Thirty three years ago, on this day, November 3, 1990, the normally sane Financial Times published a brain fart of an article
Thomas, David (1990) The cracks in the greenhouse theory. Financial Times 3 November
There were claims that the IPCC organisers had deliberately excluded strong dissenters, such as Richard Lindzen, Hugh Elsaesser and Fred Singer, from participating in the IPCC. One unnamed scientist went so far as to claim that the supporters of the greenhouse theory ‘behave like Hitler’ by conspiring to prevent critics from publishing their conclusions in leading scientific journals (quoted in Thomas, 1990.)
Paterson, M (1996) Page 45
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the IPCC’s first assessment report had been delivered two months earlier. Since then, there had been fierce contestation of it. And this article in the FT was part of the push back ahead of the second World Climate Conference in Geneva and the imminent start of the climate negotiations. So the FT was wanting to cater to its various members, readers, some of whom would want to doubt awkward physical realities.
Eleven months earlier, Forbes had run a similar piece of nonsense (Link).
What I think we can learn from this
I am not suggesting that the Global Climate Coalition or the British Coal board phoned up the editor of the FT and ordered him to order an underling to write this. That’s not how power works. That’s not how the world usually works, 99.99 times out of 100.
What happened next
The FT stopped being quite so fucking useless on climate change. It’s currently quite good (especially when they publish my letters).
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.