SD-Pictures/Pixabay 1900 has increased 10 per cent. Since CO2 absorbs long-wavelength radiation, it is possible that this is already producing a secular climatic change in the direction of higher average temperatures. This could have profound effects both on the weather and on the ecological balances.24 Hubbert concluded by recognizing that: In view of the dangers of atmospheric contamination by both the waste gases of the fossil fuels and the radioactive contaminates from nuclear power plants, Professor Hutchinson urges serious consideration of the maximum utilization of solar energy.25 In 1968, the warning by Shell’s own Chief Geologist was echoed and dramatically amplified in a report commissioned by API’s Smoke and Fumes Committee, by then renamed the Committee for Air and Water Conservation. As previously detailed by CIEL, the authors of the 1968 report Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants warned the industry that accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, would likely result in A Crack in the Shell | increasing atmospheric temperatures.26 They also warned that “[s] ignificant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000 and these could bring about climatic changes.”27 Significantly, the 1968 report acknowledged that, while uncertainties remained, the combustion of fossil fuels was the best fit to the scientific data for rising CO2 and, accordingly, emphasized that future research should focus on technologies and other changes to reduce CO2 emissions. In a supplemental report delivered to API the following year, the authors addressed the issue of atmospheric carbon dioxide in greater detail. Although the supplement dealt at greater length with the uncertainties in climate science, its central conclusion – that accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could lead to planetary warming and potentially catastrophic climatic changes – remained the same.28 Given its longstanding and active role within API generally and in the Smoke and Fumes Committee and successor committees specifically, it is reasonable to assume Shell received these reports. Two pieces of documentary evidence further but6 | tress this assumption. First, a 1972 API report on the status of ongoing research reports identifies Shell not only as a member of API’s Air and Water Conservation Committee, but also of the smaller Engineering and Technical Resources Executive Committee responsible for steering API’s research into atmospheric pollutants.29 (Another European oil major, British Petroleum, is also among the committee members.) Moreover, also in 1972, a submission from the National Petroleum Council (NPC), an industry-staffed advisory committee to the United States federal government, made significant references to the 1968 report. The report, Environmental Conservation: The Oil and Gas Industries, praised the work of the SRI scientists and their conclusions about atmospheric scavenging mechanisms for traditional pollutants, but disregarding their findings with respect to atmospheric carbon dioxide, relying instead on an earlier and more skeptical report from another source. Tellingly, and in stark contrast to the contents of the SRI reports themselves, the Executive Summary to the 1972 NPC report all but dismissed any suggestion of global impacts from pollution: Center for International Environmental Law