On this day, October 26, 1975 the “Endangered Atmosphere” conference begins in…
It was co-organised by Stephen Schneider and Margaret Mead.
To quote from the preface of “The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering” book that followed –
“When Dr. Margaret Mead was a Visiting Scholar at the Fogarty International Center, one of her interests focused on the interactions between the world society and its planetary environment. She saw a conflict developing, and yet there was surprisingly little public awareness of the growing problems and few efforts to develop long-term national and international solutions to these problems. She therefore persuaded the Fogarty International Center to sponsor a conference on the atmospheric environment which would explore the ways to maintain it as a healthy place in which to live.
An organizing committee planned the Conference, and its members are listed in these Proceedings. We were fortunate in being able to enlist the help of Dr. William W. Kellogg, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, to work with Dr. Mead as co-organizer and co-editor of the Proceedings; he is known internationally for his work on climate change and mankind’s influence on climate. Four able and dedicated rapporteurs were also enlisted, and this report owes its existence largely to their efforts. They are Mr. Anthony Broderick, Doctors Richard S. Greeley and J. Dana Thompson, and Ms. Barbara West
1975 26-29 “Endangered Atmosphere” conference
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 328.36ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – more and more climate scientists, agronomists, anthropologists etc were getting interested in what would happen if (when) temperatures started to go up.
Mead had known about carbon dioxide build-up as early as 1964 (and probably earlier) – she had been on the atmosphere group of the President’s Science Advisory Committee with Roger Revelle.
Why this matters.
Good people have been thinking about this for almost fifty years. And here we are…
What happened next?
In 2007 the denialists got hold of it. A terrible article – held up as an exemplar of good practice by the denialists, of course – was published. It’s all Rockefeller’s fault…