One hundred and eight years ago, on this day, November 3rd, 1916,
But let’s go way back to Nov. 3, 1916, courtesy of Google News’s archive search, where we’ll see a story in the Hartford (Conn.) Courant headlined, “Fossil Rocks in Canada Studied.” The subhead under the headline reads, in part, “Measurement of Ice Flow Shows Climate Change.” https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/0908/why-are-they-calling-it-climate-change-now
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 302ppm. As of 2024 it is 423.7ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the earth seemed to be warming up. And this was quite possibly just some sort of natural fluctuation. Carbon dioxide is only in the normal order of things, one among many, many factors. Before the denialists leap on this, I would say that since the 1800s, it has not been a normal run of things, because we have been putting so much fossil fuel residue into the atmosphere. It wasn’t the Industrial Revolution so much as the Fossil Fuel Revolution.
What we learn is that from very early in the 20th century, people were saying there was a slight warming (possibly cyclical). Then by the late 1930s, the Arctic was visibly warming. There’s reports on that in various newspapers. And then by 1951. Rachel Carson was talking about it in her book, “The world beneath us”.
What happened next? We kept burning fossil fuels. And the emissions kept climbing. Be interesting to know if Svante Arrhenius saw this, or said anything more after his 1896 piece of work? Did he keep a folder saying the earth is warming? Was it the sort of thing that Guy Callendar was looking at?
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.
Also on this day:
November 3, 1990 – money for independent climate scientists? Yeah, nah
November 3, 1990 – more smears about the IPCC, in the Financial Times