Sixty years ago, on this day, March 12, 1963, in New York
“Dr. Keeling was concerned enough about rising carbon dioxide levels to participate in a panel by the Conservation Foundation on March 12, 1963 “Implications of Rising Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere”, the report issued being among the first to speculate that anthropogenic global warming could be dangerous to the Earth’s biological and environmental systems. It includes on page 6: “many life forms would be annihilated” [in the tropics] if emissions continued unchecked in the upcoming centuries. They also projected that carbon dioxide emissions could raise the average surface temperature of the earth by as much as 4°C during the next century (1963-2063)”
Source
Probably the first gathering of scientists and policymakers devoted specifically and explicitly to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Conservation Foundation had been set up in New York in 1948
The International Geophysical Year was now 5 years in the past, a lot of data had been collected. In January of 1961, there had been a five day scientific conference organised by the American Meteorological Society and the New York Academy of Sciences with plenty of people talking about carbon dioxide buildup, and alongside that there had been other scientific efforts. So the Conservation Foundation, which had been aware of CO2 buildup as a potential problem for a while, held a gathering, the first ever carbon dioxide build up conference
What I think we can learn from this
Well, these sorts of events are fascinating for the legacy they leave. And for several years – really till the end of the 1960s – the publication about this meeting was cited whenever in writing about carbon dioxide buildup for years, and it only really fell away entirely after the 1971 study on the man’s impact on climate.
It also seems to have been the “last gasp” in climate science for Gilbert Plass whose statements and work from 1953 had been so important for the growth of acceptance of the carbon dioxide theory.
And in all probability, it was where Lewis Herbert aka Murray Bookchin got his facts for the section in his book written in 1964 and published in early 1965, called Crisis in our Cities, which will be discussed soon.
And the reason I say this is that the event was in New York, Bookchin was in New York and it’s impossible to imagine that he wasn’t aware of the Conservation Foundation’s activities. Bookchin’s politics were not of the technocrats. But just because he didn’t agree with the funders does not mean he’d have ignored what was happening under their auspices.
What happened next
Plass dropped out.
Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling kept doing what they were doing.
And the closing statement – well, it came to pass…
