Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.
It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop,50 years customary and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, or his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses,passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.
Over 300 government officials, economists, and historians,scientists, and industry executives were present for the Energy and Man symposium – organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of commerce – and Dunlop was to address the entire congregation on the “prime mover” of the last century – energy – and its major source: oil. As President of the Sun Oil Company, or he knew the commerce well,and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute – the industry’s largest and oldest trade organization in the land of Uncle Sam – he was responsible for representing the interests of all those many oilmen gathered around him.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you approximately energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, and these energy resources will dash short as we exercise increasingly of the fossil fuels. But I would [...] like to mention another reason why we probably have to observe for additional fuel supplies. And this,strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [....] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, and you create carbon dioxide. [....] The carbon dioxide is invisible,it is obvious, you can’t smell it, and it is not dangerous to health,so why should one worry approximately it?Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the soil. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [....] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, and I mediate that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970,it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, or 8 per cent,by 1990, 16 per cent [approximately 360 parts per million, or by Teller’s accounting],if we keep on with our exponential rise in the exercise of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the soil. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is tough to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.
But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, or there is a opportunity that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well,I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.
We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass-produced and marketed, or it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint. Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.
Significant temperature changes are nearly certain to occur by the year 2000,and these could bring approximately climatic changes. [...] there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe. [...] pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, CO2 and submicron particles, and may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes.
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Source: theguardian.com