Forty nine years ago, on this day, August 4th, 1977,
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina on August 4-5, 1977 for “Workshop on Anticipated Plant Responses to Global Carbon Dioxide Enrichment”…. Five years later, on May 23-28, 1982, a similar “International Conference on Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Plant Productivity” was held in Athens, Georgia.
(Idso, 1982: 72- 73)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 333ppm. As of 2026, 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 from the mid 70s conferences, especially in the US and Europe, about carbon dioxide build up and the social, economic, biological, military implications it was becoming a known fixture on the circuit, the carousel.
The specific context was that the biologists have been banging on about CO2 build up for a long time. See, for example, 1948 Evelyn Hutchinson at the AAAS, and Lamont Cole in the 60s, and so on and so on.
What I think we can learn from this So this is a point I make regularly; You can’t just look at what the climatologists and meteorologists are saying. You also have to look at the ecologists and biologists, George Woodwell, for example.
What happened next There was another conference in 1980 andSherwood Idso wrote a truly demented article that somehow got published in Science. And this came up in the 1980 hearings, [insert quote from co2 newsletter], and Idso kept on being a nut job denialist, unable to accept that he had been wrong, so just doubled down and kept being wrong (see also Reid Bryson) until he died.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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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:
August 4, 1978 – “A Terminal Mesozoic ‘Greenhouse’: Lessons from the Past”
August 4, 1980 – “Towards a Troubled 21st Century” reports Time Magazine
August 4, 1988 – Hawke Cabinet asks for “what can we do?” report on climate.
August 4, 2004 – Australian farmers nervous about climate change. Ignored