Contents page 1 — “Up to this point will increase the water” page 2 — Why managed change in the past? Page 3 — The result of solid Propaganda On a page
In the year 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini challenged the Islamic Revolution, the world, the people’s Republic of China under Deng Xiaoping, the path to world power, launched Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, the neo-liberal Offensive, which began on the Hindu Kush, in the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. Capitalism broke away from the welfare state, the super powers, staged a new ice age, the rise of the “global South” brought a multi-polar world order. In 1979 in the German province of green parties, first choice recorded a result, there would be hardly any to speak of, would have, between the oil Crises and nuclear disasters, not organic movement and sustainability thinking spread around the globe.
More than a footnote, it is because that at the beginning of this global turn of the year, a now almost forgotten event: the first world climate conference. 12. In February 1979, you met twelve days in Geneva; organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), its predecessor, the International meteorological organization was, since 1873 weather provided data.
the weather plays occasionally “crazy”, had the inhabitants of the North of Germany experienced a deep level: in the beginning of 1979, they threatened twice by a huge snow to sink into the ceiling. Over the Baltic sea an area of high pressure from Scandinavia with a low-pressure area from the Rhineland was pushed together, the result of an extreme cold snap. The state of emergency has been proclaimed, the power and the phone fell out, 17 people were killed. The rather sparse coverage of the climate conference took as a hanger: Announced about a new ice age?
rather the opposite. It is hardly more doubt existed in Geneva: The large majority of the 53 countries that have travelled delegate was convinced that the climate change will lead to a rise in temperature. As the cause you identified the greenhouse effect – the saturation of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide by the combustion of coal, Oil and gasoline, as well as by the clearing of the rain forests. The evidence had provided, among other things, the measurement results of the 1958 on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii-built meteorological research station. Until today, there be taken away from cities and settlements, and any Vegetation, air samples, which are not subjected to local influences and therefore as a particularly reliable apply.
Claus Leggewie
The author is a political scientist and until 2016 member of the Scientific Advisory Council on global environmental change
the forecasts of The weather researchers had it all: With the melting of the Eismeere and glaciers, the sea level could rise by up to five meters. The overriding recommendation was to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels quickly, to stop large-scale deforestation and to rely on alternative energy sources such as solar panels, of which U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, one on the roof of the White house had installed. The weather researchers had to whether inaccurate predictions of much ridicule plug-in, with, and communicated to the world not less than that: people don’t make the weather itself, you have mastered it.
The 40 years since. But you knew at that time already, in Essence, what we know today. To into greater Detail in discussions of current issues in the Geneva conference report: how the weather forecast is more reliable could be, whether they should be dry to irrigate zones with “rain machine”, how carbon dioxide could be out of the atmosphere.
This article dates back to the TIME no 08/2019. Here you can read the entire issue.
And, like today, there were no green Freaks, the protection of the climate propagated, but got the “eggheads” in gray suits. The Chairman of the conference, the then 56-year-old Robert M. White, had studied at Harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, research, before he was in 1963 the chief of the U.S. weather service. Under five presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Jimmy Carter, networked, Robert White, research, administration and the Public, and the respect paid – differently than today – and the inconvenient truth together were. “We have a lot of serious environmental problems. The conservation of the species, is one of them, but none is conclusive for the society, such as climate change,” said the chief weather man in 1977, in the Washington Post.
Also in the Federal Republic of Germany, the customer came to climate change. “Death in the greenhouse” – titled the mirror-his short report from Geneva and asked with concern: “Threatened with a cloud of pollution the world’s climate?” Already in 1978, was in the S. Fischer publishing a 500-page book under the title climate risk strategies to control the weather appeared; its author was the editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Change, Stephen S. Schneider.
