On this day, the 29th of April in 1970 a symposium was held in Washington DC on “Aids and Threats from Technology.” One of the topics of conversation was, well “Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change”
PDF here.
The newly minted Council on Environmental Quality would use this (and other research) to include a chapter about climate change in its first report, published a few months later.
Why this matters?
We knew enough to be worried, and to make a SERIOUS effort at research, throwing money and scientists at the problem.
What happened next
The scientists did the best they could. By the end of the decade, we definitely knew enough. Then Reagan and his cronies came and cost us the thick end of a decade. And then, well, the rest is history.