[TheAceOfHearts]

Epistemic uncertainty: I wasn't alive back then and haven't done a deep dive on the historical evidence to form a strong view on the claim.

However, Sabine Hossenfelder recently made a post about that [0]. My understanding is that there was still a lot of uncertainty in the scientific community during the 80s, although around the 90s there was a movement by oil companies to downplay the impact of climate change.

With that being said, whether or not oil companies were aware back then doesn't mean they cannot still be held accountable in the present. And we definitely have evidence of oil companies engaging in bad faith since the turn of the millennium to obfuscate our understanding of climate science.

[0] https://x.com/skdh/status/1810915186443722844