Big Oil Knew About Climate Change in 1959

Thanks for Ruining my Morning, Guardian

Which happens all too often anymore.

I woke up late due to being sick still, and found this article waiting on the Guardian. It's by Benjamin Franta, a PhD student of science history at Stanford University, though it doesn't entirely get into how he found the information; we can infer he did so while working on his current PhD.

The Highlights

At a symposium (a thing we don't hear of anymore) back in November 1959, a man named Edward Teller dropped a hell of a bomb on the oil industry's centennial celebrations. It's pretty familiar by now, but back then, was rather new and not at all what they wanted to hear.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would [...] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [....] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [....] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?

Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [....] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.

Afterwards, he was asked to basically summarise how things were going to break down for the future of the world, and basically predicted what has become the history of our lives, with frightening accuracy - this is about where I got really pissed off while reading.

At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.

But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.

There's no getting around the fact that what climate scientists have been saying has been being said for nearly sixty years now. Almost to the letter - this may as well have come right out of one of the most recent studies, for all the difference there is in the findings, and Teller was doing this off the top of his head after his presentation.

Of Course, Big Oil Hid the Information

The article then jumps forward to 1967, and a presentation that Robert Dunlop is giving on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute. It points out that the information from Teller's presentation eight years before was left out of Dunlop's presentation to Congress - nothing about big oil and its relation to climate change are mentioned, despite there already being cases for it.

As a matter of fact, this is the lovely gem that Dunlop drops as the key to the API's presentation about oil and alternatives to oil.

We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass-produced and marketed, it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint. Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.

Because of course big oil would want everyone to believe that. Congress should have commissioned their own studies, rather than just believed the people who stood to make the profit off of the situation...but Congress apparently has never been all that bright.

Less than a year later, information from a report the API commissioned from Stanford (and likely how Franta discovered any of this) also backed up Teller's prior presentation with direct measure, but it was quietly filed away. Congress never saw it, and neither did the public.

Franta's Point

All too often, people tend to peg the oil industry's awareness and complacency of global warming on one or two companies - Exxon and Shell, primarily. Franta's point is that it wasn't just any one or two companies that were aware and brought about the silence, deceit, and obstruction here - it went all the way to the core representative of at least the American oil industry, the American Petroleum Institute. The blame shouldn't be with one or two companies, it should be with everyone.

And it's really upsetting to find out - with more and more frequency - just how far back the industry's knowledge of climate change goes, and how long ago they could have actually done something to stop the damage that's been done. Teller's accuracy in 1959 is damn eerie, and really makes one question how much could have been salvaged if greed had been overcome.