40 Years On: 'It's Time We Start Listening' to Global Warming Prediction

Citing a peer reviewed scientific paper written over 40 years ago that clearly demonstrated the dangers of human-made carbon pollution and accurately predicted it would create a future of global warming, Dana Nuccitelli at the Guardian points out Thursday that “perhaps it’s about time that we start listening” to climate scientists.

The paper, written by renowned British meteorologist John Stanley Sawyer and published in the journal Nature (pdf) in 1972, estimated that carbon dioxide levels would increase 25 percent by 2000 from 1850 levels and that global average surface temperatures would rise by 0.6°C.

Sawyer’s numbers were just about dead on, Nuccitelli reports.

The rise in human-made carbon pollution and increase in temperature were undeniably related, Sawyer warned, and would cause changes in weather and wind patterns around the world.

A recent reading from the he carbon dioxide monitoring program at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography showed atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide temporarily surpassed 400 parts per million two months earlier than last year. Ralph Keeling at the institute warned it is only a matter of time before the atmosphere permanently maintains those levels, which climate scientists have long said the earth cannot withstand without tipping the scales against human life once and for all.

Sawyer and his colleagues saw this coming four decades ago.