Forty five years ago, on this day, July 11st, 1981,
Schlesinger – Invited speaker and panel participant on the issue “Carbon dioxide proliferation: Will the polar icecaps melt?” at the Special Session of the IEEE Power Engineering Society 1981 Summer Meeting, Portland, OR, 28 July https://www.atmos.illinois.edu/~schlesin/cv.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was xxxppm. 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 from the early 1950s, when Gilbert Plass (building on the work of Arrhenius and Callendar) pointed out that burning fossil fuels would lead to sea-level rise etc, scientists (many American, but also other nations) had been beavering away. By the mid-late 1970s, it was all become clear enough for scientists to be going puce.
The specific context was the first World Climate Conference had happened in Geneva, and a flurry of meetings and conferences was also taking place. Those in the know, knew.
What I think we can learn from this – we can’t say we were not warned.
What happened next – more emissions, higher concentrations. We slipped into the Fafocene without even really understanding it.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
See also John Mercer’s landmark 1978 article in Nature.
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 28, 1970 – American journalist warns about melting the icecaps…
July 28, 1990 – science writer John Gribbin explains why caution is wrong on global warming
July 28, 1990 – American #climate denial comes to London