Forty six years ago, on this day, February 5 1980 the UK Met Office was beavering away at the carbon dioxide problem.
Met Office meeting abt C02 BJ dash 336 dash 2 (138).JPG 5/2/1980 PR Rowntree Summary of conclusions reached during discussion of CO2 experiments.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Met Office had been aware of the idea of carbon dioxide build-up as a long-term warming influence since 1953 at the absolute latest (and in fact, all the way back to Arrhenius in 1895).
The specific context was that American scientists and politicians had been warming (see what I did there?) to the issue for a while. The Met Office had, very reluctantly (thanks to its boss, John Mason) started scientific work in 1976, putting one of their brightest young research scientists on the case, with others.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have known about this problem for a very very long time.
What happened next: Once Mason retired and was replaced by John Houghton, in 1983, the Met Office began to play a stronger and more useful role in investigating climate change, alongside the UEA Climatic Research Unit.
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: