Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!. A recent headline in the New York Times said, “Storm Lashes the Carolinas With Historic Amounts of Rain – More than a foot of rain fell on parts of North Carolina over 12 hours, catching residents, officials and forecasters by surprise.” It caught people by surprise? How is that possible? The oil companies have known since the 1950s that climate change would be the result of using their products. Their own scientists gave them all the information they needed to know their business model was a threat to the environment, but they just plowed ahead, boring holes in the ground, building refineries, and creating distribution networks because profits were more important than survival.