SMOKE AND FUMES
7
PA RT 2
The Evidentiary Basis for Accountability
Notice, Opportunity, and Failure to Act
Oil on Notice: Evidence of Early
Industry Awareness of Climate
Risks
T
he potential link between
fossil fuel combustion and
atmospheric temperature
increase has been widely
discussed in scientific literature and
academic texts relevant to the oil industry
for more than a century.
The proportion of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere has a strong positive
correlation with planetary temperatures.
For more than a century, this relationship
between carbon dioxide and planetary
© dehenderson/Pixabay
The earth receives a constant stream of
radiant energy from the sun. This solar
radiation is critical to maintaining
planetary temperatures at a level that will
support life. It has been equally critical to
life and to a stable human civilization
that a significant portion of the radiation
the earth receives from the sun is reflected
back into space, thus ensuring that
planetary temperatures do not increase
uncontrollably. Beginning with the work
of John Tyndall in 1859, it has been
widely recognized that certain
“greenhouse gases,” such as carbon
dioxide, make the Earth’s atmosphere
more opaque to that reflected radiation,
trapping energy that would otherwise be
released back into space.33 At the same
time, scientists and industry experts alike
have long recognized the simple and
irrefutable fact that the combustion of
fossil fuels—including coal, oil, and
natural gas—releases tremendous
amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into
the atmosphere; and that, indeed, CO2 is
by far the largest waste stream from fossil
fuel combustion processes.34
temperatures has been routinely discussed
in scientific literature, including specialist
journals and textbooks for the geology
The potential link between fossil
fuel combustion and atmospheric
temperature increase has been
widely discussed in scientific
literature and academic texts
relevant to the oil industry for
more than a century.
and minerology communities, in the
general and popular scientific press, and
even in newspaper reports.35 For decades,
however, the relationship between fossil
fuel combustion, atmospheric CO2, and
global temperatures caused little concern
because it was widely, but erroneously,
assumed that the CO2 released in this way
would be safely absorbed by the world’s
oceans, thus reducing global climate
impacts.
This situation began to change, and
scientific attention to carbon dioxide
began to intensify, when researcher Guy
Callendar published a study entitled The
Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide
and its Influence on Temperature.36 In his
study, Callendar observed that three
quarters of the carbon dioxide released in
the prior 50 years had, in fact, remained
in the atmosphere. As a result, Callendar
estimated world temperatures had
increased at 0.005ºC per year for the
previous fifty years.37
Callendar’s study was not immediately
embraced, but it was widely cited and
debated over the following two decades.38
Some, such as Giles Slocum of the US
Weather Bureau, determined that they
could not detect a noticeable change in
atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations.39 Others postulated that
the oceans would absorb so much of the
carbon dioxide that “the amount of