Month: October 2022

Categories
Australia Denial

October 16, 1997 – Australian businessman declares climate change “no longer an issue”

On this day, October 16 in 1997, Australian businessman Hugh Morgan, executive director of Western Mining Company, speaking on ABC radio, claimed that climate change was no longer an issue.

“Also, in responding to Senator Parer’s comments regarding the “Club of Rome” reported in The SMH on 14.3.97, both BHP Limited and CRA Limited executives were reported to confirm their commitment to environmental performance. The CRA Limited executive made it clear that his company considered climate change a serious issue. In contrast to this, on 16.10.97 Hugh Morgan, the Executive Director of Western Mining Company Ltd. stated the change in the science indicated that the experiment test of climate change had not been met which implied that climate change was no longer an issue (ABC radio news, AM program).”

(Duncan, 1997:84)

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 360.98ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Australian business had mobilised strongly and successfully in the early 1990s against the threat of a carbon tax. The new threat was that international pressure at the upcoming Kyoto conference might lead to the Australian government accepting actual cuts in emissions. Prime Minister John Howard was moving heaven and earth to avoid this, and doubtless was pleased when Hugh Morgan came out with this.

Morgan was an old-fashioned culture warrior, who had previously said Aborigines had practiced cannibalism etc etc. The stuff he came out with in the 70s and 80s was just wild.

His consigliere, Ray Evans, was already neck deep in co-ordinating international anti-climate  collaboration, with US denialists. Evans was later a founder of the misnamed “Lavoisier Group.”

Why this matters. 

Let’s remember who has been working hard to stop anything being done about climate change, yes?

What happened next?

Australia got a sweet sweet deal at Kyoto and STILL didn’t ratify.

Categories
Science Scientists

October 15, 1985 – Villach meeting supercharges greenhouse concerns…

On this day, October 15 in 1985, scientists from around the world began a meeting that would lead to the final arrival of the climate “issue” on the international agenda.  Here is the beginning of an article by prominent science writer Fred Pearce, writing in 2005…

“The week the climate changed; Villach, a sleepy spa town in southern Austria, is not an obvious place from which to change the world. But 20 years ago this week, a conference there became the spark that lit today’s burning concern about global warming. Before Villach, the greenhouse effect was a subject for specialised physicists – a possible problem for future generations and nothing more. After Villach, global warming swiftly became the world’s top environmental story. The conference, say the people who were there, was the catalyst for the formation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the gatekeeper for the science of climate change – and led to the Kyoto protocol. So what happened? Was it atmospheric chemistry or personal chemistry?

Pearce – “The Week the Climate Changed” New Scientist

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 343.35ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – since the early 1970s there had been international meetings of scientists to look at Man’s Impact on the Climate/Environment, in various places (Williamstown, Wijk, Norwich, Villach). From 1972 some of these meetings had been co-sponsored by the UN Environment Program, alongside the World Meteorological Organisation. The models got better, the scientists got surer of what was happening, what might happen…

The Villach 1985 meeting is the one at which the non-carbon-dioxide greenhouse gases got properly added up, and they realised trouble was afoot, less hypothetically and sooner than they’d been thinking…

Why this matters. 

History is good, isn’t it? If you didn’t think that, you’d not be reading this site.

What happened next?

American senators got the message – in December we’ll talk about Carl Sagan’s testimony in December 1985.  The US Department of State, nervous about being bounced into binding international action on carbon dioxide the way they had been about ozone, decided to slow the whole thing down and make sure governments got to vet scientific statements…

Categories
United Kingdom

October 14, 1974 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor is warned about carbon dioxide build-up.

On this day, October 14 in 1974, a UK Cabinet Office civil servant tells his boss about this climate change issue, after having been told about it by German Professor Hermann Flohn.

“The first example I have found of this route is in 1974. Dr P.T. Warren, a Cabinet Office civil servant, reported a conversation to Dr Robert Press [Robert Press], who was the acting chief scientific adviser between April 1974 and 1976. Warren had been at a meeting examining the forces shaping Europe over the next 30 years (Lord Kennet’s Europe plus Thirty project[Europe Plus 30]). There, he had spoken with Professor Hermann Flohn, a respectable climatologist from Bonn and one of the leading researchers into anthropogenic climate change. Flohn clearly impressed on Warren the necessity of taking the subject seriously. 

Warren told Press: 

“His organization has now achieved a ‘reasonable’ model for world climate and this leads to some very worrying predictions when data are fed in on the present output of CO2 into the atmosphere. As I understood him, and I should add that he is no over-zealous enthusiast of the doom-watch school but fully aware of all the limits to modelling, the dangers of premature judgements etc, there is a real likelihood that by the year 2100 the polar ice-caps will disappear if the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere continued at its present rate.”   

TNA CAB 164/1379. Warren to Press, 14 October 1974   

Agar 2015

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 327.28ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – in the aftermath of the 1972 Stockholm conference, more work was afoot about climate modelling (the July-August workshop in Wijk had just happened).

The very hot European summer had led to a certain amount of media speculation as well…

Btw – Flohn, who pops up a lot,  was a total mensch on all this – a really important briefer of people, including Olaf Palme. He died in 1997, and deserves more recognition than he has had.

Why this matters. 

UK Government awareness of climate change did not begin in 1988

What happened next?

Press’s successor as Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Ashworth, kept going on the climate issue. Eventually, in 1980, he briefed Margaret Thatcher who was apparently incredulous and said “you want me to worry about the weather?”

Categories
Australia Science Scientists

October 13, 2005 – “Climate Change: Turning up the Heat” published

On this day, 13 October 2005, a comprehensive book explaining climate change, by the Australian scientist Barrie Pittock was released. It was called, aptly, “Climate Change: Turning up the Heat.” 

[On this day the PPM was 377.19

Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters

People like Barrie Pittock, working on climate change from the 70s onwards, deserve all the accolades for their patient, long work on trying to get Australians to take climate change seriously. It is not their fault they were overwhelmed by the forces of greed and wilful ignorance.

What happened next?

The following year, in late 2006, climate change re-emerged as an ‘urgent’ public policy issue.  Nowt got done, of course…

Categories
Science Scientists United States of America

October 12, 1976 – Jule Charney throws (private) shade on fellow climatologists…

On this day, October 12 in 1976, an eminent US scientist was dismissive (in a personal letter) of Stephen Schneider et al.

12 Oct 1976 None of the “speculative ideas of people like … Schneider on future climate change are worth the paper (usually newspaper) they are written on. They mislead the public and they do the field harm,” Charney concluded in a separate letter.

Jule  Charney to Warren Kornberg, 12 October 1976, Box 13 – NSF, 1955-81, Papers of Jule Charney,  MIT Institute Archives, Cambridge, MA. 

(Henderson, 2014 Dilemmas of Reticence)

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 328.72ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

In the mid 1970s there was a flurry of books about climate change and its impacts. Only a very few of them focussed on the importance of carbon dioxide build-up – others saw the problem in dust, or ‘waste heat’. The grand old men of the field – Charney, Landsberg et al, feared that popularisation/tabloid style claims would damage the credibility of the field. 

Why this matters. 

Scientists – justifiably – worry about large claims and whether they are sound, since if the claims and predictions turn out to be wrong, all scientists suffer.

What happened next?

Charney changed his tune in 1979, agreeing that unless something very odd indeed happened, then a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would lead to serious warming…

Schneider went on to do much more great work.

Categories
Australia

October 11, 2006 – “Climate Institute” begins tour of rural Victoria

On this day, October 11 2006 the then new “Climate Institute” began a tour of rural Victoria…

A group calling itself the Climate Institute has started a tour of centres across the eastern states calling for action on climate change.

A panel of four, two farmers, a scientist and a wind power expert, spoke at a public meeting in the south-eastern Victorian city of Sale last night.

The group was started by a Hamilton grazier financed by a trust linked with the Murdoch media empire.

Panel member and former CSIRO scientist Graeme Peerman says farmers will be the first and hardest hit by climate change.

“At the federal level we don’t have an energy strategy, we have a document called ‘securing Australia’s energy futures’ which is a grab bag of all of the bits and pieces that you might have together, but nowhere in there is a real clear strategy as to how we build the real balance,” he said.

Sale hears push for climate change strategy ABC, 12 October 2006

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-10-12/sale-hears-push-for-climate-change-strategy/1284712?pfm=ms

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 379.33ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this –  Australia was waking up to climate change, thanks in part to the Millennium Drought, which seemed endless.  Internationally, things were moving. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had been released, the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report was coming.  

The Climate Institute had been set up the year before, and was beginning to make waves

Why this matters. 

We have tried.  We have tried and we have failed. Good to remember this…

What happened next?

The Climate Institute kept going, shutting up shop in 2017. See my Conversation piece on it going under

https://theconversation.com/so-long-climate-institute-too-sensible-for-the-current-policy-soap-opera-74360

Categories
United Kingdom

October 10, 1977 – famous scientist Solly Zuckerman writes to top UK Civil Servant, warning about climate change

On this day, October 10 in 1977, the former Chief Scientific Adviser for the United Kingdom, Solly Zuckerman wrote to the Cabinet Secretary (Sir John Hunt) about global warming, having been sensitised to the issue by an IIASA presentation.

Zuckerman  ‘This was the first time that I had heard anyone take so serious a view of this particular issue’. TNA CAB 184/567. Zuckerman to Hunt, 10 October 1977.

Solly Zuckerman

Source – Jon Agar’s 2015 article. “Future forecast – changeable and probably getting worse”: the UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 331.28ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

By the mid-late 1970s, the carbon dioxide issue was becoming more prominent. Organisations like IIASA were holding workshops, publishing articles. On IIASA, check out “Scientific Cooperation as a Bridge Across the Cold War Divide The Case of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis” by ALAN McDONALD

Why this matters. 

“We” “knew”

What happened next?

They tried to warn the new Prime Minister, one Margaret Thatcher. She dismissed them with “you want me to worry about the weather.”

Categories
Ignored Warnings Ireland Science Scientists

October 9, 1979 – Hermann Flohn warns Irish of “possible consequences of a man-made warming”

On this day, October 9 in 1979, Hermann Flohn (major German scientist) gave a talk about “possible climatic consequences of a man-made global warming” at a conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Flohn H. 1980: Possible climatic consequences of a man-made global warming. In: R. Kavanagh (Ed.): Energy System Analysis. Proc. Intern. Conf. Dublin, 9-11 Oct. 1979, D. Reidel Publ. Comp., Dordrecht, 558-568. (1981: Life on a warmer Earth, Possible climatic consequences of man-made global warming. Executive Report 3, based on research by H. Flohn, Intern. Inst. for Applied System Analysis IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria, pp. 59.)

https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/1097/1/WP-79-086.pdf

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 334.24ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – by the late 1970s, scientists who studied climate, energy systems etc had come to some conclusions

  1. Carbon dioxide really was building up in the atmosphere
  2. This would have real consequences 

They tried to get politicians to pay attention.  Oops

Why this matters. 

By the late 1970s we knew enough (earlier than that, I think there was room for doubt)

What happened next?

Flohn kept trying. Others kept trying. Eventually, in 1988, the issue “broke through”.

Categories
Australia

October 8, 1988 – Aussie poet and activist Judith Wright in final speech, warns of environmental problems ahead…

On this day, October 8 in 1988, Australian poet and activist, Judith Wright gave one of her last public speeches.

“Poet Judith Wright, in probably her last public speech, on Saturday [8th October] told delegates, “We have regarded the environment as a bottomless cornucopia of resources for the benefit of mankind”.

Mr Toyne said that that was no longer possible.”

Anon, 1988. Fight for better world: environmentalists. Canberra Times, 10 October, p.4.

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 349.37ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – Wright had been a huge part of efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef, 20 years previously, and was full of wisdom.and compassion.

Why this matters. 

A movement needs its poets.

What happened next?

Wright lived another 12 years. She was a mensch.

Categories
United Kingdom

October 8, 1959 – Shell says “nothing to see here” on carbon dioxide build-up

On this day, October 8 in 1959, an article appeared in New Scientist (then a pretty new publication)  by Dr M.A. Matthews, employed by Shell. It cast doubt on idea of carbon dioxide increase having any effect on climate

1959 Shell “The Earth’s Carbon Cycle” Article

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 313.33ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm – but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – The International Geophysical Year had focussed on many things, including the atmosphere. Academic articles were beginning to appear looking at carbon dioxide build-up.  Already through the 1950s various scientists had begun to speculate…