Forty four years ago, on this day, April 18th, 1980, an Ad Hoc Panel of heavy hitters warned that there were not going to be ANY easy fixes for the carbon dioxide build-up issue. How right they were.
“We must recognize now that increases in energy consumption using fossil fuels will have increasingly undesirable climatic effects” NAS panel on “Economic and Social Aspects of Carbon Dioxide Increase” in letter to Dr Philip Handler, its president Cited by Speth in Global Energy Futures and Carbon Dioxide Problem ..
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the various ad hoc panels and groupings of Department of Energy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, IIASA etc were all pondering “well, what happens if the carbon dioxide emissions do keep climbing and the world does get warmer, what impact will that have geo politically and socially, economically?”
What we always learn From the period of the late 70s we knew enough to be worried. And some people were worried. But idiots don’t worry(looking at you Ronald Reagan).
What happened next? Growing concern largely came to a grinding halt when Reagan took office (It will be interesting to try to figure out who organised that 1982 conference on “carbon dioxide, science and consensus” and why).
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 18, 1989 – begging letter to world leaders sent
April 18, 2013, Liberal Party bullshit about “soil carbon” revealed to be bullshit