Report - Global Governments Knew Climate Risks From Fossil Fuels Since 1957's International Geophysical Year

The “What Countries Knew” report, released Wednesday by the Center for International Environmental Law, traces when climate scientists first presented governments in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and the combined Soviet Union and Russia with research outlining the risks posed by the emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Those countries are responsible for about 40 percent of all emissions since the fossil fuel era began in the late 1800s. Summaries and transcripts from conferences cited in the report indicate that those governments and others were discussing the risks of rising global temperature, melting polar ice caps and sea-level rise as early as 1957, during the International Geophysical Year. The warnings grew more urgent in the 1960s just as governments and economies of industrialized and industrializing countries placed nearly all their chips on fossil-fueled growth. In 1965, scientists warned U.S. President Lyndon Johnson that rising carbon dioxide could cause “marked changes” in climate. About the same time, researchers at Norway’s and Italy’s state-owned oil companies warned of potential climate impacts while governments encouraged them to expand. As the reports and warnings piled up, newsreel footage in Germany celebrated record coal hauls with images of miners grinning through sooty faces, and federally subsidized oil production in the U.S. meant prosperity and the freedom to “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” at an Esso gas station.

Lindsay Fenlock, a senior researcher with the Center for International Environmental Law and lead author of the report, said she was continually surprised by the breadth of international government awareness of climate impacts with a “threat of serious implications” as she combed through decades of materials archived from the pre-internet era. During the International Geophysical Year, about 70 countries collaborated to study Earth as an interconnected system and measure the growing effects of human activities on the planet, she said. The same year, a study by American scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess characterized the rising amount of CO2 in the air as an unprecedented and irreversible “large-scale geophysical experiment” unlike anything in human history.

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The report illustrates that the early scientific evidence “didn’t stay in a drawer or on a shelf,” she said. “It was being published, disseminated. Their information was communicated directly to government officials, sometimes at the highest levels and to the broader public. “All this information,” she said, “was in the hands of those who could have acted.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15072026/governments-knew-global-warming-risks/