On this day, December 13th in 1984 for the Christian Science Monitor ran an article which covered some recent research into carbon dioxide build-up.
Its conclusion? Its conclusion has not aged well.
“the alarms often raised about melting the polar icecaps and flooding coastal cities are largely speculation. And the calls that have been made to ”do something now” to begin to restrict the burning of fossil fuels are rather premature.”
Cowen, Robert C. (1984). “New CO[2] data undercuts dire prediction icecaps would melt. Chillier winters, hungrier bugs ahead?”. Christian Science Monitor, 13 December.
Oops.
On this day the PPM was 345ppm Now it is 419ish- but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
Find mid 1980s the question of future climate change caused by buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide from man’s burning of oil, coal and gas was an infrequent but no longer unusual topic of conversation in the mass media on television and print media.
What happened next?
It would be another 4 years until the question of climate change burst onto the scene and became a regular feature of newspaper and print media and the denial campaigns started
properly.