Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature (Aug, 1953)
Normally I don’t post articles without pictures, but this one just floored me. This little blurb from 53 years ago perfectly sums up the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.
[...] Recortes sacados de modermecanix « La “Cenicienta” de la sustentabilidad [...]
Pingback by Bellini Conversa » Noticia de último minuto — December 4, 2006 @ 4:52 pm
[...] Further digging reveals a story from the ’50s that does a marvelous job of explaining the problem, a “growing blanket of carbon dioxide” and even goes as far to present some fairly accurate predictions based on research by a professor at Johns Hopkins. [...]
Pingback by global warming predicted 74 years ago « SusHI | Sustainability in Hawai`i — December 8, 2006 @ 7:31 pm
[...] A magazine from 1932 with some details about warning is a little shocking. But look at this one from a 1953 magazine; “Earths ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result.” Those numbers are not bad for a half a century ago! » original news [...]
Pingback by Daily Clerks — January 4, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
It has been some 250 years since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Two and a half centuries of engineering and mechanical evolution to perfect the combustion of carbon based material for the generation of profit and the creation of a certain way of life - consumption.
It will not stop until all the coal and all the oil and all the gas are gone.
Comment by Chris Hosking — December 9, 2007 @ 5:44 pm