Fifty eight years ago, on this day, January 13th, 1967, the editor of the most prestigious American scientific journal, Science, writes about the carbon dioxide threat,
“Man is changing the earth’s atmosphere. Most obvious is the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that almost exactly two years before Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, had made an address to Congress that included mention of CO2 build up. And in the intervening period, there had been a report in November 1965 by the President’s Scientific Advisory Panel Council and other reports. Abelson, who had trained as a nuclear physicist, clearly had his finger on the pulse (part of the job spec for editor of the premier scientific journal in the United States!)
What we learn is that at the beginning of 1967, readers of the journal Science would have been aware of this as a potential issue. Now, it turns out that the estimates of temperature increase were vastly overblown, overstated. The word could is doing a lot of work. Nonetheless, it shows us that this was an issue that scientific political elites were aware of.
What happened next Ableson did keep talking about CO2. So for example, there’s him at a symposium later that year.
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:
January 13, 2004 – Bob Carr rallies states for emissions trading
January 13, 2005- UN Secretary-General calls for “decisive measures” on climate change
ps – from Wikipeia-
Abelson was outspoken and well known for his opinions on science. In a 1964 editorial published in Science magazine, Abelson identified overspecialization in science as a form of bigotry. He outlined his view that the pressure towards specialization beginning in undergraduate study and intensifying in PhD programs leads students to believe that their area of specialization is the most important, even to the extreme view that other intellectual pursuits are worthless. He reasoned that such overspecialization led to obsolescence of one’s work, often through a focus on trivial aspects of a field, and that avoidance of such bigotry was essential to guiding the direction of one’s work.[7]