Fifty six years ago, on this day, September 19th, 1970, the Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Magazine carried a story about where the climate might be going…
“By putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, he may cause the world to grow warmer.” (then again, all the dust might blot out the Sun, cause an Ice Age).
Brian O’Brien on Fate of the world… to freeze or drown? Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Magazine
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 in 1969 Australia had become woken up in a big way to the question of global environmental damage, global environmental change. And prominent among that was what would happen to weather.
The specific context was Brian O’Brien delivering a not bad summation of current thinking that we might see an ice age or we might see heating and with heating the melting of ice caps and drowning.
What I think we can learn from this is that the idea of carbon dioxide build-up as a threat to the atmosphere and to civilization was quite widely spread by 1970. You did not need to be reading arcane scientific journals.
What happened next is hilarious. Brian O’Brien became an energetic climate denier in the late 1980s and only died quite recently. I don’t know if he changed his tune, and nor do I care. He was a silly old man with relevant deprivation syndrome,
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:
September 19 1969 – ABC Radio warns listeners about carbon dioxide
September 19, 1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists
September 19, 1997 – John Howard condemns the South Pacific to hell. Again.
September 19, 1998 – Public Health Association calls for “life-saving green taxes”