Nixon Era Global Warming Memo Early Example of Hysteria

COMMENTARY | The Associated Press reports that in 1969, then-presidential adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged the Nixon administration to address a then little known phenomenon known as global warming.

"Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention.

"There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo.

"'This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit,' he wrote. 'This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.'"

Clearly none of these things have happened. According to NOAA, the growth of carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere was considerably less than predicted in the memo between 1969 and 2000. NOAA also suggests that the Earth's average atmospheric temperature did not increase by 7 degrees between 1969 and 2000. Also, it appears that neither New York nor Washington was underwater in 2000, nor are those two cities inundated today.

Hubert Heffner, then-deputy director of the Nixon administration's Office of Science and Technology, seemed to be somewhat skeptical. He wrote back to Moynihan in a memo dated Jan. 26, 1970:

"The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between," he wrote. "One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise."

Heffner seems to have summed up a mature response to predictions of environmental doom based either on global warming or global chilling. Environmental concerns at the beginning of the 1970s revolved around air and water pollution brought on by industrial activities, which is to say pollution that would cause the air to be unbreathable and the water to be undrinkable. The idea of the Earth broiling or the Earth freezing because of human activity was an enthusiasm for the future.

Al Gore, the main perpetrator of the global warming hysteria, was at the time of the Moynihan memo getting ready to serve a tour in Vietnam in order to help his father's reelection prospects. His enthusiasm to garner power and make money off of global warming lay decades in the future.

What does the revelation of the Moynihan memo tell us? The obvious take away from the story is that one ought to look upon predictions of doom, whether they come from religious leaders such as Harold Camping or imminent scientists and government bureaucrats, with some degree of skepticism. This is especially true if the proposed solution to the postulated problem involves the expenditure of large amounts of money and extensive and unpleasant disruptions of the lifestyles of the majority of people.

One good thing, though. Apparently the Moynihan memo was lost in the bureaucratic circular file long before Watergate. The imminent cooking of the Earth would have been just the thing to distract from the travails brought on by the "fifth rate burglary."

Sources: Moynihan, as Nixon aide, warned of global warming, AP, July 2, 2010

Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, NOAA

Global Warming: Frequently Asked Questions, NOAA