A new report reveals that Big Oil companies have been covering up the detrimental effects of climate change around 20 years earlier than previously thought.
Although researchers are now aware that Amoco, Exxon, Mobil, Phillips, Shell, Sunoco and Texaco all shared climate research between 1979 and 1983, the newly leaked documents revealed by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) point to research as far back as 1957.
"This story is older and it is bigger than I think has been appreciated before," said Carroll Muffett, president of CIEL.
Muffett says that the documents reveal that the industry was taking note of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change by 1957. Furthermore, he says that they shaped science and research in order to alter public opinion in a way that benefited them as far back as the 1940s.
CIEL has created a website that contains all of the documents it has uncovered, including scientific articles, oral testimonies and patents that cover more than 50 years of research and activities in the oil industry.
"They offer compelling evidence that oil executives were actively debating climate science in the 1950s, and were explicitly warned about climate risks a decade later," CIEL said. "Just as importantly, they offer glimpses into why the industry undertook this research, and how it used the results to sow scientific uncertainty and public skepticism."
Many point to the similarities between the Big Oil events and Big Tobacco, both of which consist of hiding information on the health impacts of each respective industry. However, Big Oil is still getting away with it and continues to fund science and research that downplays the detrimental effects of fossil fuels on climate change and provides ammunition for climate deniers in Congress.
"Like Big Tobacco, Big Oil spent decades orchestrating a deception campaign that undermined our public health," said Jeremy Funk of Americans United for Change. "After similarly damning internal tobacco industry memos surfaced of a coordinated cover-up of their products' dangers, states and consumers' families were rewarded billions of dollars in damages and tough new regulations were put in place by the court system and Congress."
