Twenty years ago, on this day, October 20, 1983, the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian gave a tolerably accurate summation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s report.
The Australian page 3 climatic change (based on EPA report)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 342.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Australian runs a page three greenhouse gases story that isn’t a complete shit show?! By this point, climate change was well understood as a potential long-term problem in Australia, various magazines, newspapers would run stories. Senators would make speeches…
What I think we can learn from this
I guess, what we learn is that The Australian newspaper has decayed markedly, perhaps never from a particularly high baseline. But now it’s just a fucking rag.
What happened next
There was another climate report released by the National Academy of Science the following day. And that is the topic of tomorrow’s blog post….
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.