A terrifying prediction from 1912 is so creepily accurate that people think it's fake. It's not.

[phands]

And now it's likely too late...

A newspaper article in 1912 warned about climate change.

The debate over coal continues to rage across America. As recently as the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was talking up “clean coal” while Hillary Clinton was on the defensive about what to do about people working in the coal industry.
But it turns out, experts have been aware of the threat for a long time. As in more than 100 years.
A 1912 article in the Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette entitled, “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate”laid out the numbers clearly:

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.​

Reading the brief article it almost seems too far ahead of its time. Were people really warning about the potentially devastating effects of coal to the Earth’s atmosphere?

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It’s so shocking people thought it was fake. It’s not.

After the article was shared on social media, some people quickly chimed in claiming it was a hoax. The website Snopes investigated and quickly confirmed the article was very real.

Full article is at https://www.upworthy.com/a-terrifyi...te-that-people-think-it-s-fake-it-s-not?c=pop

 

[Subsymbolic]

I’d say they were well behind the curve...

Try this from 1865 (p382)

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6xhFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA382#v=onepage&q&f=false

As the Smithsonian points out...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...e-climate-science-didnt-get-credit-180961291/

No doubt if it had been a man we’d all be knitting our own electricity and living in yurts by now.

 

[repoman]

Oh, the Popular Science article mentions Arrhenius. His 1896 paper is great.

 

[steve_bank]

Circa 1900 people were aware of short term affects of volcanic eruption. The Summer That Never Was, particultes in the atmospher caused a short term cooling that led to crop failure and famine in some places.

 

[untermensche]

What do you mean?

Totally wrong.

The effect was considerable in less than a century.

I think we need to face it.

The dictators in business with the governments they have bought are going to burn oil as fast as humanly possible.

And future humans will feel the effects.

The sickest crime in history.

Shows humans to be unthinking and uncaring.

A species not really worth saving despite it's magnificence in many ways.

 

[repoman]

What do you mean?

Totally wrong.

The effect was considerable in less than a century.

I think we need to face it.

The dictators in business with the governments they have bought are going to burn oil as fast as humanly possible.

And future humans will feel the effects.

The sickest crime in history.

Shows humans to be unthinking and uncaring.

A species not really worth saving despite it's magnificence in many ways.

So, in 1912 what did the best scientists who were hopefully not compromised think about the timescale of global warming? I would bet that the 1912 article was pretty accurate to that.

First the population numbers have gone up a lot as has the carbon footprint per person. Also the limitations of carbon sinks has happened now.

As each decade moved on, the science grounding and evidence for AGW as well as possible mid and worse case future scenarios have built up. Judge people by the standards of their day.

But by the mid 50s this full extent and scenarios were known.

This is required viewing

 

[steve_bank]

What do you mean?

Totally wrong.

The effect was considerable in less than a century.

I think we need to face it.

The dictators in business with the governments they have bought are going to burn oil as fast as humanly possible.

And future humans will feel the effects.

The sickest crime in history.

Shows humans to be unthinking and uncaring.

A species not really worth saving despite it's magnificence in many ways.

Well, how many electronic gadgets, computers, cars, TVs, washer and dryers, hair dryers, electric tooth brushes and so on do you have? As consumers we are all complicit.

 

[steve_bank]

Air pollution manifested early on in the industrial revolution was it not?

There must have been similar events earlier in the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air-pollution event that affected the British capital of London in early December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday, 5 December to Tuesday, 9 December 1952 and then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

It caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas, far more severe than previous smog events experienced in the past, called "pea-soupers". Government medical reports in the following weeks, however, estimated that up until 8 December, 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater; about 6,000 more died in the following months as a result of the event.[1]

 

[steve_bank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Catastrophic results from less than 1 degree C average temperature change. The scary thing is climate change may be non linear, a tipping point. We could lose a lot of agriculture quickly.

Looks like those wacky survivalists back in the 60s/70s may have been on to something. In the 80s there was story of a group in Oregon who bought a valley with a narrow entrance, they could dynamite it closed...

 

[untermensche]

What do you mean?

Totally wrong.

The effect was considerable in less than a century.

I think we need to face it.

The dictators in business with the governments they have bought are going to burn oil as fast as humanly possible.

And future humans will feel the effects.

The sickest crime in history.

Shows humans to be unthinking and uncaring.

A species not really worth saving despite it's magnificence in many ways.

Well, how many electronic gadgets, computers, cars, TVs, washer and dryers, hair dryers, electric tooth brushes and so on do you have? As consumers we are all complicit.

Ordinary people are not complicit in the collusion between oil companies and governments and the lack of resources allocated to the development of alternative energy sources.