50 Years Ago - Bookchin and Commoner On Climate Change

Murray Bookchin. “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought.” 1964

“As an example of the scope of modern man’s disruptive role, it has been estimated that the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) adds 600 million tons of carbon dioxide to the air annually, about 0.03 percent of the total atmospheric mass — this, I may add, aside from an incalculable quantity of toxicants. Since the Industrial Revolution, the overall atmospheric mass of carbon dioxide has increased by 13 percent over earlier, more stable, levels.
“It could be argued on very sound theoretical grounds that this growing blanket of carbon dioxide, by intercepting heat radiated from the earth into outer space, will lead to rising atmospheric temperatures, to a more violent circulation of air, to more destructive storm patterns, and eventually to a melting of the polar ice caps (possibly in two or three centuries), rising sea levels, and the inundation of vast land areas.
“Far removed as such a deluge may be, the changing proportion of carbon dioxide to other atmospheric gases is a warning of the impact man is having on the balance of nature.”

Barry Commoner. "Science and Survival." 1966 edition

“Fire, an ancient friend, has become a man-made threat to the environment through the sheer quantity of the waste it produces. Each ton of wood, coal, petroleum, or natural gas burned contributes several tons of carbon dioxide to the earth’s atmosphere. Between 1860 and 1960 the combustion of fuels added nearly 14 percent to the carbon-dioxide content of the air, which had until then remained constant for many centuries. Carbon dioxide plays an important role in regulating the temperature of the earth because of the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Both glass and carbon dioxide tend to pass visible light but absorb infrared rays. This explains why the sun so easily warms a greenhouse on a winter day. Light from the sun enters through the  greenhouse glass. Within, it is absorbed by soil and plants and converted to infrared heat energy which remains trapped inside the greenhouse because it cannot pass out again through glass. Carbon dioxide makes a huge greenhouse of the earth allowing sunlight to reach the earth’s surface but limiting reradiation of the resulting heat into space. The temperature of the earth — which profoundly affects the suitability of the environment for life — is therefore certain to rise as the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases.
“A report by the President’s Science Advisory Committee finds that the extra heat due to fuel-produced carbon dioxide accumulated in the air by the year 2000 might be sufficient  to melt the Antarctic ice cap — in 4000 years according to one computation, or in 400 years according to another. And the report states:  ‘The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years, 40 feet per century.’ This would result in catastrophe for much of the world’s inhabited land and many of its major cities.”

And later in the same book:

“And suppose that, as it may, the accumulation of carbon dioxide begins to threaten the entire globe with catastrophic floods. Control of this danger would require the modification, throughout the world, of domestic furnaces and industrial combustion plants…. Solar power and other techniques for the production of electrical power which do not require either combustion or nuclear reactors, may be the best solution.”

 taken from here