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> However, it turns out that it is much easier politically to just use advertising to convince Americans to buy and drive big, gas-guzzling SUV/Pickups and let

> However, it turns out that it is much easier politically to just use advertising to convince Americans to buy and drive big, gas-guzzling SUV/Pickups and let the CO2 do the warming. Are you genuinely suggesting this or are you wasting people time? Is your thesis American knew about CO2 and gauged how bad it would be and decided the positive effects from warming meant it was better to encourage greater CO2 output?

mlatu 4y ago
YES, the americans did know about CO2 at least as early as 1941. I didnt try to look that up but instead stumbled upon it while reading something else, and remembered your comment, so here you go: > Ford’s 1941 bioplastic Model T was made of hemp, flax, wheat, and spruce pulp, which made the car lighter than fiberglass and ten times tougher than steel, wrote the New York Times on February 2, 1941. The car ran on ethanol made from hemp or other agricultural waste. Ford’s experimental model was deemed a step toward the realization of his dream to “grow automobiles from soil,” wrote Popular Mechanics in their December 1941 issue and reduce greenhouse gases—already known to occur by then. https://themeaningofwater.com/2020/10/03/henry-fords-hemp-cars/ https://themeaningofwater.com/2020/10/03/henry-fords-hemp-ca...
- thombat 4y ago
  Unfortunately that "Popular Mechanics" reference appears to be false: the December 1941 issue [1] did feature an article "Pitch Hitters for Defense" which included Ford's car experiments, but the entire focus was on supplanting the use of metals to free capacity for the military use. Carbon dioxide, greenhouse effect, or any environmental discussion is quite absent. (The advertising in the issue is interesting since even just before Pearl Harbor there's a lot of military references. My (very limited) understanding was that isolationism was strong but apparently far from pacifism) [1] https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Mechanics_12_1941_text.pdf https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Me...
koheripbal 4y ago
I think Russia is absolutely trying to warm Siberia via CO2 production.
- necovek 4y ago
  Wouldn't that be easier done by burning all of those fossil fuel locally instead of exporting it? (Though CO2 as side product is not overly localised, it certainly is to an extent)
rsynnott 4y ago
> Is your thesis American knew about CO2 and gauged how bad it would be and decided the positive effects from warming meant it was better to encourage greater CO2 output? While I assume it was a joke, global warming was certainly known of at the time. It wasn't super-well understood (they couldn't make detailed predictions in the way they can today), but they would have known that adding CO2 would raise the temperature.

mlatu 4y ago

YES, the americans did know about CO2 at least as early as 1941. I didnt try to look that up but instead stumbled upon it while reading something else, and remembered your comment, so here you go: > Ford’s 1941 bioplastic Model T was made of hemp, flax, wheat, and spruce pulp, which made the car lighter than fiberglass and ten times tougher than steel, wrote the New York Times on February 2, 1941. The car ran on ethanol made from hemp or other agricultural waste. Ford’s experimental model was deemed a step toward the realization of his dream to “grow automobiles from soil,” wrote Popular Mechanics in their December 1941 issue and reduce greenhouse gases—already known to occur by then. https://themeaningofwater.com/2020/10/03/henry-fords-hemp-cars/ https://themeaningofwater.com/2020/10/03/henry-fords-hemp-ca...

thombat 4y ago
Unfortunately that "Popular Mechanics" reference appears to be false: the December 1941 issue [1] did feature an article "Pitch Hitters for Defense" which included Ford's car experiments, but the entire focus was on supplanting the use of metals to free capacity for the military use. Carbon dioxide, greenhouse effect, or any environmental discussion is quite absent. (The advertising in the issue is interesting since even just before Pearl Harbor there's a lot of military references. My (very limited) understanding was that isolationism was strong but apparently far from pacifism) [1] https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Mechanics_12_1941_text.pdf https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Me...

koheripbal 4y ago

I think Russia is absolutely trying to warm Siberia via CO2 production.

necovek 4y ago
Wouldn't that be easier done by burning all of those fossil fuel locally instead of exporting it? (Though CO2 as side product is not overly localised, it certainly is to an extent)

rsynnott 4y ago

> Is your thesis American knew about CO2 and gauged how bad it would be and decided the positive effects from warming meant it was better to encourage greater CO2 output? While I assume it was a joke, global warming was certainly known of at the time. It wasn't super-well understood (they couldn't make detailed predictions in the way they can today), but they would have known that adding CO2 would raise the temperature.