The atmospheric greenhouse effect is known since more than a century, thanks to several scientists including Eunice Newton Foote and Arrhenius. It is thus pretty pleonastic, but still worthy of attention, that the coal industry knew of the issue since at least 1966 as documented digging an issue of the Mining Congress Journal. And of course they covered it up and continue peddling climate negationism, pumping millions into nefarious (un)think-tanks such as the Heartland Institute.
An amusing quote:
“Every time you turn your car on and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 into the air, you’re doing the work of the Lord,” Palmer told a Danish documentary team in 1997. “That’s the ecological system we live in.”
And I agree, it is the work of the Lord indeed, who told us in the Bible to exploit the Earth to the very end. But, you know, the Lord also planned this experiment of the Earth to end quickly. I wonder if there is some Hollywood script somewhere where one discovers that the global ecological crisis is just a prodrome of the Second Coming. Christian Conservatives would love it: they would not need to deny the role of fossil fuels, they would embrace it. Let carbon dioxide guide us to the Rapture, brethren!