The truth is the first casualty of the climate wars, it turns out.

By now, with the climate showing increasingly worrying signs of volatility and wild, unseasonal temperature swings across the globe, there should be no doubt. No other Earth Day has witnessed such extremes. Whether fossil fuels are the cause of climate breakdown, or whether they are “merely” a contributing factor, no longer matters. The crisis is here, and it is dire.

The first two hours of PBS Frontline’s ambitious, three-part exposé The Power of Big Oil is thoughtful and quiet, then, as these kinds of TV exposés go. It’s not so much about the dark, malevolent power Big Oil has unleashed on the planet, driven by profit-seeking, as it is the story of a cover-up: How the fossil fuel industry manipulated the mainstream media and created a debate within the scientific community where there shouldn’t have been any debate. As early as the mid-1970s, those in the know warned of what was coming, even as Big Oil’s manufacturers of consent preyed on the public’s fears of economic decline and job losses. The energy crisis that brought down Jimmy Carter’s US presidential administration played into heavy industry’s hands, by accident and by desire, in equal measure. See, Big Oil’s message went. Oil is crucial to the economy. Big Oil has your best interests at heart. And God help anyone, even a democratically elected US president, who agues otherwise.

Frontline’s producers have taken an unusual and courageous approach in their two-hour opening act. (Subsequent instalments air April 26 and May 3, also on PBS.) The opening two hours focuses on the cover-up — what did Big Oil’s policymakers know, when did they know it, and how did they convince some scientists to turn against their own findings and argue that the Al Gores of the world were hysterical alarmists out to convince a gullible public that the end was nigh and it was all Big Oil’s fault, when in reality Big Oil was on the public’s side in the first place. Today, that seems like an absurd argument, but large sectors of the public were gulled into believing it.

Frontline’s exposé is quiet where other programs might be weighted down with bombast — not so much sound and fury signifying nothing as soft-spoken voices warning of a terrible price to be paid for modern-day comfort across the industrialized world. The Power of Big Oil’s opening two hours show how the manipulation of the mainstream media — coupled with expensive, glossy ad campaigns — can swing the majority of public opinion into believing that nothing is wrong, that the alarmists are just that. Crisis, what crisis? Exxon, Shell, Total, BP and the others can keep your job safe, your home heated, your bank balance in the black, and save the planet at the same time.

The dark arts of media manipulation — manufacturing consent, Noam Chomsky’s called it — is anathema to the commercial broadcast networks, which rely on ads to survive. In one real sense, only public broadcasting — and PBS Frontline in particular — can take on a subject as volatile as media consent. And if the opening night of The Power of Big Oil seems a little dry at times, listen closely and you’ll find a thriller every bit as complex and challenging as anything in a John Grisham drama. The Power of Big Oil is The Pelican Brief as documentary.

A brief caveat here: Not one of the fossil fuel players approached by Frontline for comment agreed to an interview, and the program producers are up-front about that in the program: “We asked,” they say, “but they would not answer.” The unspoken question — what do they have to hide? — reveals an equally undeniable truth: By refusing to reply, the fossil fuel industry can maintain the illusion of plausible deniability.

Which is where the whistleblowers come in.

“We were there,” they say, “we witnessed the campaign of disinformation, we were a part of it, and now we’re ashamed. Telling the truth now is an atonement of sorts — we only hope it isn’t too late.”

That’s a powerful admission, and watching these first two hours of The Power of Big Oil, it’s hard not to think of the opportunities that were missed. We see where the climate is today, on the eve of Earth Day 2022, and the question becomes: How different might it have been if people had listened? Al Gore posed that question at the time, and was roundly ridiculed by some. It’s the Don’t Look Up question writ large, in the real world.

Perhaps one of the reasons so few policymakers listened is that Big Oil shaped the story in such a way that they didn’t have all the information. Or, worse, they did listen and chose to ignore it, for any number of reasons: Economic, out of greed, to stay in power, or some malevolent combination of all three.

The Power of Big Oil covers a 40-year period that takes in multiple US presidential administrations, draws on thousands of pages of newly uncovered documents, and features more than 100 in-person interviews. Documents make for dull TV viewing, but they’re essential for clearing up any confusion that lingers, especially when they show how critical decisions were made, and not made.

“I do think that scientists have a moral obligation to point out the implications of their findings and try to do it as clearly possible,” one scientist says in the program.

A rational person might ask why that’s even necessary to say out loud, but that’s how media manipulation works: It takes straightforward information and bends and shapes it to fit a preconceived argument. Science doesn’t deal in ifs, buts and maybes. It deals in facts. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be science.

This program makes for hard viewing at times, but it’s critically important. Today, more than ever.

PBS Frontline: The Power of Big Oil premieres Wednesday on PBS, at 10E/9C.