Thirty two years ago, on this day, January 23rd 1992 the allegedly fact based business newspaper, the Australian Financial Review” (“the Fin”) published more denialist shite, including the inevitable quote from Pat Michaels.
SEA levels may be unlikely to rise significantly for many decades to come, but the flood of published material about the enhanced greenhouse effect has become a matter of serious concern.
The flood threatens to inundate small libraries around the world and force the larger ones to build retaining walls in their periodical sections. Fortunately, the main book collections are so far unthreatened.
But while most of us can only watch the increasing flood levels of articles about the effect and wonder what it all means, there are signs that the worst may be over….
Lawson, M. 1992. Cooling the global warming predictions. Australian Financial Review, 23 January . SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.3ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Fin had been running denialist hit pieces, which was very common in the business press this time, even in the quality business press, like the FT allegedy part of the battle of ideas.
The denialists were very good at calling themselves truth tellers and claiming that they were being censored and silenced. See Boykoff and Boykoff 2004 “Balance as bias” – it is really good on this. And the denialists also knew how to give the elite and business press what they wanted, or what was needed to get something printed. So getting a prestigious American over to yap some bollocks was still enough to get published.
What we can learn from this is that the denialists were cunning and persistent. And of course, the organizations were well-funded.
What happened next? The denial kept going, kept escalating, and reached an early peak in 97 before Kyoto. Then the Lavoisier group came along, just to stiffen Howard’s anti Kyoto spine and then it exploded into public in 2009-11. And here we are.
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 23, 1957 – New Zealand scientist warns about consequences of carbon dioxide build-up
January 23, 1995 – The Larsen B starts to break up with us.. (Ice, Ice, baby)