Fifty two years ago, on this day, October 8, 1971, former Junior Minister Lord Kennet decided to push back against the “carbon dioxide is definitely not an issue to worry about” line coming from John Maddox, then editor of the journal Nature. Kennet had, in 1968, been the first UK politician (afaik) to talk about the possible problem of climate change. Here’s an excerpt from Kennet’s letter.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that John Maddox, the editor of Nature, had been consistently smearing those who raised environmental concerns. Wayland Young, aka Lord Kennet had been an effective minister in the last Wilson government, and was quite right in what he said here.
This was in the context of the British state having a new Department of the Environment and preparing its international negotiating position ahead of the Stockholm conference it was a member of the Brussels group to slow things down
(Also see that Maddox had been schooled by Ian Martin of Thames Television on 28th of February 1970. Ian Martin had essentially been talking about “wicked problems” and “post-normal science”, but these terms did not exist yet.)
What I think we can learn from this is that just because you’re the editor of a Big Scientific Journal doesn’t mean you don’t need to be taught about how the world actually works by politicians and television executives. Of course, you’ll refuse to learn …
What happened next
Kennet continued to work on environment stuff including water pollution. Maddox wrote a book called The Doomsday syndrome in 1972, and turned out loads of articles and speeches dismissing the greenhouse effect all through the 70s and 80s. And as late as 1988, after Jim Hansen and Steve Schneider spoke up he was still chiding them.
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.