In 1961, the U.S Public Health service hosted a symposium on “Air Over Cities.”171 Like many meetings of its type, its primary focus was urban air pollution, widely recognized as a threat to public health. Carbon dioxide frequently appeared in these discussions. Helmut Landsberg, Director of the Office of Climatology for the US Weather Bureau, included it in a table labelled “Concentration of Some Air Pollutants in the Atmosphere of urban areas.” Carbon dioxide was the first pollutant listed, followed by carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, aldehydes, chlorides, and 167 Id. at 108. 168 Id. at 177. 169 Id. at 303. 170 Id. at 320. 171 US PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, SEC TECH. REP. A62-5, SYMPOSIUM: AIR OVER CITIES (1961) [hereinafter 1961 PHS SYMPOSIUM]. 55 others.172
James Lodge of NCAR also highlighted CO2, noting that it was “generally agreed that the concentration of this compound in the earth’s atmosphere has increased since the turn of the century….”173 Lodge agreed that more research was needed, particularly to improve measurement techniques.174 Wendell Hewson also attended this meeting and argued for more research to better understand “the possible influence on our climate of increased CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from our combustion of fossil fuels.”175
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 317ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that industrialisation brings smogs (a word only coined in about 1906). This was known from the early 19th century (and the burning of coal as an air pollution problem goes back hundreds of years – Fumifugium, much?).
The specific context was the first air pollution conference had happened in 1958 – and Chauncy Leake had raised the carbon dioxide issue…
What I think we can learn from this is that carbon dioxide as a problem was understood fairly well by the early 1960s…
What happened next – in 1963 the Conservation Foundation held an important meeting. In 1965 the President’s Science Advisory Council released a report (see yesterday’s post!). And it still took another two decades to break through the inertia and resistance…
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.
Sixty years ago today the first official government report to make significant mention of carbon dioxide build-up was released. Dr Marc Hudson of All Our Yesterdays investigates where the report came from, what it said, and what the consequences were.
The easy assumption of American superiority in science and technology was shattered on 4th October 1957, when the Soviet Union announced it had launched a satellite – Sputnik. As The Onion’s Our Dumb Century reported “American metal-bauble superiority was cast into grave doubt Thursday when the Russians launched a two-foot ball of tin into orbit around the Earth.”
In response to Sputnik, and its sequel a month later, the Americans threw money at the problem and also created the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). It was an expansion of an existing body that President Truman had created in 1951.
“Recalling the role the Soviet accomplishment had played in a lecture he gave at the MIT in 1962, Isidor Rabi, a physicist, chairman of the SAC and then a member of the PSAC for many years, remembered that “it was a serious matter that we could be beaten so badly, that we could so misunderstand the circumstances of the great development, that we should have lost out so completely.”
Isidor I. Rabi, “Science and Public Policy: Compton Lecture n° 2, MIT,” 8 March 1962, I. I. Rabi Papers, LOC, Box 11, “American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1941-1965,” 12.
(Loetscher, 2022, p.39)
PSAC produced worthy reports, some more influential than others. One of its first was on the parlous state of the US education system (For more about it, see Wang, 2008). By 1962, carbon dioxide build-up was on its agenda. PSAC had an international science panel, and a September 1962 paper “The Problem with Large-Scale Experimentation with Possible Environmental Effects” was produced. It warned that “alteration of our environment has reached the point of requiring intensive study and understanding on an urgent basis.”
Penned in unusual gravitas, the report stated that “never before has man had the power he now has to bring about changes, some of them irreversible, on a scale that can affect people in all parts of the world and that can cause major but indeterminate environmental changes.” The panel distinguished between two types of problematic large-scale experiments. The first related to actions that were individually small but whose compounded effects could be serious, and the continuous release of CO2 was cited as an example. The second category comprised nuclear tests, which were comparatively fewer, but had much larger consequences (or so it was thought at the time).
Loetscher, 2022 p.60-61
The climate issue
Carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem was, by this time, hardly new. There’s a long pre-history, but for current purposes, we can begin 12 years before the PSAC report. In May 1953 Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass had warned that “The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.”
The lack of accurate measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was one barrier – it was not absolutely clear that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising. It was only by the late 1950s, with funding from the US and as part of the International Geophysical Year that accurate measurements were taken. By 1959 any doubt that carbon dioxide levels were increasing was removed (though the significance of this remained a source of legitimate scientific debate).
“Man’s ability to change the environment has increased greatly over the last sixty years and is likely to continue to increase for some time to come. Even now it is almost impossible to predict all of the consequences of man’s activities. It is possible, however, to predict that there will be problems…”
Present were Roger Revelle, a giant of US oceanography, who had already in 1956 warned US Senators of the possibility of dramatic changes to the climate due to carbon dioxide build-up, and Charles “Dave” Keeling, whom Revelle had hired to measure carbon dioxide levels. Both these men served on the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide subcommittee of PSAC in 1965 (1).
Revelle had already raised the carbon dioxide issue in 1964 in a separate committee within Lyndon Johnson’s Domestic Council. PSAC was another such chance to flag the problem. According to Hart and Victor (1993)
“Nor did Revelle’s chapter spring from new scientific evidence – although it did refer to the ongoing research programmes…. Revelle simply seems to have taken an otherwise unrelated opportunity presented to him as a member of a PSAC panel to try to bring the science and policy streams together.”
(Hart and Victor 1993, p.657).
By 1965, as concern about pollution in all its forms grew, various Senate and House of Representatives sub-committees held hearings, and a handful of witnesses made mention of CO2. This is not entirely surprising – after all, in his February 1965 message to Congress, President Johnson (in words surely penned by Revelle) had stated
“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.”
Meanwhile, PSAC was asked to create a report on “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment”.
“Restoring the Quality of the Environment”
The report, which you can read here begins, sensibly enough, with a definition.
“Environmental pollution is the unfavorable alteration of our surroundings, wholly or largely as a by-product of man’s actions, through direct or indirect effects of changes in energy patterns, radiation levels, chemical and physical constitution and abundances of organisms. These changes may affect man directly, or through his supplies of water and of agricultural and other biological products, his physical objects or possessions, or his opportunities for recreation and appreciation of nature.”
(PSAC 1965)
In a clear sentence that would not be published today without invocation of the magic properties of “technology,” the authors argue that “the production of pollutants and an increasing need for pollution management are an inevitable concomitant of a technological society with a high standard of living.”
The report covers – among other issues – soil contamination, sewage and agricultural waste.
On page 9 (and this is the complete quote) readers are told.
CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF POLLUTION
Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO2 in our atmosphere than at present. This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable though local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.
That is it for the body of the report as far as carbon dioxide build-up is concerned.
Among the key recommendations that the report made was that taxes should be imposed on polluting activities.
However, there were a series of annexes. In the carbon dioxide one, authored in the main by Revelle, the problem is succinctly outlined.
“The carbon in every barrel of oil and every lump of coal, as well as in every block of limestone, was once present in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide…. Within a few short centuries, we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years.”
The report flags two questions of particular import –
(1) What will the total quantity of CO2 injected into the atmosphere (but only partly retained there) be at different future times?
(2) What would be the total amount of CO2 injected into the air if all recoverable reserves of fossil fuels were consumed? At present rates of expansion in fossil fuel consumption this condition could be approached within the next 150 years.”
Revelle and colleagues admit that the first question is hard to answer, given that assumptions must be made about the amount of fossil fuels that will be used. They show their working to arrive at a figure of somewhere between 14 and 30 percent.
After flagging research being conducted about what the implications of carbon dioxide might be for the Earth’s temperature by Manabe and Weatherald (their pivotal paper would not appear until 1967) the report turns to possible impacts.
They flag
the “Melting of the Antarctic ice cap” (something well underway)
Rise of sea level.-”The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years, 40 feet per century. This is a hundred times greater than present worldwide rates of sea level change.”
Warming of sea water.
Increased acidity of fresh waters.
Increase in photosynthesis.
Revelle was not above echoing his earlier paper with Hans Seuss in 1957, in which they had suggested that mankind was engaged in an unwitting vast experiment.
“Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. The CO2 produced by this combustion is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it remains there. The estimated recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are sufficient to produce nearly a 200% increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.”
Perhaps the most startling element of the annex is an early proposal of solar radiation management. Revelle and his co-panellists noted that a
“change in the radiation balance in the opposite direction to that which might result from the increase of atmospheric CO2 could be produced by raising the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth. Such a change in albedo could be brought about, for example by spreading very small reflecting particles over large oceanic areas. The particles should be sufficiently buoyant so that they will remain close to the sea surface and they should have a high reflectivity, so that even a partial covering of the surface would be adequate to produce a marked change in the amount of reflected sunlight. Rough estimates indicate that enough particles partially to cover a square mile could be produced for perhaps one hundred dollars. Thus a 1 % change in reflectivity might be brought about for about 500 million dollars a year, particularly if the reflecting particles were spread in low latitudes, where the incoming radiation is concentrated. Considering the extraordinary economic and human importance of climate, costs of this magnitude do not seem excessive.”
How was it reported and what were its consequences
Short term
There are two immediate consequences, around newspaper coverage and also industry awareness.
Newspaper coverage was extensive. The Forum (of Fargo, North Dakota) ran a front page story on Sunday November 7, with the headline “LBJ Panel urges Tax on Pollution and Junked Autos”. The Washington Post editorialised in a similar fashion.
On November 12, The Press Tribune or Roseville California ran an editorial under the unambiguous title “Utter Disaster Near at Hand?” It began
“Very recently, we’ve driven on the freeway systems in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and we wonder if the day of utter disaster isn’t near at hand….”
Then, to nail home the sense of foreboding
“Meanwhile, it’s not just the city dwellers who need to worry about what’s happening to our air. Some scientists fear that nothing really effective about pollution control will be done until it’s too late and that the human race will be doomed to die of poisoning. Other scientists fear that the amount of carbon dioxide and other combustion products going into the air is enough to create a hot-house effect holding the sun’s heat next to the earth, raising the average temperature and causing the polar ice caps to melt. This could raise the level of the sea, flood our coastal cities….”
The following week, under the title “Air Pollution is Menacing Earth’s Climate” a journalist called Philip Meyer reported thus
“Man may be changing earth’s climate. If he doesn’t stop: Our children could choke in a world of stifling heat and violent storms.
Polar ice could melt and the oceans rise to swallow up our coastal cities. The cause? Our own acts of air pollution.
This is not idle speculation or science fiction. Warnings have been sounded by responsible scientists in and out of government.
It is a simple projection of two undisputed facts: We are adding fantastic amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; carbon dioxide acts as a heat trap.
(Meyer, P. 1965. Air Pollution is Menacing Earth’s Climate.” The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey), November 17, p.52).
Many other regional papers covered it, at the time, and it had an afterlife.
It served as a “hook” for prominent science writers such as Irving Bengelsdorf of the Los Angeles Times (“Carbon Dioxide Enrichment – A Lot of Contemporary Sun” July 28 1966). P33.
As late as September 1966 it was still being invoked (see for example the Arizona Republic, September 29, “Cars blamed mostly for smog” p1 and 14).
Meanwhile Frank N. Ikard, who had been a Democratic congressman for Texas for ten years, before becoming the President of the American Petroleum Institute, gave a speech at the API’s annual meeting, held just after the release of the PSAC report. The relevant portion of this speech “Meeting the Challenges of 1966” is below.
Longer-term
As Spencer Weart acidly noted in his excellent book “The Discovery of Global Warming” the PSAC report
“put the issue on the official agenda at the highest level – although only as one item on a long list of environmental problems, many of which seemed more pressing. The next step in such matters was typically to ask the National Academy of Sciences to form a committee and issue an authoritative report. In 1966, the Academy duly pronounced on how human activity could influence climate. The experts sedately said there was no cause for dire warnings, but they did believe the CO2 buildup should be watched closely.”
(Weart, 2003, page 44).
The 1966 NAS Weather Modification report also stated that ‘the atmosphere is not a dump of unlimited capacity.’
According to Hart and Victor the PSAC report “seems to have made little substantive impression on policymakers, although NSF Director Leland Haworth did mention the concern in Congressional testimony, and in the introduction to the 1966 NSF annual report.” (Hart and Victor 1993, p.657).
Longer term influence through 1960s
The PSAC report was regularly cited – the CO2 increase of “25 per cent by the year 2000” figure pops up in various newspaper and magazine articles and books. By 1967 there are editorials in journals such as science and when magazines such as Time and Newsweek ran articles about air pollution, carbon dioxide build-up got a mention.
Roger Revelle was teaching at Harvard, and one of the students whom he explained the carbon dioxide issue to was the young Al Gore.
Further scientific work took place, and by the early 1970s the PSAC report was supplanted by publications such as Man’s Impact on Climate.
PSAC was abolished by Richard Nixon in 1973 – he was unhappy that it wasn’t cheerleading his agenda, and upset that a PSAC member spoke publicly against supersonic transport research.
In 1988 the carbon dioxide issue finally “broke through”, and politicians were forced to acknowledge its existence. Smears and anti-science propaganda campaigns, funded by fossil fuel companies, began. In 1992 the US administration of George HW Bush was successful in stripping out targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries from the climate treaty about to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit. Since then there has been three decades of meetings, while billions upon billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are poured into the atmosphere (roughly 70% per annum more than in 1990).
Finally, the penny has dropped for many – that pledges and blandishments about the efficiency of markets are no match for physics.
The carbon dioxide levels in 1965 were approximately 320ppm. Today they stand at 425ppm, and are climbing at 2 to 3ppm each year.
We are in very very deep trouble. The FAFOcene has begun.
Footnotes
The other members of the subcommittee were Wally Broecker – who ten years later would publish the first academic paper to use the term ‘global warming’, Joseph Smagorinsky of the US Weather Bureau and Harmon Craig).
Further Reading
Hart, D. and Victor, D. 1993. Scientific Elites and the Making of US Policy for Climate Change Research, 1957-74. Social Studies of Science, Volume 23, Issue 4
Loetscher Audrey, 2022.0, A History of Unsustainability: The U.S. Government, the Fossil Fuel Industry, and Climate Change ( 1957 -1992)
Wang, Z. 2008. In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America.. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Pp. xix+454. $49.95.
Seventeen years ago, on this day, November 5th, 2008,
On 5 November 2008, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was opening a new building at the London School of Economics. Speaking of the credit crunch, she turned to some of the economists present and said, ‘It’s awful. Why did no one see it coming?’ Journalists, not constrained to be diplomatic, were more forthright in condemning economists. For Anatol Kaletsky, one-time economics editor of the Times, ‘Economists are the guilty men’ (the Times 5 February 2009). The economics editor of the Guardian, Larry Elliott, claimed that ‘as a profession, economics not only has nothing to say about what caused the world to come to the brink of financial collapse … but also a supreme lack of interest’ (the Guardian 1 June 2009). Writing in the same newspaper, Simon Jenkins attributed this failure to the fact that ‘Economists regard it as their duty fearlessly to offer government what it wants to hear. … Don’t rock the boat, says the modern profession, and the indexed pension is secure.’ The whole economics profession, he contended, had ‘suffered a collapse’ (12 November 2008). https://strangematters.coop/frederic-s-lee-profile-part-one
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 386ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that climate change had burst onto public awareness again in 2006. The Queen had lobbied Prime Minister Tony Blair to do more in 2004. And then in late 2008 the Global Financial Crisis had kicked in.
The specific context was that by now everyone was talking about the COP to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, as the last chance to save the earth. But everything was complicated by the banking near death experience and the bail outs…
What I think we can learn from this is that smart questions come from the most unexpected quarters.
What happened next – the Queen kept banging on (well, it’s all relative) about climate change. We’re so screwed.
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.
See also
October 31 2004 report in the Observer that the Queen had lobbied Blair on the Bush administration’s stance on climate.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 316ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The specific context was that the International Geophysical Year had concluded at the end of 1958, and the data was coming in. But Teller already knew about this…
What I think we can learn from this – “we” knew. We were warned. We chose to ignore the warnings.
What happened next – it would take another 29 years – until mid-1988 – before the issue finally broke through.
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.
Eighteen years ago, on this day, November 3rd, 2007, there was a second “Rising Tide Australia” boat blockade of Newcastle Port,
On June 5, 2006, in a Rising Tide Australia action, 70 people used small boats to blockade the port of Newcastle, Australia, which exports 80 million tons of coal each year. The protest aimed to call attention to a planned expansion that would allow the port to export twice that amount.[1] The action was repeated by 100 people on Nov. 3, 2007: at this second action, participants attempted to block ships from entering the port for four hours, but police boats managed to escort three ships into the port. At one point, a police jetski rammed one woman’s kayak, resulting in her hospitalization.[2][3]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that climate change had exploded onto the Australian political scene in September 2006.
The specific context was Rising Tide folks were willing to put their bodies on the line.
“I felt then, and I still believe today, that this was one of the great moments of the ’60s, a moment of communal self-awareness and courage and initiative and growth. But it was a moment of collective failure and pathetic inadequacy as well. Our ritual, in order to strengthen us for the struggle, assured us that we possessed the power to overcome the destructive forces we faced—that we could be, to use another phrase of Mailer’s, “revolutionary alchemists.” And yet, alas, the more seriously we took our confrontation with these demonic powers, the more futile and hollow we were bound to feel—for we knew, after all, that our magic could not work. Even as we closed in on the Pentagon, we knew that computers were being programmed and orders given inside, and bombs were being dropped a half a world away, and people were being killed, and we had no power to stop it. For an hour or so, thousands of us played running games with soldiers and police, trying to outflank them or break through their lines, to make it up the stairs to the building’s front door. (Many succeeded—they would get beaten up savagely later that night—but many more failed, including me: I got teargassed, along with a few hundred other people, and we all tumbled and got pushed down a hill.) Soon it was cold and dark, and the Pentagon became an enormous solid implacable malevolent mass slumbering above and around us, and we stopped running and threw draft cards into piles, and lit them to start small bonfires. And gathered around, still shaky and oddly stoned from the gas, and tried to come to terms with what we had done. We had faced up to some of the black terrors of the night, and called them by their real name; and our deed, like our campfire, had brought us a little light and warmth; but it had done nothing to bring the dawn.”
What happened next – the blockades have continued. So have the exports. So has the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 351ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was climate change (then called “the Greenhouse Effect”) was on the cusp of blowing up as a public policy issue in Australia, thanks to both international events (the Villach meeting and its aftermath, James Hansen’s testimony in 1988) and local factors and efforts (especially the CSIRO/Commission for the Future “Greenhouse Project”).
The specific context was that the big public meetings, linked by satellite (then novel) were to be held very soon.
What I think we can learn from this – the juxtaposition of climate and car adverts? It continues. We can be an asshole species.
What happened next – the meetings were held. The promises were made. The cars kept being sold, bigger and bigger, more and more. The emissions climbed.
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.
Nineteen years ago, on this day, November 2nd, 2006,
Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey says using “shade cloth” over parts of the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland could protect it from the harmful effects of global warming.
Earlier this week, Britain’s Stern report said climate change could cause a global economic downturn and bleach the reef.
Ms Bailey says the shade cloth idea came from a scientist who found that coral in natural shade was healthier than that in direct sunlight.
“One part of the reef the coral had vibrant colours and another part of the reef the colours weren’t as vibrant, and he was trying to find the scientific reason for this,” she said.
“And [he] discovered upon coming up to the surface, that that part of the reef that had vibrant colours was actually being given natural shade.”
One of the suggestions is to attach the shade cloth to pontoons, which is an idea Ms Bailey says is worth considering if it will help protect the reef.
“We’re very concerned because this is a $5.8 billion tourist industry on the reef, employing 33,000 people,” she said.
“So obviously we’re tackling this problem from both ends – the cause of the problem and also trying to find practical ways to mitigate the problem.”
November 2, 2006 Fran Bailey shade cloth and Great Barrier Reef
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 382ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the Howard government had, from 1996, done everything it could to slow domestic and international action on climate change.
The specific context was that in September 1996 the climate issue had broken through into public consciousness in Australia, and questions were being asked. Also, as per the article, the Stern Review had been published.
What I think we can learn from this – hairless murder apes have murdered the biosphere.
What happened next – the Reef keeps bleaching. And bleaching. Oh Gaia, what have we done?
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.
Fifty-nine years ago, on this day, November 2nd, 1966, Manabe and Weatherald’s pivotal paper was submitted
“According to our estimate, a doubling of the CO2 content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2C. Our model does not have the extreme sensitivity of atmospheric temperature to changes of CO2 content which was adduced by Möller.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 321ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was questions of what would happen if carbon dioxide levels went up dramatically (the Keeling Curve was relatively flat back then, but simple extrapolation suggested trouble) was mostly of scientific interest at the time.
The specific context was the carbon dioxide issue had received a boost in 1965 with Lyndon Johnson’s message to Congress about pollution, and a report at the end of the year by the President’s Science Advisory Committee (see November 7th).
What I think we can learn from this – the scientists were looking into it…
What happened next – it got published, obvs. And their 1975 paper was an even bigger deal…
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.
Soon after I arrived on 1st October, I became impressed that the experimental forecasts for aircraft crossing the Atlantic were systematically more accurate than traditional forecasts based on extrapolation of time sequences of hand-drawn charts. Accordingly I decided, against the advice of some senior colleagues, who favoured a longer trial period that the numerical forecasts would be issued routinely twice a day from Monday, 2nd November 1965. The Press and TV were invited to witness this landmark in the history of the Met Office and gave it wide coverage. Fortunately the first forecast was excellent and ushered in a new era in which weather forecasts were to become objective exercises in mathematical physics replacing the empirical methods that, for more than a century, had depended on the skill and experience of the individual human forecaster.
Mason memoir
and
By carefully stage-managing the public performance of a new, computer-driven meteorology, new claims of objectivity could be made, with public credibility and social authority at stake.37 Thus, on the same day as the inauguration of numerical forecasts, Mason presided over the Office’s first-ever press conference, where he proclaimed a new dawn in weather forecasting – a move which his deputy, A.C. Best, thought to be a “great risk” for the office’s reputation.38 While much of the credibility economy which Shapin describes concerns scientific claims where virtual witnesses have no direct access themselves to the phenomena in question, the success and credibility of weather forecasting is easily adjudicated on by anybody who cares to look out of the window. Standing before more than 100 journalists and cameramen from the BBC, national newspapers and the technical press, Mason marked the introduction of numerical weather forecasting in the UK with great confidence: “Today is a landmark in the history of forecasting in the Office”, he declared, “because this afternoon you will see the production of our first routine numerical weather forecast by the computer”.39 Britain, he continued in his first push to build social authority in the Meteorological Office, could now look forward to increasingly accurate weather forecasts underpinned by modern, objective technologies. As the press gallery watched the Meteorological Office’s line printer slowly produce the UK’s first routine numerical forecasting chart, Mason patiently answered questions for nearly an hour and then distributed souvenir copies of the chart to all attendees. The formalities over, the press gallery toured the Central Forecasting Office at Bracknell and chatted over coffee with senior members of Mason’s staff.
2017 Maartin-Nielsen –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 320ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was the Met Office had not delivered warnings about a particular cold winter in 1962, and had copped some flak for that, because US meteorologists had warned about it.
The specific context was that new boss, John Mason wanted to move things along, and take advantage of new computers etc.
What I think we can learn from this – the forecasts we now accept as normal required a hell of a lot of work, and some institutional risk-taking.
What happened next
Mason was keen to move things along (the man was dynamic but backed the wrong horse on carbon dioxide and never changed course). He was a major block on “early” action (e.g. at the First World Climate Conference).
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.
