On this day, June 18 1976 the UK Meteorological Office’s director, John S. Sawyer, replied to a request from the Cabinet Office. Two days earlier they’d asked for his take on Reid Bryson, a prominent US atmospheric scientist. Bryson was predicting imminent climate change (but NOT from the build up of carbon dioxide, which he considered a non-issue.
Sawyer was scathing – Bryson was “completely misleading and alarmist”.
The context is that by the mid-70s, with a series of “weird weather events” (including the 1976 drought, then underway), policymakers were beginning to wonder if something was up with the weather.
You can read more about this,and where I got the above information from, in the excellent paper “Computing the Climate: When Models Became Political”“by Janet Martin-Nielson. The specific quote is this –
In 1976, the Cabinet Office wrote to the Meteorological Office’s director of research, John S. Sawyer, asking for his views on Bryson’s work. Bryson is ‘‘completely misleading and alarmist,’’ replied Sawyer only two days later, and, he continued, ‘‘the evidence that a permanent climatic change of significant magnitude is in train is at best exceedingly sketchy.’’42
J. S. Sawyer to D. C. Thomas, 18 Jun 1976, KEW, CAB 164/1379 Martin-Nielson, 2018 Computing the Climate
Why this matters.
We need to remember that it wasn’t a straight line, that carbon dioxide build-up was only one of the ways that scientists thought the weather could change. That uncertainty can be hard to recollect in the aftermath of 1985 onwards…
What happened next?
Bryson refused to accept that carbon dioxide was driving observed climatic changes. These things happen – people don’t like to admit they backed the wrong horse.
A report on climatic change finally got presented to Margaret Thatcher in 1980. Apparently her response was incredulity and “you want me to worry about the weather.” And this, from a chemist.
