35 years ago this week Scientists gathered to alert people to Greenhouse gasses and their impact on the environment and society.

On 30 November 1987, 266 of Australia’s pre-eminent environmental, oceanographic, atmospheric and earth scientists, as well as mathematicians, physicists, and biologists, gathered at Monash University in Melbourne for a five-day conference which, it would turn out, marked the beginning of the climate crisis debate in Australia. Many of those attending had been working on the science of greenhouse gasses for years, but few had any inkling of how the problem would become a crisis.

It was one of the first major national gatherings of its type anywhere in the world. For a short while Australia was the climate change debate’s epicentre. The conference was designed to inform governments and the public of the problem and how it would need to be fixed.

In the audience were hundreds of sceptical scientists.

Cosmos Science Digital News Editor Ian Mannix spoke to two of the people who were at that meeting.

For more background on this conference and discussions with other people who attended, read Cosmos Weekly this Friday.

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