Scientists Were Aware of Global Warming in the 1950s, According to Yale Climate Connections

Transcript:

In the late 1950s, Eisenhower was president, the Cold War was in full swing, Elvis Presley rose to fame – and scientists were already worried about global warming.

Oreskes: “They already understood that when we burn fossil fuels, we put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, those gases heat the atmosphere, and therefore it was extremely likely that in the fullness of time, burning fossil fuels would lead to global climate change.”

Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University.

Her research shows that by the 1990s, there was overwhelming scientific consensus about the reality of human-caused climate change.

But fossil fuel companies led efforts to make people believe the science was uncertain. Oreskes says they used similar tactics to those the tobacco industry used to undermine the science linking smoking to lung cancer.

Oreskes: “If people think the science is unsettled, then they tend not to be motivated to act on the problem. And that’s rational. That makes sense, right? I wouldn’t be motivated to act on a problem that I wasn’t really sure was a real thing.”

So she wants people to understand that burning fossil fuels creates dangerous climate-warming pollution – and the science has been settled for decades.

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media