On this day, fifty years ago, Sir Kingsley Dunham gave a presidential address, with the title “The Advancement of Environmental Science” to the Canterbury Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In it, he noted the following
“Unfortunately, a development of energy sources sufficient to make possible universal living standards equivalent to the highest achieved at present would, according to some calculations, raise the whole temperature of the atmosphere and seas to an extent dangerous to life. Here the meteorologists and oceanographers must assess this risk as they reach greater understanding of all the circulatory processes involved. The great tropical experiment of the Global Atmospheric Research Programme of the World Meteorological Organisation and the International Council of Scientific Unions shortly to begin, is an important step towards fuller understanding of processes in a zone so far too little known. Regarding the possibility of a general global rise of temperature, the effect of accumulation of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere producing a greenhouse effect (Wilson & Matthews 1970), has been widely discussed, especially in the light of Swedish observations indicating a possible increase of 18 per cent of this gas in the atmosphere by the year 2000 because of the combustion of fossil fuels. A question, which insufficient data at present makes it impossible to answer, is whether a rise in temperature dangerous to life will have occurred before combustion of carbonaceous fuels comes to its end.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in 
The context was – The Limits to Growth and the Stockholm Environment Conference were just over a year old. But the issues they raised were not going away, and people still wanted to talk about this stuff.
What we can learn – the threat of carbon dioxide wasn’t abstruse. People knew.
What happened next – the first oil shock meant that politicians and planners had less time/bandwidth for environmental issues (and were using the wrong tools anyway).
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.