Forty eight years ago, on this day, May 26th, 1978,
ADVISORY GROUP ON CLIMATE MEETING, MAY 26, 1978 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Well, to quote from Joshua Howe
“In the mid-1970s, the largest and most inclusive of America’s science advocacy organizations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), included climate change as a potential subject of focus as it began to consider new directions for the coming decade. In 1978, the AAAS convened an Advisory Group on Climate. The committee comprised researchers from a variety of disciplines associated with climate questions, including, among others, Roger Revelle, leading agronomist and later critic of consensus views on global warming Sylvan Wittwer, Robert White of the National Academy of Sciences Climate Research Board, Science editor-in-chief Philip Abelson, and California…”
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, and PAUL S. SUTTER. “ADVISORY GROUP ON CLIMATE MEETING, MAY 26, 1978.” Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past, edited by JOSHUA P. HOWE, University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 128–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnkd5.25. Accessed 15 May 2025.
What I think we can learn from this
It is almost fifty years since we had smart people sitting around nutting out the implications of this issue. That may give you pause to consider how that strategy has worked out, as strategies go…
What happened next
They produced their report. Other committees of Learned Gentlemen (and less frequently Gentlewomen) produced reports. The reports piled up.
As per this article from The Onion.
The Time To Act Is Now,’ Says Yellowing Climate Change …
1 Apr 2016 — ‘The Time To Act Is Now,’ Says Yellowing Climate Change Report Sitting In University Archive … The Onion. Privacy Polic
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:
May 26, 1990 – Times front page about Thatcher going for stabilisation target – All Our Yesterdays
