On this day, April 2 1979. Yes, the same year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science started a four day workshop in Anaheim, Maryland.
The following from the rather good recent Verso book “The Great Adaptation” helps set the scene
“The US Department of Energy was no longer willing to overlook the climate question. In collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAA) the leading US scientific body and publisher of the journal Science, it financed a research programme on the social and economic impacts of climate change. Roger Revelle and Stephen Schneider were each involved in organising the programme, which in 1979 resulted in the first international conference dedicated to the social sciences of global warming. This seminar, held in Annapolis, Maryland, sought to bring together speialisgts in economic history, anthropology, economics and political science to think through the consequences of global warming and the responses it demanded: Schneider, Revelle, Kellogg, Orr Roberts, Kenneth Hare and Crispin Tickell all took part…”
(Felli, 2015/2021: p44)
Why this matters.
Again? I keep banging on about the late 1970s. There’s a method to my madness, which you’ll hopefully read about in a gasp yes, book at some point.
What happened next?
More studies, but then basically, with the coming of the Reagan administration in 1981, the funding dried up, and Reagan appointees tried, for a few years, at least, to silence the climate scientists. See, for example, what happened to James Hansen in 1981 after his front page story in the New York Times. By the mid-80s, this became much harder, and eventually they had to move to plan B…