Fifty seven years ago, on this day, January 27th 1967,
Rothschild’s response was to insist that Lovelock refrain from discussing the topic—“the weather getting colder, and the cause possibly being fossil fuel combustion products in the atmosphere”—with “non-Shell people.”14 He encouraged Lovelock to continue his visits to NCAR in order to “monitor the work [being] done” on the issue.
14. Rothschild, letter to Lovelock, 27 Jan. 1967, box 76, part 3, Archive Collection of Professor James Lovelock.
This is quoted in Leah Aronowsky’s excellent paper (see references below).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Lovelock had written this paper with the Shell people, and had been been told to shut up. Partly presumably for fear of alarming the savages, and getting in the way of I didn’t know further coal and oil exploration?
What happened next? Lovelock as far as I know, did keep schtum. But then, Victor Rothschild, boss of science for Shell, was his friend…
Lovelock, J. 2000. Homage to Gaia.
That was good question. When did Lovelock start going public? And this is the kind of thing you can use to generate questions for further study.
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.
References
Aronowsky, L. (2021). Gas guzzling Gaia, or: a prehistory of climate change denialism. Critical Inquiry, 47(2), 306-327
Also on this day:
January 27, 1989 – UN General Assembly starts talking #climate
January 27, 1986 – Engineers try to stop NASA launching the (doomed) Challenger Space Shuttle