A new study has done what climate advocates have been calling for: putting names to numbers. Researchers have identified 32 fossil fuel companies whose products are responsible for half of the world's CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution.

This is attribution science - the painstaking work of tracking emissions back to their source. And it matters enormously for climate litigation and accountability.

The methodology here is crucial to understand. These aren't just the direct emissions from these companies' operations - pumping oil, mining coal, running refineries. The study includes downstream emissions: what happens when you burn the fuel these companies extracted and sold. When you fill your car with gasoline from Saudi Aramco's oil, those tailpipe emissions get attributed back to the source.

This is sometimes called "Scope 3" emissions in corporate accounting, and it's often the biggest number. A coal mining company might have relatively small operational emissions, but the coal it sells could generate hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 when burned in power plants.

The study, reported in The Guardian, covers emissions from the start of the industrial era through present day. That historical lens matters because CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries. The coal burned in 1950 is still warming the planet today.

The 32 companies identified include both state-owned enterprises and private corporations - names like Saudi Aramco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Gazprom, along with state coal companies in China and India.

Now, the inevitable question: is it fair to blame fuel producers for emissions from burning their products?

That's partly a philosophical question about responsibility, but here's the science perspective: many of these companies spent decades funding climate denial and lobbying against clean energy policies, even as their own scientists confirmed the climate risks. Internal documents from companies like ExxonMobil show they understood the science perfectly well in the 1970s and 1980s.

So this isn't just about selling a product that turned out to be harmful. This is about companies that knew their products were harmful, hid that information, and actively worked to prevent solutions.

The practical implications of this research are significant for climate litigation. Several cities and states have sued fossil fuel companies for climate damages, and attribution science like this helps establish legal causation. Instead of vague claims about "the industry," you can now point to specific companies and their contribution to the problem.

Of course, we all use fossil fuels. I'm not writing this on a computer powered purely by good intentions. The energy transition is happening, but it's not complete. The question isn't whether we immediately stop using all fossil fuels - that's not feasible - but whether companies that profited enormously while deliberately obscuring climate risks should help pay for the damages.

This study gives us the accounting to have that conversation with actual numbers instead of approximations.

The universe doesn't care what we believe. Let's find out what's actually true - and in this case, we now know exactly who's responsible for what.