Yes, we realize this is a shocking, shocking! development, but oil giant Exxon ("putting the double-cross in energy") was revealed to have known about carbon dioxide's effects on climate change for over thirty years, while funding climate change denial efforts. Internal e-mails from Exxon's climate expert reveal that the oil company understood the impact of carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas -- on the atmosphere, and made business decisions based on that knowledge:
"The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago…." (emphasis added)Anyone able to count to 3 should be able to connect the financial dots between the climate change denial movement and the industries that benefit -- indeed, survive -- from that denial. With some 97 percent of published experts -- and the National Academy of Sciences -- insisting that climate change is occuring and is caused by human activity, only the corporate polluters and their coin-operated Republican legislators are holding down the fort. Now we can see vividly the depths of their cynicism and greed.