Tag: 1965

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United States of America

January 13, 1965 – President Lyndon Johnson gets a memo about carbon dioxide build-up and climate change

Sixty years ago, on this day, January 13, 1965, Lyndon Johnson got a memo about environmental problems, including carbon dioxie buildup. We know this thanks to the sterling investigative work of Rebecca John, writing for DeSmog. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that US scientists, including Roger Revelle and Charles Dave Keeling had been measuring and pondering. A couple of years before this  memo, in March 1963 the Rockefeller-funded Conservation Foundation had held a meeting on carbon dioxide build-up.  The following year Revelle had chaired a group looking at environmental problems (the group included Margaret Mead!).  

What I think we can learn from this is that the information was getting to the very top quite quickly.

What happened next

A month after the memo, LBJ gave a special address to Congress on environmental problems included a mention of C02 build up

Two years to the day later an editorial appeared in Science pointing to … carbon dioxide as a problem

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: 

January 13, 2004 – Bob Carr rallies states for emissions trading

January 13, 2005- UN Secretary-General calls for “decisive measures” on climate change

January 13, 2021 – New Scientist reports on types of intelligence required to deal with #climate change   

Categories
United Kingdom

April 22, 1965 – Manchester Evening News article on C02 and global warming

Fifty nine years ago, on this day, April 22nd, 1965, the Manchester Evening News ran another article warning about carbon dioxide build up,

22 April 1965 Article about C02 and global warming in Manchester Evening News

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that a couple of months earlier, Lyndon Johnson, as President of the United States, had made a special address to Congress, which mentioned CO2 buildup, and other scientists were sniffing around the issue. The Evening News has talked about carbon dioxide buildup before but this was a pretty clear case. 

What we learn is that if you were a tolerably intelligent person with a tolerably decent memory, and I don’t know, O-level chemistry and physics, you’d have understood the climate issue from them a lot earlier than I thought even a couple of years ago. 

What happened next Manchester Evening News very periodically covered the issue. So did everyone. But it wasn’t really until ‘69 – 70 that it got any traction, and then it went away again until 1988. 

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: 

April 22, 1975 – UK Civil Service scratches its head on #climate

April 22, 1993 – Clinton’s announcement used by anti-carbon pricing Aussies

Categories
United States of America

April 15, 1965 – Murray Bookchin warns about carbon dioxide build-up

Forty nine years ago, on this day, April 15, 1965, Murray Bookchin’s second book “Crisis in Our Cities” becomes one of the first to contain a warning about the long-term build up of carbon dioxide.

On page 187 we have this – 

And this –  “Meteorologists believe that the immediate effect of increased heat leads to violent air circulation and increasingly destructive storms….  theoretically, after several centuries of fossil-fuel combustion, the increased heat of the atmosphere could even melt the polar ice caps of the earth and lead to the inundation of the continents with sea water.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.  

The context was

Herber (real name Murray Bookchin) had written about “Our Synthetic Environment in 1962, ahead of the publication of Rachel Carson’s far more influential “Silent Spring.”

This, his second book, mentioned the danger of climate change.  I will try to dig into it more, but I strongly suspect Bookchin will have read the Conservation Foundation’s report on its March 1963 meeting about the C02 problem, held in New York.

The timing was good too – just two months earlier, in his special address to Congress, President Lyndon Johnson had name-checked carbon dioxide build-up.

What I think we can learn from this

Educated people have known for yonks.
Bookchin had to operate under a pseudonym because he was (checks notes) … an anarchist…

What happened next

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.