Sixty five years ago, on this day, March 11th, 1959, in the aftermath of the International Geophysical Year…
A general warming up of Arctic waters and a receding of glaciers means that the average sea level of the world is rising. In the South of England this rise will be 6in in the next 100 years. This will necessitate, said Dr. D.C. Martin, assistant secretary of the Royal Society, higher sea walls to protect highly populated industrial areas below the level of ordinary spring tides. He was speaking at the Royal Society of Arts in London yesterday on “Some achievements of the International Geophysical Year.”
March 11 1959 – Smith,A. (1959) Warmer Arctic Raising World’s Sea Level. Telegraph and Morning Post, March 12, p.15
p.415-6 – Martin did NOT link it explicitly to c02 buildup
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 316ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the International Geophysical Year, which lasted 18 months, had ended in December 1958, three months earlier. There were masses of data to be crunched. It seemed fairly clear that the world was indeed warming, which had been noted for a few decades really, and that therefore, a certain amount of polar ice would indeed melt. This was accepted without necessarily being ascribed to carbon dioxide. This is an important point. At that point people saw other contenders for the causative agent for this warming – orbital wobbles the activity of the Sun, something else. DC Martin had been up to his neck in the BBC television programme The Restless Sphere. (Interesting guy. Further action, look at the Royal Society archives for that period.)
What I think we can learn from this
Symptoms and causes are not self-evident. You shouldn’t mistake acceptance of the existence of symptoms as a consensus around what only later is revealed to be the accurate diagnosis.
What happened next The Royal Society got more involved in the meteorology stuff. especially by the end of the 1960s.
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.
Also on this day:
March 11, 1969 – NASA explains need to monitor C02 build-up to politicians
March 11, 1989 – warm words at The Hague, where the climate criminals should be sent…