Sixty seven years ago, on this day, May 13th, 1957, English steam engineer Guy Callendar, who had been pointing to carbon dioxide build-up as an explanation for increased global temperatures since the late 1930s, wrote to Gilbert Plass, who in 1953 had brought the problem to global attention (see my Conversation piece here).
How easy it is to criticise and how difficult to produce constructive theories of climate change! and ““A point of special interest is the large discrepancies between the apparent increase of atmospheric CO2 given by the air-CO2 observations . . . and the predicted increase derived from the size of the exchange reservoirs as now revealed by radio carbon measurements.”
Letter from Callendar to Plass 13 May 1957 (Fleming, 2007: chapter 5)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Guy Callendar had been banging on about climate change and carbon dioxide buildup since 1938. And Plass had been doing the same since 1953. The two were corresponding and Callendar made a very good point about how the more conventional/mainstream/whatever people were resentful of an outsider committing that terrible crime of being right and proving the experts to be wrong.
What we learn is that sometimes the experts are wrong. Other times they’re right but sometimes they are wrong. Don’t expect them to applaud you.
What happened next Callendar had another great piece in 1960 – see here. He died in 1964. Plass kept writing about climate for a few more years but eventually moved on to other things. And the emissions kept climbing.
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
Fleming, J. 2009 The Callendar Effect – The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964), The Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of: The Life … of Climate Change
Also on this day:
May 13, 1983 – idiots get their retaliation in first…
May 13, 1991 – UK Energy minister fanboys nuclear as climate solution. Obvs.
May 13, 1992 – Australian business predicts economic armageddon if any greenhouse gas cuts made