Fifty eight years ago, on this day, October 24th, 1967,
“The early theory of acid rain came from a Swedish scientist, Svante Oden, who published it first not in a scientific journal, but in a newspaper, the October 24, 1967, issue of Dagens Nyheter”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 322ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere would screw with buildings and lungs was a long established fact, dating back centuries – by the time of the Industrial Revolution it got so bad in some English cities that – gasp- the British State created an Alkali Inspectorate.
The specific context was Sweden was noticing changes to the acidity of their lakes, and biological impacts on trees, fish etc. And they wondered if the problem might be coming from perfidious Albion…
What I think we can learn from this is that there were plenty of cognate issues to do with atmospheric pollution alongside climate – ozone, nuclear war etc.
What happened next the British politicians ignored, denied etc. etc. that it was their fault. Of course they did. Read more about it here.
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:
October 24, 1967 – editor of Science warns about C02 build-up