparked
climate concern and brought the CO2-climate link to the attention of a
U.S. President for the first time._

* Climate Crisis
[[link removed]]
* Climate Change
[[link removed]]
* Climate Science
[[link removed]]
* climate scientists
[[link removed]]
* big oil
[[link removed]]
* Oil Industry
[[link removed]]
* Fossil Fuel
[[link removed]]
* fossil fuels
[[link removed]]
* fossil fuel industry
[[link removed]]
* environment
[[link removed]]
* environmental science
[[link removed]]
* Green New Deal
[[link removed]]
* GND
[[link removed]]
* Climate disaster
[[link removed]]
* Oil profits
[[link removed]]
* carbon fuels
[[link removed]]
* corporate profits
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

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