Thirty eight years ago, on this day, January 9th, 1987 a grumpy scientist who had already been wrong about ozone was being wrong about carbon dioxide build-up.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was was that more concern was being paid to the greenhouse effect, especially since the Villach meeting in October 1985 and people were talking about it, clearly. The other context will be that Richard S. Scorer was well as ozone problems, from the 70s and his actions on the latter score a mention (p.114) in a Oreskes and Conway’s book The Merchants of Doubt.
What’s fascinating here is that latter the same year Scorer, in his capacity as President of the Royal Meteorological Society, was engaged in “high level” discussions” about climatic change (as per National Archives binge, Jan 2025 – watch this space!)
What I think we can learn from this
Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, and having been flat wrong is a real thing – see also John Maddox (twice Nature editor) And John Mason (ex-Met boss) for that matter.
What happened next
1988 was the banner year for climate change. It broke through into the public policy agenda. Scorer died in 2011. and the Guardian keep kept publishing asinine letters from asinine people
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.
Also on this day:
January 7, 2004 – geoengineering our way outa trouble?
January 7, 2013 – Australian climate activist pretends to be ANZ bank, with spectacular results
2013, Jan 7: Paper (briefly) wraps rock. But coal wins in the end… #auspol
