Here's a current paper on promoting climate literacy in education.

Which quotes a 1958 paper. "a National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) publication, Planet Earth: Mystery With
100,000 Clues," [1]

"Our industrial civilization has been
pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a great rate,”
and if this continued, “it would have a marked warming effect
on the earth’s climate” and could “cause significant
melting of the great ice caps and raise sea levels in time.”

http://cires.colorado.edu/files/8813/9817/6983/McCaffrey_and_Buhr_2008.pdf

via Bruce Sterling. http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/114825541433/our-industrial-civilization-has-been-pouring

[1] 1. NAS, Planet Earth: Mystery With 100,000 Clues (1958),
available at http://www7.nationalacademies.org/archives/IGY PlanetEarthPosters.html. The educational booklet, posters, and
films, particularly one entitled “The Inconstant Air,” are important
science education artifacts. They also demonstrate how robust the
scientific understanding of climate processes and the earth system
were 50 years ago. The films are available on the Internet at
http://lasp.colorado.edu/igy_nas/.