Seventy years ago, on this day, July 11st, 1956,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 314ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. 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 in May 1953, Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass, building on the work of Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar, had catalyzed the world (well, a few scientists) into wondering and working on the question of carbon dioxide build-up.
Roger Revelle was already a Big Fish by this time, and was in the process of getting serious money out of the US government for the International Geophysical Year.
The specific context was the Australians were an integral part of the IGY. I suspect someone in the IGY press team planted this story with the journo, or gave him access.
What I think we can learn from this – by 1956, carbon dioxide stories were appearing in the Australian press
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What happened next. The IGY happened from 1957 to the end of 1958. Huge amounts of data were gathered.
Through the 1960s and 1970s Revelle would return to the theme of carbon dioxide build-up, but as one of the ‘cautious’ commentators (too cautious, we now know).
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On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
July 26, 1967 – Allen Ginsberg tells Gary Snyder it’s “a general lemming situation”
July 26, 1977 – Australians warned about cities being flooded #CanberraTimes
July 26, 1988, – Australian uranium sellers foresee boom times…
July 26, 2006 – Costello versus wind farms
July 26, 2008 – Reggae festival for climate protection in New York