On May 7 1966, Roger Revelle the noted American scientist had a story in the popular news magazine Saturday Review on carbon dioxide and the oceans.
In it Revelle wrote
“Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment which, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate. We must not forget, however, that even a relatively small rise in the average annual temperature of the atmosphere might be accompanied by other more serious changes, for example, shifts in the position or the width of belts of low rainfall.”
To be clear – he was not yet saying “watch out”, as others soon would be. Just before this quote he wrote
“In general, our attitude toward the changing content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is being brought about by our own actions should probably contain more curiosity than apprehension.”
Why this matters
We need to remember that people have been warning about the build-up of carbon dioxide for an extremely long time as a potential problem.
Revelle, we should say was one of the founders of the climate issue having written with Hans Seuss about the way in which the oceans might not be soaking up as much co2 as the dogma suggested, and having hired Charles David Keelng whom he found very irritating. (see, Joshua Weiner’s book)
What happened next
Revelle kept researching and writing. Other people kept researching and writing. The climate issues slowly, painfully, worked its way up the policy agenda, but didn’t really get down until 1988.