Over the last three decades, media coverage of climate change and carbon dioxide (CO2) has become common.
My awareness of climate change began in the late 1950s—Possibly from reading articles in The Kansas City Star, Reader’s Digest or watching Kansas City television shows. I’m not sure.
As a high school freshman, the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect, and related environmental issues concerned me. In spring 1959, I was taking a high school general science class. So, I asked the teacher about the increasing CO2 levels and the greenhouse effect. He blew me off. Apparently, he hadn’t read or heard about the CO2 and greenhouse effect.
Over the last five years, I began to question myself, “Did I really know about the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere in 1959? Were the media covering the greenhouse effect early in the 1950s?”
It kept me up awake at night. So, I searched online databases for scientific journal articles, reports, books, and the web.
I had learned about the 1950s scientists' reports on CO2 in the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect. Below, I highlight selected resources I found in my literature searches.
Spencer R. Weart, the author of The Discovery of Global Warming, points out, “
In the late 1950s, a few American scientists, starting with Plass [Gilbert N. Plass], tentatively began to inform the public that the greenhouse gases might become a problem within the foreseeable future. Revelle [Roger Revelle ], in particular, warning journalists and government officials that greenhouse warming deserved serious attention. 1
Climate change is not new to scientists.
As I dug deeper, I learned that the early work of scientists in the 1800s provided the basic concepts, theories, and foundations of humankind’s 2019 understanding of climate change.
On the American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics website,2 Weart provides historical reviews of key scientists in The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect, and he links to other essays elaborating on specific scientists and their contributions to advancing humankind’s understanding of climate change. He recounts the challenges they faced advancing physics and atmospheric science to develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of chemical and physical interactions of CO2 in the atmosphere, oceans, geological features, and their contributions to climate change.
In Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction3, Professor Mark Maslin, professor of physical geology at the University College
London, provides a brief review of physics and political issues related to climate.
An October 2019 my quick search of electronic databases identified thousands of articles, publications, and reports. For example, an Amazon book search identified dozens of books on climate change and related issues. A Medline Plus (National Institutes of Health’s U.S. National Library of Medicine) search identified more than 190 articles related to climate and health topics. The New York Times 1851 to 2008 database lists nearly 19,000 articles, and The New York Times 1980 to present database contains 65,000 articles. A search for “climate change” using The Web of Science, a major database covering diverse scientific disciplines, generated a list of more than 300,000 citations.
Clearly, climate change has emerged as a significant societal issue spanning politics, international relations, health, science, and related disciplines.
Future blogs will report on selected climate change, environmental, and health issues.
--Don Z
Notes & Resources
1S. R. Weart (2019). The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. The Discovery of Global Warming. (https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm) Accessed 28 October 2019.
2American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics. (https://www.aip.org/history- programs/physics-history). Accessed 28 October 2019.
3 Maslin, M. (2014). Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction. 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press. London, United Kingdom.