The fourth issue of the CO2 Newsletter, published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982 is live. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.
The eight page issue has a front page story on potential temperature increases we could expect, taken from Wally Broecker’s pivotal August 1975 article in Science “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?“
There’s also an editorial, feedback from readers (including Congressman George Brown), excerpts from recent reports and a concluding article “What would be needed to bring the C02 buildup to a halt”
Barbat was convinced that only a very rapid and widescale roll-out of nuclear energy could help us avoid the worst. Barbat’s editorial begins
The only feasible method for halting the CO2 buildup soon – while still permitting large scale mechanization – would place nuclear energy in the dominant role. Whether civilization will be allowed to use nuclear energy on a sufficiently large scale depends on nuclear energy overcoming its military legacy and on an informed public being allowed to make energy decisions rather than socioeconomic lobbying groups.
The impetus for the scientific pursuit of nuclear energy early in this century was clearly the desire to find a substitute for the chemical energy of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons were developed first because a succession of scientific breakthroughs happened to culminate in the discovery of the fission chain reaction on the eve of World War II.
