Sixty years years ago, on this day, November 23, 1963, the BBC science fiction programme Doctor Who sixty years ago
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the BBC wanted to make an “educational” show, with some humans from the present visiting earth’s past and the audience being informed about x, y and z. No bug-eyed monsters. From the earliest days Doctor Who was concerned with environment – in the second story about the Daleks, we learned that there has been a nuclear war, the atmosphere is poisoned and they will all die of radiation if they’re not careful. In the second season there’s a thinly veiled warning about DDT (Planet of the Giants). Throughout the show, long before “The Green Death” and “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” environmental concerns were getting a look in.
What I think we can learn from this
Someone should write an article about this. Only to have it knocked about by sadistic reviewers in love with their anonymous power.
What happened next
Doctor Who kept going and going and going, for better or worse, and has become deeply embedded in institutionalised in the “symbolic reservoir.”
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.
On this day, 60 years ago, November 13, 1963, the peace campaigner, journalist and science communicator (including as first editor of New Scientist) Ritchie Calder gave a clear warning about the build-up of carbon dioxide, at a meeting of the Town and Country Planning Association in London.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures
The context was that Ritchie-Calder had been aware of the issue – at the latest – by early 1954, when he wrote about the issue for a national newspaper. By 1963, the first meeting entirely devoted to carbon dioxide build-up had already taken place in Washington DC. Calder was almost certainly aware of this…
Sixty years ago, on this day, November 11, 1963, the magazine US News and World Report runs a story on weather and climate.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that through the 1950s concern about weather and weather change has grown. The US had started seriously spending money on weather modification experiments..
In 1963, in March in New York, the Conservation Foundation had held a one day meeting about carbon dioxide build up and its possible consequences. So the changes in the atmosphere, the weather, these were all grist for journalists ’mill. And you could quickly cobble together a new story based on old clippings, and maybe phoning up a couple of scientists who would be happy to be quoted, because as long as you’ve got the quote right, it would make them feel important. And keep their names in the papers. Universities would be mostly happy about this. And so the weekly ravening beast that was US News and World Report continued to be fed. Am I too cynical?
What I think we can learn from this
To really understand an individual document, you have to understand the social and political context of when it was written. This is a banal statement, but one that periodically needs repeating.
What happened next
The stories kept coming. By the late 60s carbon dioxide got named a lot more. But everything still got framed around. “We don’t know what will happen because maybe dust.” That didn’t begin to change until the late 1970s.
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.
Sixty years ago, on this day, March 12, 1963, in New York
“Dr. Keeling was concerned enough about rising carbon dioxide levels to participate in a panel by the Conservation Foundation on March 12, 1963 “Implications of Rising Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere”, the report issued being among the first to speculate that anthropogenic global warming could be dangerous to the Earth’s biological and environmental systems. It includes on page 6: “many life forms would be annihilated” [in the tropics] if emissions continued unchecked in the upcoming centuries. They also projected that carbon dioxide emissions could raise the average surface temperature of the earth by as much as 4°C during the next century (1963-2063)”
Probably the first gathering of scientists and policymakers devoted specifically and explicitly to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Conservation Foundation had been set up in New York in 1948
The International Geophysical Year was now 5 years in the past, a lot of data had been collected. In January of 1961, there had been a five day scientific conference organised by the American Meteorological Society and the New York Academy of Sciences with plenty of people talking about carbon dioxide buildup, and alongside that there had been other scientific efforts. So the Conservation Foundation, which had been aware of CO2 buildup as a potential problem for a while, held a gathering, the first ever carbon dioxide build up conference
What I think we can learn from this
Well, these sorts of events are fascinating for the legacy they leave. And for several years – really till the end of the 1960s – the publication about this meeting was cited whenever in writing about carbon dioxide buildup for years, and it only really fell away entirely after the 1971 study on the man’s impact on climate.
It also seems to have been the “last gasp” in climate science for Gilbert Plass whose statements and work from 1953 had been so important for the growth of acceptance of the carbon dioxide theory.
And in all probability, it was where Lewis Herbert aka Murray Bookchin got his facts for the section in his book written in 1964 and published in early 1965, called Crisis in our Cities, which will be discussed soon.
And the reason I say this is that the event was in New York, Bookchin was in New York and it’s impossible to imagine that he wasn’t aware of the Conservation Foundation’s activities. Bookchin’s politics were not of the technocrats. But just because he didn’t agree with the funders does not mean he’d have ignored what was happening under their auspices.
What happened next
Plass dropped out.
Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling kept doing what they were doing.
And the closing statement – well, it came to pass…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The United Nations was still regarded as a serious player, and “development” for the newly decolonized countries was a hot topic, whereas climate change caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide was most explicitly not. This was due to relatively easy to understand reasons – the idea of heating the world because of industrial gases was new (if you don’t count Arrhenius and Callendar), we just didn’t have good enough measurements. Meanwhile, cold winters were still very much a thing (and the cooling effect of dust and sulphur very much in play.)
What I think we can learn from this
We endlessly talk about what the world needs to be doing, but it takes longer than you think. We end up doing something different, usually less than we originally wanted.
What happened next
The attempt to “develop” has industrialised the world, but largely in the interests of the super-rich and the rich, (which probably includes you and definitely includes me, looking at things globally).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
