Seventy years ago, on this day, May 5, 1953, the modern “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” era began.
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 that Plass had become interested in the question of carbon dioxide buildup while being paid by Ford Motor Company. He had corresponded with British steam engineer and scientist Guy Callendar. Plass only looked at how carbon dioxide actually functions in the real world, and whether the bands become saturated or not (they don’t).
What I think we can learn from this
This is the pivotal moment, when someone takes the carbon dioxide theory and starts hammering it out…
This classic warning went around the world. It was eye-catching, and it was syndicated, certainly in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. And it probably helped. George Wendt in his writing in the UNESCO magazine Courier, which also got syndicated. So you can see these couple of people speaking up about it.
Plass’s warning also popped up in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere, this was really consequential.
What happened next
Plass kept writing and thinking about climate build up carbon buildup. In 1956, he had an academic article published in Tellus, the Swedish scientific journal.- “the carbon dioxide theory of climate change”, and also a popular article in the American Scientist.
He was there in 1961 at the New York Academy of Sciences/American Meteorological Society meeting and at the 1963 Conservation Foundation meeting. But that was his last gasp on the topic…
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.