Thirty five years ago, on this day, June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen gave his pivotal testimony to senators.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that since the 1985 Villach meeting advocates of climate action had been pressing every button and pulling every lever that they knew. Hansen had testified before and this testimony timed to sensitise journalists before the Toronto “Changing the Global Atmosphere” conference was held on a very hot day in Washington DC with the windows closed and the air conditioning turned off.
What I think we can learn from this
You have to say the same thing over and over and over again to get anywhere. You have to be lucky with your timing. And crucially James Hanson was a small c-conservative person at that point, so coming from him it was a big deal to say that the greenhouse effect was here. Those words would not have had the same effect from some other people…
What happened next
The issue exploded. Presidential candidates were forced to address it. Hansen got smeared and ignored and uninvited to important meetings. This continued until he retired. He’s been getting arrested a lot.
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.