In 1965, American Petroleum Institute Warned Of "Catastrophic Consequences" If Emissions Not Cut
They knew. They all knew.
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Oil and gas companies whose products emit globe-warming greenhouse gases were well aware of the risks of rising temperatures directly linked to their products decades ago, internal documents reveal. The head of the American Petroleum Institute — the largest trade association for the U.S. oil and gas industry — warned in 1965 that “time is running out” to stave off “catastrophic consequences” of global warming pollution. In 1979 an internal Exxon memo on the impact of climate change from fossil fuels warned, “The potential problem is great and urgent,” and included an appendix outlining consequences of increasing CO2 (the main greenhouse gas emitted from burning fossil fuels). Another Exxon internal memo, this one from Exxon scientist Roger Cohen on August 18, 1981, stated that is it “distinctly possible” that global warming could “produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population).”
In 1988 Shell produced a “confidential” report titled “The Greenhouse Effect” that detailed likely consequences of climate change including rising temperatures, and the report even projected that some areas of the world would become less habitable. That same year, 1988, an Exxon memo also titled “The Greenhouse Effect” noted that climate models “predict a 1.5°C to 4.5°C global temperature increase in 100 years.” Yet “Exxon’s position,” as revealed in that memo, was to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse effect.”
Exxon and industry peers did just that, pushing the uncertainty angle even as climate science became more robust and the risks of inaction grew. A 1996 Exxon document outlined a presentation that Exxon Biomedical Sciences’ D. J. Devlin gave to an industry group created to discredit climate science called the Global Climate Coalition. That document attacked the science (what Exxon called the “Advocates’ Hypothesis”) on likely human health impacts of climate change. One of those impacts noted in the document is “suffering and death due to thermal extremes.”
Suffering and death from extreme heat is no longer a hypothesis or potential impact but rather a reality, as a robust body of research shows. The new Climate Impact Lab study reveals how much worse that reality could become under a very high emissions scenario, which is not yet locked in. But if the world fails to change course in time, the risks of this reality will grow even starker as children alive today age in a world ravaged by climate consequences.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/04/american-petroleum-institute-catastrophic-climate-heat-deaths
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