This was the first news report to warn of climate change in 1912.

This 110-year-old news bulletin is now famous and is shared annually on the Internet as one of the first climate science news stories in the media (although it is actually a reprint of a story published in a NSW mining magazine). month ago).

At that time,why did it take so long to listen and act before the warnings of the article?

American scientist and women’s rights activist Eunice Foote is now widely First person to demonstrate the greenhouse effect in 1856A few years ago, British researcher John Tyndall published similar results.

Primitive experiments showed that carbon dioxide and water vapor can absorb heat, which can affect the earth’s temperature when grown. That’s why we’ve known the relationship between greenhouse gases and Earth’s temperature for at least 150 years.

Forty years later, Swedish scientist Svente Arrhenius made some basic calculations to predict how much Earth’s temperature would change. if we double the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. At that time, CO₂ levels were around 295 parts per million air molecules. This year we reached 421 parts per million, an increase of over 50% compared to the pre-industrial period.

Arrhenius estimated that doubling CO₂ would produce a 5℃ warmer world. That figure is, fortunately, higher than modern calculations, but considering it doesn’t use any fancy computers, it’s not far off! At the time, the Swede was more concerned about the possible arrival of a new ice age rather than global warming, but by 1900 he was already starting to shock his students with the news that the world was slowly warming due to coal burning.

Climate Science in the Shadow of the Oil Boom

The 1912 New Zealand quote was probably based on a four-page report published in the magazine. Popular Mechanicsthis builds on the work of Arrhenius and others.

When climate advocates point to the existence of articles like this and say that we already know that climate change will happen, they overlook that Arrhenius’s ideas are often considered frivolous, meaning that many people don’t take them seriously. In fact, there has been backlash over the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

When the First World War began, the matter lost momentum. Oil began to rise, pushing out promising technologies such as electric cars, which in 1900 held a third of the nascent market. against this, technological developments in fossil fuels and military purposes were used. The idea that humans could influence the entire planet with these activities was left out of any discussion.

1930s: The Callendar Effect

It wasn’t until the 1930s that human-induced climate change resurfaced. British engineer Guy Callendar collected weather observations from around the world and found that temperatures were already rising.

Callendar was the first to clearly identify a warming trend and link it to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, but downplayed the importance of CO₂ compared to water vapor, another potent greenhouse gas.

Like the 1912 article, Callendar also underestimated the rate of warming we will see in the next 80 years. to your first results. He predicted that by 2000 the world would be only 0.39℃ warmer, instead of the 1℃ we observed. However, it caught the attention of researchers, which sparked intense scientific debate.

But in the late 1930s, the world once again went to war. Callendar’s expeditions quickly faded into the background with the wars and subsequent need for reconstruction.

Doubt traders take action

In 1957, scientists began the International Geophysical Year, which included intensive exploration of the Earth, its poles and atmosphere. This included the creation of atmospheric monitoring stations that monitor the continued increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans. At the same time, oil companies were recognizing the impact their business had on Earth.

During these postwar decades, very little political debate about climate continued. Hard to classify as a leftist, Margaret Thatcher saw global warming as a clear threat during her time as UK Prime Minister. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen gave his famous speech to the United States Congress stating that global warming is already here.

The momentum for awareness of the problem was growing. Many environmentalists were emboldened by the Montreal Protocol, which more or less stopped the growth of the hole in the ozone layer. Can we do the same to stop climate change?

As we know now, we didn’t. It was one thing to phase out a class of chemicals. But is it to isolate ourselves from the fossil fuels on which the modern world is built? That would be much more difficult.

Climate change has become politicized and Pro-business conservative parties around the world have embraced the doctrine of climate skepticism. The media often included a skeptical version for the sake of “balance”. This has led many to believe that the ‘jury’ is still out there when, in fact, science speaks more precisely and clearly than ever before.

Because of this skepticism, there were long delays in decision making.. It took until 2005 to ratify the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce greenhouse gases. Science and scientists themselves were attacked. A fierce battle soon ensued, with heated debates, often funded by fossil fuel interests, and challenging overwhelming scientific evidence.

Unfortunately for us, these noisy efforts managed to delay the action. People who refused to accept the science supported the fossil fuel industry for at least another decade, even as climate change continued to escalate with natural disasters and increasingly intense heat waves.

The best time to take action was 1912. The next best time is now.

After decades of setback, climate science and social movements are now calling more loudly than ever for strong and meaningful action.

Science cannot be questioned. The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 1990 stated that global warming “may be caused largely by natural variability”, while the most recent report in 2021 stated that people “conclusively […] They warmed the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land.

We’ve seen a welcome change, even in the previously skeptical media. And, as we saw in the federal election in May, public opinion is on the side of the planet.

National and international climate policies are stronger than everand while there is much more to be done, ultimately it seems that government, business and public opinion are moving in the same direction.

Let’s use the 110th anniversary of this short quote as a reminder to keep the conversation going and push for the change we finally need to make.

Linden Ashcroft is a researcher at the University of Melbourne (Australia).

Reference article: https://theconversation.com/for-110-years-climate-change-has-been-in-the-news-are-we-finally-ready-to-listen-188646

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