Sixty nine years ago, on this day, April 23, 1954, the Irish Times ran a brief article about climate change and carbon dioxide. Yes, 1954.
It came from a journalist/scientist, Gerald Wendt, who had been writing for the UNESCO Courier.
23 April 1954 Irish Times article
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
In May 1953 Gilbert Plass had said to the American Geophysical Union meeting, in essence – “you know, that Brit, Guy Callendar who said, before the war, that carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere was leading to warming?? “ell, he’s right.”
What I think we can learn from this
The idea that carbon dioxide build up could be a problem was in the air (sorry, not sorry) for a long time.
What happened next
Wendt’s writing got syndicated/serialised elsewhere, including in the colonies.
By 1956 Plass had published on the subject. Others were doing likewise.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.