Fifty seven years ago, on this day, February 20, 1966, another US senate hearing got an allusion to trouble ahead, from a particle physicist called Leland Haworth.
“Another thing that is in a strict sense a pollutant but not usually thought of as such is the carbon dioxide that comes from all our burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil, gas, and so forth — which is adding to the carbon dioxide content of the air. It is not a pollutant in the sense of doing any harm to us directly, but it could change the temperature balance of the world.”
— Leland Haworth, hearing on weather modification
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The President’s address to Congress in February 1965 had mentioned build-up of C02, and a report that came out in November did likewise. The National Science Foundation was doing further work on this, which Haworth would have been well aware of. There had been a report, released in late 1965 on the topic, which had looked at David Keeling’s measurements (as per Gordon MacDonald to Oppenheimer and Boyle, 1990).
What I think we can learn from this
A problem can be on the sidelines for a long time, and may even disappear into nothing. For a problem to become an issue will be, usually, the end result of a lot of hard work, and a few capitalised-upon disasters…. It took a while for “climate change” to break through (30 years, when it probably only needed 20 – there is a plausible alternative history narrative where by the late 1970s, the issue gets dealt with (though probably would have required the late-Brezhnev era Soviet Union to innovate, so, maybe not so plausible?!).
What happened next
By the late 1960s, more work was being done, more talk about it, including in the context of the Americans wanting a non-napalming-babies issue to talk about internationally (see Moynihan September 1969 memo). The American Association for the Advancement of Science was getting in on the act too, and by 1970, most people talking about air pollution would at least mention in passing the (potential) climate problem.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.