Forty seven years ago, on this day, November 13, 1975, scientists were busy trying to inform politicians of the coming threats.
Concerning possible effects of air pollution on climate
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Environment and the Atmosphere of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, 13-14 November 1975
And got turned into an article in the Bulletin of the AMS.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by 1975 scientists who studied this stuff were getting more and more alarmed about the build up of CO2. The best way of demonstrating this is the Wally Broecker paper “are we on the cusp of a pronounced global warming.” But it’s one thing for something to appear in a scientific journal like Science, it’s another for politicians to hear it. Of course, US politicians had been hearing this stuff for years, a long time. 20 years really going back to Roger Revelle in the lead-up to the International Geophysical Year
What’s different here is there’s more certainty, more science, and the build-up of co2 has continued.
What I think we can learn from this
It takes a very very long time for a new idea/problem to become an issue. There is enormous inertia in people’s heads, in our (political) cultures.
What happened next
An attempt to get legislation through failed. There was soon a second push for a climate act with George Brown and others. It worked.
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.