Sixty three years ago, on this day, November 19, 1960, English steam engineer Guy Callendar noted that the carbon dioxide theory was not universally accepted.
In 1961 he published the results of his study in the Quarterly Journal, concluding that the pattern of recent climatic warming was not incompatible with his hypothesis of increased carbon dioxide radiation.”67 …. As this paper was going to press, Callendar wrote a note listing “[Four] reasons for the unpopularity of CO2 theory in some meteorological quarters.” Although there was no organized opposition to anthropogenic climate change at the time, Callendar’s note reads much like a contemporary response to global warming skeptics:
a. The idea of a single (easily explained) factor causing world wide climatic change seems impossible to those familiar with the complexity of the forces on which any and every climate depends.
b. The idea that man’s actions could influence so vast a complex [system] is very repugnant to some.
c. The meteorological authorities of the past have pronounced against it, mainly on the basis of faulty observations of water vapour absorption, but also because they had not studied the problem to anything like the extent required to pronounce on it.
d. Last but not the least. They did not think of it themselves!
68. CP 1, Levinson, 19 November 1960
Source: James Roger Fleming 2007 The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964) p.82
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 317ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Callendar had continued writing after the war on climate and had corresponded extensively with Gilbert Plass, the man most responsible for bringing the carbon dioxide theory to prominence in the United States.
This article with these notes to himself was written after he’d submitted something for publication. And they bear thinking about in terms of why good ideas or sound ideas don’t go further. It’s classic, “not invented here” syndrome. People are unwilling to accept good ideas from people they don’t like.
What I think we can learn from this
is that awareness of intellectual resistance to facts is hardly novel. Even around climate, it goes back further than perhaps you think
What happened next
Callendar’s paper got published. It was his last one. Callendar died in early 1964, on the same day of the year as Svante Arrhenius who died in 1927 (LINK).
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.