Forty four years ago, on this day, February 7 1979, the had of the Met Office John Mason, sent a deeply disingenuous letter to Kenneth Berrill, a senior civil servant who had been responsible for getting an interdepartmental committee formed to look at the possibility of climate change caused by carbon dioxide build-up, and what implications that would have for the UK.
And early in 1979, [Mason] wrote directly to Berrill, describing the carbon dioxide problem as of ‘‘immediate importance’’ and assuring Berrill that he was pouring resources into the problem. This engagement with CO2 climate change represented an about-turn in Mason’s position. (Martin-Nielsen, 2018)
CAB 164/1422 B. J. Mason to K. Berrill, re: ‘‘Economic Effects of Climatic Change,’’ 7 Feb 1979, KEW
This – February 1979 – was just as Mason was about to fly off to the First World Climate Conference in Geneva, where he would… make sure that carbon dioxide was not agreed as an immediate threat. Whether Berrill noticed, or cared, I don’t know…. You can read about Mason’s performance in Geneva in Stephen Schneider’s memoir “Science as a Contact Sport.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
John Mason, as head of the Meteorological Office had been dismissive of carbon dioxide build up as something to be concerned about for several years. The notion that this was a U-turn from Mason, is not necessarily accurate.. Another reading of the situation is that Mason was merely bending to reality because an Intergovernmental Committee on climate had already started meeting it in late 1978.
What I think we can learn from this
Behind any creation of a committee or a report, there is always politics that you don’t see usually at the time or even later – things that are either not leaked or kept secret or in fact, never actually written down, but said in passing and in corridors.
This creates problems for historians trying to recreate “what really happened.” Secondly, we learn that people are capable of pretending they’ve changed their mind, if it is politically expedient for them to do so.
What happened next
The Climatic Change report was subjected to attempts to suppress it, and was finally released in February 1980 as a “nothing to see here” document. You can read about this in four days on this website.
References
Martin-Nielson, J. 2018. Computing the Climate: When Models Became Political. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018) 48 (2): 223–245. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2018.48.2.223
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.