1982 Edison Electric Institute advertisement Washington Post

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This Edison Electric Institute advertisement was published in the Washington Post on the 3rd of February 1982. It suggests that the causes of acid rain were still unclear at that time and that more facts were needed before sensible legislation could be made. Man-made acid rain was discovered by researchers at Hubbard Brook in 1963, and brought to public attention through an article in Science in 1974 (Oreskes & Conway, pp 67-68). It was found to be caused by dissolved nitrogen and dissolved sulfur, mostly resulting from the burning of coal and oil. There was no confusion about whether or not acid rain was real, the uncertainty was about the nature of its cause; higher dispersion of sulfur in the atmosphere through taller smokestacks or simply higher consumption of fossil fuels overall (Oreskes & Conway, p.71).

The booklet "An updated perspective on acide rain" that you could order for free was written by Alan W. Katzenstein in 1981. Katzenstein wrote a similar booklet for the Tobacco Institute, "Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) and Risk of Lung Cancer - - How Convincing is the Evidence?", in 1987.

Source: http://polluterwatch.com/coal-ads-archive -> http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/357228-1982-2-3-eei-wp-acidraintherealissue.html