Fifty years ago, on this day, August 7th, 1977,
Dayton Daily News,7 Aug 1977, p.182
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 333ppm. As of 2026, 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 was that from the early mid 70s there had been plenty of news stories about carbon dioxide build up, and here we see Arthur Herzog, who had already written The Swarm and Earthsounds, wrote the first full-length cli-fi novel, which is not to say that climate change from carbon dioxide build up had not appeared in various short stories by Isaac Asimov, also in James Blish’s 1969 “We all die naked” and in Ursula Le Guin’s “The Lathe of Heaven.”
The specific context was that Herzog had already had some successes!
What I think we can learn from this is that it’s now 50 years since the first full-length carbon dioxide specific cli-fi book was published, and here we are.
What happened next Herzog’s novel never got turned into a movie, which is a pity. It would have been a good one, I think.
Research and see if you can find out more about Hertzog’s process. Keyword search: Hertzog heat genesis. Did he consult Stephen Schneider, etc. Has anyone written about this?
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts 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.
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If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
August 7, 1933 – Elinor Ostrom born
August 7, 1979 – Cabinet Office wonk hopes to pacify greenies
August 7, 1991 – “Draft Ecology Plans released”
August 7, 1995 – decent Australian journo reports on utter bullshit #climate economic “modelling”
August 7, 2003 – John Howard meets with business buddies to kill climate action