Twenty six years ago, on this day, May 10, 1997, The Australlian gave more oxygen to a frankly idiotic (I can say it because he’s now safely dead) scientist called Brian O’Brien.
SCIENTISTS continue to make dire predictions about the effect of greenhouse gases despite clear evidence the planet will not be as badly affected as first thought, a leading atmospheric scientist says. [really?]
Former Nasa space scientist Dr Brian O’Brien said self-interested scientists and conservation groups propped up the “greenhouse industry” with exaggerated claims in order to preserve their respective patches..
Lunn, S. 1997. Greens let off gas over greenhouse. The Australian, 10 May, p.45
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 366.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian government of John Howard had launched a diplomatic offensive against Australia having to take on any actual reduction commitments at the upcoming Kyoto negotiations in December. Whether O’Brien had been asked or was freelancing here is hard to tell but the denialist effort to say that climate change was overblown fits in the context of trying to reduce the political cost of being a dick.
O’Brien is now dead so I can say what I think which is that he was a foolish overconfident old man when the climate issue took hold and he enjoyed the notoriety of being a denialist and a dressed up his b******* and leaned heavily on his background with NASA.
What I think we can learn from this
We have to see specific denialist outbreaks against the political environment of the time and not just as symptoms of of old white male derangement.
What happened next
The denial coalesced around something called The Lavoisier Group by 2000. It kept the flame of climate denial alive until 2007/8, when other groups got heavily involved as well.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.