Fifty six years ago, on this day, August 17th, 1970, scientist Charles Munro-Watson had a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald: “one does not know the long-term ecological effects of the addition of carbon dioxide to our atmosphere.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. 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 environmental issues and questions over energy production, especially, had become quite live in the late 60s, even before the first oil shock of 1973. Questions around carbon dioxide build up were also being asked. And here we see a letter from a prominent Australian scientist of the time to the Australian newspaper back when it was still right wing and conservative, but before it totally jumped the shark.
Actually, jumping the shark is the wrong usage, because it applied to Happy Days, which had moments of grace and usefulness, which I don’t really think the Australian ever had.
What I think we can learn from this is that Munro was a mensch. Munro also was bezzies with Stuart Bailey, a physicist at University of Sydney, who knew all about carbon dioxide build up, and as the author of the Frontiers in Science cartoons, had been banging on about it in 1965, 1968-69 and so forth.
What happened next Munro remained very active on questions around what sources of energy Australia should be investigating and exploiting, and he was very much in favour of renewables, especially solar. He died in 1991.
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.
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Also on this day:
August 17, 1982 – Crispin Tickell sounds the alarm bell
August 17, 1988 – “The Greening of Congress
August 17, 1989 – Space shields to save the earth…
August 17, 1997 – Paper etc industries want “greenhouse minister”
August 17, 1998 – Emissions Trading considered (again)
August 17, 2002 – Pacific states urge Australia to sign Kyoto Protocol