Seventy one years ago, on this day, May 24th, 1953, the New York Times reported on Gilbert Plass’s statements at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting a couple of weeks earlier. The article was by Waldemar Kaempfert, who’d write something else on the topic in October 1956, just before his death.
https://www.nytimes.com/1953/05/24/archives/how-industry-may-change-climate.html
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The New York Times makes explicit mention of carbon dioxide buildup from industry as something that will heat the planet. This is from their science writer Walter Kaempffert.
The context is that a couple of weeks later earlier, Gilbert Plass, a Canadian physicist had made a startling presentation to the American Geophysical Union, and this had travelled around the world [Conversation article link].
What we learn is that it’s been 71 years since the warnings started coming from people who weren’t “merely” steam engineers.
What happened next – It was taken seriously, as it were, in the 1950s, then seemed to fall off for 10 years. And then came back in the late 60s and then fell off again, came back in the late 80s. And here we are 35 years after that, having increased our emissions by about 70%.
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 24, 2000- Australian denialist nutjobs have nutjob jamboree