Ninety-one years ago, on this day, October 21st, 1933 the Melbourne Age told its readers some facts…
etc
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7_1hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lJUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2910%2C4782263
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 308ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had been dead for four years but his ideas about CO2 as something building up in the atmosphere that would cause warming was still around. And every so often a newspaper will pick up on it. We’ve had several other examples of that already on All Our Yesterdays for example, here and here, [New York Times and The Oregonian].
What we learn is that good ideas go through rough patches. Bad Ideas can go through noisy patches. Do we get closer approximations of reality? Yeah, I think we do. We split the atom goddamnit. Go us, brainy murder apes!
What happened next It would be another 20 years before Gilbert Plass would make his statements at the American Geophysical Union meeting…
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
See also Daily Oregonian 1931 and New York Times 1932
Also on this day:
October 21, 1983 – “Changing Climate” report released
October 21, 1989 – Langkawi Declaration on environmental sustainability…