UPDATE – Ooops. I got this wrong. See here. (17 Dec 2023)
Fifty years ago today, on 17 December 1973 the physicist Mike Pentz (Open University, and Cambridge) gave a public talk warning of the trouble ahead…,
Compare with 14 and a half years later-
Anon, 1988. Scientists warn of devastation. Canberra Times, 2 July, p.6.
TORONTO, Friday (KRD).—Toronto scientists and policymakers from 46 nations say global damage from “greenhouse” warming and other man-made atmospheric changes may ultimately be second in magnitude only to the devastation of a nuclear war.
They also called on industrialised countries to tax fossil-fuel consumption to finance a fund to protect the atmosphere and drastically cut carbon-dioxide emissions.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the scientific consensus around carbon dioxide as a major problem was still in its early phases, but plenty of people could see real trouble ahead, on the basis of 19th century physics.
What we can learn
It was basic physics. You didn’t really need that big a crystal ball to figure it out.
What happened next
The British State faffed its way through the 1970s on this question. The first report, finally released in 1980 was a “maybe, yeah, nothing to see here” effort. Only in 1988 did the issue finally break through.
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..