On this day, 31st July 1981, US congressmen got to hear from scientists.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate : The Greenhouse Effect House Committee on Science and Technology 31 July 1981. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002758619
“carbon dioxide and climate, the greenhouse effect:” hearing before the Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Agriculture Research, and Environment and the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh Congress, first session, July 31, 1981.
Here’s who was there. By now you probably recognise Roger Revelle and Stephen Schneider….
You have to wonder what they were thinking/hoping, given the wrecking ball that was the Reagan Administration. But, then, what else were they supposed to do?
According to Nathaniel Rich in Losing Earth
Though few people other than Rafe Pomerance seemed to have noticed amid Reagan’s environmental blitzkrieg, another hearing on the greenhouse effect was held several weeks earlier, on July 31, 1981. It was led by Representative James Scheuer, a New York Democrat — who lived at sea level on the Rockaway Peninsula, in a neighborhood no more than four blocks wide, sandwiched between two beaches — and a canny, 33-year-old congressman named Albert Gore Jr….
The Revelle hearing went as [Gore’s fixer] Grumbly had predicted. The urgency of the issue was lost on Gore’s older colleagues, who drifted in and out while the witnesses testified. There were few people left by the time the Brookings Institution economist Lester Lave warned that humankind’s profligate exploitation of fossil fuels posed an existential test to human nature. “Carbon dioxide stands as a symbol now of our willingness to confront the future,” he said. “It will be a sad day when we decide that we just don’t have the time or thoughtfulness to address those issues.” That night, the news programs featured the resolution of the baseball strike, the ongoing budgetary debate and the national surplus of butter.
Why this matters.
If you know you’re history…
What happened next?
Reagan