On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming

Somebody cut the cake - new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100^th birthday party.

It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University's iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.

Over 300 government officials, economists, historians, scientists, and industry executives were present for the Energy and Man symposium - organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business - and Dunlop was to address the entire congregation on the "prime mover" of the last century - energy - and its major source: oil. As President of the Sun Oil Company, he knew the business well, and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute - the industry's largest and oldest trade association in the land of Uncle Sam - he was responsible for representing the interests of all those many oilmen gathered around him.