Documents show industry-backed Air Pollution Foundation uncovered the severe harm climate change would wreak

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called ‘Keeling curve’ that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This ‘Keeling curve’ has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
    5·
    9 months ago

    You say all that as if the governments aren’t owned by and run for the disgustingly rich, which is why reform isn’t a solution (there is no legislating climate change away) but rather the whole system needs abolishing.

    • tim-clark@kbin.social
      11·
      9 months ago

      And one country can’t solve the issue. We all need to work together…which will never happen

      • underisk@lemmy.ml
        2·
        9 months ago

        I don’t think you’re gonna hurt anything by acting on climate change without a global consensus. I do think the effect COVID had on warming showed pretty clearly how much is possible when even a few countries just take indirect action.