Forty seven years ago, on this day, June 9th, 1979, the Grey Lady made herself useful…
Increase of Carbon Dioxide in Air Alarms Scientists – The New York Times
- By Philip Shabecoff; Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, June 8 — It is invisible, odorless and poses no immediate threat to human health. Government policies to combat air pollution ignore it completely: But the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is arousing growing alarm among scientists and environmentalists and could impede this country’s efforts to solve its energy problems.
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a gas released by the burning of fossil fuels. Burning oil produces carbon dioxide, and burning coal produces even more. Unlike other gases released into the air by combustion, such as sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide, or dust particles, it does not make people sick or reduce visibility.
The Government, therefore, has not regarded carbon dioxide as a pollutant and, aside from one small research operation in the Department of Energy, has not paid any attention to it.
Concerned for 20 Years
But that research office recently issued an interim report that stated, “It is the sense of the scientific community that carbon dioxide from unrestrained combustion of fossil fuels is potentially the most important environmental issue facing mankind.”
Scientists have been concerned with the increasing carbon dioxide in the air for the last 20 years. But in the absence of any hard evidence about the consequences of its presence, the issue was more for speculation and the Sunday supplements than for Governmental action.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 336ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 432ppm. 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 for this was that the New York Times had been reporting intermittently carbon dioxide buildup since 1953 under then reporter Waldemar Kaempfert, and had picked up the wire service report in 1955 of the GE scientist John Hutton giving testimony. This reporter, Walter Sullivan, was pretty famous. He’d written a book about the International Geophysical Year and was fully aware of carbon dioxide build up. In 1972 he had met Stephen Schneider, and presumably the two had stayed in touch. And here we are.
The specific context was that by this stage, the Department of Energy, I think, from when it was still called the ERDA had been holding conferences and to a lesser extent, releasing reports about carbon dioxide build up. (That reluctance to release reports had been the final spur for William Barbat, btw.)
What I think we can learn is this: Really by the late 1970s this issue of CO2 build up was not controversial in that people admitted it was happening and that it could cause problems. There wasn’t really, yet an active, coherent denialist lobby.
What happened next: In August of 1981 Sullivan wrote up a study led by James Hansen, it was front page news in the New York Times, and it had two interesting consequences. One is that the New York Times editorialised on CO2 to build up, and the other that Hansen found his funding withdrawn for a grant that had already been issued. That was how the Reagan administration did things.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 9, 1966 – Lovelock’s report
June 9, 1967 – New York Times reports on temperature drop…
June 9, 1989 – the Australian Labor Party versus the unions versus the planet #climate