Thirty two years ago, on this day, January 19th, 1992,
“One of the CSIRO’s top scientists says doubters of the greenhouse effect are gambling with the future of the world. Dr Graeme Pearman, coordinator of the CSIRO’s climate change research program, said yesterday there was little doubt global warming was a reality according to all the best scientific models.”
Anon, 1992. Greenhouse cynics gambling with future. Canberra Times, January 20
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the denialist campaigns in Australia, helped by imported American scientists, had been successful. And the Hawke and then Keating governments had significantly softened their stance, their already weak appetite for economic measures, such as a carbon tax. Pearman, who had been studying the climate issue for 20 years by this stage, knew what was at stake and was publicly pushing back.
What we can learn from this is that scientists have been correctly predicting that the gamble was going on and correctly predicting that there might be losers in that gamble.
What happened next is that a carbon tax came back onto the agenda in 1994-95. It was again defeated, then tax became ETS in the late 90s. Everyone was talking about it. And then finally Tony Abbott killed it off. More broadly Pearman has been very public about the struggles back then.
And we are 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.
Also on this day:
January 19, 1968 – Engineers are not ecologists…
January 19, 1976 – The carbon consequences of cement get an early discussion.
January 19, 2015 -Four utilities pull out of an EU CCS programme…