One hundred and thirty one years ago, on this day, December 24th, 1894,
Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, in the midst of a gruesome divorce, started work on his climate model, Dec 24 1894 ( source for the date is Elizabeth Kolbert “H is for Hope” p12)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 295ppm. 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 that Arrhenius was aware of Tyndall’s work on “carbonic acid” in the atmosphere (but not Eunice Foote’s).
The specific context was – he was going through a messy and painful divorce and needed a Project to Distract Himself.
What I think we can learn from this – scientists make sacrifices etc.
What happened next was that Arrhenius published the work. He later got a Nobel Prize for chemistry (for other discoveries).
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, December 22nd, 2010,
“What we see happening with new record temperatures, both warm and cold, is in good agreement with what we predicted in the 1980s when I testified to Congress about the expected effect of global warming. I used coloured dice then to emphasize that global warming would cause the climate dice to be ‘loaded’—for risk of more extreme weather.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 390ppm. 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 that Hansen has been banging on about carbon dioxide build-up for 50 years. His first foray into the world beyond science on this was in 1981. McKibben wrote a series of essays for the New Yorker that was then published as a book “The End of Nature”
The specific context was – that the UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen had been a farce, and it was clear things were gonna get out of hand.
What I think we can learn from this – being smart and right isn’t enough.
What happened next – Hansen and McKibben have gone on being smart and right.
The emissions have kept climbing. Who knows, maybe solar will reduce our energy emissions markedly. Who knows…
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.
Seventy-two years ago, on this day, December 18th, 1953, Irving Langmuir gave a seminar at General Electric,
In 1953, at the time he was making highly dubious claims for the efficacy of weather modification and even climate modification, Langmuir presented a seminar at GE on “Pathological science” or “the science of things that arenʼt so.”(27) Utilizing his own criteria for pathology, Langmuirʼs claims for cloud seeding qualified on several counts: they rested on observations close to the threshold of detectability, on apparently meaningful patterns generated in field trials; on the inability of critics to reproduce the experiments; on the intervention of the courts, legislature, and the press; and on overreliance on the credentials of a Nobel laureate rather than proof.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 312ppm. 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 that in the aftermath of World War 2, anything seemed possible, if you threw enough money and brains at it.
The specific context was – hydrogen bombs had been tested, and weather modification was “in the air” – but maybe it couldn’t be done…
What I think we can learn from this – even those taking the grants for the experiments were not sure it could be done…
What happened next – Langmuir died in 1957. The Weather Modification bandwagon rolled on for decades.
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
Fleming, J. 2006. The pathological history of weather and climate modification: Three cycles of promise and hype . Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (2006) 37 (1): 3–25.
On this day 41 years ago, the Chief Scientific Advisor, B.N. Nicholson wrote a report which included this –
The predicted changes in climate accompanying increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other gases will have widespread and possibly catastrophic impacts on agriculture, energy supply and demand, sea-defences etc.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 352ppm. 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 that by the early 1980s climate scientists were pretty sure that there was a quick (in geological terms basically instantaneous) warming on the way. Not that anyone in “power” seemed to give a damn.
The specific context was that Thatcher had already been warned about carbon dioxide build-up by her previous Chief Scientific Advisor, John Ashworth. Meanwhile, by 1984 it was becoming obvious to scientists who could add up that there was serious trouble ahead.
What we learn. There were plenty of warnings – our “leaders” did not lead.
What happened next. Thatcher was finally convinced in 1988, and the next phase started – one of empty promises.
A discussion is given of a simple mathematical model of the carbon dioxide cycle in atmosphere-biosphere-sea, with special attention to the possibility of self-sustained oscillations and to the behaviour of the cycle when additional carbon dioxide is injected from an outer source. The discussion is confined to phenomena with characteristic times of the order of 10–103 years leaving out the long geologic periods as well as the purely annual periods. Some numerical computations are also carried out on the electronic computer BESK. The discussion and the computations show that self-sustained oscillations possibly appear due to the presence of the sea, and that they generally are favoured when there exist time-lags in the biosphere of the order of a few decades. The computations also indicate that additional carbon dioxide injected at a rate corresponding to the present combustion of fossil carbon does not change significantly the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, since most part of it will be stored in the biosphere. Thus, the present theory suggests that the increase of carbon dioxide indicated by recent measurements may represent part of a natural self-sustained oscillation and not necessarily be a response to an increased combustion of fossils.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 313ppm. 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 that all sorts of new possibilities for understanding the universe were being opened up in the 1940s and 1950s – the technical advances of the second war offered new ways of gathering and analysing data, finding patterns.
The specific context was that those meetings in 1954-1955 were a neglected (especially by this site!) push for understanding of the carbon dioxide influence…
What I think we can learn from this – the knowledge of potential problems ahead was solid by the mid-1950s, and it wasn’t all down to Gilbert Plass…
What happened next – then-young Swedish scientist Bert Bolin went to the US in 1959 and tried to get everyone alarmed about carbon dioxide build-up. Oh well…
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 6 December 2005, in a presentation to the American Geophysical Union (AGU), James Hansen stated that, “we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption” (Hansen, 2005, p. 8). Hansen’s warning helped initiate a tipping point trend in climate change communication that was quickly reflected in public debate. These warnings were front page news by January 2006, with The Washington Post reporting that, “[t]his ‘tipping point’ scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad…” (Eilperin, 2006, p. A01).”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 380ppm. 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 that James Hansen had been getting in trouble with asshole Republican administrations since 1981, when a front page story on the New York Times had led to a research grant already given being withdrawn and people losing their jobs. The George HW Bush administration had also tried to sideline/silence Hansen in the key period 1989-1992. And on and on it went.
The specific context was HW’s dumb son, “Dubya” was nominally President, but you gotta assume a lot of the direction was coming from Dick Cheney. By this time the US was having to contend with the fact that the UN process, which it thought it had rendered pointless by withdrawing from Kyoto negotiations, was “back on track” (it’s all relative) and there would be more fights to come about this.
What I think we can learn from this – Hansen is worth listening to. It’s scary af.
What happened next – Hansen took (enforced) retirement. GISS got slaughtered in 2025. The emissions kept climbing, and the Republicans stopped pretending to be anything other than devastation-bots.
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.
Sixty years ago, on this day, November 23rd 1965, American scientist Walter Orr Roberts gave a speech. In it, this –
“Perhaps, through this mechanism, we are already modifying the atmosphere, unknowingly and on a large scale, as we clearly are already doing on the city scale. Indeed, can we be sure that city-scale modification is simply city-scale? Or are the atmospheric solids and gases put in over the city bringing changes on a larger scale? The relative abundance of carbon dioxide is clearly rising in the atmosphere, almost certainly through man’s intervention. But no one seems at all secure about what this is doing to the climate.”
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 47, No. 3, March 1966 Based on an address delivered at the International Symposium on Electromagnetic Sensing of the Earth from Satellites, Miami, Fla., 23 November 1965.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 320ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it was 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 since the early 1950s the question of carbon dioxide build-up and its possible climatic consequences had been known. Not necessarily taken seriously, but by the mid-1960s, this was -just- beginning to shift.
The specific context was Roberts gave his speech in the aftermath of the release of the PSAC report on November 7th 1965.
What I think we can learn from this – it wasn’t secret or arcane information. I am not saying “everyone knew” but, well, a lot of people did.
What happened next – the emissions kept climbing. NCAR kept investigating.
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.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, November 17th, ,2009 email hack at the Climatic Research Unit of University of East Anglia.
“Early on the morning of November 17, Gavin Schmidt sat down at his computer and entered his password. It didn’t work. Strange, he thought. He tried a few other accounts and none of them worked, either. Now he was alarmed. As a leading climatologist with NASA’s Goddard Institute in Manhattan, he’d been hacked before. He was used to e-mails from people who disapproved of his work,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. 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 that scientists doing “impact science” work on climate had been attacked, smeared and intimidated since 1989 (e.g. hatchet jobs on James Hansen). It had hit an early peak in 1994-5 when the IPCC’s second assessment report was underway. It had continued against Michael Mann for the “hockey stick”.
The specific context was the Copenhagen climate sumit was about to start – and those opposed to action were going to do absolutely anything they could to reduce the chances of progress (the chances were vanishingly low, btw).
What I think we can learn from this – we should see this attack as part of a longer trend.
What happened next – there were various investigations and it was deemed a “nothing burger” – except the denialists, obvs, cried ‘cover-up’.
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.
Fifty-nine years ago, on this day, November 2nd, 1966, Manabe and Weatherald’s pivotal paper was submitted
“According to our estimate, a doubling of the CO2 content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2C. Our model does not have the extreme sensitivity of atmospheric temperature to changes of CO2 content which was adduced by Möller.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 321ppm. 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 questions of what would happen if carbon dioxide levels went up dramatically (the Keeling Curve was relatively flat back then, but simple extrapolation suggested trouble) was mostly of scientific interest at the time.
The specific context was the carbon dioxide issue had received a boost in 1965 with Lyndon Johnson’s message to Congress about pollution, and a report at the end of the year by the President’s Science Advisory Committee (see November 7th).
What I think we can learn from this – the scientists were looking into it…
What happened next – it got published, obvs. And their 1975 paper was an even bigger deal…
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 one years ago, on this day, October 26th, 1994,
Scientists, politicians and economists recently gathered in New Zealand for the Greenhouse 94 conference from October 10 to 14. Discussions at the conference confirmed that the heat is on: sea levels are rising, climate patterns are shifting, and the atmosphere is heating up. ZANNY BEGG reports on the implications of global warming.
Ben Elton, in his best-selling novel Stark, was able to describe the earth as a stinking trash can of multinational companies — with an ozone layer in tatters, sea temperatures rising and pollution transforming the air into a toxic soup — and keep it funny. But when straight-faced scientists begin to talk about the threat global warming poses to the planet there isn’t much to laugh about.
Two thousand five hundred scientists working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement on September 14 that told the world what we didn’t want to know: carbon dioxide levels are on the rise and the world’s climate is at a serious risk from human activity. This was confirmed by discussions at the Greenhouse 94 conference, convened by CSIRO, which concluded that sea levels and temperatures in the Oceania region have been rising steadily since the beginning of the century.
Elwin Jackson attended the Greenhouse 94 conference for Greenpeace. His prediction for the future, if no reduction of greenhouse gases occurs, is as stark as Ben Elton’s. “In the year 2040”, he explained to Green Left Weekly, “we could see famine stalking through South-East Asia. We could see more droughts, increased flooding, rapidly changing weather conditions and more pests. The conditions we see in many parts of Africa could come to this part of the world. The human cost of this would be horrific.
Anon, 1994. Greenhouse alert: global warming is a global warning. Green Left Weekly October 26, 1994
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 359ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 the first “Greenhouse” conference, in 1987, had been crucial – an opportunity for scientists working in different domains to compare notes. For a few years the scientists were being sorta listened to (which is distinct from saying they had a lot of influence).
The specific context was by 1994 climate had disappeared from the front pages and into the boring bits where policies are combatted and not really explained. Yawnsville. Still, the grinding work of science goes on…
What I think we can learn from this – issue attention cycles are a thing. More people should know about them
What happened next – scientists kept sciencing. Emissions kept climbing.
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.
