Seventy one years ago, on this day, May 24th, 1954,
24 to 26 May 1954 – Eriksson, “Report on an informal conference in atmospheric chemistry held at the Meteorological Institute, University of Stockholm, May 24-26, 1954,” Tellus, 6 (1954)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the question of carbon dioxide build-up had returned to prominence with the 1953 presentation by Gilbert Plass at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting. The Swedes had a lot of expertise in this field, and prestige (Carl Rossby etc).
What I think we can learn from this is that from the early 1950s good scientists were looking at this and going “hmm.”
What happened next. According to Weart (1997) they set up carbon dioxide monitoring stations and just got noise because there were too many forests nearby.
Rossby died too young. The baton was picked up by Bert Bolin and others. For all the good it did us, at a species-level.
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:
May 24, 1953 – NYT on “How industry may change climate” – All Our Yesterdays
May 24, 2000- Australian denialist nutjobs have nutjob jamboree
May 24, 2004 – “The Day After Tomorrow” released – All Our Yesterdays