Forty three years ago, on this day, March 25th, 1982,
The CBS Evening News for March 25, 1982 included a two minute and 50 second story by David Culhane on the greenhouse effect. Chemist Melvin Calvin raised the threat of global warming, Representative Al Gore called for further research, and James Kane of the Energy Department said there was no need for haste. (Sachsman, 2000)
Carbon Dioxide and Climate : The Greenhouse Effect hearings of the House Committee on Science and Technology, 97th Congress, March 25 1982 https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002758682
See the detailed account in Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth
(also in C02 Newsletter Vol 3 No 3, March-April 1982)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
that the CO2 issue was something journalists had been particularly interested in since maybe the late 1970s and although Reagan and Republicans were in the ascendant, that didn’t mean that Congress had stopped chipping away. And I think in ‘82 was the first time Al Gore had held hearings
Congressional hearings are a nice hook – the experts are in town, so you can grab them for an interview. And you can get two or three minutes of quality journalism relatively cheaply and predictably.
What I think we can learn from this that Americans were being tolerably well-informed about future threats. 43 years ago. It was on the television for Christ’s sake – national news.
What happened next
CO2 kept bubbling away in the American news, famously in ‘83 with the EPA report “can we delay a greenhouse warming?” (no), and on and on at a relatively low level until it properly exploded in the summer of 1988.
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:
March 25, 1982 – congressional hearings and CBS Evening News repor
March 25, 1988- World Meteorological Organisation sends IPCC invites.
March 25, 2013 – Australian Department of Climate Change axed
