Fossil Fuel Industry Knew About Impending Climate Crisis as Early as 1954

For at least 70 years, the fossil fuel industry has been aware of — and, in fact, funded — research showing that their products would cause climate crises and global warming, newly uncovered documents have revealed.

11 comments

Sweet. Fine them for 70 years of knowingly contributing to air pollution and climate damage.
- We can't do that; it might harm The Economy. Best we can do is a stern scolding and a gentleman's agreement to not do it again.
- Sue them.
  
  Nationalize them.
I just learned about Eunice Foote yesterday. We've known about it since 1856!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_Newton_Foote
- Kind of.
  John Tyndalls independent discoveries in 1859 generally laid out the concept of the greenhouse effect - how these substances can create a cycle that lead to increasing temperatures. This was built on understandings of works nearly a hundred years earlier around how the sun and atmosphere propagate heat.
  Eunice’s works work was more that an atmosphere made up of this gas would be hotter than our present.
  Basically her discoveries fell to obscurity and are more of an interesting historical footnote. Tyndalls directly lead to what we know today and is part of an evolutionary chain of understanding.
  
  Kind of. The first person to work this stuff out was actually Joseph Fourier in 1822
The person who was in charge in 1954 probably died super wealthy sometime in the 70s-80s. In that regard he correctly judged this to be a problem for future generations. We may think that it was selfish to burn his grandchildren's future for his present comfort, but most of us are not sociopaths.