‘Coal Consumption Affecting Climate.’ That is the headline of a short article that appeared in a New Zealand newspaper not this week, month or even year but more than a hundred years ago, in August 1912.
The 10-line news-in-brief in the Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, says that in the early 20th century the world was burning around two billion tons of coal a year.
That combustion, it continues, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making the air “a more effective blanket” for the earth raising its temperature. “This effect may be considerable in a few centuries,” it warns. More than a century later, climate scientists say the planet has warmed by around 1.2C since the late 1800s, and is continuing to heat as humans emit more greenhouse gases primarily by burning fossil fuels.
It just goes to show that knowledge of the impact of coal on Earth's climate is not new science. At least now it's being taken seriously and coal mining is now in rapid decline, with numerous countries already completely abandoning it or just about to do so. The end of coal is nigh.
Century Old Prediction of Pocket Phones: Over one hundred years ago, English cartoonist and caricaturist W. K. Haselden did a strip on "pocket telephones". It was published in The Daily Mirror on 5 March 1919. Haselden was known for being ahead of his time. According to Wikipedia, "Haselden often lampooned social and technological trends of the time by making bold predictions about how the future would transpire, including fashion, camera phones and feminism." The comic strip is titled "When We All Have Pocket Telephones". Have a look...
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