Fifty six years ago, on this day, May 17th, 1969, Lord Ritchie Calder makes his warning again…
“Degradation of the Environment at Centre for Continuing Education, University of Chicago, 15-17th May 1969”
“With this combination fish are migrating, changing even their latitudes. On land the snow-line is retreating, the permafrost line in Siberia as well as in the Western Hemisphere is being altered and the glaciers are melting. In Scandinavia, land which was perennially under snow and ice are melting and the arrow heads of over 1,000 years ago when the black earth was last exposed have been found. I am advising all my friends in Britain not to take 99 year leases on properties at present sea-level.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Ritchie Calder had known about CO2 build-up from 1954 at the latest (possibly earlier). He had warned and warned and warned (see 1963 activities). By 1968 he had become quite apocalyptic – see his Presidential Address to the Conservation Society.
What I think we can learn from this is that smart people knew. But as per Schiller “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain”.
What happened next Calder warned and warned (see his “Mortgaging the Old Homestead,” article and his 1975 interview on The Science Show). His son Nigel made a documentary that basically warned of a new Ice Age (The Weather Machine). Calder died in 1982, before the world “woke up”…
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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 17, 1968 – “Some prophets of darkness warn of polar icecaps melting…”
May 17, 1972 – New York Times reports carbon dioxide build-up worries…