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.
On this day 43 years ago, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (created 1848) held its annual meeting, this time in Washington DC. The climatologists held panels within that.
They were pretty blunt about what was on the way.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was the AAAS had been around for a long long time. By the late 1960s its annual gatherings were a site for scientific discussion of what was coming (see here and here).
The specific context was by the late 1970s the climate scientists were beginning to get sure of the eventual result of tipping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (though they varied on time frames). AAAS was involved.
Efforts to get policymakers interested had had some success, but it all fell in a heap after the Reagan Administration came in in January 1981.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have known for a long time. This. Was. Not. A. State. Secret.
[LINK]
What happened next. The climate stuff at the AAAS meeting was covered in newspapers around the US, sometimes featuring quite prominently. The scientific work continued. And continued.
1988 was the pivotal year. [LINK]
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.
On this day 20 years ago, climate scientist James Hansen, being censored and bullied left right and centre by Bush administration appointees, breaks a sixteen year silence with the media and says yes to a request to appear on the CBS show Sixty Minutes.
Jim spent the morning of the first interview, January 5, 2006, in his apartment, completing his email about ethics to Einaudi and Leshin. He remembers feeling nervous as he walked the few blocks to his office for the filming. “I wondered if I shouldn’t just talk about the science, but then I decided, ‘To hell with this. This has got to be illegal.’ I would be blunt and not hold anything back.”
Source – Bowen Censoring Science p. 55
and
“As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn’t want you to hear but he’s going to say them anyway. Hansen is arguably the world’s leading researcher on global warming. He’s the head of NASA’s top institute studying the climate. This imminent scientist says that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. Scott Pelley reports.”
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 governments, at the behest of the powerful interests that either control them or “influence them significantly” (depends on the facts, and also the perspective of the commentator!), have always silenced inconvenient voices – “who will rid me of this troublesome priest” etc etc.
The specific context was that James Hansen had first felt the ire of a Republican administration in 1981 when the front page story on the New York Times in August resulted in already-issued grant funding being pulled from GISS. Hansen kickstarted climate concern with his June 23 1988 testimony to Congress. He found himself mysteriously not invited to various important policy meetings in the following years, and his testimony to Congress subtly altered/suppressed. By 2006 the Bush Jnr administration was fighting a rear-guard action, since the Kyoto PRotocol had finally been ratified by enough nations the previous year to become “law” (well, lore, really), and negotiations for a successor were underway. The censorship and harassment of Hansen, laid out in Bowen’s book, was part of that.
What I think we can learn from this is that the powerful like to stay powerful, and suppress voices that are telling stark truths, as best they can.
What happened next Hansen retired, and started getting arrested.
Hansen is still working as a scientist and the stuff he is saying is frankly terrifying. I am glad I am closer to the grave than the cradle, because there are some shitstorms on their way.
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.
References
Bowen, M. 2008. Censoring Science: Inside The Political Attack On Dr. James Hansen And The Truth Of Global Warming.
Sixty six years ago, on this day, December 29th, 1959,
Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology.
“”There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics” was a lecture given by physicist Richard Feynman at the annual American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959.[1] Feynman considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms as a more robust form of synthetic chemistry than those used at the time. Versions of the talk were reprinted in a few popular magazines, but it went largely unnoticed until the 1980s.
The title references the popular quote “There is always room at the top.” attributed to Daniel Webster (who is thought to have said this phrase in response to warnings against becoming a lawyer, which was seen as an oversaturated field in the 19th century).”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 316ppm. As of 2025, 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 there were lots of smart people knocking around in the 1950s. Lots of funding for them to, within the sprawling empire that was the American military-industrial complex.
The specific context was Feynman was damn smart (once you’re that stratospheric, I am not sure there’s much point in distinguishing between von Neumann etc etc).
What I think we can learn from this – I need to read more Feynman, and more about Feynman.
What happened next? Feynman kept on being absurdly smart. In one of his memoirs he talks about, during the Challenger investigation, talking to engineers on the ground and finding out they were way smarter than their bosses. Obvs.
Also, he dropped the rubber o-ring in the ice water. Now that is showmanship…
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.
Swedish-American meteorologist who first explained the large-scale motions of the atmosphere in terms of fluid mechanics. His work contributed to developing meteorology as a science. Rossby first theorized about the existence of the jet stream in 1939, and that it governs the easterly movement of most weather. U.S. Army Air Corps pilots flying B-29 bombing missions across the Pacific Ocean during World War II proved the jet stream’s existence. The pilots found that when they flew from east to west, they experienced slower arrival times and fuel shortage problems. When flying from west to east, however, they found the opposite to be true. Rossby created mathematical models (Rossby equations) for computerized weather prediction (1950).
and
John von Neumann Born 28 Dec 1903; died 8 Feb 1957
Hungarian-American mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, logic, meteorology, and computer science. He invented game theory, the branch of mathematics that analyses strategy and is now widely employed for military and economic purposes. During WW II, he studied the implosion method for bringing nuclear fuel to explosion and he participated in the development of the hydrogen bomb. He also set quantum theory upon a rigorous mathematical basis. In computer theory, von Neumann did much of the pioneering work in logical design, in the problem of obtaining reliable answers from a machine with unreliable components, the function of “memory,” and machine imitation of “randomness.”[Image left: Von Neumann with ENIAC computer.]
John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered…, by Norman MacRae. – book suggestion.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 295-297ppm. As of 2025, 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 these were two seriously smart human beings.
The specific context was Rossby was born the same year Arrhenius’s paper on carbon dioxide build-up was published, lol.
What I think we can learn from this – I do wish von Neumann had lasted a bit longer – I think he might have taken more interest in CO2 build-up. But this is idle speculation and dreaming that a white saviour might have saved us. Nowt was going to save us.
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.
