Tag: Charney Report

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Science Scientists United States of America

July 23, 1979 – Charney Report people meet – will conclude “yep, global warming is ‘A Thing’.”

On this day, 23 July 1979, the  “Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate” begins at Woods Hole, giving us the  “Charney Report.”

Short version – a scientist (Gordon MacDonald) and a Friends of the Earth activist (Rafe Pomerance) had managed to get President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor (Frank Press) to get Carter to request a study on whether this “greenhouse effect” thing was gonna actually be the problem some were saying.

So folks met, under the leadership of one of the big original beasts of atmospheric science, Jule Charney.

And they came up with the view, “yes”.

See this excellent summary, written by Neville Nicholls, an Australian scientist

Here’s a flowery (but good) bit from Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth”–

The scientists summoned by Jule Charney to judge the fate of civilization arrived on July 23, 1979, with their wives, children and weekend bags at a three-story mansion in Woods Hole, on the southwestern spur of Cape Cod. They would review all the available science and decide whether the White House should take seriously Gordon MacDonald’s prediction of a climate apocalypse. The Jasons had predicted a warming of two or three degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century, but like Roger Revelle before them, they emphasized their reasons for uncertainty. Charney’s scientists were asked to quantify that uncertainty. They had to get it right: Their conclusion would be delivered to the president. But first they would hold a clambake.

They gathered with their families on a bluff overlooking Quissett Harbor and took turns tossing mesh produce bags stuffed with lobster, clams and corn into a bubbling caldron. While the children scrambled across the rolling lawn, the scientists mingled with a claque of visiting dignitaries, whose status lay somewhere between chaperone and client — men from the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and Agriculture; the E.P.A.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They exchanged pleasantries and took in the sunset. It was a hot day, high 80s, but the harbor breeze was salty and cool. It didn’t look like the dawning of an apocalypse.

Why this matters. 

“We” really knew enough by the late 70s. Everything since then has been footnotes.

What happened next?

Carter lost the 1980 election, handsomely. It would be another 8 years before the simulacrum of international action began.

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

Feb 18, 1978 – “#Climate Experts see a Warming Trend”

On this day, 18th February 1978. readers of The Washington Post would have learned, via an article by a journalist called Thomas O’Toole titled “Climate Experts See a Warming Trend,” that the burning of coal and oil was causing so much carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere that by the year 2000, temperatures might begin to rise.  

O’Toole was reporting

“… the opinions of 24 climate experts in seven countries polled by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects which yesterday released the poll’s results in a 100-page report published by the National Defense University.”

This report, bless, is available on the interwebz.

[See also a report in the New York Times]

We need to remember that in the late 1970s the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a problem and as one that was going to get worse and cause serious difficulty had moved from the academic journals and the scientific periodicals to the quality press such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Canberra Times. If you go looking for these, you can find them. They usually come out of various National Academy of Science reports too. We knew. We really did.

Why this matters? 

What it says is that we’ve had almost 50 years to sort this out and, pace Donald Trump,, this problem was not invented by Al Gore, or by the Chinese as a hoax. 

What happened next? 

Well in this specific case, Carter’s Science Advisor asked some top scientists to look into the problem. This is the so-called Charney report, which said in 1979, we find no reason to believe this warming won’t happen. You can read more about it in Nathaniel Rich, and to some extent in Alice Bell’s “Our Biggest Experiment”