We have grown accustomed to photos of forest fires and cremated animals, to sheets of ice crumbling into the ocean, to promess from world leaders that they will heed scientists’ “last chance” warning.
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But it was in early May 1953, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, that the Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass told the other scientists gathered that there were problems:
The great increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at a rate of 1,5 degrees per century.
Plass’ warning “went viral” and appeared on newspapers and magazines from around the world, as in Newsweek on May 18th and Time on the 25th of May.
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The fact that the world is warming was already uncontroversial among scientists. But the emphatic connection of global warming with carbon dioxide (CO2), made by Plass, was noteworthy.
Plass continued working on the issue, with publications until the end of the 1950s. In 1956, he published an academic article on “ the carbon dioxide theory of climate change ” in the Swedish scientific magazine Tellus, and also a popular article in American Scientist. In addition to being present in first big meetings to discuss the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.
When Plass first raised the issue, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was around 310 parts per million. Today, there are 423 or more. Every year, as we burn more oil, coal and gas, the concentration increases and more heat is trapped.
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When Plass's warning is 100 years old, concentrations will be much higher. There is a very good chance that we have surpassed the 2°C level of warming that used to be considered “safe.”
Curto Curatorship:
- A timeline of climate change around the world (BBC Brazil)
- Climate change 'went viral' for the first time exactly 70 years ago (The Conversation*)
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