On this day, October 9 in 1979, Hermann Flohn (major German scientist) gave a talk about “possible climatic consequences of a man-made global warming” at a conference in Dublin, Ireland.
Flohn H. 1980: Possible climatic consequences of a man-made global warming. In: R. Kavanagh (Ed.): Energy System Analysis. Proc. Intern. Conf. Dublin, 9-11 Oct. 1979, D. Reidel Publ. Comp., Dordrecht, 558-568. (1981: Life on a warmer Earth, Possible climatic consequences of man-made global warming. Executive Report 3, based on research by H. Flohn, Intern. Inst. for Applied System Analysis IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria, pp. 59.)
https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/1097/1/WP-79-086.pdf
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 334.24ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – by the late 1970s, scientists who studied climate, energy systems etc had come to some conclusions
- Carbon dioxide really was building up in the atmosphere
- This would have real consequences
They tried to get politicians to pay attention. Oops
Why this matters.
By the late 1970s we knew enough (earlier than that, I think there was room for doubt)
What happened next?
Flohn kept trying. Others kept trying. Eventually, in 1988, the issue “broke through”.