SOURCE: The Washington Post (also available at Reading Eagle)
DATE: June 11, 2016
AUTHOR: Chris Mooney
SNIP: It was such a different time – and yet, the message was so similar.
Thirty years ago, on June 10 and 11 of 1986, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works commenced two days of hearings, convened by Sen. John H. Chafee, R-Rhode Island, on the subject of “Ozone Depletion, the Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Change.”
“This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling,” Chafee said at the hearing. “The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we have a problem, a serious problem.”
…
And what they said was clear: Human greenhouse gas emissions would cause a major warming trend, and sea level rise to boot.
The New York Times also covered the hearings, writing that “The rise in carbon dioxide and other gases in the earth’s atmosphere will have an earlier and more pronounced impact on global temperature and climate than previously expected, according to evidence presented to a Senate subcommittee today.”