Last week, the APR had this timeline of climate change: Risks of climate change have been known for decades. It is a nice graphic showing how little has been done since 1880 when the world first began to understand climate change, but it only describes five milestones. It clearly makes the point that scientists have known about the “greenhouse effect” for 130 years and that the United Nations has been trying to coordinate reductions of greenhouse gases for 30 years. But it doesn’t convey enough information about what has and has not happened recently — in the time since scientists first warned President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 that rising levels of CO2 might cause big problems in the near future.
So at the top of this post I put together a more detailed timeline since 1960 showing the rise of CO2 (smooth blue line) on the left axis and rising average global temperature (red line) on the right axis along with 15 major milestones — 14 of them efforts to limit CO2 and 1 (brown box) describing the fossil fuel industry working to downplay the danger and persuade politicians to do nothing. Though crowded with information (and perhaps a bit too busy), this graphic only has 15 milestones compared with my two sources, a Guardian article — Half a century of dither and denial – a climate crisis timeline — with 19 milestones, mostly focusing on the efforts to block effective action, and a much more comprehensive history — The Discovery of Global Warming — with 121 milestones.
I hope this graphic will help show that in the last 55 years there has been a lot of effort to understand the greenhouse effect of CO2 and other gases, determine how dangerous global warming is, determine when it would bring about significant negative change and when it would bring about truly disastrous and irrevocable changes, publicize those consequences and how we can prevent the worst of them from overtaking us, and work in conjunction with other countries to take the necessary measures. The graphic shows there has been a lot of good work done, but not nearly enough effective action.
By 1979, it was clear to most experts that the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases was likely a big problem that we would have to address — and the sooner action was taken, the easier and better it would be to prevent the worse consequences. What happened instead: in 1981, the Reagan administration gutted funding for research and development of solar and wind energy.
By 1988 — when CO2 had already grown by 25% to 350 parts per million (from the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm) and average global temperature had already grown by about 0.3ºC — it was clear to most environmental scientists that there was a very real danger that needed to be responded to immediately by cutting the use of fossil fuels and rapidly expanding the use of clean, safe renewable energy (efficiency upgrades, wind, solar, etc.).
By 2001, environmental scientists were tearing their hair out about how dangerous climate change was and how pitifully small our response was in comparison to the danger. It was also clear that the fossil fuel industry had deliberately clouded the picture and used its lobbying and donations to convince/bribe politicians into doing little to nothing.
By 2018, with CO2 at over 400 ppm and global temperature up almost 1ºC, it had become obvious that the climate crisis was already well upon us, regularly causing severe heatwaves, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather and getting worse all the time. It was clear that drastic steps must be taken by 2030 or we will be on an irreversible path to a world of horrendous weather and incessant pounding by terrible disasters, possibly leading to mass extinctions of species, possibly even including humans.
And now, 55 years after President Johnson was first warned, scientists are loudly ringing the bell of danger, young people are marching in the streets demanding that fossil fuels be left in the ground and renewable energy sources are rapidly expanded, and yet politicians still continue to take wholly inadequate steps.
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