SMOKE AND FUMES integrate information not only on key air pollutants of interest to the industry, but also on “the attitudes of the general public on these problems, and the activities of individuals or groups seeking to achieve objectives in this field.”53 It sought to ensure, through API, that information relevant to air pollutants and their regulation flowed continuously to key oil industry personnel, and, critically, to assist industry leaders in “preparing statements on controversial issues.”54 As explained by Lloyd, the Smoke and Fumes Committee actively pushed out its messages through articles in national magazines, outreach to reporters, leaflets and brochures, and issuing running progress reports on the industry’s pollution control efforts.55 The early history of the Smoke and Fumes Committee, and particularly its engagement on the smog debate in California, offers insight into the context in which early oil industry research into climate change was undertaken. In 1946, the year that the Smoke and Fumes Committee was founded, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was founded in connection with Stanford University.56 One written history of SRI indicates that Atholl McBean, director of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) was the “most important of the founding fathers.”57 In 1947, the Smoke and Fumes Committee hired the newlycreated SRI to conduct much of its air pollution research.58 Indeed, in its early years, 74% of SRI’s research “went to petroleum and natural gas people,”59 and oil and gas interests were heavily represented on its board. In 1952, the Smoke and Fumes Committee was reformed within API, with an executive of Union Oil Company of California (now Chevron) as its chairman.60 By the early 1950s, scientist Arie HaagenSmit had identified automobiles and gasoline as the primary causal agents for the pervasive smog pollution that choked Southern California in a toxic haze for decades. After California regulators accepted Haagen-Smit’s theory, the Smoke and Fumes Committee launched an extensive campaign to discredit Haagen-Smit and his research. When an atmospheric chemist named Harold Johnston publicly criticized HaagenSmit’s theory, the Smoke and Fumes Committee awarded Johnston a contract with SRI to review Haagen-Smit’s work and disprove his theory.63 Unexpectedly, Johnston’s work confirmed Haagen-Smit’s research was correct, with Johnston himself proclaiming Haagen-Smit a “genius.”64 When Johnston shared his findings with superiors at SRI, his presentation to the SRI board of directors was postponed, and his consultancy terminated.65 In 1954, when Vance Jenkins recounted the history of industry-sponsored air pollution research to the public, he neglected to mention Johnston’s confirmation of Haagen-Smit’s theory and declared “[t]he work at Stanford Research Institute has shown that there are a number of apparent errors both in this theory and in its interpretation to account for the various phenomena associated with smog.”66 The experience of Haagen-Smit was indicative of the Smoke and Fumes Committee’s work on a number of fronts, and its frequent use of industry-funded researchers to question or contradict air pollution research it considered unfavorable to industry interests. By 1958, the Smoke and Fumes Committee was funding research into an array of pollutants at a number of additional institutes, including Armour Research Foundation, Franklin Institute, and Truesdail Laboratories.67 © josepons28/Pixabay As noted above, the Smoke and Fumes Committee existed not just to fund and oversee research, but to actively communicate with “interested organizations in industry, research, and government; and to the public.”61 However, as the goal of the Smoke and Fumes Committee was, in part, to avoid “the hasty passage of a law or laws for the control of a given air pollution situation,”62 the Committee did not simply publish all the research it sponsored. One stark example of this pattern unfolded in the debate over the causes of urban smog. 9