Eighty years ago, on this day, November 19, 1943, the burn-enormous-amounts-of-petrol-to-disperse-fog-so-bombers-can-land was used for the first time.
From the time of the first operational use of FIDO at Graveley on the 19/20 November 1943 until the end of the year, thirty-nine successful landings were made.
Fleming, 2007, p.56.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 310ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Guy Callendar’s bright idea of burning off fog that would prevent RAF planes from returning to base got its first actual physical use, saving crews’ lives so they could continue bombing campaigns against military targets and against civilians. It’s a war.
What I think we can learn from this
Local weather manipulation and global patterns have a backstory
What happened next
FIDO continued to get used through to the end of the war.
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.
Sixty three years ago, on this day, November 19, 1960, English steam engineer Guy Callendar noted that the carbon dioxide theory was not universally accepted.
In 1961 he published the results of his study in the Quarterly Journal, concluding that the pattern of recent climatic warming was not incompatible with his hypothesis of increased carbon dioxide radiation.”67 …. As this paper was going to press, Callendar wrote a note listing “[Four] reasons for the unpopularity of CO2 theory in some meteorological quarters.” Although there was no organized opposition to anthropogenic climate change at the time, Callendar’s note reads much like a contemporary response to global warming skeptics:
a. The idea of a single (easily explained) factor causing world wide climatic change seems impossible to those familiar with the complexity of the forces on which any and every climate depends.
b. The idea that man’s actions could influence so vast a complex [system] is very repugnant to some.
c. The meteorological authorities of the past have pronounced against it, mainly on the basis of faulty observations of water vapour absorption, but also because they had not studied the problem to anything like the extent required to pronounce on it.
d. Last but not the least. They did not think of it themselves!
68. CP 1, Levinson, 19 November 1960
Source: James Roger Fleming 2007 The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964) p.82
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 317ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Callendar had continued writing after the war on climate and had corresponded extensively with Gilbert Plass, the man most responsible for bringing the carbon dioxide theory to prominence in the United States.
This article with these notes to himself was written after he’d submitted something for publication. And they bear thinking about in terms of why good ideas or sound ideas don’t go further. It’s classic, “not invented here” syndrome. People are unwilling to accept good ideas from people they don’t like.
What I think we can learn from this
is that awareness of intellectual resistance to facts is hardly novel. Even around climate, it goes back further than perhaps you think
What happened next
Callendar’s paper got published. It was his last one. Callendar died in early 1964, on the same day of the year as Svante Arrhenius who died in 1927 (LINK).
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.
Twenty five years ago, on this day, November 18, 1998, Australian Prime Minister John Howard trolls the environmentalists and the planet by appointing a coal guy as “environment minister”.
Australia announces new environment ambassador.
18 November 1998
CANBERRA, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer announced on Wednesday the appointment of senior Foreign Affairs and Trade department officer Ralph Hillman as Australia’s new Ambassador for the Environment.
Hillman, who has an extensive economic background, was most recently the Ambassador, permanent representative of Australia to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. He replaces Meg MacDonald, who held the post since September 1997.
1998 Democrats unhappy that Ralph Hillman is now environment ambassador, with ACF more emollient –
FED – Democrats damn appointment of environment ambassador. 19 November 1998
Australian Associated Press
CANBERRA, Nov 19, AAP – The Australian Democrats today damned the appointment of economist and trade expert Ralph Hillman as Australia’s new ambassador for the environment.
Democrats environment spokeswoman Lyn Alison said the announcement that Mr Hillman would replace Meg McDonald as ambassador this month was a cynical decision.
“Mr Hillman has no obvious qualifications to be an advocate for the environment, he is more likely to work against the interests of the environmental movement,” Senator Alison said in a statement.
“The key credential Mr Hillman brings to the position is his hard-headed economic rationalism and experience in foreign affairs. This makes him just the ticket for a government that doesn’t take the environment seriously.”
But the Australian Conservation Foundation said it would work with Mr Hillman.
“We believe it is a very important job,” ACF campaigns director Michael Krockenberger told AAP.
“It is especially so as Australia faces a lot of international pressure on the environment on issues like climate change and looking after world heritage areas threatened by issues such as uranium mining in Kakadu National Park and oil shale mining at the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 366.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Howard liked, I think, occasionally to troll his opponents. And this was classic trolling, appointing the head of the Australian Coal Association, to be the next ambassador for the environment, a post that had been created a few years earlier during the “Greenhouse Effect” spasm.
Howard also appointed Wilson Tuckey as Minister for forestry – “ he has a sense of humour.” (quote from Hamilton)
What I think we can learn from this is that by putting these sorts of people in these sorts of positions, you send the message – you demoralise your opponents, you destroy the credibility of organisations and institutions to poison the well. In other words,
What happened next
Howard kept trolling – his best was using World Environment Day to announce, in 2002, that he would submit the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia had signed, forward for ratification.
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.
Sixty years ago, on this day, November 18, 1953 Harold Macmillan, who would go on to be British Prime Minister, told the truth about the function of (most) committees set up by politicians.
"The Macmillan Manoeuvre" – a new short video. Not great, not terrible. Tell me what you think… Tips for improving general technique very welcome. pic.twitter.com/XXs9umj2D2
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The London Smog of 1952 had killed 4000 people. Even though most of these were The Old and The Sick, still the cry went up, “something must be done.” So the Beaver committee (chaired by Sir Hugh Beaver) was set up…
The game is the game. But sometimes, thanks to external factors and pushing, committees’ recommendations do actually get implemented and matter…
What happened next
The Beaver Report made a series of recommendations, and as if by magic, the 1956 Clean Air Act.
Macmillan became Prime Minister in 1957, after Anthony Eden suffered a little local difficulty over the Suez Canal.
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.
Calum McFarlane reflects on half a decade of climate promises…
Five years ago I wrote this, nominally as an interview for Marc about how I viewed activism (climate and otherwise) but also as a release valve for all the Big Feelings I was having at that time1.
To quote myself:
“…an abiding sense of unease that things were Not Right (more so than usual) was affirmed by the IPCC 1.5 report – I knew that the uncertain future I was concerned about was much closer than I had feared.”
I have not to this day read the full report – I think I did struggle through the summary at one point. But the gruesome details are not really the point, being as we are five years down the track, and however many increments worse on however many metrics you care to mention.
(There is of course a counterfactual here – how much worse things might have been if that report had not been published. But given how bad things are now, and how much faster they are getting worse than was expected even five years ago (at least in mainstream IPCC communications, which we know to be ‘conservative’), this is small comfort).
Did this report, and the wave of ‘climate awareness’ that came with it drag more people into the category of being outright worried / scared by climate change, than merely “concerned”, as the pollsters have it? Maybe. But it clearly didn’t have any impact where it matters, where the power to change things is. Again, as I wrote five years ago:
‘Matthew Bolton writes that the first principle of making change is that ‘you only get the justice that you have the power to make happen’, the justice that you have ‘the power to compel’. The point of campaigning is to make a difference. It’s not to live in an activist bubble where we can comfort ourselves that we have the right ideas and everyone else has the wrong ideas.’”
We (where “we” = people who would prefer not to have seen our planet get the shit kicked out of it, to use the vernacular) still have no power. Without it, we have compelled no justice. Much ink has been spilled about the reasons for this – after all, it is probably the ultimate “Wicked Problem”. But none of it changes where we are now.
We2 have already unleashed horrors that the writers of the goriest bits of the Old Testament would shrink from. And that is to say nothing of what is now known to be inevitable, or what is waiting for us in the lucky dip I mentally refer to as “sooner and / or worse than expected” in the years and decades to come.
Is there anything else to say? The closing paragraph of part of my interview five years ago “Activist Vuvuzela” covers it all, I think:
“Anything else you’d like to say?
All of the previous answers notwithstanding, I find myself increasingly afraid that humanity will bequeath the current and next generations not only a degraded world, but a lack of hope that anything can ever be better, that there is any point to trying. I hope to find the courage in myself to do the best I can, for as long as I can, for my family, my community, and our planet.
(Sounds trite as I read it back, but there it is).”
Footnotes
The Big Feelings are different now, but they haven’t gone anywhere.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 408.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Extinction Rebellion was dreamed up in 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, and Roger Hallam and others. People did some stickering and fly posting. They announced a “declaration of rebellion” in Parliament Square at the end of October, and this was their next big media stunt.
And how many of those 1000s of people are now sitting in front of their televisions, blaming themselves for not having the tenacity to stay with it?
[To do – get someone who was there on the day in London, to give them memories of the day, and ideally, something that they wrote at the time.]
What I think we can learn from this
It’s not their fault. It was a toxic environment, the chaotic process, but we don’t know how to do social movement organisations. We just cut straight to the March on Washington in 1963, and people are giving “I Have a Dream” speeches, not understanding all that went for the so called star system.
What happened next
XR held two “rebellions” in 2019. The second was a damp-ish squib, and then came the pandemic. They’ve never really been able to re-heat the souffle, and at least in Manchester, the local groups tanked.
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.
The day has been going since 2010. I think. Nice to see men taking responsibility for their own fertility. My personal story is well you can read it here in the Conversation about having kids
What I think we can learn from this
There’s already plenty of humans on the planet.
What happened next
Much less to worry about. If I were a breeder, I’d be looking at the climate records getting scratched and thinking about the near future into which my precious bairns were growing up and I’d be freaking out.
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.
Two years ago, on this day, November 16, 2021, a UK politician mouthed the right climate pieties at COP26, then told the oil companies “keep drilling, baby.”
Gosden, E. (2022) Kwarteng courted oil bosses after Cop26; Energy secretary encouraged North Sea drilling. The Times, January 3, p.23 – (Kwarteng schmoozed on Nov 16)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly416ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Glasgow climate COP had happened. Apparently 1.5 was still alive. The British state was happy enough with its performance and now back to business as usual. The Energy and Climate Secretary of State Bay was back to palling around with oil companies and letting them do further drilling in the North Sea.
What I think we can learn from this
that the ink does not need to be dry on some precious “hold hands sing Kumbaya” announcement of climate good intentions before politicians will go back to doing what they do in the interests of capital accumulation and their own post-political career and comfort.
What happened next
Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a mildly consequential mini budget in October of 2022, five minutes before Liz Truss threw him under the bus in a futile effort to save her own skin.
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.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, November 16, 1995, a denialist douche-bag testilies…
On November 16, 1995, Patrick J. Michaels, an associate professor in the department of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, U.S. House of Representatives, on issues related to human-induced (or anthropogenic) climate change.
Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 202
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Michaels and a small band of others had for reasons of their own and (in Michaels case, money and attention), decided to attack and smear climate science and climate scientists. And in 1995 the big effort was to attack the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to anyone who would listen. And they had enough Republican friends, especially in the House of Reps and Senate, to be able to do what the proper scientists were doing, which was create venues for discourse.
What I think we can learn from this is that “ideal speech communities” can get hijacked and perverted by lying liars. The lying liars could never admit that they were wrong. Too demanding, emotionally.
What happened next
The attacks on the IPCC and in this case, especially Ben Santer continued, but they reached such a high vicious pitch that members of the Global Climate Coalition started to worry about their reputations and started to leave. But it didn’t matter. The denialists had won.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 343.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from the late 1970s, the US Department of Energy and others were funding studies of global energy demand and the climate impacts. The lead author of this report, David Rose, had been quoted in The Wall Street Journal article in August 1980 [LINK] as saying, if the build up is real, then this is serious.
The build-up was real, this was serious.
The report was finished on this date, and it was reported on in January of the following year by Walter Sullivan, of the New York Times.
Meanwhile, shortly before this was finished, the EPA and the NAS had had reports out.
What I think we can learn from this is that a hell of a lot of the serious intellectual work had been done by the early 80s. It was simply a question of getting the politicians on board that took another five years. And as soon as that was achieved, there was an enormous, virulent pushback.
What happened next
We did not heed the warnings. The Age of Consequences is upon us and the dildo of consequence, never arrives lubed.
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.
