Boing Boing came up with quite a find today: a video from 1958 that is both amusing and full of relatively accurate information about climate change. Entitled “The Unchained Goddess,” it was produced as an episode of the Bell Telephone Hour.
As I have described before, the idea that climate change only entered the realm of scientific knowledge within the last few years is quite mistaken. Notice also how the announcer in the video is concerned about emissions of “six billion tonnes per year of carbon dioxide.” The figure today is closer to forty billion.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
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Knowledge about the nature of greenhouse gasses has existed since John Tyndall published the results of his experiments in 1859; the first calculations of what effect human greenhouse gas emissions would have on the planetary system were conducted by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.
In 1936, Guy Callendar found that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 289 ppm, and that at the present level of emissions it would increase to 314 ppm by 2000. This estimate implied a rate of increase of 0.39 ppm per year. Because of higher annual emissions, the concentration of carbon dioxide is currently rising by 2.0 ppm per year.
I should also add a link to some additional campy and hilarious (but accurate) old television science content:
His name is Julius Sumner Miller and physics is his business.
The dramatic music that accompanies the glacier falling apart is priceless.