On this day, October 1 1957, a US Oil Company ponders carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere.
1 October 1957 Humble Oil study – Radiocarbon evidence on the dilution of atmospheric and oceanic carbon by carbon from fossil fuels. H. R. Brannon Jr. A. C. Daughtry D. Perry W. W. Whitaker M. Williams
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 315.6 or thereabout ppm. At time of writing it was 421ish ppm – but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – by the early 1950s, various folks were beginning to take note of carbon dioxide as a potential issue. (See for example, Gilbert Plass). Accurate atmospheric measures were not yet, however, being taken.
As Ben Franta noted in his 2018 article –
“In 1954, the geochemist Harrison Brown and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology submitted a research proposal to the API entitled “The determination of the variations and causes of variations of the isotopic composition of carbon in nature.” The scientists proposed the use of new mass spectrometers to investigate the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in terrestrial, marine and mineral systems to understand geological and biological carbon cycling”
Even with International Geophysical Year barely being underway, we knew enough to plant a big fat warning flag in the ground and say “we really need to think about this one.”. The oil companies certainly did…
What happened next?
Awareness of the potential climate impacts of carbon dioxide build-up grew and grew through the 60s, into the 70s and 80s. There was a thirty year history of scientists saying “er, look” before 1988, when the issue broke through into the public sphere.
On this day, 15 September 1980, Australian scientists met in Canberra to discuss carbon dioxide and its build-up…
1980, 15 to 17 September, Carbon Dioxide and Climate – Australian Academy of Science symposium in Canberra
“In 1980, the Australian Academy of Science held a conference to review 20 years of measurements showing increasing carbon-dioxide levels, and by then there was an understanding that the greenhouse effect would result in climate change.”
On this day in 1856 American scientist and women’s rights campaigner Eunice Foote illustrated her findings in a paper entitled, “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays,” which was accepted at the eighth annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on August 23, 1856 in Albany, NY. Back in the day, what we now call carbon dioxide was known as carbonic acid…
On this day, 3 August 1970, the first report of the Council on Environmental Quality was delivered to Preside Nixon. It contained a chapter on inadvertent weather modification, carbon dioxide build-up and icecaps melting.
The CEQ had been set up as part of the legislative process that had gathered momentum under Johnson and come to fruition by late 1969.
By early 1970s, folks were going “you know, this really might become a problem.” By the mid-late 1970s the smarter ones dropped the “might”…
What happened next?
The CEQ didn’t return to the climate issue until Carter, best I can tell. And then Gus Speth, as its boss, got cracking with getting things moving, having been nudged by Gordon MacDonald and Rafe Pomerance of Friends of the Earth.
Gordon MacDonald had already been writing about this stuff (see his chapter in the Nigel Calder book). He would go on to be important in the fight against synfuels.
On this day, July 29 1974 a World Meteorological Organisation conference on climate modelling began, running until 10 August.
As Bert Bolin (one of THE key figures) wrote in the foreword-
At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972, it was emphasized that the earth’s climate is of basic importance to man and his well-being. Climatic variability and possible change are still essentially unpredictable although they are significant factors in the continued development of both industrialized and developing countries. Some of the most important problems that confront us were very well summarized in the SMIC report “Study of Man’s Impact on Climate”, (1) which was available at the UN conference and served as an important reference document. In recommendation 79d of the conference, it was recommended that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in co-operation with the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) “continue to carry out the GARP (Global Atmospheric Research Programme) to better understand the general circulation of the atmosphere, the causes of climatic change and whether these causes are natural or the result of man’s activities”.
At its eighth session in London in March 1973, the JOC considered in detail the role of GARP for studies of climate and its fluctuations. It was proposed that the next step towards an active programme would be the organization of an International Study Conference on the Physical Basis of Climate and Climate Modelling….
The conference was held at Wijk outside Stockholm during the period 29 July to 10 August 1974 with a total attendance of about 70 scientists from different parts of the world. Their devoted work during two weeks has resulted in the present report.
These were the building blocks – between 1970 and 1975 – when climate scientists patiently assembled the evidence, debated, refined. By about 1976/7 it was pretty clear what was coming, just a question of when (how fast, in what order). They did try to warn the politicians. And some of the politicians kinda sorta listened a bit.
What happened next?
The scientists kept at it. (Impact) Science is very very cool.. Some joined the dots, understood the implications, quicker than others. By 1979 the smarter ones were getting quite nervous….
WMO started already in the 1970’s to concentrate more than before on climate problems. An Executive Committee panel on Climate Change was established in 1975, with Dr. Bill Gibbs from Australia as Chairman, and CCL, under the chairmanship of Helmut Landsberg, from 1973, re-oriented its effort towards environmental problems related to climate. About the same time, in 1974, the Global Atmospheric Research Program had a meeting in Stockholm in order to agree on which problems related to climate that should be of main interest to this program in the next few years. In fact the meeting discussed the fundamental question to change the classical approach to climate studies from the statistical one towards a more physically-oriented one. In fact in the Stockholm Conference on the Physics of Climate in 1974, the numerical forecasting modelers who had worked for about ten years or more on modeling the general circulation of the atmosphere were now interested in trying to apply similar mathematical approaches to the global circulation of the atmosphere and to other aspects of understanding of the future climate. It would then be possible to clarify what could be expected to happen on the globe, if the increase of the carbon dioxide from human emissions from burning fossil fuel would continue without change. The Global Atmospheric Research Program, when it had been accepted by the U.N. in 1962, included a proposal for a program divided into two parts: one on the experiment to improve the weather forecasting on the basis of increased observations around the globe. This experiment, proposed for about ten years by Bo Doos in WMO, had in 1974, reached a stage where it could be expected to take place within the next five years. For that reason, Dr. Bert Bolin, who was in charge of the Global Atmospheric Research Program, thought that it was timely to start with the second part of the GARP program, namely the climate part. This was the basic reason why the Conference in Stockholm in 1974 was called and the physical foundations of climate were established.
On this day, 23 July 1979, the “Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate” begins at Woods Hole, giving us the “Charney Report.”
Short version – a scientist (Gordon MacDonald) and a Friends of the Earth activist (Rafe Pomerance) had managed to get President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor (Frank Press) to get Carter to request a study on whether this “greenhouse effect” thing was gonna actually be the problem some were saying.
So folks met, under the leadership of one of the big original beasts of atmospheric science, Jule Charney.
The scientists summoned by Jule Charney to judge the fate of civilization arrived on July 23, 1979, with their wives, children and weekend bags at a three-story mansion in Woods Hole, on the southwestern spur of Cape Cod. They would review all the available science and decide whether the White House should take seriously Gordon MacDonald’s prediction of a climate apocalypse. The Jasons had predicted a warming of two or three degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century, but like Roger Revelle before them, they emphasized their reasons for uncertainty. Charney’s scientists were asked to quantify that uncertainty. They had to get it right: Their conclusion would be delivered to the president. But first they would hold a clambake.
They gathered with their families on a bluff overlooking Quissett Harbor and took turns tossing mesh produce bags stuffed with lobster, clams and corn into a bubbling caldron. While the children scrambled across the rolling lawn, the scientists mingled with a claque of visiting dignitaries, whose status lay somewhere between chaperone and client — men from the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and Agriculture; the E.P.A.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They exchanged pleasantries and took in the sunset. It was a hot day, high 80s, but the harbor breeze was salty and cool. It didn’t look like the dawning of an apocalypse.
Why this matters.
“We” really knew enough by the late 70s. Everything since then has been footnotes.
What happened next?
Carter lost the 1980 election, handsomely. It would be another 8 years before the simulacrum of international action began.
On this day in 1968 Gordon Macdonald’s chapter on weather and climate modification, under the title “How to Wreck the Environment” (pdf here) appeared Nigel Calder’s book “Unless Peace Comes a Scientific Forecast of New Weapons” was published
A shortened version of the chapter had already appeared in New Scientist in April of the same year
“How to wreck the environment.” New Scientist. 25 April 1968):180- 82;
MacDonald noted
“There has been much controversy in recent years about conjectured overall effects on the world’s climate of emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from furnaces and engines burning fossil fuels, and some about possible influences of the exhaust from large rockets on the transparency of the upper atmosphere. Carbon dioxide placed in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has produced an increase in the average temperature of the lower atmosphere of a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. The water vapour that may be introduced into the stratosphere by the supersonic transport may also result in a similar temperature rise. In principle it would be feasible to introduce material into the upper atmosphere that would absorb either incoming light (thereby cooling the surface) or outgoing heat (thereby warming the surface). In practice, in the rarefied and windswept upper atmosphere, the material would disperse rather quickly, so that military use of such a technique would probably rely upon global rather than local effects”
Why this matters.
Anyone who had their eyes open knew there was probably trouble ahead. By the late 70s, that trouble was unmistakable.
What happened next?
Ten years later Macdonald, with Rafe Pomerance, would get the wheels rolling for the Charney report (see Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth”).
By then MacDonald was also appearing on the Macneil Lehrer hour (1978) and so on. There’s a nice oral history interview here–
Basically, Macdonald is one of the (forgotten) good guys.
On this day, July 19 in 1976, as drought grips the UK, US scientists are pondering.
“In any market, nervousness reflects uncertainty-and there are few things as uncertain as the weather. “We just can’t confidently predict long-range trends in climate,” says Murray Mitchell, a climatologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington. Mitchell and other specialists have advanced several theories to explain why droughts occur-and they range from speculation about sunspot cycles to a possible tilting of the earth’s axis. One notion holds that man himself is altering the climate with pollution. By burning fossil fuels, the theory runs, the industrialized world adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, creating a “greenhouse effect.” The carbon dioxide traps the sun’s heat, raising temperatures on the earth’s surface. “If we’re still rolling along on fossil fuels by the end of the century,” Mitchell warns, “then we’ve had it.”
Mayer, A. (1976) A World Praying for Rain. Newsweek, July 19, page 66.
Why this matters.
Again, by the late 1970s, we knew enough…
What happened next?
By the late 1970s, the scientific reports were piling up. Carter paid a little attention. Then along came Reagan. And Thatcher…
A sequel (the body count is always higher, the deaths more elaborate) to a 2009 scientific conference, it came as the fractious public debate about an emissions trading scheme (dubbed, brilliantly, “the great big tax on everything” by the wrecking ball disguised as an Opposition Leader that was Tony Abbott) was coming to a head.
The conference was briefly marred by some Lndon La Rouche nutjobs who brandished a noose and called Hans Joachim Schellnhuber a “Nazi.” Yeah, you keep being you, guys.
