Forty five years ago, on this day, December 10th, 1980, the National Coal Board’s top science bod says what he thinks…
10 December 1980 lecture THE FUTURE FOR COAL AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 339ppm. 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 carbon dioxide build-up as a problem was by now almost 30 years old. There had been waves of concern, each had receded leaving, well, not very much.
The specific context was that Gibson had been up to his neck for the last few years in various investigations of what to do about C02 build-up, if anything could in fact be done.
In 1979 Margaret Thatcher, as the new Prime Minister had met her chief scientific advisor. He tried to get her interested/concerned and her retort was “you want me to worry about the weather?”
What I think we can learn from this – the warnings were there. They were largely ignored.
What happened next – the problem would not become an issue until 1988…
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.
References
Xxx
Also on this day:
December 10, 1978 – Academic workshop on “Climate/Society Interface” begins in Toronto…
December 10, 1985 – Carl Sagan testified to US Senators on #climate danger
December 10, 1991 – denialist hosted by the “Tasman Institute” – All Our Yesterdays