TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas conglomerate, knew fossil fuels were linked to rising global temperatures half a century ago, but colluded with other oil majors to obfuscate those risks and deceive the public, new research reveals. Formerly known as Total, the company has sought to rebrand itself and burnish its image as a company committed to addressing the climate crisis. The peer-reviewed study authored by three historians and published Wednesday in Global Environmental Change — and based on internal company documents and interviews with former executives — found Total employees knew about the potential for  “catastrophic global warming from its products” by at least 1971. (FT $)