Gilbert Plass

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Gilbert Plass was a Canadian physicist who warned a magazine audience about a warming planet in 1953. He told Time that "for centuries to come, if man's industrial growth continues, the earth's climate will continue to grow warmer." Plass was born on the 22nd of March 1920 and died on the 1st of March 2004. He spent most of his working life in the United States. Few readers of that magazine could have guessed how closely his forecasts would match later measurements. How did a physicist trained in the 1940s arrive at such a claim? What numbers did he commit to, and how did they look half a century on? And what sort of person spent decades in laboratories and lecture halls, yet also built a following among stamp collectors and radio listeners?

  451

• 2. Infrared And Early Computers

  ›

  In 1956 Plass began publishing a run of scientific papers on carbon dioxide and climate. The work rested on demanding calculations of how the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation. Those calculations were heavy enough that he turned to early electronic computers. Machines of that era were slow and scarce, so putting them to work on the atmosphere was an ambitious choice. His earlier magazine remark had given a rate of 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming every 100 years. The papers aimed to give that kind of statement a firmer calculated footing. They did not stop at theory, because they also put numbers on the year 2000.

  11124

• 3. Measured Against Reality

  ›

  Plass predicted that a doubling of carbon dioxide would warm the planet by 3.6 degrees Celsius. He also forecast that carbon dioxide levels in 2000 would be 30 percent higher than in 1900. His third prediction was that the planet would be about 1 degree Celsius warmer in 2000 than in 1900. In 2007 the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report offered figures to compare against. It estimated that doubling carbon dioxide would raise temperatures by 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius, a range that comfortably holds his 3.6. The report put the rise in carbon dioxide at 37 percent since pre-industrial times. Its estimate for warming between 1900 and 2000 was around 0.7 degrees Celsius. The baselines differ slightly, but the figures sit close together. The report arrived three years after his death.

  7812

• 4. A Physicist On The Move

  ›

  Plass graduated from Harvard University in 1941, and by 1942 he was working at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan District at the University of Chicago. He stayed there until 1945. A PhD in physics from Princeton University followed in 1947. In 1946 he had already become an instructor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, where he eventually rose to associate professor. In 1955 he left academia for a year as a staff scientist with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He then joined the advanced research staff at the Aeronutronic division of the Ford Motor Company. By 1960 he managed the research lab in Ford's theoretical physics department. He also became a consulting editor of the journal Infrared Physics, now called Infrared Physics and Technology. In 1963 he accepted a new post as the first professor of atmospheric and space science at the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies. That institution is now The University of Texas at Dallas, and he stayed five years. His final move came in 1968, when Texas A&M University made him a professor of physics and head of its physics department.

  12

• 5. Echoes In Film And Print

  ›

  The short film Invisible Blanket, released in 2018, won awards. Its story drew on the article in which Plass had spoken to the magazine in the 1950s. A film maker choosing that old piece shows how long the warning had been waiting to be heard. In 2019 the writer Nathaniel Rich published the bestseller Losing Earth. The book recognizes Plass among the people who saw the problem early. Both works came long after his death, and they brought his name to audiences who had never opened a physics journal.

  68

• 6. Stamps And Symphonies

  ›

  In 1978 Plass founded the United States Possessions Philatelic Society. He was an avid philatelist, a collector and student of postage stamps. For 14 years he served as editor of the society's journal, Possessions. His love of music reached a wider public through the radio. On KAMU-FM he hosted a classical-music program called Collector's Choice for many years. Radio stations like that one broadcast from the Texas A&M campus where he had once led the physics department, so his last academic home was also the place his voice carried farthest.

  910