November 13, 2025
Fossil Fuel Climate Risks Known Since 1950s
Scientists and oil company executives have known about the climate risks of our profligate fossil fuel use since the 1950s… Credit: Pexels.com
Dear EarthTalk: How long have scientists known about global warming and its potential catastrophic effects? Was there much effort to suppress this information? – T.D.V., Omaha, NE
The earth’s average surface temperature has risen about two degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century, with more record high temperature events increasing and cold weather events decreasing. Contrary to popular assumptions, evidence by scientists for these climate changes on our planet have been present since the 1950s, and issues could have been regulated sooner. However, efforts were put in place to suppress this information to the public.
Fossil fuel corporations in the decades following the mid-20th century were troubled by the newfound climate evidence and its ability to hurt their profits, so some of them alluded to the idea that the newfound evidence was inconclusive. “If people think the science is unsettled, then they tend not to be motivated to act on the problem …I wouldn’t be motivated to act on a problem that I wasn’t really sure was a real thing,” Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes told Yale Climate Connections. This inconclusiveness, however, proved to be false: Results were already fully conclusive by the mid-1970s.
Exxon (now Exxon/Mobil) stands out for aggressively trying to de-bunk the effects of climate change since 1977, and was investigated by InsideClimateNews, revealing a harrowing account of the company spreading misinformation. In the 1980s, conscious that their products might not stay as profitable once the harmful effects were widely known, Exxon founded the Climate Coalition to question the scientific basis of distress due to climate change. The effort was so impactful that it helped stop the U.S. passing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998.
In March 1974, past U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger announced in two speeches at the United Nations General Assembly and World Food Conference with CIA evidence stating that, “Leaders in climatology and economics agree that climate change is occurring…it has already caused major economic problems all around the world.”
Overall, climate change was one of many issues shrouded due to motivations of profit over moral standing. Like tobacco is to lungs, the harm done to mother earth was suppressed in favor of corporate greed.
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Scientists knew about global warming in the 1950s
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