Thirty years ago, on this day, September 14, 1993, the New York Times reports on industry efforts to intimidate scientists into shutting up.
As the Clinton Administration prepares to announce in the next few weeks a plan for controlling waste industrial gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, conservatives and industry groups have mounted a renewed assault on the idea that global warming is a serious and possibly catastrophic threat.
Stevens, W. 1993. Scientists Confront Renewed Backlash on Global Warming. New York Times, September 14.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Clinton had already lost the BTU energy tax battle and was trying to recover some reputation by proposing other forms of CO2 legislation. But crucially those members of the coalition that had defeated the BTU were not downing weapons, they were up for another fight, to consolidate the break, as they say in tennis…
What I think we can learn from this is that at-will lose the opponents of action are gonna keep coming at you. And they learn from both their defeats and victories…
What happened next
The industry goons’ next famous victory was rendering Kyoto meaningless before it even happened.
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.