David Keeling (1928-2005) climate scientist
“Keeling’s scientific legacy is illustrated in an image of unforgettable, ominous simplicity: the jagged, remorselessly rising line marking the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 1958, when his measurements began, to the present day. There seems little doubt now that the so-called “Keeling curve”, plotting his data from the observatory on the top of Mauna Loa, an 11,000ft extinct volcano in Hawaii, will be one of the key images in human history, as recognisable and as full of instant meaning as the crucifix or the swastika…His data set is one of the most important in history and stands as the base on which all modern climate change science is built”
The Independent 27 June 2005
“After last year’s Paris climate conference, the world congratulated itself on having agreed a new process, even though real action was postponed. Yet, given the longevity of a large part of the capital stock, the time for decisive change is right now, not decades in future. But the world is not really serious about climate, is it? It prefers fiddling while the planet burns”.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 6 April 2016
“For years, our leaders chose to ignore the warnings of our best scientists and top military strategists. Global warming, they told us, was beginning a stealth campaign that would lay waste to vast stretches of the planet, uprooting and killing millions of innocent civilians. But instead of paying heed and taking obvious precautions, we chose to strengthen the enemy with our endless combustion; a billion explosions of a billion pistons inside a billion cylinders have fueled a global threat as lethal as the mushroom-shaped nuclear explosions we long feared. Carbon and methane now represent the deadliest enemy of all time, the first force fully capable of harrying, scattering, and impoverishing our entire civilization”
Bill McKibben, The New Republic, 2016
The Keeling tartan
The Keeling tartan symbolises a wholesale shift in the energy basis of civilisation, from fossil fuels (grey and black track) to 100 per cent clean energy (green and yellow track). It is named in honour of the late Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose measurements from 1958 onwards supplied the first concrete evidence of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, commonly known as the ‘Keeling Curve’. Today, ninety-seven percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that man-made climate change is for real. Permission to adopt the Keeling name was graciously granted by his son, Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 Program that continues the vital measurement series to this day.
Scottish Tartan Register No. 10593; UK Patent Office No. 4022617
Click here for alternate ‘Keeling Dress’ tartan.