Tag: Nigel Calder

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United Kingdom

November 20, 1974 – BBC airs “The Weather Machine”

On this day, November 20, 1974, the BBC showed a documentary “The Weather Machine”, which makes glancing and largely dismissive mention of carbon dioxide build-up as a cause of the changing weather patterns by then being studied more intently…

“On Wednesday evening, immediately  following The Frost Interview, the BBC broadcast its much heralded, prestige extravaganza The Weather Machine (BBC2, November 20, 9.00 p.m.); the latest in a series of annual productions which began so successfully back in 1970 with Violent Universe. Excellently assisted by the studio commentary of Magnus Magnusson, the modulated narrative tones of Eric Porter and, more importantly, by the availability of a six figure budget, producer Alec Nisbett endeavoured to squeeze into 120 minutes of airspace the fruits of twelve months globetrotting “

Nature 22nd November1974

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 330ppm. At time of writing it was 417ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – from the early 1970s, a series of extreme weather events made the weather, well, newsworthy….

Why this matters. 

We should be fair to folks back then- there was a lot of different data and arguments out there. With hindsight it is “obvious” that carbon dioxide was definitely the culprit. Hindsight is famously 20/20…

What happened next?

Through the 1970s climate scientists became more and more convinced of what was going on, what was coming – sooner or later.  They tried to raise the alarm…

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Ignored Warnings Science United States of America

July 22, 1968 – Gordon Macdonald tries to warn about carbon dioxide build-up…

On this day in 1968 Gordon Macdonald’s  chapter on weather and climate modification, under the title “How to Wreck the Environment” (pdf here) appeared  Nigel Calder’s book “Unless Peace Comes a Scientific Forecast of New Weapons” was published 

July 22, 1968 – Viking Adult – ISBN: 978 067 074 1140

A shortened version of the chapter had already appeared in New Scientist in April of the same year

“How to wreck the environment.” New Scientist. 25 April 1968):180- 82;

MacDonald noted 

“There has been much controversy in recent years about conjectured overall effects on the world’s climate of emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from furnaces and engines burning fossil fuels, and some about possible influences of the exhaust from large rockets on the transparency of the upper atmosphere. Carbon dioxide placed in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has produced an increase in the average temperature of the lower atmosphere of a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. The water vapour that may be introduced into the stratosphere by the supersonic transport may also result in a similar temperature rise. In principle it would be feasible to introduce material into the upper atmosphere that would absorb either incoming light (thereby cooling the surface) or outgoing heat (thereby warming the surface). In practice, in the rarefied and windswept upper atmosphere, the material would disperse rather quickly, so that military use of such a technique would probably rely upon global rather than local effects”

Why this matters. 

Anyone who had their eyes open knew there was probably trouble ahead. By the late 70s, that trouble was unmistakable. 

What happened next?

Ten years later Macdonald, with Rafe Pomerance, would get the wheels rolling for the Charney report (see Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth”).

By then MacDonald was also appearing on the Macneil Lehrer hour (1978) and so on. There’s a nice oral history interview here– 

Basically, Macdonald is one of the (forgotten) good guys.

See this nice biographical memoir of the man (he died in 2002) by Munk, Oreskes and Muller