Thirty-six years ago, on this day, February 26th, 1988, four months before James Hansen gave his dramatic and pivotal testimony in Washington DC, an Australian climate scientist, Graeme Pearman, was speaking out on the same topic.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101979010
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was the “Elizabeth and Frederick White Research Conference on Global Change at the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra, against the backdrop of increasing global awareness and the “Greenhouse Project” initiated by the Commission for the Future and the CSIRO. Pearman been studying climate change for 17 years by this time with CSIRO trying to alert people. And over the last 10 years, there had been a dramatic warming; this was captured also later that year. In March in a conference about the Gaia hypothesis held in San Diego.
What we learn is that we’ve known – and we’ve chosen to ignore scientists and keep voting for the people who ignore scientists. Oh, and by the way, both mainstream political parties ignore the scientists.
What happened next? A few months later, climate change properly exploded onto public consciousness, stayed there until about 1990-91 when the Gulf War took over. dislodging Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. And then it didn’t really come back until 2006, with The Inconvenient Truth etc.
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.
See also Graeme Pearman in January 1992 on the gamble.
Also on this day:
Feb 26, 1981 – Science writer warns readers about the greenhouse in the Guardian….
Feb 26, 1998 – Australian “clean coal” is on the way (again).