Proving climate change: the 'Keeling Curve'
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2021
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A young American scientist began the work that would show how our climate is changing in 1958. His name was Charles Keeling and he started meticulously recording levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. He would carry on taking measurements for decades. His wife Louise and son Ralph spoke to Louise Hidalgo about him and his work.
(Photo: Thick black smoke blowing out of an industrial chimney. Credit: John Giles/PA)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Louis Adaggo. |
| 0:41.2 | In the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP26, we're looking back at how the world woke |
| 0:46.5 | up to global warming. |
| 0:48.3 | We start in the late 1950s, when a young American scientist began one of the most important projects in |
| 0:54.0 | establishing the existence of climate change. The scientist's name was Charles Keeling |
| 0:59.2 | and in January 1958 he started recording levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on the |
| 1:05.3 | slopes of the world's largest volcano in Hawaii. |
| 1:09.0 | In 2012, I spoke to his widow and his son about what he uncovered. |
| 1:14.0 | He was a little bit like the Dutch boy with the finger in the dyke |
| 1:18.7 | needing to take care of something that other people weren't necessarily noticing |
| 1:22.4 | as being as important. |
| 1:24.0 | Charles Keeling's son, Ralph, says what his father had noticed was that no one was accurately |
| 1:29.5 | measuring the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to see if they were changing over time. |
| 1:35.7 | Jarskeeling decided that if no one else was successfully doing it, he would, as he himself |
| 1:41.0 | later explained. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

