A look back at an early government reckoning with ‘greenhouse warming’ shows just how long the world has been dragging its heels
In 1983, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 343 parts per million. The global average temperature was around 0.3 degrees Celsius higher than before the Industrial Revolution. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was sounding an alarm about global warming.
“Temperature increases are likely to be accompanied by dramatic changes in precipitation and storm patterns and a rise in global average sea level,” wrote the authors of a report titled “Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming?” which was released 40 years ago this month. “As a result, agricultural conditions will be significantly altered, environmental and economic systems potentially disrupted, and political institutions stressed.”
That warning from four decades ago rings startlingly true today, as tropical storms and hurricanes drench both the Southeast and California, heat waves deemed to be “virtually impossible” without climate change’s influence scorch Europe and the U.S., and other catastrophes seem to cascade across the globe.
The 1983 publication was not the first government report on climate change. Just two years earlier, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality warned about “substantial economic, social, and environmental disruptions,” and a report to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 concluded that “climatic changes that may be produced by the increased [carbon dioxide] content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”
Still, the science had progressed somewhat by 1983 when Stephen Seidel in EPA’s Office of Policy Analysis and consultant Dale Keyes produced their report. Exactly four decades later, with carbon dioxide eclipsing 420 ppm this year and average warming up to around 1.2 degrees Celsius, it’s worth looking back to see just how well some of the EPA’s projections hold up.
“Current estimates suggest that a 2°C (3.6°F) increase could occur by the middle of the next century, and a 5°C (9°F) increase by 2100.”
Verdict: Pretty darn close. At present, the 1.5-degree threshold will likely be breached in the early 2030s (though individual years may climb past it even before that), and without rapid intervention, by mid-century that 2-degree prediction could be on target…
R&I-Rawr
Orange of Specious
Article URL : https://themessenger.com/tech/forty-years-ago-scientists-warned-about-climate-change-how-accurate-were-their-predictions