On this day, October 24 in 1967, folks at a Public Health conference in Miami Beach… got to hear a warning about climate change, from Philip Abelson Abelson was a big fish, the editor of Science. His list of man-made environmental threats was mostly “local” stuff- DDT, smog etc. But then there is this.
“Each year, tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere and the amount is increasing. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is growing. By the year 2000, an increase of 25 per cent is probable.(7) Such a change would not have much direct effect on human beings, but it might have substantial indirect effects. Many geophysicists believe that such an increase would affect the world’s temperature by what is called a greenhouse effect. The extra carbon dioxide would slow heat loss from the earth, resulting in warmer climates and possibly the melting of polar ice. “
Abelson paper was presented before a Special Session of the American Public Health Association at the Ninety-Fifth Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., October 24, 1967. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.58.11.2043
(7) Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel. President’s Advisory Committee. Washington, D. C.: The White House (Nov.), 1965, p. 120.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 319.39ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
People were beginning to clock to all the different ways we were screwing ourselves. Abelson’s speech was a summary of the state of the art, and included the Revelle warning in the PSAC publication of two years previously.
Why this matters.
It is via events like this that news percolated out…
What happened next?
By late 1968, various scientific work was more seriously underway, and led to the crucial July 1970 Study of Man’s Influence on Climate workshop in Williamstown, Massachusetts.