Fifty one years ago, on this day, February 6, 1975, the UK magazine New Scientist published an article about, well The Quest for Gaia.
Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis in journal articles in 1972[1] and 1974,[2] followed by a popularizing 1979 book Gaia: A new look at life on Earth. An article in the New Scientist of February 6, 1975,[39] and a popular book length version of the hypothesis, published in 1979 as The Quest for Gaia, began to attract scientific and critical attention.
Lovelock and Sidney Epton, “The Quest for Gaia,” New Scientist, 6 Feb. 1975, p. 304;
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Lovelock had been thinking about all this stuff for a while (see also his atmospheric pollution work for Shell in the 1960s!) here and here.
The specific context was that by the mid-1970s the idea that positivist science was good at some stuff and might also be missing bigger parts of the bigger picture had really caught on.
(see also Dr Who and the Green Death!)
What I think we can learn from this is that Lovelock’s hypothesis (disputed) has gained traction and attention, for reasons both sound and unsound.
What happened next: The Gaia hypothesis got a signal boost during the excellent thriller “Edge of Darkness” in the mid-1980s. Lovelock lived to a very ripe old age, and warned about anthropogenic climate change repeatedly.
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.
“Kill Whitlam” telegram was by Rupert Murdoch to the editors of his Australian newspapers. He was miffed at not getting more out of Gough Whitlam, the Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, whom he had supported..
The context was that Murdoch hadn’t had his transactional needs met by Whitlam, and was therefore gunning for him. Very old story.
Why care?
So how would history have turned out any different? Probably not.
Murdoch is doing a “cheating death” thing, with Lachlan, his mini-me in charge in perpetuity, so that Murdoch and Fox can spew out the bollocks forever.
What a species, but we’re susceptible to it, the bollocks.
We just don’t know which buttons to push to collaborate. “They” know how to get us to hate.
They know how to get us to disdain and disparage – and to end coalitions before they even begin.
And you know, we need to remember this, that the power of the media, if they “pay the truth makers” against any political move that they even perceive to be opposed to their interests.
(How) does it connect to climate change?
The Murdoch media spews an endless vomit-stream of lies, half-truths, smears etc. It didn’t have to be like this….
What happened next
Whitlam was “dismissed”, lost the ensuing election, and the one in 1977. “Labor” regained office in 1983, under the neoliberals Hawke and Keating. That was pretty much the end for social democracy in Australia. And here we are.
How does it help us understand the world?
The power of the press…
How does it help us act in the world?
Knowing when (and how) you’re being lied to is useful, imo.
The other things that you could read about this or watch
See also the first television adaptation of Chris Mullin’s A Very British Coup with the newspaper proprietor on a sun-lounger in Spain telling his editors in London what the opinion polls were to be flashed on the front page of the newspapers about Prime Minister Harry Perkins.
What do you think?
If you have opinions or info about this, or other things that happened on this day that are worth knowing, let me know!
“Climatic change and variability : a Southern perspective : based on a conference at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, 7-12 December, 1975, which was co-sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science and Royal Meteorological Society (Great Britain). Australian Branch.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 331ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was there had been increased concern in the early 1970s, in US, UK and Australia (and elsewhere no doubt) about disruptions to weather patterns and its implications for security (food supplies etc).
The specific context was that in 1974 Whitlam’s Minister for Science had been persuaded by Nugget Coombs (legendary and recently retired public servant) to set up an inquiry. Mind you, by the time the conference happened, Whitlam had been sacked by the Governor-General (with a little help from our friends at Langley?).
What I think we can learn from this – the debates have been there for fifty years. This inquiry was about two years too early to have a strong “carbon dioxide is the problem” theme.
What happened next – a report was produced, but sank without trace. Meanwhile, the CSIRO kept beavering away. There was a conference on Philip Island in 1978, and an academic conference in Canberra in 1980, a monograph in 1981. Plenty of warnings. Ignored, obviously.
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.
Fifty years ago, on this day, November 17th, 1975 Living with Climatic Change conference begins in Toronto.
In 1975 there was an important conference in Toronto entitled “Living with Climate Change”, sponsored by the Canadian Meteorological Society, the Mexican Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and the Science Council of Canada. It was attended by leading persons in atmospheric sciences at the time from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, many of whom became familiar figures in climate change issues in subsequent years. I think that it is of interest, and provides important perspective to our work today to quote from the first sentence of the report of thirty-four years ago (McTaggart-Cowan and Beltzner, 1976):
“There is growing evidence that the world is entering a new climate regime. Both the rate of change of the climate and the amplitude of short-term climatic variations will be much more pronounced than in the recent past.”
And the last sentence of the preface reads:
“We hope that this discussion will be a significant impetus toward furthering our ability to live more securely and more contentedly with climate change.”
Could not this statement from 1975 apply equally well to our symposium in 2009?
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 331ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was by the mid-1970s there had been a lot of freaky bits of weather/desertification/crop failures etc. Carbon dioxide was not the only culprit (see also dust, thermal pollution).
The specific context was the Canadians were alive to the problems, given their long long winters, and a bunch of decent scientists.
What I think we can learn from this – we worried for a long time. By the mid 1970s, the worries were coalescing around carbon dioxide…
What happened next – the Americans were publishing, there was a push for a World Climate Conference, which happened in 1979. That could/should have been the moment a serious political push started. Oh well…
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.
The context – since the 1950s people had been keeping tabs on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The dogma that extra carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere would be absorbed by the oceans had been exploded by Revelle and Seuss (not the same Seuss as yesterday’s post!)
What we learn – we knew plenty enough to be taking action
What happened next. Oh, you know the rest, if you’ve been reading this site for any length of time. The emissions kept climbing, the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases kept climbing. The temperatures kept climbing. The social movements performed a bunch of three year spasms every decade or so…
Forty nine years ago, on this day, June 26th, 1975, an overconfident man was being over-confident. And fundamentally, dangerously, wrong.
Scorer, R. 1975 The danger of environmental jitters. New Scientist, June 26 p702- 703
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that environmental concerns were still bubbling along. The greenhouse issue was still bubbling along. None of it with the prominence in the public mind that it had a couple of years before. But still enough for sceptics, like Richard Scorer to do a standard “denounce the greenies for being hysterical, emotional, unscientific, irrational.” fear, this stuff writes itself. Scorer wasn’t alone in this of course – there was also John Maddox, John Mason et al.
What we learn is that the culture war must be fought, just pull the trigger to feel powerful, lay down some so-called suppressing fire at your enemies. Label them hysterical, ignore the arguments. Bish bosh.
What happened next – as late as 1987 Scorer was peddling the same tosh.
Scorer’s 1987 greenhouse denial in the Guardian letters page.
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.
Forty seven years ago, on this day, November 13, 1975, scientists were busy trying to inform politicians of the coming threats.
Concerning possible effects of air pollution on climate
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Environment and the Atmosphere of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, 13-14 November 1975
And got turned into an article in the Bulletin of the AMS.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by 1975 scientists who studied this stuff were getting more and more alarmed about the build up of CO2. The best way of demonstrating this is the Wally Broecker paper “are we on the cusp of a pronounced global warming.” But it’s one thing for something to appear in a scientific journal like Science, it’s another for politicians to hear it. Of course, US politicians had been hearing this stuff for years, a long time. 20 years really going back to Roger Revelle in the lead-up to the International Geophysical Year
What’s different here is there’s more certainty, more science, and the build-up of co2 has continued.
What I think we can learn from this
It takes a very very long time for a new idea/problem to become an issue. There is enormous inertia in people’s heads, in our (political) cultures.
What happened next
An attempt to get legislation through failed. There was soon a second push for a climate act with George Brown and others. It worked.
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.
Forty eight years ago, on this day, August 30, 1975, the very first edition of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s new science program carries a segment about climate change.
Peter Ritchie-Calder: In the course of the last century we’ve put 360,000 million tonnes of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. On the present trends the accumulated requirements between now and 2000 AD will come out as something like 11,000 million tonnes of coal a year, 200,000 million tonnes of crude petroleum and liquid natural gas, and 50 million million cubic metres of natural gas. Remember, this is coming out of the bowels of the Earth, and now we are taking it out and we’re throwing it back into the atmosphere, and into the climatic machine, into the weather machine, where it is beginning to affect the climate itself. Now this is a very serious matter, and to me there is no question that our climate has changed.
Robyn Williams: Do you expect the limitation to this ever-expanding use of fossil fuels to be due to either running out of them, or to this second question of climate effect?
Peter Ritchie-Calder: I think definitely that environmental factors…that you will simply be confronted with a situation which will make life virtually intolerable.
Robyn Williams: We’ve got these different possible techniques, there’s a nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, solar power, tidal power and so on. What do you think will happen to determine which of these will become the satisfactory energy source? Do think it will be questions of scientific ingenuity. Do you think it will be questions about changing social patterns and use of energy or questions of money?
Peter Ritchie-Calder: If we’re looking at what I regard as the absurd oil situation, the OPEC situation…I must say I just get a lot of sardonic pleasure out of it because here you’ve got these fellas really cocking a sniff at us and saying to the people who went for that cheap oil, ‘You’re going to pay the price that we’re going to determine for you.’ It also reminds us of the enormous stupidity of our whole scientific policies over the last 40 years. We were very emphatic in 1963, that’s 12 years ago…these are the years that the locusts have eaten, we’ve really wasted our opportunity…in 1963 we were talking at the Rome conference, the UN conference, on new sources of energy, which is rather sardonic because we weren’t talking about atomic energy at all, we were talking about the oldest sources of energy which is the sun and the wind and the water and geothermal energy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Scottish public intellectual Ritchie-Calder had been aware of the potential problem of climate change since 1954 at the latest (probably earlier). He had been speaking of it as a serious problem by 1963 at the latest. His January 1970 article about “Mortgaging the Old Homestead,” which had been serialised in the Bulletin and elsewhere, included a relatively lengthy mention of the carbon dioxide problem.
At the time this show was broadcast the Australian Academy of Science was conducting an investigation into “the carbon dioxide problem”. It was Nugget Coombs who’d set that ball rolling, using Kissinger’s speech to the General Assembly as a pretext.
What I think we can learn from this is that intelligent Australians who listened to the Science Show knew from 1975 what was going on.
What happened next was that the Science Show kept covering the climate issue and we’ve already talked about it on this website – the Nirenberg and O’Brien episode and others… well done Robyn Williams!
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.
Forty eight years ago, on this day, August 18, 1975, a bunch of people who had been thinking about man’s impact on the climate for quite a while get together in Norwich, England, for a meeting about what’s coming. They decide that there’s no ice age on its way but there IS a decent chance of a large amount of warming…
1975 18-23 August 1975 Norwich meeting which ended speculation about possible cooling.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was interested in the weather – was it getting colder? was it getting warmer? There had been public pronouncement in both directions including, infamously, the 1971 Rasool and Schneider paper. The popular version of this was The Weather Machine by Nigel Calder which became a BBC documentary. And there were questions asked in the House of Commons.
But the people who actually studied the climate issue were looking closely at carbon dioxide and by now beginning to think this is the issue – we’re going to get warming not a cooling. Wally Broeker’s paper in Science had just been published a month earlier and the National Academy of Science had started its 2-year study on understanding climate.
What I think we can learn from this is that although doubt continued in public because bad ideas and stories have a long half-life this workshop was the moment at which any lingering doubts about the cooling were put to one side, at least in the minds of people who knew what they were talking about.
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, December 22 in 1975, the New York Times ran a story “Scientist Warns of Great Floods if Earth’s Heat Rises.”
But carbon dioxide was not in the frame.
Dr Howard Wilcox, who had a book called “Hothouse Earth” argued that – in the words of the NYT-
“man’s output of heat into the atmosphere, if allowed to increase at present energy and industrial growth rates, will raise the earth’s temperature enough to melt the polar ice caps and flood many populous areas of the earth in the next 80 to 180 years.”
That ‘heat’ would be the key driver, was not the case…, as both William Kellogg and Murray Mitchell pointed out – the final paragraphs in the story are these:
Dr. J. Murray Mitchell, Jr.; senior research climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. in a telephone interview offered, similar observations:
“I agree with Dr. Wilcox’s concern and his scientific analysis and statistical evidence. But I feel that the more immediate danger will come from the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide that are thrown off into the atmosphere along with the heat that Dr. Wilcox talks about.”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 331ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
Why this matters
We need to remember that – as per the Landsberg article mentioned a few days ago, carbon dioxide was not the only villain in the picture.
What happened next
Within a couple of years, it was obvious that carbon dioxide was, in fact, the big thing to worry about.
