'Time is Running Out,' American Petroleum Institute Chief Said in 1965 Speech on Climate Change

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The warning is clear and dire โ€” and the source unexpected. โ€œThis report unquestionably will fan emotions, raise fears, and bring demand for action,โ€ the president of the American Petroleum Institute (API) told an oil industry conference, as he described research into climate change caused by fossilย fuels.

โ€œThe substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is runningย out.โ€

The speaker wasnโ€™t Mike Sommers, who was named to helm API this past May. Nor was it Jack Gerard, who served as APIโ€™s president for roughly a decade starting inย 2008.

The API president speaking those words was named Frank Ikard โ€” and the year was 1965, over a half-centuryย ago.

It was the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Muhammad Ali felled Sonny Liston in the first round, and Malcom X was fatally shot in New York. The first American ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law establishing Medicaid andย Medicare.

It would be another four years before American astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon โ€” and another decade before the phrase โ€œglobal warmingโ€ would appear for the first time in a peer-reviewedย study.

And 1965, according to a letter by Stanford historian Benjamin Franta published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, was the year that Presidentย Johnsonโ€™s Science Advisory Committee published a report titled โ€œRestoring the Quality of Our Environment,โ€ whose findings Ikardย described at that yearโ€™s annual APIย meeting.

โ€œOne of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts,โ€ Ikard presciently added, according to excerpts from his speech published inย Nature.

Text of a speech by American Petroleum Institute leadership on climate change
Exerpt of API President Frank Ikard’s 1965 speech on climate change and fossilย fuels.

API Funded Early Research Linking CO2 and Fossilย Fuels

That prediction was based in part on information that was known to the oil industry trade group for over a decade โ€” including research that was directly funded by the API, according toย Nature.

In 1954, a California Institute of Technology geochemist sent the API a research proposal in which they reported that fossil fuels had already caused carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to rise roughly five percent since 1854 โ€” a finding that Nature notes has since proved to beย accurate.

API accepted the proposal and funded that Caltech research, giving the program the name Project 53. Project 53 collected thousands of CO2 measurements โ€” but the results were neverย published.

Meanwhile, other researchers were reaching similar conclusions. Nuclear physicist Edward Teller became known in 1951 as the โ€œfather of the hydrogen bombโ€ for designing a thermonuclear bomb that was even more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Teller warned the oil and gas industry in 1959 about global warming and sea level rise in a talk titled โ€œEnergy Patterns of theย Future.โ€

โ€œCarbon dioxide has a strange property,โ€ Teller said in excerpts published earlier this year by The Guardian. โ€œIt transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouseย effect.โ€

A researcher at Humble Oil Co. (now known as ExxonMobil) checked results from a study of carbon isotopes in tree rings against the unpublished Caltech results, and found that the two separate methods essentiallyย agreed.

Keeling Curve of monthly average carbon dioxide concentration measurements from Mauna Loa Observatory
This figure shows the history ofย atmosphericย carbon dioxideย concentrations as directly measured atย Mauna Loa,ย Hawaiiย since 1958. This curve is known as theย Keeling curve, and is an essential piece of evidence of the man-made increases inย greenhouse gasesย that are believed to be the cause ofย global warming.ย Credit: Delorme, data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA, and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps,ย CC BYSAย 4.0

And in 1960, Charles Keeling first published the measurements that became the famousย โ€œKeeling curveโ€ โ€” establishing one of the bedrock findings connecting climate change to fossil fuels. The CO2 measurements taken by Keeling back in the late 1950s showed levels of roughly 315 parts per million (ppm) at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii andย rising.

Those CO2 levels have since climbed upwards to 410.13 (ppm) on the day that the Nature letter was published โ€” CO2 levels that scientists knew both then and now would be dangerously high, as carbon levels in the Earthโ€™s atmosphere have not been over 410 ppm in millions of years.

What the Oil Industry Knew, Then andย Now

In his 1965 talk, the APIโ€™s Ikard described the role of oil and gasoline specifically in causing climate change. โ€œThe report further states, and I quote: โ€˜โ€ฆ the pollution from internal combustion engines is so serious, and is growing so fast,’โ€ he told the API conference, โ€œโ€˜that an alternative nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a nationalย necessity.โ€™โ€

Three decades later, the API urged a different approach to climate science. โ€œItโ€™s not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it,โ€ the API wrote in a 1998 draft memo titled โ€œGlobal Climate Science Communications Plan,โ€ which was subsequentlyย leaked.

Embed from Getty Images

As of publicationย time, an API spokesperson had not replied to questions sent byย DeSmog.

Itโ€™s worth noting that since 1965, the science connecting climate change to fossil fuels has grown stronger and more robust. A scientific consensus around the hazards of climate change and the role that fossil fuels playย in causing it hasย formed.

โ€œRigorous analysis of all data and lines of evidence shows that most of the observed global warming over the past 50 years or so cannot be explained by natural causes and instead requires a significant role for the influence of human activities,โ€ the Royal Society explains.

Today, the API continues to call for further research on climate change โ€” and expanding the use of fossil fuels in theย meantime.

โ€œIt is clear that climate change is a serious issue that requires research for solutions and effective policies that allow us to meet our energy needs while protecting the environment: that’s why oil and gas companies are working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,โ€ the APIโ€™s webpage on climate change states.

โ€œYet archival documents show that even before Keeling published his measurements,โ€ Franta’sย letter published by Nature says, โ€œoil industry leaders were aware that their products were causing CO2 pollution to accumulate in the planetโ€™s atmosphere, in a potentially dangerousย fashion.โ€

Main image: San Diego, CA, October 26, 2007 โ€“ A Northern California fire crew works into the night clearing the fire line and monitoring the back burn that was set to stop the Poomacha fire from advancing westward.ย Credit: Andrea Booher, FEMA, publicย domain
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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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