Ninety three years ago, on this day, May 10th, 1931, an Oregonian newspaper provides some facts
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 308ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that newspapers love to write stories about the weather and climate – “is it getting hotter?””Is it getting colder?” “boffins are undecided” This is a staple and it’s easy to write and readers have opinions on the weather and will write in.
So it’s not a huge surprise that the Daily Oregonian would run a piece. Nor is it a surprise really that carbon dioxide and Svante Arrnehius would get a mention because although scientists had wrongly dismissed Arrhenius on the basis of assumptions about how carbon dioxide would behave in the stratosphere, his ideas made a kind of intuitive sense for other people. (Now this isn’t to say that all ideas that have been dismissed by scientists which make intuitive sense are right!. But in this case…)
What happened next? Well, there was in England a steam engineer called Guy Callendar beavering away. And a few years later, he would submit the paper and then present it at the Royal Meteorological Society. And that would interest a German called Herman Flohn, and also a Canadian called Gilbert Plass from 1953 onwards. Meanwhile, the emissions climbed.
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:
May 10, 1978 – Women told that by 2000 “we will be frantically searching for alternatives to coal.”