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.

  • doublejay1999@lemmy.world
    218·
    10 months ago

    So happy to sit back and gossip about “ooo the evil companies” but they do nothing to elect the people that could change things .

    Man fuck the Guardian and their charade

    • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      83·
      10 months ago

      Like who? Who can I vote for that will make a difference? Give me a name

      Edit: ah no response. Shocker. Almost as if you only want to sling shit without anything useful to contribute.

      • alvvayson@lemmy.world
        3·
        10 months ago

        The real problem is that there is no one we can vote for that can make a difference.

        One half of the politicians want to continue using fossil fuels.

        And the other half wants to do mostly virtue signalling with policies that look good on paper, but won’t actually solve the problem.

        I guess the second group is less bad, but politics is unlikely to save the climate.

        Sorry, don’t have a solution. We could have solved it by continuing to deploy and develop nuclear after Chernobyl, but by now it seems like 2 or 3 degrees of warming is inevitable.

        • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          In other words our leadership is greedy and they only care about their own comfort at the expense of everyone else.

          They know they’ll die long before any of this affects them.

          They don’t give a fuck about their own grand children, which should tell you everything about what kind of people they are.

      • silence7@slrpnk.netM
        41·
        10 months ago

        So here’s the thing: it depends on where you are. If you’re in the US:

        Biden has a shot at being elected, and got the Inflation Reduction Act passed:

        It’s also important to vote in all the down-ballot races. Vote in the primary of the party likely to win the general election where you are. Vote in the general election too.

        • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          10 months ago

          I agree but we already voted Biden in which contradicts the statement of who I was replying to.

          but they do nothing to elect the people that could change things .

          Clearly not if we ALREADY voted for people that could change things.

          • silence7@slrpnk.netM
            3·
            10 months ago

            The US has has another election this year. Reelecting Biden, and giving him a Congress that will actually pass meaningful climate legislation is part of what we need.

            The reality is that the kind of change we need won’t be the work of a single Presidential term or session of Congress, or any one nation. Biden did what he could with the congress he had, where the Democrats had a majority in the Senate only by virtue of the Vice President being able to break ties, and even then, a couple Democrats (Manchin, Sinema) being bought off by the oil industry.