Many like to pretend that the climate crisis is a recent discovery. Some still refuse to acknowledge that it's even real.
But a newspaper clipping from 1912 is beginning to recirculate for its chillingly on point prediction of what we know today as global warming. Feautured in the August 14, 1912 issue of The Rodney & Otamatea Times, the headline reads: Coal Consumption Affecting Climate.
Take a look below:
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The article goes on to say:
"The furnaces of the world are now burning through about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it ads about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries."
Possibly more chilling than the earliness of the article is the way it underestimated how soon humans would feel the effects. While this article estimated considerable effects in a few centuries, Earth is already experiencing unprecedented heat. Last month was the highest global temperature ever recorded.
People were quick to point out the growing urgency of the climate crisis.
For the United States, prospects on the climate crisis are looking grim. President Donald Trump soon pulled out of the legendary Paris Climate Accord after his inauguration and, most recently, proposed greatly weakening the Endangered Species Act.
We can only hope that it won't be another 107 years before humans realize our own damage because, frankly, we don't have that long.
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