Thirty three years ago, on this day, July 16, 1990, the asinine comments of Hugh Morgan, culture warrior and businessman, are reported in the Canberra Times
ADELAIDE: Western Mining chief Hugh Morgan has criticised the former Minister for the Environment, Graham Richardson, and the scientific community for treating the greenhouse theory as fact rather than hypothesis.
Mr Morgan told an Australian Institute of Energy conference dinner on Monday [16th July] that he was concerned at the way in which some scientists and Senator Richardson expounded the theory as if it were truth.
1990 Anon. 1990. Public ‘unaware’ of alternative scientific theories on greenhouse effect. Canberra Times, 18 July, p. 6
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that having won the Federal election in March of that year, the Labour Party was having to follow through on promises to the environmentalists about a so-called “ecologically sustainable development process.” Hugh Morgan, who probably felt the Liberals and Nationals had been robbed, was predictably furious, and predictably spouting his climate denial bollocks, saying that there were alternative theories. This was a common proposal at the time and still is. Morgan’s “alternative theories” being possible somewhat like Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”.
There is that letter from Guy Callendar to (I think) Gilbert Plass about people being able to criticise theories, but it’s very hard to come up with a good one. And there is also the editorial in Climatic Change by John Eddy, where he cites Kipling’s poem, In the Neolithic Age – “nine and 60 ways to calculate the tribal lays and every one of them is right.”
But that’s not what Morgan is saying. Morgan is saying that he’s gonna shop around until he finds a “theory” that allows us to keep burning coal and the oil and the gas and spitting on and shitting on the environmentalists. That’s what Morgan means by “alternative theories.”
What I think we can learn from this
Brittle old white men are bad for your health. And your planet’s health, at that.
What happened next
The ecologically sustainable development process did indeed start. Morgan kept funding denialist efforts including his consigliere Ray Evans and all the other Goon Squad types who have made the Australian response to climate change change so shameful and wasteful.
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.