Seventy years ago, on this day, June 21st, 1954, the Manchester Evening News runs a story on carbon dioxide build-up. Yes, seventy years ago.
Cook, J.G. 1954. That smoking chimney warms up the world. Manchester Evening News, June 21, p.4
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the year before Gilbert Plass had made his attention-grabbing speech at the American Geophysical Union. And in early 1954, Gerald Wendt had published a piece in the UNESCO Courier.
Alongside this other newspapers, notably the Mews Chronicle, had run pieces by Ritchie Calder. And so on. Yes, the Manchester Evening News was a regional paper that was bigger and better back then. (Manchester hadn’t really felt in a big way, the decline that was to take hold in the late 50s and 60s)
What we learn is that carbon dioxide buildup was not controversial. It was at this point speculative; there weren’t firm numbers just merely a guesstimate that the CO2 levels had increased by 10% and could reasonably be expected to increase further and that this could/should have implications. But that’s as far as it went.
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:
June 21, 1958 – Washington Post reports ‘world turning into a ‘greenhouse’
June 21, 2007 – ABC unleashes “Carbon Cops” on the world. ACAB – All Climate Activists Barf…