On this day, October 10 in 1977, the former Chief Scientific Adviser for the United Kingdom, Solly Zuckerman wrote to the Cabinet Secretary (Sir John Hunt) about global warming, having been sensitised to the issue by an IIASA presentation.
Zuckerman ‘This was the first time that I had heard anyone take so serious a view of this particular issue’. TNA CAB 184/567. Zuckerman to Hunt, 10 October 1977.
Source – Jon Agar’s 2015 article. “Future forecast – changeable and probably getting worse”: the UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 331.28ppm. 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 mid-late 1970s, the carbon dioxide issue was becoming more prominent. Organisations like IIASA were holding workshops, publishing articles. On IIASA, check out “Scientific Cooperation as a Bridge Across the Cold War Divide The Case of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis” by ALAN McDONALD
Why this matters.
“We” “knew”
What happened next?
They tried to warn the new Prime Minister, one Margaret Thatcher. She dismissed them with “you want me to worry about the weather.”