Sixty years ago, on this day, April 4th, 1964, a working group of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council got looking at climate change…
PSAC was the second presidential task force to whom Revelle had introduced the issue of CO2. The first was a subgroup of President Johnson’s Domestic Council, which released a report in 1964. Joseph Fisher, Paul Freund, Margaret Mead and Roger Revelle., “Notes Prepared by Working Group Five, White House Group on Domestic Affairs,” April 4 1964.
(Howe, 2014:219) [Mead and 1975 conference, with Stephen Schnenider)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Roger Revelle, Conservation Foundation people, Charles Keeling, etc were looking at the carbon dioxide numbers and thinking, “you know, this is one to keep an eye on” as per the 1963 meeting.
And so on to Johnson. Within the Presidential Science Advisory Committee, which had been set up in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, the climate issue was just one of those things that people thought about. (I’m not sure how Margaret Mead came to be involved, but I’m glad she was!)
The thing that we learned is that there they are within the policy subsystems beavering away, trying to get people to take this stuff seriously.
What happened next?
Well, a little under a year later, Johnson gave a special address to Congress about environmental pollution. And you know what? It mentioned CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. And that was thanks to Revelle.
In November 1965 there was a long report, led by John Tukey, that kinda-sorta emerged from this PSAC group, but went much broader.
How did Margaret Mead get involved? She and then-husband Gregory Bateson will already have known about the issue via G. Evelyn Hutchinson, I’m sure.
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.
Also on this day:
April 4, 1957 – New Scientist runs story on carbon dioxide build-up
April 4, 1964 – President Johnson’s Domestic Council on climate…
April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-upApril 4 – Interview with Ro Randal about “Living With Climate Crisis