Yesterday I discovered in an anthropology book I own that its author warned that a rise of global temperature of 2.5 degrees Celsius would be very dangerous. That book is copyright 1977 and is written by a world famous leading paleontologist anthropologist named Richard Leakey (who died recently) and coauthored by a person who was at the time the science editor of the science journal called New Scientist. I am astonished that way back in 1977 he proclaimed global warming climate change dangers that most scientists didn't become convinced in until decades later! [But, there is the exception that Leakey seems to be primarily thinking about the problem of having enough food to feed billions of people, not being fully aware of other problems from a rise in global temperature.] Here we are in the year 2022, 45 years after his book was copyright, and there is now an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists of the dangers of more than a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures.
The science book is called ORIGINS: What New Discoveries Reveal About the Emergence of Our Species and its Possible Future, by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin. [Richard Leakey was unreligious and an atheist, and he became such at a young age. He was also a Humanist. Such are stated in some of his science books.] Much of the book is about human evolution and physical anthropology and much of the latter part is about cultural anthropology.
The last chapter of that book is called "Mankind in Perspective". Near the end of the chapter, on pages 249 - 253 (but excluding pages 250-252 which are mostly photos), he says the following [I have added boldface for emphasis].
"We know, too, that there is enough coal to supply our energy-hungry world for many centuries. But it may also turn out that in order to survive we will have to leave that coal buried and unburned. The problem is that, as with other fossil fuels (oil and gas), coal when it is burned releases carbon dioxide. Over the long term, a large build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could alter the world's climate sufficiently to disrupt seriously the pattern of agriculture. Moreover, agricultural production in the U.S., China and the Soviet Union is so finely balanced with demand, particularly for grain, that even the slightest normal variation in weather can cause havoc. The results of global warming of 2.5°C, the anticipated outcome of a dramatic rise in the carbon dioxide level within sixty years, are virtually unimaginable.
Major policy decisions will have to be taken with the next thirty years if this prospect is diverted. And those decisions will be useless unless they are agreed upon globally: there would be little point, for instance, in the Soviet Union deciding not to unearth its massive coal reserves if the U.S. goes ahead and burns its coal, or vice versa. Undoubtedly the question of future energy resources is about to strain the machinery of international decision-making as it has never been strained before. There is no mistaking that if the wrong decisions are made within the next thirty years, human life on earth could be set on the downward spiral toward extinction."
Page 141 of the book has a chart which "shows how the temperatures have fluctuated during the last million years."
