Memorandum for the Petitioners | 42
5.39. As pointed out by amicus and expert witness Mr. Carroll Muffett,
President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for International
Environmental Law (CIEL), “[a]t all relevant times, fossil fuel companies can
and should be presumed to be experts in all aspects of the products they
produced, manufactured, marketed or otherwise put into the stream of
commerce.” !43
5.40. Based on evidence submitted during the course of the National
Inquiry, the fossil fuel industry, including many of the respondent Carbon
Majors, had actual knowledge of the harms resulting from the extraction,
sale, and use of their fossil fuel products in the 1960s, if not earlier. The
exact date of fossil fuel industry notice, awareness, and knowledge of climate
risks will not be settled until ail relevant documents and communications are
disclosed by the respondent Carbon Majors.
5.41. Respondents’ knowledge of climate risks and subsequent
corporate actions and/or inactions, taken in light of the known risks, are set
out below based on the evidence given during the National Inquiry. A
timeline of the key information in this section is attached hereto and made an
integral part of this memorandum as Annex “A.”
D.1.
The fossil fuel industry should have
been
aware
that
fossil
fuel
combustion could alter the global
climate by the early 20th century
5.42. Almost 200 years ago, scientists began researching the
“greenhouse effect.” '“ The link between increases in global average
temperature and fossil fuel combustion was further studied by Guy Callendar
im 1938.5
From there on, as explained by Mr. Muffett, “the potential for
climatic change became a matter of recurring discussion within the scientific
and technical literature.”!46
Ekins (UK Energy Research Centre and University College London), Peter Frumhoff (Union of Concerned
Scientists),
Department
‘8 Muffett,
"4 In 1896,
Richard Heede (Climate Accountability Institute), Sharon Eubanks (Former Director at U.S.
of Justice Litigation Team and Lead Counsel), and Sophie Marjanac (ClientEarth).
C., supra note 141, p. 13.
Arrhenius published a paper titled “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the
Temperature of the Ground” that finally quantified the effect that increased carbon dioxide had on the
greenhouse effect. See: Lewis, D. (03 August 2015), Scientists Have Been Talking About Greenhouse
Gases for 191 Years, Smithsonian Institute, available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/scientists-talking-about-greenhouse-gases19 1-years- 180956 146/ (last accessed on 12 September
2019)
4° See Exhibit “VV” to “VV-8,” Callendar, G. (1938), The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its
Influence on Temperature.
“6 Muffett, C., supra note 141, p. 16.
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