HOW COULD WE HAVE KNOWN?
A Timeline Compiled by Dick Bennett, revised New Year’s Eve 2021.
A CHRONOLOGICAL SAMPLE OF BOOKS, ARTICLES,
FILMS, EVENTS REVEALING THE LONG, OBSTRUCTED LEARNING CURVE OF GLOBAL WARMING ANTICIPATING
THE PRESENT URGENCY OF GLOBAL CHANGE BECOMING CLIMATE CATASTROPHE/EMERGENCY/CHAOS: FROM
1926 TO 2000. The revision of the Timeline
years 2000 to present will appear soon. (Years in 18 point type; texts in 12. Roughly, Green
indicates advancing knowledge of the reality of climate change, of ensuing climate
calamity, emergency, and chaos, and of resisters. Red indicates
villains and villainy defending the status quo by corporations, denial, media
ownership, financial system, chicanery, lying, dark money, bribery, disinformation,
information control.)
1926 (Vladimir Vernadsky, The Biosphere, early Soviet use
of key concept of integrated living organisms and nonliving environment (not
trans. into English until 1998!). In the
same time period Aleksei Pavlov referred to the Anthropocene and anthropogenic
era as the new mainly human-driven geological period.
1945-50 a major spike of warming
“marking a Great Acceleration in human impacts on the environment,”
particularly in “fallout radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing.”
1950s
and ‘60s: Rachel
Carson
observes atmospheric and oceanic warming.
1953
In The Edge of the Sea, Rachel Carson observed the atmosphere and oceans
warming, and noted the importance of a stable temperature to their creature
inhabitants.
1958
Scientists
began sampling the air and measuring the temperature at Mauna Loa Observatory.
1962
Rachel Carson, Silent
Spring. If undermined, the living
processes of Earth will “return in time” to haunt us.
1963
Rachel Carson, “Our Polluted Environment” introduced the concept of ecosystem—an integrated ecological
perspective--to the US public, and “the need to take it into account in all of
our actions” (Foster, “The Anthropocene Crisis,” 11).
1968
Keeling made his first visit to the Mauna Loa Observatory leading to the “Keeling Curve.”
1970
Earth
Day Inaugurated.
1971
Oil Co.”Total has known that burning fossil fuels could cause a
climate crisis since
1971.1 1 - Science Direct “ “They knew. They lied.
They stole our future.” 350.org.
(10-21-21).
1972
UN Conference on the Environment: serious
warning we have seriously compromised the health of the Earth (Bertell, 2).
Donella
Meadows, et al.
The Limits to Growth. (See A Synopsis: Limits to
Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella Meadows, et al.)
1973
First
appearance of word Anthropocene in
English.
1977
“…the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
warned that unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions might raise global
temperatures as much as 10’F [5.5’C] and raise sea level 20 feet.” Romm, Climate Change, 2nd ed., xv.
1978 “Our 1978 article, ‘Is Mankind Warming the
Earth,’ marks one of the earliest uses of the phrase ‘climate
change.’” “Speak Truth to
Power,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
(11-6-21).
1980
E. P. Thompson. “Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization.” New
Left Review (May-June).
1981
James Hansen’s first article on warming. Disinformation campaign begins (Hoggan, Climate
Cover-up).
1982
Barry Commoner. The Closing
Circle. Aware of the rift in the metabolism of
the biosphere, he warns of “the vast changes in the human relation to the
planet, beginning with the atomic age and the rise of modern… synthetic
chemistry.”
William Catton, Jr. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. There must be
limits to our tremendous appetite for population growth, energy, natural
resources, and consumer goods.
1988
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Established.
IPCC is a
scientific body under the auspices of the United Nations (UN). It reviews and
assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information
produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It was first
established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
and later endorsed by the United
Nations General Assembly through
Resolution 43/53
Hansen’s
report to Senate 6-23 on significant warming.
James Hansen: “…in 1988 [Hansen reported,} the four warmest
years on record were all in the 1980s. The two warmest years were 1981 and
1987.[25] During a senate meeting on June 23rd, 1988, Hansen
reported that he was ninety-nine percent certain the earth was warmer than it
had ever been measured to be, there was a clear cause and effect relationship
with the greenhouse effect” (Wikipedia).
Peter Seidel. Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the
Damage We Inflict on Our Planet…and Ourselves.
PBS/NOVA showed
its first documentary on CC in 1988, its 17th on April 18,
2018.
1989
Bill
McKibben, The End of Nature, “the
first popular book warning of climate change” (Hawken, Drawdown, 216).
1990
The UN’S IPCC published its First Assessment
Report (FAR), a supplementary report in 1992, 2nd
assessment report in1995 (SAR), third assessment report (TAR) in 2001, fourth assessment report (AR4) in 2007, fifth assessment report (AR5) in 2014, 6th in 2018-2021(AR6). The IPCC inspired an outpouring of research
and publications.
Colin Hocking, et al. Global
Warming and the Greenhouse Effect. A textbook for grades 7 to 10. The earliest textbook for youths on climate
change of which I am aware.
1990
Lester Brown,
et al. “World Without End,” Natural History (May 1990).
1991
Edburg and Yablokov. Tomorrow Will
Be Too Late: East Meets West on Global Ecology.
A
dialogue between Swedish statesman Rolf Edberg and Soviet biologist Alexei Yablokov,
Jeremy
Rifkin”s Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century recognizes
nuclear war and greenhouse gasses as wars against nature (and apparently he was unaware of Vernadsky or the IPCC’s First Report). See 1926 and 1990. See Tom Engelhardt, “Our
Not-So-Slow-Motion Apocalypse”(2021), for the explicit linking of war and
warming, war of terrorists and tarrarists.
1992
UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change adopted based on scientists’ consensus of anthropogenic
alteration of atmosphere. Went into
effect in 1994.
Al Gore. Earth in the Balance. (One of
the earliest books inspired by the IPCC reports.) Before the expression “Green Apollo program” gained usage, Gore “and
numerous others” had urged such a program (Hertsgaard 272). “Gore
had urged the U.S. government to initiate a green
Marshall Plan.” (Gore is one of
the unsung heroes of the ecology movement to save planet and civilization.)
“Warning to Humanity”
“on the dangers of climate change signed by over 1,500 of the world’s
scientists, including more than half of the recipients of the Nobel Prize among
living scientists”
Lester Brown. State of the World.
1994
John Bellamy Foster. The Vulnerable
Planet. “biobeochemical cycles of the Earth System were being disrupted by the increasing
scale of capitalist production.” Foster, “The Planetary Rift.”
1995
UN IPCC 2nd Second Assessment Report (SAR)
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sar/wg_I/ipcc_sar_wg_I_full_report.pdf
David Edwards. Burning
All Illusions. An intense
rejection of “the fanatical system of profit,”
because “all major environmental problems . . .are all symptoms of the same
massive trauma resulting from industrial intervention interfering with the
natural life-supporting systems of global life” (144).
1998
Mark Hertsgaard
in Earth Odyssey foretold
massive dangers ahead and “proposed a Global Green Deal, modeled on
the New Deal” of FDR. (from his Hot).
Thomas
Casten. Turning
Off the Heat: Why America Must Double
Energy Efficiency to Save Money and Reduce Global Warming. Notable for having been published so
early, though he had started his warnings about C02 in 1975.
2000
ExxonMobil denial campaign
questions scientific certainty. Copying
from the tobacco industry’s successful delay of tobacco regulation, the fossil
fuels industry needed only to instill a little doubt, until confidence in climate change science decreased
and EM’s profits soared.
Our children ask us,
what
did you do while the planet was plundered?
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