mouse carcinogen … would, in his judgment, relieve the cigarette industry of any responsibility for lung cancer in the minds of both the medical profession and the public.”111 From the 1960s into the 1980s, a mathematician named Theodor Sterling was one of the tobacco industry’s most cited scientists. His work focused on issues of study design and epidemiological proof; namely, he was not arguing that a given pollutant didn’t result in some negative health outcome, but that it hadn’t been proven that it did. In the early 1960s, Sterling was working on questions of lead exposure. We know of at least one study he conducted with scientists from Ethyl Corporation, a joint venture co-owned by General Motors and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon).112 In this study, Sterling and the Ethyl Co. scientists looked into occupational exposure to lead compounds, as an alternative to car exhaust as a source of lead exposure.113 Later, in 1968, Sterling prepared a report evaluating “the conditions under which findings and conclusions pertaining to the smoking and health issue may be reviewed best for the benefit of the Public Health Service, the scientific community, the tobacco industry, and, of course, the general public.”114 His recommendation was that “a permanent commission needs to be formed for the purpose of establishing a consensus on the results of various studies and what they mean.”115 Sterling’s accounts of the discussions indicate that this recommendation came to be in large part due to the contributions of Robert Eckardt, a member of the advisory committee for Sterling’s study and Medical Director of Esso Research (Exxon).116 Eckardt was a member of the petroleum industry’s Air Pollution Research Advisory Committee (APRAC), upon which the recommended commission was based.117 Later, a 1975 cigarette industry document would reveal how the petroleum industry used the APRAC, an ostensibly neutral body with government participation, to “launder” research that made its products seem safe when they were not.118 While the behavior of the petroleum industry in relation to lead, cancer, and smog does not directly implicate its liability for climate change, it does reveal a pattern. We know that scientists offered a solution to the cigarette companies that would appear scientific and alleviate their reputational concerns, and it was modeled off of research done previously for the petroleum industry. We know that Theodor Sterling, whose academic work supported the cigarette industry through three decades, worked with oil industry interests on questions of lead pollution, doing research that would absolve the lead in gasoline. 111 Id.. See Robert T. P. DeTreville, et al., Occupational Exposure to Organic Lead Compounds, 5 J. OF OCCUPATIONAL AND ENVTL. MED. 229 (1963), available at http://journals.lww.com/joem/Citation/1963/04000/Occupational_Exposure_to_Organic_Lead_Compounds.48.aspx. 113 Id. 114 See Theodor Sterling, Report and Recommendations of the Advisory Panel to the Feasibility Study (report commissioned by tobacco industry) (on file with University of California, San Francisco), available at https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=pkyx0119. 115 See Theodor Sterling, The Feasibility of a Definitive Evaluation of the Data Concerning Smoking and General Morbidity and Disability: Status Report (report commissioned by tobacco industry) (on file with University of California, San Francisco), available at https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=xxhl0040. 116 See Sterling, supra note 114. 117 Id. 118 See Laundered Research (Feb. 11, 1975) (on file with University of California, San Francisco), available at https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=rybl0004. 112 20