Forty five years ago, on this day, July 12, 1978, US scientists gathered to review
1978 Woods Hole workshop to review “Report of the Workshop to Review the U.S. Climate Program Plans”, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, July 12-19, 1978, to the Climate Research Board
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the National Academy of Science had released its big fat report in the middle of 1977. And there was now a US Climate programme as well, thanks to George Brown’s efforts to get a climate act through. This workshop is about “well how are we doing? What do we do next?”
What I think we can learn from this is that you can get a research agenda with policy implications embedded within the state but then you need to husband it, make sure it’s on track. And that’s unglamorous but it’s needed, obviously, and will take up a lot of time and energy. But there isn’t really an alternative because if you don’t nurture it, you’re screwed (spoiler, you are anyway!)
What happened next
The climate issue continued to build and build and by 1980 81, it had some serious legs on it. And then came Reagan and the Heritage Foundation, grinding into gear and making sure that things like the Global 2000 report don’t have as much afterlife as they otherwise might. See. May 13 1983 blog post
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.