How Much Did The Fossil Fuel Companies Know About Climate Change, And When? A Chat With Ben Franta

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Stanford doctoral candidate Benjamin (Ben) Franta (aka @BenFranta on Twitter) has a degree in Applied Physics from Harvard, a Law degree from Stanford, and is currently working on his Ph.D. from Stanford on the history of climate science, climate denial, and the fossil fuel industry.

I came across him when I heard about his most recent paper where he and two French researchers showed how French fossil fuel company Total were aware of harmful global warming impacts since at least 1971 but instead of doing anything about it, they engaged in overt denial of climate science. This was the way fossil fuel companies decided to deal with the issue.

That this was standard practice for fossil fuel companies is something I've been aware of for some time, but I decided to invite Ben to come on the podcast to talk about not just this but also the potential legal ramifications of this behaviour.

This was a truly fascinating episode of the podcast and I learned loads as always, and I hope you do too.

If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to leave me a voice message over on my SpeakPipe page, head on over to the Climate 21 Podcast Forum, or just send it to me as a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. Audio messages will get played (unless you specifically ask me not to).

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And remember, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane!

Music credit - Intro and Outro music for this podcast was composed, played, and produced by my daughter Luna Juniper

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If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - get in touch via direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover the show.

Credits
Music credits - Intro by Joseph McDade, and Outro music for this podcast was composed, played, and produced by my daughter Luna Juniper