Sixty six years ago, on this day, September 21st, 1958, the Los Angeles Times ran a truncated version of the full Spilhaus cartoon on the greenhouse effect.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the International Geophysical Year was still underway. Sputnik had gone up, so the Soviets were winning! Charles David Keeling had started his measurements at Mauna Loa. And even before they were complete, people kind of knew, as per Washington Post front page in July 1957, that there was a greenhouse effect that was going to bake us. Spilhaus had done a PhD before the war. He was well aware of Roger Revelle, I think they’d work together. And he’d started doing educational cartoons about science. And here we are.
What we learn is that mass publics were being educated by cartoons and documentaries like the Unchained Goddess about what was going on.
What happened next Spilhaus mentioned the greenhouse effect in the 1960 science documentary that appeared, I think, on CBS.
In 1965, Australian cartoonists, science educators also mentioned the greenhouse effect in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. In 1987, Bill Waterson’s Calvin and Hobbes tackled the topic.
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:
September 21, 1990 – Ministers call for Toronto Target to be federal policy …
September 21, 1993 – Manchester says “no, not hot air”. Yeah, right.
September 21, 2014 – big #climate march in New York. World saved.