A history of climate denialism - the1a.org
In 1956, The New York Times predicted that once global warming took effect, we could see parrots in the Antarctic.
That was nearly seven decades ago. There aren’t parrots in Antarctica, but the impact of climate change is loud and clear.
We’re currently experiencing the hottest summer on record. Ocean surface temperatures in the Florida Keys hit 90 degrees this July. And one recent study found that Antarctica is likely warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world — faster than the predictions made by many climate change models.
How did the country go from recognizing the threat of climate change to doing little to address it for 60 years?
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.