One hundred and thirty-one years ago, on this day, January 6th, 1883, the New York Times took the righteous mickey out of something that had recently appeared in the UK scientific journal Nature…
Anon, 1883 – The Atmosphere, New York Times, January 6, p.4.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 293ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that everybody talks about the weather (but nobody does anything about it). And there was all sorts of speculation back and forth about what air quality might do to people. And this, of course, is one of the denialist “arguments”; “people have always been worried about the weather, therefore, there’s nothing new under the sun. Therefore, there’s nothing to worry about.” This is every bit as vacuous as it appears at first sight, but it’s very effective among people who just want to stick their fingers in their ears and shout la la la, which seems to be most everyone most of the time.
What happened next? Well, there’s other stuff that’s interesting (watch this space) but then in 1896, Svante Arrhenius’ article about carbonic acid was published.
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
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Also on this day:
Jan 6, 1971- the whiff of sulphur (taxes) and 20 more years of #PredatoryDelay