Seventy three years ago, on this day, February 27, 1953, Canadian scientist Gilbert Plass gives a presentation at Simon Newcomb Astronomical Society –
Henry, F. 1953. Question of Eras, Tropical or Glacial. Baltimore Sun, March 1, p71
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 312ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that in the late 19th century, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had suggested that carbon dioxide buildup would eventually warm the planet. He didn’t think this was a bad thing, and he thought it would take 1000s of years or hundreds at least.
Arrhenius’ predictions had been challenged.
In 1938 a British steam engineer called Guy Callendar, had moved the dial a little bit, perhaps, and had said that the warming was indeed already happening. This was mostly ignored in the UK, but some Americans were getting interested.
The specific context was that so were Canadians. Gilbert Plass was originally Canadian, and he had been working on this, and was going to be speaking at the American Geophysical Union meeting in May.
And here he is, about two months beforehand, testing out his presentation on a smaller audience, a less scientifically robust one
What I think we can learn from this is that Plass didn’t just turn up on the fourth of May cold. He had tested out his argument and his presentation beforehand, which I think is kind of interesting, but I would because I’m the guy who has discovered this, and as anyone knows, who rustles around a lot in archives, just because you found something, doesn’t mean it’s important or significant. There is not a one to one relationship between the amount of effort you’ve expended and the importance of what you found.
What happened next: Plass gave his speech at the AGU which went around the world. Plass released more scientific studies and also something in American Scientist and Scientific American in 1959. Pllass was there in 1963 at the Conservation Foundation’s meeting in New York, and that was about it for Plass. He went on to other things; he’d said what he had to say. The emissions kept climbing. Concentrations kept climbing. You know, the rest…
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.
Forty seven years ago, on this day, February 20, 1979 the following was published –
“An Assessment of the Possible Future Climatic Impact of Carbon Dioxide Increases Based on a Coupled One-Dimensional Atmospheric-Oceanic Model” Hunt and Wells
A radiative-convective equilibrium model of the atmosphere has been coupled with a mixed layer model of the ocean to investigate the response of this one-dimensional system to increasing carbon dioxide amounts in the atmosphere. For global mean conditions a surface temperature rise of about 2°K was obtained for a doubling of the carbon dioxide amount, in reasonable agreement with the commonly accepted results of Manabe and Wetherald. This temperature rise was essentially invariant with season and indicates that including a shallow (300 m) ocean slab in this problem does not basically alter previous assessments. While the mixed layer depth of the ocean was only very slightly changed by the temperature increase, which extended throughout the depth of the mixed layer, the impact of this increase on the overall behavior of the ocean warrants further study. A calculation was also made of the temporal variation of the sea surface temperature for three possible carbon dioxide growth rates starting from an initial carbon dioxide content of 300 ppm. This indicated that the thermal inertia of the slab ocean provides a time lag of 8 years in the sea surface temperature response compared to a land situation. This is not considered to be of great significance as regards the likely future climatic impact of carbon dioxide increase.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was the idea that carbon dioxide build-up could warm the planet goes back to Arrhenius in 1895. The idea got nudged forward by Guy Callendar in 1938 onwards, and then pushed to the next level by Gilbert Plass in 1953.
The specific context was that by the late 1970s, it was broadly agreed among the relevant scientific community that there was serious trouble ahead, and this is laid out in painstaking and painful detail in William Barbat’s CO2 Newsletter, which I am releasing through the course of 2026.
What I think we can learn from this is that information on its own, the truth on its own, will not set you free.
What happened next: More studies, more emissions, more concentrations, spasms of protest, but no action worthy of the name to actually bend the emissions curve down, and certainly reducing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 via various so called draw down projects is a complete fucking fantasy.
And I didn’t have kids because the second half of the 21st Century is going to make the first half of the 20th look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding. But I’m standing here narrating this, looking at sparrows and finches and things and I guess it’s my job just to enjoy it for as long as I can. I suppose.
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.
The climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
Hansen, J. 2009. Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them. Guardian, 15 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that we have known since the fifties that putting enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was going to have consequences. We didn’t know how big, how soon, but by the late 1970s, that was becoming clear…
The specific context was that the UK government was busy bullshitting about allowing the building of new “carbon-capture-ready” coal-fired power stations. For fuck’s sake.
What I think we can learn from this is that scientists can tell the truth all they like. The truth, on its own, will not – in fact – set you free, no matter what St John wants you to believe.
What happened next: Hansen kept writing and sciencing. The politicians kept ignoring him and thousands of other scientists. So did, for the most part, the publics of the Western democracies.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, February 14th, 1990,
“The command sequence was then compiled and sent to Voyager 1, with the images taken at 04:48 GMT on February 14, 1990.[19] At that time, the distance between the spacecraft and Earth was 40.47 astronomical units (6,055 million kilometers, 3,762 million miles).[20]”
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Voyager had been launched years earlier, and they turned round and looked at the earth and took the photo. There’s a nice story about how it got found, just like one pixel.
What I think we can learn from this is that beautiful images are sometimes found by accident. See also Earthrise in 1968 as pushed for by Stewart Brand.
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.
FRED Prata was flicking through some satellite pictures one day when he saw a “funny looking cloud”. It got him thinking. A few years later, that train of thought produced a piece of technology worth tens of millions of dollars — possibly hundreds of millions — every year to the international airline industry.
Chandler, J. 2006. Discarded scientists fail to grasp CSIRO logic. The Age, 11 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that since the permanent invasion in 1788 Australia has always been a set of settler colonies keen to exploit natural resources for short term gain. Great god development and all that… this required knowledge, science (production and, inevitably, impact science). The CSIRO was born.
The specific context was that CSIRO scientists had been at the forefront of investigating climate change impacts, from the early 1970s onwards. By the 2000s, they were under the cosh.
What I think we can learn from this is that the distinction between production science and impact science is crucial, and under-understood. And that our lords and masters are basically morons who kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
What happened next: The attacks on scientists producing inconvenient truths have continued, regardless of the party in charge. Because the parties are there to keep the “show” (or relentless extraction and accumulation) on the road.
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.
Michiel van den Broeke, Professor of Polar Meteorology at Utrecht University (longer bio at end of post) very kindly agreed to read William Barbat’s article “Glacier melt: How soon? How fast?” and explain what Barbat got right (and wrong) and where the science has gone in the almost 50 years since then. It’s a brilliant (imo) piece, and I hope you learn as much as I did. Please do share it, comment on it.
Professor van den Broeke
In the March 1980 edition of the CO2 NEWSLETTER, William Barbat reported about the threat of melting ice sheets and the rapid, multi-metre sea level rise that could ensue. Undoubtedly, Barbat had been triggered by the 1978 scientific publication of British glaciologist John Mercer (1922-1987), then employed at (what would later become) the Byrd Polar Research Centre of Ohio State University (Mercer, 1978). In his Nature article: “West Antarctic ice sheet and CO2greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster“, Mercer pointed out that the increase in CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels would result in strong Antarctic warming, potentially leading to the disintegration of the large Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves. In the absence of their buttressing effect, the West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse, raising global sea levels by several metres.
Today’s cryospheric research relies heavily on three complementary techniques: in situ observations, satellite observations and numerical models. In situ observations are often scattered in space, but to their credit have relatively long time series (typically decades in the Polar Regions), indispensable for trend detection. They moreover provide ground truth for satellites and serve to evaluate/calibrate climate and ice sheet models. Satellites, on the other hand, with their limited mission lifetime of typically 5-10 years, produce short time series, but they have the advantage of near-complete spatial coverage, filling in the spatial gaps left by the in situ observations. Numerical models, once evaluated and/or calibrated with the in situ and remotely sensed observations, can help us isolating the physical processes at work and, when they perform satisfactorily, make credible future projections.
When Mercer published his study almost 50 years ago, he had to make do with very limited observations and crude models. Although the density of in situ observations in the polar regions increased sharply after the 1957/58 International Geophysical Year (IGY, also referred to as the Third International Polar Year), observations remained very scarce notably in the ice sheet interiors. While some satellites for earth observation, notably Landsat, were available at that time, time series were less than a decade long. For Earth’s cryosphere, the satellite era started in earnest more than a decade later, with the launch of European Space Agency‘s radar-equipped ERS-1 in 1991. Finally, in the late 1970’s, climate and ice sheet models were still in their infancy; the model projections of future Antarctic warming used in Mercer’s study were from Syukuro Manabe, who in 2021 was co-awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for his pioneering contributions to climate modelling.
In spite of this, both Mercer’s 1978 Nature paper and William Barbat’s 1980 report in the CO2NEWSLETTER highlight the remarkable body of knowledge on the world’s ice sheets that had been gathered. Their reported total volume expressed in sea level rise equivalent of 66 m only deviates by 1% from today’s numbers1. Estimates of sea level stands of 6 m above present during the last interglacial (~125.000 years ago) fall well within the range of current estimates (6 to 9 m) (Dutton et al., 2015). Other remarkably accurate statements concern the approximately 50/50 partitioning of meltwater runoff and iceberg calving as sink terms in the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet and the importance of ice shelf buttressing for grounded ice flow in Antarctica, which decades later was observationally confirmed after the sudden disintegration of Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 (Scambos et al., 2004). Mercer also correctly identified the apparent temperature threshold for the viability of Antarctic ice shelves, later corroborated by the demise of Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves after several decades of strong warming (Morris & Vaughan, 2013; Scambos et al., 2004). Also recently been confirmed is Mercer’s statement that a 5 K atmospheric warming could destabilize parts of the large Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves (Van Wessem et al., 2023).
Inevitably, these early reports also have flaws and large uncertainties, which the authors frankly admit. Lacking direct observations, and realising that around 1980 mass changes of both ice sheets were significantly smaller than they are today (IMBIE, 2018, 2020), not much could be said about the magnitude of mass loss of the ice sheets, let alone the processes that caused them. It would take the launch in 2002 of the satellite pair of the Gravity Anomaly and Climate Experiment (GRACE) before mass loss from both ice sheets was convincingly demonstrated (Velicogna & Wahr, 2005; Velicogna, 2006). GRACE also showed that the recent mass loss in Antarctica is concentrated in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas sectors, and is associated with ice shelf thinning owing to increased ocean melting at their base, rather than weakened buttressing of the Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves. Making projections based on scanty information proved even harder. Mercer’s assumption that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would double in 50 years was too pessimistic: atmospheric CO2 levels increased by 26%, from 337 to 426 parts per million, between 1979 and 2025. As a result, Antarctic warming remains far from the values reported in his paper.
This begs the question: if we were in Mercer’s shoes today, would we do much better in projecting the future of the Earth’s big ice sheets? Based on the latest IPCC report (IPCC, 2021), my take is that the uncertainties are still surprisingly large and not so dissimilar to what they were in 1978. Since then, our knowledge and technical (observational, modelling) capabilities have of course expanded tremendously, but we have also identified numerous new unknowns. The net result is that future ice sheet mass change and associated sea level rise remain highly uncertain, and that we still may be in for unpleasant surprises from nonlinear processes leading to tipping points that are currently not or poorly understood. Given the complex interactions between atmosphere, ocean and ice sheets that straddle several orders of magnitude in temporal and spatial scales, it is clear that this deep uncertainty will not be resolved anytime soon. It thus seems fitting to conclude with the statement made by Mercer in his 1978 paper, which still firmly stands: “…despite the crudities and inadequacies of present techniques for modelling the climatic effects of increasing atmospheric CO2content and the resultant doubts […], we cannot afford to let the atmosphere carry out the experiment before taking action because if the results confirm the prognosis, and we should know one way or the other by the end of the century, it will be too late to remedy the situation…”.
Bibliography
Dutton, A., Carlson, A. E., Long, A. J., Milne, G. A., Clark, P. U., DeConto, R., Horton, B. P., Rahmstorf, S., & Raymo, M. E. (2015). SEA-LEVEL RISE. Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods. Science, 349(6244), aaa4019. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa4019
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.
Morris, E. M., & Vaughan, D. G. (2013). Spatial and Temporal Variation of Surface Temperature on the Antarctic Peninsula And The Limit of Viability of Ice Shelves. In Antarctic Peninsula Climate Variability: Historical and Paleoenvironmental Perspectives (pp. 61-68). https://doi.org/10.1029/AR079p0061
Scambos, T. A., Bohlander, J. A., Shuman, C. A., & Skvarca, P. (2004). Glacier acceleration and thinning after ice shelf collapse in the Larsen B embayment, Antarctica. Geophysical Research Letters, 31(18). https://doi.org/10.1029/2004gl020670
Van Wessem, J. M., Van den Broeke, M. R., Wouters, B., & Lhermitte, S. (2023). Variable temperature thresholds of melt pond formation on Antarctic ice shelves. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01577-1
Velicogna, I. a. J. W. (2006). Measurements of Time-Variable Gravity Show Mass Loss in Antarctica. Science, 311(5768), 1754-1756. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1126/science.1123785
Footnotes
1 Combining radar flight lines of ice thickness with mass conservation provide us with accurate estimates of the sea level equivalent volumes of the ice sheets of Greenland (7.4 m) and Antarctica (57.8 m), (Morlighem et al., 2017; Morlighem et al., 2019).
Michiel van den Broeke (Rotterdam, 1968) has been Professor of Polar Meteorology at Utrecht University since 2008, where he studies the interaction between the climate and the large ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. Between 2016 and 2022, Michiel served as Scientific Director of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), where around 90 people work on developing a fundamental understanding of all components of the climate system.
“On February 10, 2006, the Friday of the week that George Deutsch resigned, Jim spoke at a conference on politics and science, sponsored by the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. (He was added at the last minute on account of his recent notoriety.) IN a talk derived from the Keeling talk, which was now about two months old, he decided to add a brief discussion of tropical storms, because the topic was “especially relevant to this conference.”
See these two pages from Mark Bowen’s Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.
2006 Hansen at conference on science and politics at New School for Social Research (Bowen Censoring Science page 143)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Hansen had been abused, ignored, sidelined in 1989 by the George HW Bush administration, and had basically gone back to the lab (that’s no criticism of the man, btw).
The specific context was that by 2006 the climate issue was heating up again – the Kyoto Protocol had been ratified (thanks, Russia) – so the international negotiations were “back on”, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme was underway, and Al Gore’s film was about to come out. Last summer (2005) Hurricane Katrina had hit New Orleans, with thousands dead.
What I think we can learn from this is that the Bush regime was full of assholes.
What happened next: Hansen started getting arrested at protests about coal plants and pipelines, and has kept on with the science.
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.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, January 28th, 1990.
Another reviewer of the Gribbin book, William Goulding (The Sunday Times, 28 January, 1990), quotes the late climate scientist and climate science communicator Stephen Schneider as saying: “scientific predictions are like ‘trying to gaze into a dirty crystal ball. By taking time to clean the glass you can get a better picture; but at some point it is necessary to decide that the picture is good enough to alert policy makers and the general public to the hazards ahead. That point has certainly been reached with studies of the greenhouse effect and the prospect of rising sea levels in particular.’” Unfortunately, that point seems to be forever receding into the future…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been measuring the impact of human activities, whether it was on air pollution, water pollution, ozone depletion, you name it, and had been trying to figure out how to raise the alarm without being called alarmist, and pondering where, when and how to speak out.
So you have the famous Shelly Rowland quote
“What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
Stephen Schneider was among them. In 1971 famously, he had co-authored a paper that got taken up as a when’s the new ice age happening, kind of thing to the dismay of some of his colleagues. I think it’s fair to say that Schneider leaned in. In 1976 he published the Genesis Strategy, He’d been on Johnny Carson (TV show). See also his efforts around the First World Climate Conference (Science as a contact sport)
The specific context was that the IPCC’s first assessment report was due out. (The IPCC had had its first meeting in November 1988). Meanwhile negotiations were clearly at some point going to begin for an international climate treaty. So here is Schneider, who was a very smart man, very thoughtful, trying to figure out when you pull the big lever.
You can also see him tackling the same issues about 10 years prior, in a 1979 Panorama video. I would love to know when this video was; I haven’t been able to track it down.
The interest was gratifying but more than a little ironic. “They won’t admit it but this means some kind of ban has been lifted,” Rowland said.
For as Rowland and others recount it, ever since 1974, when he and UCI postdoctoral fellow Mario Molina first theorized that the Earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Rowland has paid a price for his ideas.
In part, that’s because Rowland didn’t just make his discovery, write up the results and quietly return to his lab.
Instead, shocked by the implications of his research, he took an unusual public stance–doggedly telling reporters, Congress, half a dozen state legislatures, and just about anyone who seemed interested that ozone loss could lead to skin cancer and catastrophic climatic change. And, again and again for more than a decade, he urged that CFCs be banned.
In doing so, Rowland took on a $28-billion-a-year industry whose products, ranging from home insulating materials to solvents for electronic equipment, have become an essential part of modern life.
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.
Twenty five years ago, on this day, January 23rd, 2001,
World temperatures may increase by as much as six degrees Celsius over the next century, leading climate change scientists say in an alarming report that adds new urgency to the warnings on global warming.
The projected increase, which would be the most rapid temperature change in the past 10,000 years, is expected to push sea levels up by nearly a metre, threatening tens of millions of people, and generate more floods, droughts and fires.
The report found that the 1990s were the hottest decade since instrument records were first taken in 1861 and that 1998 was the hottest year. And for the first time scientists agreed that the warming is mostly due to human activity.
The gloomy prognosis was released in Shanghai yesterday by the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a joint project of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation.
International Climate Change Taskforce report
2001 Schauble, J. 2001. Six Degrees Hotter: Global Climate Alarm Bells Ring Louder. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been warning about CO2 build up causing warming in the 20th century of significant proportion since – well, you can say Calendar in 1938 but I really think Gilbert Plass in 1953 is the point at which people start to pay attention, (some attention). And by the late 1970s as you’ll see from the CO2 Newsletter, The warnings were firm, firm enough to alarm scientists and some politicians.
The IPCC was created to provide, well, to provide scientific imprimatur, but also to make sure that the independent scientists didn’t get paid too much attention, as they had over ozone.
The specific context was that by 2001 the IPCC Third Assessment Report was coming out. T
What I think we can learn from this is that we should remember is that scientists have to cope with the fact that journalists will either misunderstand the research because it’s complex and new,, or they will overstate it and “sex up the dossier” in search of a bigger, bolder headline, and then the scientist catches it in the neck for what the journalist wrote. You also get the need for the media system to just go to extremes. And the examples I’d use from 1988 are Steven Schneider being disinvited because he wasn’t alarmist enough. And also a hack said to Robyn Williams of the ABC Science Show “oh, now we’ll need the backlash.”
What happened next
That trouble ahead! We kept burning fossil fuels, and CO2 kept accumulating in the atmosphere. And, you know, the rest,
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.
