On this day, 85 years ago, a paper with the catchy title “THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON TEMPERATURE” landed on the desk of the editor of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Journal. It was by one Guy Callendar, who was not even a “proper” scientist, “merely” a careful and diligent collector of data…
Historian James Fleming has written about Callendar – see here.
What happened next?
The paper was accepted. Callendar presented his findings, to general indifference (people who, 40 years later were serious players in the emerging climate consensus were present in the room, e.g. Kenneth Hare).
Callendar’s work caught the attention of scientists such as Hermann Flohn and Gilbert Plass, and was well known to the Roger Revelles and Hans Seuss’s of the world.
Why this matters
At this point, I should make clear what I am NOT saying.
I do not think anyone in 1938, hearing Callendar, should have dropped everything and raised immediate alarm. In 1938 the species – or at least the British Establishment – had other things on its mind.
I don’t even particularly “blame” people much later. I think it is really only in the late 1970s that the precautionary principle properly kicks in, and that the evidence and scientific consensus is strong enough to warrant serious action. This action did not come. Thanks Ronald. Thanks Margaret. Thanks Malcolm.
[The question of whether that consensus could have been accelerated if proper action was taken at the end of the 60s? I am agnostic. It is also not the most useful question to ask, I guess.]
So, we should know the history, but not use it to blame people for things that they could not by any reasonable measure have done that much about.