Forty six years ago, on this day, June 14th, 1978, scientists met. Looked at the data. Concluded there was trouble ahead.
Man’s impact on climate : proceedings of an international conference held in Berlin, June 14-16, 1978 / edited by Wilfrid Bach, Jürgen Pankrath, William Kellogg.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that through the 1970s, there had been a series of these sorts of meetings, especially from 1974-75 where climatologist sociologists, economists, etc. who were mostly men, mostly white, mostly American, or Western European would get together and scratch their heads about buildup of CO2 and what it might mean. Some of these meetings were being held under the auspices of the World Meteorological organisation in unit and ICSU, others IIASA. And the First World Climate Conference was due to happen soon.
What we learn is that by the late 1970s there really was enough to be going on with for politicians to get on top of an issue. But the signal I guess was still too weak. There wasn’t as yet a physical signal. Things took a hit when Reagan took office and the gravity, momentum whatever you want to call it shifted to the Europeans and it would be 1988 before things hit the headlines properly. But it’d be interesting to look at when organisations started to hold these meetings and what the nature of these meetings was primarily scientific or also social.
What happened next, these sorts of meetings kept happening. The OECD and the IEA joined the fray too. The First World Climate Conference had been relatively inconclusive, thanks to resistance from people like John Mason, but that issue was going away. Meanwhile, in the UK, the first government report on climate change got buried. Or there were discussions about burying it: in the end it was released, to no acclaim or impact.
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.
References
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Also on this day:
June 14, 1973 – Education for the Future? Meh.
June 14, 1979 – the messy inclusion of climate change in energy politics