How vested interests tried to turn the world against climate science

For decades fossil fuel majors tried to fight the consensus - just as big tobacco once disputed that smoking kills

• Revealed: top UK thinktank spent decades undermining climate science

In 1998 a public relations consultant called Joe Walker wrote to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association representing major fossil fuel companies, with a proposed solution to a big problem.

In December the previous year, the UN had adopted the Kyoto protocol, an international treaty that committed signatory countries to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.