'Startling Confirmation': Big Oil Funded Climate Research as Early as 1954

"This pushes back the fossil fuel industry's knowledge of the climate crisis a full two decades," one campaigner wrote.

A sign is posted in front of a Chevron gas station on July 31, 2020, in Novato, California; a Chevron predecesor helped fund climate research in the 1950s.
(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

OLIVIA ROSANE
Jan 31, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The fossil fuel and automotive industries knew that their products could destabilize the climate as early as 1954, new research published by DeSmog on Monday reveals.

The Southern California Air Pollution Foundation, whose contributors included major oil and car companies, helped to fund the early climate research of Charles David Keeling, who went on to create the famous Keeling curve tracking the rise in global concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, DeSmog reported. The foundation was also informed of the potential implications of Keeling's research.

"This pushes back the fossil fuel industry's knowledge of the climate crisis a full two decades," Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media posted on social media in response to the news. "Think of the damage and lives that could have been saved if we started researching and moving to clean energy back then."

"These findings are a startling confirmation that Big Oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years—for twice my lifetime—and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day."

The revelations were based on documents found in the California Institute of Technology Archives, the U.S. National Archives, the Charles David Keeling papers at the University of California, San Diego, and Los Angeles newspapers, which established that the foundation helped finance Keeling's early measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the U.S. West from 1954-56.

The Southern California Air Pollution Foundation was established in 1953 to help address the problem of smog in Los Angeles. Its members included 18 car companies such as American Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. It also received funds from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now the Western States Petroleum Association. What's more, representatives from the Southern California Gas Company, the Southern California Edison Co., Chrysler, General Motors, and Union Oil—now Chevron—sat on its board of trustees, and beginning in 1955, that board was updated on findings by a "technical advisory committee" staffed with one API member and Richfield Oil Corporation—now BP—and Chrysler scientists.

In a November 1954 research proposal from Keeling's research director Samuel Epstein, the foundation was informed of the potential implications of Keeling's measurements of carbon dioxide levels.

"The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization," Epstein wrote.

DeSmog noted that this makes 1954 the earliest known date at which the fossil fuel industry both funded climate research and was informed of the possible consequences of its products. It comes five years before physicist Edward Teller spoke to API about global heating and around 25 years before ExxonMobil's research into climate change in the 1970s and '80s. In total, the foundation funded Keeling's early work for a total of $13,814, which would be around $158,000 today.

In reporting the news, Rebecca John pointed out that many of the same companies and industry associations that funded Keeling's early research would go on to fund a campaign denying climate science 35 years later, among them API, the Automobile Manufacturers Association, Chevron, and BP.

"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," John wrote.

Geoffrey Supran, who studies the history of climate disinformation at the University of Miami, toldThe Guardian that John's revelations "contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth's climate on a scale significant to human civilization."

"These findings are a startling confirmation that Big Oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years—for twice my lifetime—and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry's denial of basic climate science decades later."

The Center for Climate Integrity put it more succinctly on social media.

"They knew. They lied. They need to pay," the group said.