You say:
The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually.
— Tate
And then contradict that statement with:
As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law.
— Tate — boethius
I doubt it. In the 1970s it wasn't clear if the climate was cooling or warming. The effect of the Milankovitch cycle wasn't discovered until the mid 1970s. — Tate
That's not a contradiction. — Tate
The potential heating effect of certain gases such as CO2 was well established in the lab by the end of the 19th century. — Olivier5
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth's atmosphere to global warming.
https://www.livescience.com/humans-first-warned-about-climate-change.Scientists first began to worry about climate change toward the end of the 1950s, Spencer Weart, a historian and retired director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland, told Live Science in an email. "It was just a possibility for the 21st century which seemed very far away, but seen as a danger that should be prepared for."
The scientific community began to unite for action on climate change in the 1980s, and the warnings have only escalated since.
The environmental movement has been going on a pretty long time spinning the same plans around and around; it is, broadly speaking, become closer to a ritualised mea culpa artistic expression, precisely to avoid effective actions — boethius
Put it on your tombstones for no one to read. — unenlightened
I don't know what kind of timescale you had in mind, but I think this has been true for some time. I was involved with the road protest movement in England in the 90s and it was (on reflection) exactly as you describe. — Isaac
No one really talked about the solutions to excessive car use, which would have involved a discussion about the break up of communities, increasing social isolation, the erosion of self-esteem, urban growth policy, taxation (public services provision)...etc. — Isaac
No, people don’t know what they ought to do to help, because they think it’s a hoax. — Xtrix
Global warming was a common theme in science fiction in the 1980s. The 1982 movie Blade Runner was typical. So no, the news wasn't broken to Americans by Al Gore. He was just unusually successful in raising alarm. — Tate
Given how polarized US politics was becoming at the time, I'm starting to wonder if Gore being the face of climate change activism in the country made Americans LESS likely to address it. Not that was his fault, of course (more society's), but we all know how politics ruins literally everything. — Mr Bee
Given how polarized US politics was becoming at the time, I'm starting to wonder if Gore being the face of climate change activism in the country made Americans LESS likely to address it. Not that that was his fault . . . — Mr Bee
Global warming was a common theme in science fiction in the 1980s. — Tate
So no, the news wasn't broken to Americans by Al Gore. He was just unusually successful in raising alarm. — Tate
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