Sixty four years ago, on this day, October 2nd, 1961,
beginning of UNESCO conference – “Rome (October 2-7 1961), arranged by UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization, to restrict the interest to climatic variations which have occurred since the latest glaciation, with particular attention to the period of the meteorological record. The reason behind this decision was no doubt the wish to talk about something which might conceivably have relevance to the nature and trends of the arid lands of to-day–relevance on the scale of economic planning, say, for a hundred years. (Sutcliffe, Nature No. 4808 December 23, 1139-40.”
And there was discussion of carbon dioxide build-up, as per this published in the Derry Standard.
“These warm years, with their economic implications, have led to a number of theories, notably one that man is changing the weather by burning fossil fuels and releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately for the theoreticians, this rising temperature curve levelled off around 1940 and has now dipped.”
Behrman, D. 1961. Science Notes. The Derry Standard, November 21, p7
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 317ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that the International Geophysical year had got everyone thinking about the planet (its purpose) and what humans might be doing/might be able to do (make the deserts bloom etc). There had even been a UN resolution on weather modification and space.
The specific context was that some were beginning to talk about Carbon Dioxide – there had been the New York Academy of Science meeting in January 1961.
What I think we can learn from this is that we used to believe we could make a better world…
What happened next – Ritchie-Calder got more and more interested in carbon dioxide. He tried to alert people in 1963, and then seems to have put it on the backburner for a few years, before launching a second campaign in 1968…
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:
October 2, 1927/64 – Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar die.
October 2, 1942 – Spaceflight!!
October 2, 2014 – Low emission technologies on their way, says Minerals Council of Australia