On this day in 1957, Sir Edward Appleton makes a passing reference to the possibility of climate change in an article about the International Geophysical Year in the magazine The Listener – “For we do know this: that more carbon dioxide should help the atmosphere to trap more heat from the sun”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that the International Geophysical Year was just beginning, and the BBC had just broadcast “The Restless Sphere”, hosted by Prince Philip. Meanwhile, in April the New Scientist had run a brief story on carbon dioxide.
What we can learn is that we knew enough to be worried, and to set up a proper watching brief. We didn’t.
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 3, 2008, Greenpeace occupied Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power plant
“At dawn on July 3, 2008, 27 Greenpeace activists entered the 2,640 megawatts Eraring Power Station site north of Sydney to call for an energy revolution and take direct action to stop coal from being burnt. Twelve protesters shut down and chained themselves to conveyors while others climbed onto the roof to paint ‘Revolution’ and unfurled a banner reading ‘Energy Revolution – Renewables Not Coal’. The action preceded the Australian government’s climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut’s delivery of his Draft Climate Change Review on July 4. Police arrested 27.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the new Rudd Government had appointed economist Ross Garnaut to look at climate economics, and was also appointing other panels, there was going to be a lot of green papers and white papers and speeches. What Greenpeace were, quite rightly, saying is, well, if these speeches and policy papers don’t accelerate the closure of coal-fired monstrosities – death factories in James Hansen’s term – then they’re not worth that much.
What I think we can learn from this
It’s so difficult for an NGO, or any set of NGOs really, to be both trying to engage in the finer points of policy and simultaneously making broader societal points. Because if you go out and do the radical stuff, you’ll find yourself uninvited and disinvited to the policy roundtables, or not taken seriously when you make serious points. All the more reason why you need a very broad-based, well-funded, set of organizations within a movement and that that movement has ways of discussing what counts as “selling out,” being caught up to being a fig leaf, and what counts as constructive engagement. And there’s never going to be the final solid answer and there will always be people who disagree.
As of 2022, Eraring is still pumping out its death, but it is scheduled for final closure shortly.
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.
Thirty seven years ago, on this day, July 3, 1986, there was a House of Lords debate on “the atmosphere and fuel use”
Lord Campbell of Croy was an interesting chap – “After being defeated by Winnie Ewing of the Scottish National Party at the February 1974 general election, Campbell was made a life peer as Baron Campbell of Croy, of Croy in the County of Nairn on 9 January 1975.[4] He became Chairman of the Scottish Board in 1976, and was Vice President of the Advisory Committee on Pollution at Sea from 1976 to 1984.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Villach conference in September 1985 had created a real sense of urgency among climate scientists, and in the US, a small number of senators were trying to get the issue higher up the agenda. In April 1986 the catastrophe at the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine had put the question of transboundary pollution on the map, and put a question mark over nuclear….
What I think we can learn from this
Nuclear always causes a glow in a certain kind of heart…
What happened next
Two years later, everyone was talking about the greenhouse effect, even Thatcher.
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.
Thirty years ago, on this day, July 2, 1993, the FT reported on a conference where a long-suffering climate expert tried to correct the childish bullshit of Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels
Conference Report: Global warming – fact or claim? FT Energy Newsletters – Power Europe July 2, 1993 Section: Pg. 3 The hothouse spectre of global warming from emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has become a driving force in the environmental policies of many countries. Flohn versus Lindzen and Michaels.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the UNFCCC had been agreed the previous year, and ratification by enough member states to make it a “thing” was proceeding quicker than had been thought. Meanwhile, the IPCC was working on its next assessment report. And the denialists kept on going.
What I think we can learn from this
Idiots going to idiot.
The debating technique known as a Gish Gallop.
What happened next
Lindzen and Michaels kept being idiots.
Flohn died in 1997.
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.
Seventy-one years ago today… Rachel Carson book The Sea Around Us is published. It includes observations (uncontroversial) on Arctic climate warming…
“It is now beyond question that a definite change in the arctic climate set in about 1900, that it became astonishingly marked about 1930, and that it is now spreading into sub-arctic and temperate regions. The frigid top of the world is very clearly warming up.”
After revising the completion date, Carson completed the manuscript in June 1950. By that time, several periodicals (The New Yorker, Science Digest, and The Yale Review) were interested in publishing some of the chapters.[6] Nine of fourteen chapters were serialized in The New Yorker beginning on June 2, 1951, and the book was published on July 2 1952 by Oxford University Press.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 312ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in the 1950s DDT was good for you. As was Technology. Everything was going to be better living. And Carson came along and said ‘not so fast’… She wasn’t the only person to say this, but she said it well…
What I think we can learn from this
Resistance is fertile
What happened next
In 1962, when Silent Spring came out, the Chemicals industry, etc. went apeshit, unused to being challenged. Attacks of all sorts ensued. Of course. And have kept going…
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.
Ten years ago, on this day, July 2, 2013, Boris defuckhead Johnson writes in his column in the Daily Telegraph “newspaper” that “Wind farms couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was overpaid hack Boris Johnson needed to write a column. And attacking wind farms is always easy if you’re a conservative. Johnson, of course, didn’t bother to do any research. Why would he, that’s not what they were paying him for. You don’t ask a clown to have evidence based policy and you should not ask a clown to be Prime Minister or World King, Offshore wind was in a precarious position but was beginning to make headway.
OTHER OLD WHITE MEN
’ Mr Peter McGauran MP, the federal Minister for Agriculture and member for Gippsland, went further in June 2006, saying ‘Wind farms don’t live up to the hype that they’re the environmental saviour and a serious alternative energy source.
(Prest, 2007: 254)
ABC, 2006. Pete McGauran says wind farms a fraud. AM Program, 29 June. 2006
Old white men just can’t bear to be dependent (Hudson 2017)
What I think we can learn from this commentators especially right wing ones, can say any old fact-free shit that they like and suffer no consequences. Wind power now provides a decent (and climbing) percentage of our electricity needs, on an annual basis in the UK. (Please note I am not advocating a 100% wind energy economy nobody is that’s a straw man. That’s a trap.)
What happened next
Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and by between the narrating of this and the uploading, probably Prime Minister again. [no, actually he is toast.]
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.
