Of Course They Knew
We owe thanks to Jelmer Mommers, a Dutch journalist who has uncovered Shell Oil Company reports dating to the 1980’s that prove that this global fossil fuel petrol company has known for many decades that their products are destroying our planet, warming its climate and causing seas to rise.
From Shell’s 1988 report aptly entitled “The Greenhouse Effect”:
“by the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.”
They knew.
Shell concluded that as of 1988 their company was generating 4% of world-wide carbon-dioxide emissions from the products it produces: oil, natural gas and coal.
They knew.
And as has happened, the 1988 report, which can be found here, correctly predicted that by the late 20th or early 21st century scientists would be able to conclude that our climate’s severe warming was, you guessed it, caused by these products and the carbon dioxide they emit into our atmosphere and oceans.
And what did they do armed with “The Greenhouse Effect report”? They covered it up, of course. For another decade they were a member of something called the Global Climate Coalition, a trade group whose purpose was to deceive the public by producing propaganda that attempted to question or discredit the scientific truth, the truth that their own experts had provided to their company leadership in that 1988 report. Talk about crimes against humanity.
They knew.
Their own report concluded that as of 1981, 99% of carbon-dioxide emitted into our atmosphere came from the products that Shell and their competitors produce. From their own report:
44% of carbon-dioxide emissions came from oil,
38% from coal and
17% from natural gas.
Their report also includes an analysis about the impact of a warming climate including sea level rise, acidification and the impact of rising temperatures on people including how this will force us to migrate to other places as our environment is destroyed by their products. It even suggests strategies to deal with the problem including a recommendation that they take political action as soon as possible and not wait for more people to see more obvious changes in our climate such as those they predicted would be apparent (and is now evident) in the decades after the report.
They knew.
In fact, they have all known for decades that the products they make and humans pay for and use are destroying earth’s environment and warming our climate to catastrophic levels. And one can conclude that they covered it up time and time and time again because it’s bad for business to have the public know you are destroying the only planet we have, and along with that our children’s future.
And when I say “they” I don’t, of course, mean only Shell (Royal Dutch Shell) but every large and small oil company and nation including EXXON, Chevron, Valero, Marathon, Conoco, BP and every other maker and distributor of fossil fuel products. Saudi’s Aramco, China’s Sinopec, National Petro Corp and Petro China, Brazil’s Petrobras and on and on.
Every car manufacturer knows the truth too and yet they are successfully lobbying our President and his EPA Director RIGHT NOW to relax emissions rules so they can keep selling the products that emit the pollution for as long as possible.
And every utility company knows too. They can run all of the “slick” ads they like about how low their rates are or how much they love solar but they are not being honest with you. As I have mentioned here before, our own local utility, FP&L, produces less than half of 1% of its energy from solar and that’s because they would rather use coal, natural gas and nuclear energy over the last nearly 100 years they’ve been in business instead of robustly investing in sustainable solutions like the widespread use of solar power.
And you know who else knows and actively plays along in the cover-up and lying game? Politicians such as Florida’s Governor Rick Scott, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, EPA Director Scott Pruitt, and, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump. They and the others that protect and perpetuate the fossil fuel firms like Shell and the products that emit the pollution, the established utilities, car makers and the rest, all know.
Of course they knew, they all did. “The Greenhouse Effect” report only adds to the growing pile of irrefutable scientific evidence and facts that prove carbon-dioxide from fossil fuel products has most certainly caused our global climate crisis. Anyone that suggests otherwise, that these products are not warming our planet to disastrous levels, is wasting our time. Time we simply don’t have to waste.
The question is now that we know, what are the rest of us going to do to fix the problem before it’s too late?
To learn more about “The Greenhouse Effect” please click here for an excellent article from The Washington Post by Steven Mufson and Chris Mooney.