Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2
sCientists, environmentAlists,
And the globAl Atmosphere
if you look closely at the data Behind the keeling curve, you
will notice that the undulating line representing the annual cycles of atmo-
spheric CO
2
over time is not continuous. In the spring of 1964, there is a
gap. In January of 1964, near the midpoint of the oscillation that peaks
in May and bottoms out in October, global atmospheric CO
2
stood at
roughly 319 ppm. In May, at the peak, it was 322 ppm. And between those
two points, nothing. Charles David Keeling's funding had run out, and for
three months in early 1964 there was insufficient data to provide a monthly
average of atmospheric CO
2
at the Mauna Loa Observatory. In May, new
measurements began.
There is a similar divide between old and new in the history of climate
change in the 1960s, though it is perhaps less obvious and certainly less
abrupt. Before the mid-1960s, atmospheric CO
2
remained a scientific curi-
osity whose potential impacts on global temperature and sea level enabled
science advocates like Keeling and Roger Revelle to secure research fund-
ing. Their concerns were speculative, balanced by their optimism that sci-
entific and technological developments could help solve whatever human
or environmental problems CO
2
might present. By the end of the decade,
however, scientists and the general public had begun to see atmospheric
change— including rising CO
2
— in a new way. The optimism about the
“grand experiment” of CO
2
faded in the 1960s, and some scientists became
