US oil company ran 1977 article predicting climate crisis could cause starvation

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1. >Though warnings like this were becoming more widespread in the scientific literature of the time, it would be more than a decade before global heating gained mainstream attention in 1988 following Nasa scientist James Hansen’s testimony to Congress

   Ummm, no. First of all, another NASA scientist testified before Congress a few years earlier, in 1985, to issue a warning. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? His name was Carl Sagan, the most well-known science communicator of his generation.

   *A little of the climate change induced by the greenhouse effect, then, is a good thing, but “here we are pouring enormous quantities of CO2 and these other gases into the atmosphere every year, with hardly any concern about its long-term and global consequences.”*

   [https://www.openculture.com/2021/11/carl-sagan-warns-congress-about-climate-change-1985.html](https://www.openculture.com/2021/11/carl-sagan-warns-congress-about-climate-change-1985.html)

   Second, the combination of the two NASA scientists may have been the first time it hit the mainstream for that particular generation of people, but it first went mainstream in the 1950s, when the so-called “greatest generation” was raising the baby boomers. From 1953:

   *The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.*

   *This got picked up by the Associated Press and other wire services and appeared in newspapers all around the world (even as far afield as the Sydney Morning Herald). Plass’s warning also popped up in Newsweek on May 18 and in Time on May 25.*

   [https://theconversation.com/climate-change-first-went-viral-exactly-70-years-ago-205508](https://theconversation.com/climate-change-first-went-viral-exactly-70-years-ago-205508)

   The greatest generation ignored the warning. The baby boomers ignored it. Gen X ignored it. The entire world ignored it, and then turned around and claimed that the oil industry was hiding the truth that was in plain sight everywhere.