GM Scientist Warned Automaker Of Climate Change In The 1960s, Report Says
44
Sponsored Links
A new report published by environmentally-focused outlet E&E News indicates General Motors knew about the harmful effects of vehicle emissions and climate change as early as the 1960s.
According to the report, researchers at both GM and crosstown rival Ford found “strong evidence,” that “human activity was warming the Earth,” in the 1960s and 1970s. A scientist at GM “presented her findings to at least three high-level executives at the company, including a former chairman and CEO,” the publication says, but no further action was taken.
It goes on to say that despite these findings, GM still backed lobbying groups that challenged scientists’ predictions with regard to global warming and climate change to help protect its business.
“But in the following decades, both manufacturers largely failed to act on the knowledge that their products were heating the planet,” the publication said. “Instead of shifting their business models away from fossil fuels, the companies invested heavily in gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. At the same time, the two carmakers privately donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that cast doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming.”
Carroll Muffett, the president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, says both GM and Ford were “deeply and actively engaged” in research regarding vehicle emissions and their potential effect on the environment in the mid-1960s and into the 1970s.
A GM spokesperson told E&E News the company’s past discretions are not representative of its current beliefs.
“There is nothing we can say about events that happened one or two generations ago since they are irrelevant to the company’s positions and strategy today,” the person said.
The scientist that led GM’s climate change research was Ruth Reck, a physicist that became one of the first women to join GM’s research laboratory in the 1960s. Reck eventually came to the conclusion that aerosols in the atmosphere from vehicle tailpipe emissions were contributing to warming on a global scale, findings she presented to GM top brass, including GM’s then-vice president of government relations, James Johnston.
“We would sit down and (GM executives) would look at the papers, and I would explain to them what they were looking at,” said Reck, who would later leave GM in 1992 after being instructed to pause research on environmental issues. “They were aware of things that were going on.”
GM, now recognizing the looming threat of climate change, is currently in the midst of a widescale transition from fossil fuel-powered passenger vehicles to battery-electric and hydrogen vehicles. The shift is part of the automaker’s “Vision Zero” strategy to achieve a future with zero emissions, zero crashes and zero traffic congestion.
“As Chairman and CEO of General Motors, I now have a unique opportunity – and responsibility – to use my engineering mindset to help make the world a better place on a much larger scale,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a blog post published this week. “At General Motors, we have a vision of zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion. It is our north star that guides everything we do.”
Subscribe to GM Authority for more and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
- Sweepstakes Of The Month: Win a Corvette Z06 and 2024 Silverado. Details here.
Sponsored Links
I had predicted this in the 50’s!
No, you did not.
I guess now we know why GM crushed the GM EV1’s for absolutely zero reason.
Just think if it wasn’t for GM paying lobbyists to keep making ICE vehicles they actually spent that money to further advance R&D in the EV1 Program. There would be no Tesla today and GM would have been the Absolute undisputed Leader in Automotive Tech. As a GM fan I hope and Pray this doesn’t become a much bigger story and Legacy Auto Makers go through the lawsuits like VW did. That would cripple them and allow the so called Startups to take over the Industry. GM (and all other Legacy Automakers) better get ahead of this story and not try to hide it as VW did a couple of year sago.
GM killed the EV1 because it was an expensive car that they could not sell at that time that was experimental.
The tech learned then was not tossed out and was incorporated into the Volt and even now into the EV models coming.
GM is a EV tech leader today because of this. This is why Honda and Ford has gone to GM for their help.
The info is there as well as the time line.
There is a great history of weather variation. If you investigate the logs of ships over history going back to 1000 years you will see that the weather varies over time just as we are seeing now.
i thought ford was going with rivian and vw for evs.
i don’t think you are right about weather variation. the changes we see today are occurring over decades instead of 1000s of years. that is concerning.
Ford is used a number of options.
The Mach E mile tested at the GM proving grounds and was pictured leaving. GM may have been doing consulting work as they plant to market their engineering on the EV work.
1992 GM was at bankruptcy level and if my memory serves me right, they had 40,000 people quit on one day. Mark Reuses’ dad was sacked overnight and the C5 was essentially killed. Someone being told to stop working on anything that year is not surprising.
GM’s EV1 was a novelty, just like EV’s are now. Expensive and limited range. The setup to charge your car at your house costs thousands. The EV1 was over 600 bucks a month to lease way back then. Little demand then and now.
Keep thinking that EV’s are a Novelty Lol
I have a Detached Garage at my house. I had to get a Company to Dig a Trench and then an Electrician to run exactly 90 Feet of Cable. All of that including the Cable which 100 Feet was $300 cost me $1,200
If you have an Attached Garage it will be a couple Hundred Dollars Not thousands.
sounds like you got a good deal. What was the guage of wire ran and did you run aluminum or copper? Electricians around here will charge $1200 for a 10 foot run for a 220v (double pole 30amp) to be able to run a welder.
They ran Metal conduit not copper so most likely Aluminum I guess. I am not sure HAHA
I am not sure how much Conduit costs but my uncle gave me 20 Feet (We used about 12 Feet) of it with the corners and the Boxes. So not sure how much I saved.
Running the line into the Conduit was pretty fast. They used some form of lubricant and a pulling mechanism.
If your Garage is attached it would be super easy.
As I have stated here many times though, EV’s require DC Fast Chargers to be built out quickly as they are in Europe and China. There are a lot of People who are not lucky enough to Charge at home.
Hi Daniel, I bought the Chevy Bolt EV in 2017 which gets 238 miles on a charge. I got $5,000 off with dealer discount. So $32,000 was not too bad. I’m retired and did not earn enough to take advantage of the tax credit. I did have to stretch my budget to get it, but I feel it was worth it to go zero emissions. I’ve taken 3 vacations in it using the super charger option with no problem, so time of charging (during breakfast and lunch breaks) and range is not at all an issue for me. At home, I charge using the provided 120v charger plugged into a standard outlet (20 amp max) in my garage. I travel under 60 miles a day so I don’t need the level 2 charger in the garage. Later, when I got my solar panel array, I did opt for the level 2 charger option intigrated into the SolarEdge converter which only cost me $500 more inclusive as part of the total price of the solar array installation. I did that just in case I need to charge quickly. So far I have only needed it twice. Average cost was $9.00 per month. So far after 3 years, no issues. I absolutely love my 2017 Chevy Bolt EV.
Climate change is real, but its a combination of humans and a natural cycle that the earth is going through. Humans are just speeding up that cycle.
None of it matters though because humans will come and go having been a tiny blip in the earths life.
the earth survived just fine w/o dinosaurs. the same will be true w/o humans.
That was the old GM.
Good joke but the bankruptcy protects them from nusances like this.
Own it GM….
I was speaking to a friend and he said that GM and Chrysler cannot be sued due to their Bankruptcy but Ford and other Automakers can. Obviously this is his opinion but I am sure some group or groups will find a way to get something going.
I think Automakers should get in front of this ASAP. Look what happened to VW as they were trying to stonewall the investigation.
Climate change is happening every second of the day. The wind speeds up or slows down, the sky clouds up or clears changing the temp but don’t give me this crap about global warming. The mercury thermometer was only invented back in the 1850’s and we don’t even know how accurate that was! And if the earth is millions, if not billions, of years old, the scientist of today don’t know crap! You only hear one side of the story and with the media cramming it down our throats, along with covid, it’s going to be revealant.
Anyway who’s going to be able to afford these EV vehicles anyways? Nobody but the ubber rich.
They used to say “Exxon knew about climate warming as early as late 70s and they didn’t do anything about it ” apparently now GM’s turn.
This evil companies that rule the world up against the humanity’s common interest narrative comes from superhero movie generation that lost touch with the reality. It’s not a private company’s job to save the planet nor they have power to do something about it. Also they don’t employ neither only scientist nor the best scientists of the world. Just because one guy working for a car company hypothesized about something doesn’t mean you have to stop the world and dedicate your life for that. Science doesn’t work like that this is not like someone found a spaceship and didn’t tell anybody.
You have to do in-depth research which take years and bring tons of data to prove your theory. We’re talking about 60s at that point every theory was up in the air. But one thing was accepted even at that time by almost all scientists is greenhouse gases like carbon-dioxide and methane make atmosphere warmer, and guess what human activities creates tons of them. So probable causes behind climate change was not an unknown to science so they did not need a car company to tell them the truth…
If EXXON thought the earth was warming in the late 1970’s they were absolutely correct, since as I state below, a very COLD period for the Globe was the mid 1940’s – mid 1970’s, when Scientists were a bit more humble and thought the earth might be entering a new ice age, but they weren’t sure.
How unlike the publicity seeking self-assured guys we have today. But Exxon’s money was not wasted, since the earth was INDEED warming in the late 1970’s , as it is now cooling for the next several years.
Either the Author is taking what the ‘GM Scientist’ said in the 1950’s out of context – or, as a matter of fact he was ABSOLUTELY CORRECT compared to all his peers who thought we were entering a NEW ICE AGE.
If the Scientist said that the EARTH was going to start warming up, he was absolutely correct – since the 1940’s – mid 1970’s were the COLDEST period in hundreds of years, since the ‘little ice age’ when the Thames froze over.
Of course, the products that GM produced in the 50’s had essentially no effect on this process. But the scientist was correct – in years hence it did get warmer after the mid 1970’s, again having little to do with cars.
Just like nowadays, the earth is overall getting cooler, and will continue to do so for years.
“Carbon” (a misnomer, since they supposedly mean Carbon Dioxide) is a RESULT of these temperature changes – and not much of a cause, its effect being logarithmic in nature in any event.
Plants in general are basically starving for CO2 at current levels, proof of which is Greenhouses would not need to artificially add CO2 for the plants to make them grow.
I drive EVs, but the author of this article is obviously either very young, or caught up in the polemic.
The Scientist turned out to be correct, but not for the reason that the writer would like.
We all know climate changes based on volcanoes, huge solar flares, etc, etc… Science is not an exact but predictions from data by humans, although smart, but without conclusive data analysis it’s a guess. Meaning we don’t have a 5 million year old living human scientist to us what to expect with climate change… Being human, and needing a job with – well – like anything else can be political which means humans can be bought by that narrative as we have seen – that states we have 10 years or the earth dies…which by the way is being stated by a 20 something year old politician that wants to erase history as well as earth history for the narrative of the green new deal. As someone stated, earth will be here after humans and climate change will happen despite petroleum based vehicles roaming mother earth. At one point I laughed at hybrids then EVs, plugging into the dirty electrical outlet source that pollutes so I haven’t changed yet… Maybe GM was right to suppress the news back then and cause fear that could have changed the world based on 1 scientist…. lol sort of like today with COVID.
My 39 old son tested positive but never had and symptoms during his 15 day quarantine. My uncle died of a heart attack but was classified as COVID for funding…
Dear Race57, Two of my relatives died of covid-19, how dare you imply that it’s fake! We are still grieving.
Scientists have other ways of determining the earth’s temperature by taking core samples of ice at the poles and other very scientific ways other than using humans with a thermometer. Source: “How Do We Know the Temperature On Earth Millions of Years Ago? Updated On: 22 Oct 2019 By Ashish at www dot scienceabc dot com / eyeopeners / how-do-we-know-the-temperature-on-earth-millions-of-years-ago dot html
The Union of Concerned Scientists have determined that electric cars are cleaner than gasoline cars from cradle to grave: www dot ucsusa dot org / resources / cleaner-cars-cradle-grave
Jeff, I will dare all dam day… if you can’t face the reality get off the thread… as I said, my uncle died of a heart attack and his death was logged as Covid-19. The hospital logged it that way and the powers to be wrote it on his death certificate. As I said, my son tested positive and showed no symptoms at all. Dont come at me all righteous…if you want to throw blame, call Governor Cuomo for putting the elderly into a COVID-19 hospital to die, God bless their soles….
Dear Race57, Both of my relatives actually suffered and died of covid-19. What does Governor Cuomo have anything to do with my relative’s deaths? They didn’t live in New York.
Do you read…this is not about you or your grievance. I had an uncle die of a heart attack period. Yet, he was counted as a COVID-19 death. We were talking about the people in charge were scewing the numbers using the climate change and pandemic to use to their benefit. It goes without saying we know there are real cases and people dying. This is a general discussion so quit getting bent over the axle…
Yes Race57 – they are playing games again…
Remember AL Gore’s “THE EARTH HAS A FEVER!!!!!”… When you are in the business of selling Carbon Credits, (or how to make money for nothing), then shrillness is increasingly necessary.
In 2019, there were 72,000 people who died from influenza…. Zero deaths in 2020, because now even motorcycle accidents cause it. Its a real – man – made condition. however, even the CDC has admitted that only 6-9 % of the 200,000 deaths of people WITH Covid-19 actually died FROM Covid-19. So that is 12-18,000 deaths. Which is bad enough, and those responsible, like China, should be held to account.
No one will ever admit that non-drug therapies can protect yourself from this admitted danger, and even younger people are at risk due to lingering heart and lung damage this man-made disease causes for its after effects. Older people are actually more at risk compared to the flu, so I make sure I get plenty of zinc in me, which will prevent it replicating…
You won’t hear such good advice from any Drug company, since that advice isn’t patentable nor profitable.
Dear Bill Howland,
You said, “even the CDC has admitted that only 6-9 % of the 200,000 deaths of people WITH Covid-19 actually died FROM Covid-19.”
The CDC said no such thing. Multiple fact checks reveal that that is 100% false. Here is just one of many: www dot snopes dot com / fact-check / cdc-mortality-statistics
Two of my relatives died of covid-19, and they suffered greatly with all the symptoms of covid-19. so it is not fake. We are still grieving. Jesus loves you and so do I.
Jeff, again you missed the answer…geez. Nobody said it wasn’t real, the numbers are aren’t real and some just plain fake news. Testing positive doesn’t equal death. 99% walk away without showing symptoms, like my son and others with preexisting conditions do not. Same for climate changes, if I get paid to say yes or no, I will say yes or no…
Dear Race57, I’m sorry your uncle died of a heart attack and then was ironiously counted as a covid-19 death. And I’m glad your son didn’t show symptoms. I guess I’m still irritable and in grief, and I apologize for being rude. God Bless you and yours.
It’s all good. No worries.
Since you let S nopes do all your work for you, and tells you what to think – there is no hope for you. However – assuming there is a bit of a lack of laziness about you, you might peruse this link :
https: / /www.cdc dot gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/co vid_weekly/index.htm
You will note the following –:
185,000 of the deaths happened in an institutional setting (think: why would that be?)
The vast majority of deaths in males happened between 75 and 84 years of age (the ages when most males die anyway of any cause).
The vast majority of deaths in females happened when they were 85 or older.
Hint: The virus must not affect many 120 year olds for analogous reasoning.
The ‘Cov id-19’ count includes ‘actual’ and ‘presumed’ cases – something which HERETOFORE was NEVER listed on death certificates unless there was certainty. Of course, thousands of doctors have complained they are being pressured by their managements to state COVID-19 as the cause of death.
That said – to repeat myself – There is danger for older people from COV ID-19 greater than plain old influenza. The danger for youngsters is on the other hand, minimal from Cov id-19, however there have been a substantial subset of people in their 30’s who have had serious heart and lung after effects from the total Cov id-19 experience, along with more than a few deaths. That is why all would be well to personally protect themselves – in the sense they should get their general health state up. Masks or 6 foot distancing don’t do that.
When people say climate change, I say duh! Climate has always changed regardless of human activity.