Seventy years ago, on this day, June 21st, 1954, the Manchester Evening News runs a story on carbon dioxide build-up. Yes, seventy years ago.
Cook, J.G. 1954. That smoking chimney warms up the world. Manchester Evening News, June 21, p.4
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the year before Gilbert Plass had made his attention-grabbing speech at the American Geophysical Union. And in early 1954, Gerald Wendt had published a piece in the UNESCO Courier.
Alongside this other newspapers, notably the Mews Chronicle, had run pieces by Ritchie Calder. And so on. Yes, the Manchester Evening News was a regional paper that was bigger and better back then. (Manchester hadn’t really felt in a big way, the decline that was to take hold in the late 50s and 60s)
What we learn is that carbon dioxide buildup was not controversial. It was at this point speculative; there weren’t firm numbers just merely a guesstimate that the CO2 levels had increased by 10% and could reasonably be expected to increase further and that this could/should have implications. But that’s as far as it went.
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.
Thirty years ago, on this day, June 20th 1994, insurers do the sums and begin to wonder…
Interestingly, big business, led by the $1.4 trillion dollar insurance industry, is becoming increasingly worried about global warming. After a global record loss of SUS27.1 billion in 1992.
Munich Reinsurance, the largest reinsurance company in the world, stated, “Action is now required first and foremost from politics and business: the imminent change in our climate makes speedy, radical counter-measures unavoidable.”
Jackson, E. and Goldsworthy, L. 1994. No doubt about global warming. Canberra Times, June 20, p.16.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is again, that the COP1 meeting is pending in the not too distant future. But the denialist lobby the Global Climate Coalition is riding high and is taking the oxygen and seemingly speaking on behalf of “all business.” But reinsurers need to look at the future. And they also understand that if, once in 100 year events start happening every 10 years, then their business model of insuring insurance basically falls over. So they really ought to do something. The dilemma facing them is that nobody cares; they’re only reinsurers. Yawnsville.
What we learn is that factions of capitalism were, from the mid 90s, looking ahead and saying in the words of that shuttle pilot “uh oh.”
What happened next a whole bunch of insurers turned up to day 1 of COP1 and then went home. The fossil fuel lobbyists stayed there for the whole thing. How do I know? I read the Carbon War by Jeremy Leggett.
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 373.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was talking about carbon capture and storage. And its cousins. Direct Air Capture and BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage found their start this early date, at least conceptually. And, of course, it was our old friends at IIASA who posted this. They never met a geoengineering technological fix that they didn’t approve of. That’s who these people are, for better or for worse. Can’t blame them for being what they are.
What we learn is that technocrats gonna technocrat, to channel Ms Swift.
What happened next? There’ll be another almost 15 years before BECCS started being taken really seriously. And that was in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement where the warning bell was ringing ever louder. And rather than reach for fundamental social transformation, which they don’t know how to do, and would force them to admit that the last 35 years had been worse than useless and wasted, they double down on the techno, because they can do no other.
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.
or “The Australian nuclear lobby and fixing climate change”
The context is this
This morning, [Opposition Leader] Peter Dutton announced his alleged plans for an Australian nuclear energy industry and in so doing he has set a test for all Australian media: are they willing to do their job as a fourth estate and call this out for the nonsense it is, or they all going to play games until the next election pretending this is some sort of legitimate alternative that deserves to be taken seriously?
[See also Simon Holmes a Court’s excellent thread about the 18 questions that should be asked about Dutton’s announcement.]
I thought about pitching something to The Conversation Australia – but I am out of favour with them and in any case, there’s this typically excellent piece by John Quiggin. Also I should be doing other things (see disclaimer here and at foot of this post).
But for various reasons (including a myth that the Australian Conservation Foundation had ‘stabbed them in the back’) the Liberals and Nationals quickly decided NOT to compete for ‘green’ votes, and not to take climate seriously. Except when forced (2005 to 2009), they’ve held to that stance ever since.
The nuclear ca(na)rd never goes away, no matter how many times the objections to it are raised. There is always a new buzz phrase – fast-breeder, thorium pebbles, small modular – to roll off the tongues of those whose enthusiasm is ideological or cynical. The buzzsaw of reality hits the buzzword … and a new buzzword replaces it.
The “nuclear” option is too useful to be discarded. It serves as
as a non-answer to what many LNPers regard (secretly or openly) as a non-issue
as an invocation of Faith In Technology – it makes them feel modern/scientific/whatever, as distinct from the hysterical emotional greenies (who, dammit – and this must never ever be admitted – have a better track record of seeing what is coming)
as a wedge issue to split the environmentalists and give lazy/obedient journalists something to write about other than the sheer idiocy of the LNP’s “stance”, whatever it is this week.
Thus it is rolled out again and again. It’s Groundhog Day, only for morons.
A timeline of nuclear power advocacy and use of the climate issue in Australia (always in beta, and more interested in the pre-1988 period than is healthy.)
Over time I will add to this, if I remember. Send me stuff, I guess.
1970 Australian Atomic Energy Commission annual report
This is quoted by academics in presentations at academic conferences, e.g. ANZAAS in Brisbane, the following year
1971 Australia’s first nuclear power station – Jervis Bay– cancelled, by a Liberal Prime Minister (Billy McMahon.
1972 The Stockholm Conference on the Environment.
1975 Institute of Engineers Australia (IEAust) creates an “Energy Task Force”
1977
As part of the debates about whether Australia should be mining and exporting Uranium…
In July – The IEAust’s Lance Endersbee comments (reported on the front page of the Canberra Times thus_
“Three or four” nuclear power stations were predicted for Australia within 25 years by the chairman of a task force that began its final discussions on a national energy policy in Canberra yesterday.
Professor Lance Endersbee, who is also chairman of the General College of the Institution of Engi neers, said the power stations were possibilities for Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. Victoria might have a fourth nuclear power station by the year 2000 – ironically because of the adverse environmental effects of mining its massive coal reserves. Professor Endersbee foresaw problems in the disruption of the State’s landscape and large discharges of carbon dioxide.”
1978 The Australian Mining Industry Council (later rebranded as MCA) publishes a propaganda tome “Nuclear Electricity” with a glancing mention of the possible greenhouse effect
1979 Visit by American scientist and nuclear booster Alvin Weinberg (write up in Canberra Times). See here.
“Dr Weinberg’s case, in brief, was that though we really have not yet experienced an energy crisis, one is on the way. Apart from the fact that oil is running out globally, if we continue burning it and other fossil fuels, meaning mainly coal, we may push up the earth’s temperature (by increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so creating a “greenhouse effect”) and thus disrupt the climate, at the very least.”
1982 Leslie Kemeny article (which he recycled in 1985 at an IEAust conference) (Kemeny a long-term enthusiastic nuclear bloviator – see Jim Green’s 2009 article in Crikey).
“In Europe, demand for nuclear power was growing as concern mounted about the effects of acid rain on forests, the pollution of the oceans and the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
In 1988 the “Greenhouse Effect” finally broke through into mass public awareness. There was plenty of denial, and also opportunistic “nuclear is the only answer” stuff.
“While the concern to make a serious attempt to do something about the problem was widespread, it was not universal. The pro-uranium lobby launched a heavy-handed campaign to portray nuclear power as the answer to the greenhouse effect, with the support of an ‘expert committee’ of the Institution of Engineers.”
(Lowe, 1989: 7)
“…. There can be no credible case on economic grounds for the nuclear option.
An understandably upset member of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, recently sent me a copy of a “position paper”, prepared for the Institution by an expert committee. I read the paper with the interest of someone who might well have been a member of the Institution had it not been for a few chance turnings along the road: I actually earned an honest crust in Sydney as a cadet engineer in bygone days when beaches were clean and books were dirty. The document stated that, ‘It is clear Australia can improve living standards internationally and contribute to an amelioration of the Greenhouse Effect by providing uranium and uranium services’. While some of the rhetoric has been changed, much of the technical detail is eerily reminiscent of a 1977 report by the same body….”
(Lowe, 1989:92)
Various enthusiasms for nuclear, in ALP and LNP. But climate issue dies by 1992 (with the coming of Keating and the UNFCCC) and over the next ten years or so, nuclear advocacy is relatively subdued….
2006 With pressure around the climate issue rising (Kyoto coming into force, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme etc), John Howard gets Ziggy Switowski to produce another report
MacLeod, R. (1994) The atom comes to Australia: Reflections on the Australian nuclear programme, 1953 and 1993, History and Technology, an International Journal, 11:2, 299-315, DOI: 10.1080/07341519408581868
Urwin, J. 2023. Better active today than radioactive tomorrow’: Environmentalism and the Australian anti-uranium movement, 1975–82. International Review of Environmental History, Volume 9, Issue 2
DISCLAIMER
I struggle (more than usually) to write in academese. Or in that kind of academese to which I once aspired. Maybe I was never good enough, maybe I never tried hard enough or long enough. Whatever.
Twelve years ago, on this day, June 19th, 2012, leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott had to herd some of the more lunatic cats.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 394ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
TENSIONS have erupted in the Coalition over a key climate change policy less than two weeks before the introduction of the carbon tax from July 1.
Tony Abbott was yesterday forced to stare down a backbench challenge to the party’s support for the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target as senior backbenchers blamed it for adding to electricity prices amid a backlash over last week’s 18 per cent price increases in NSW and South Australia.
Maher, S. 2012. Abbott forced to quell backbench climate rift. The Australian, 20 June, p.1.
The context was that Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Emissions Trading Scheme was about to take effect. Although the Liberals were riding high in the polls that must have bruised their self-love, and trigger-happy backbenchers were needing to feel strong. They were opposing renewables to such an extent that it was electrically damaging. And the human wrecking ball Tony Abbott, of all people, had to tell them to cool their jets.
What we learn is that in the midst of a culture war or legislative war, the red mist descends, and someone has to say “hey, cool it.” And on this occasion, believe it or not, it was Tony Abbott.
What happened next? Abbott took office in mid-2013. He managed to disappear the emissions trading scheme, but not the renewable support in ARENA and CEFC.
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.
On this day forty long long years ago, an OECD conference about the environment and economics began in Paris.
Report on the International Conference on Environment and Economics, OECD, Paris, France, 18-21 June 1984
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 344ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the Brundtland Commission was underway, and transborder issues (acid rain especially) were exercising European wonks.
What we learn
BFWRs (Big Fat Worthy Reports) keep coming round. And around. And around. The production and reception of them creates networking opportunities and distractions for a certain class of person who might – theoretically at least – be a problem otherwise…
What happened next
The Brundtland Commission released its “Our Common Future” report in 1987. The following year, the climate issue burst to life. And we are not saved.
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.
Fifty two years ago, on this day, June 18th, 1972 Australian author Patrick White, who would next year win the Nobel Prize for Literature, got involved in politics, very very reluctantly.
“On 18 June 1972, Patrick White made his début as a public speaker from the back of a truck in Sydney’s Centennial Park. He was there to address a rally against the state government’s plan to turn the area into a sports centre, which would have ruined the ecology and amenity of the park.”
Peter Ferguson “Patrick White, green bans and the rise of the Australian new left”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Sydney was in the grip of the developers who could only see dollar signs. The unions were trying to stop them. Civil society was trying to stop them. And even Patrick White, the intensely private, Australian writer who was about to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was reluctantly willing to use his status to help the cause.
What we learn is that social resistance to the megamachine/the Juggernaut requires a full court press from not just workers but artists. A popular front you could almost say. And even then, its victories will be partial, because greed is astonishingly motivating. You could almost say that capitalism is a form of acid eating away at institutions to coin a phrase entirely. De novo.
What happened next, Patrick White won the Nobel. Sydney was not entirely paved over, but that’s no thanks to the politicians. What was saved was saved by popular pressure forcing them to be slightly less short-sighted, albeit briefly.
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.
We are, allegedly, in the midst of an “energy transition.” How very exciting! We are moving from dirty old fossil fuels, which are heating the planet, to lean clean green [fill in the blank – CCS, Nuclear, hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, grid-level batteries, perpetual motion machines] because we are a clever ingenious species interested in its own survival.
Apologies for the tone, but one of the things you see – if you’re a cynic who has read a history book, and/or lived through some history – is that we tell each other (and ourselves) stories we want to hear. Crucially, these stories then shape our perception, shape the way we select evidence to confirm these stories (1).
The ability to see this, to name it, and to try to compensate for it, is one of those “core skills” that many claim they have. But it requires not just competence, but also confidence and courage. Saying that the pretty story that people are lulling themselves with (and getting vibes, attention and cash from) is just a story, and that there are plot holes big enough to let a category six hurricane through, can be a risky business.
Michael Liebreich delights in punching holes in stories. Hydrogen was the subject of his latest effort. His lecture last Thursday was both brutal and hilarious.
Liebreich also co-hosts a podcast called Cleaning Up. The two obvious meanings are “making money” and “dealing with physical pollution,” but there’s a third (unintended?) meaning of de-mythifying, of clearing out the Augean stables of horseshit.
I got to thinking of horseshit. Not what the guest – Hans Eric Melin – had to say. He was crystal clear on what could and couldn’t be expected of battery recycling (from EVs, to grids etc etc). He also talked about the very persistent myth that only 5% of batteries are recycled/are recyclable. He explained where it came from, and how it keeps popping up. Listen to the podcast, and/or read him here on LinkedIn.
Tl:dr – the two sources of the myth are a Friends of the Earth press release and the abstract of a scientific paper (the claim not supported in the body of that paper!).
And what the 5% figure reminded me of was the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 (told you I was old).
“Late 18th century cities like London and New York seemed to be ‘drowning in horse manure’. In London, where the horse-carried Hansom Cab occupied the streets, 50.000 horses produced 570.000 kilograms of horse manure and 57.000 litres of urine daily. Together with the corpses of death horses, the urine and manure started to poison the city’s inhabitants. In 1894 the Times predicted that “in 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” The situation came to be known as the ‘Great Manure Crisis of 1894’ [source, and see here too].
Role of myths in transitions
Generally, we like to tell stories. They make us feel like we are in control, or – failing that – that we will be less surprised than other people when surprising/uncontrollable things happen.
This energy transition that we are going through (kinda sorta) is scary, disorientating, and discombobulating. Expect loadsa stories. especially from people who want your money.
Meanwhile, we like to hear stories – to scare ourselves with the bogey-man (mountains of horseshit will crush us!!). This is something you see especially in the 1970s disaster novels (ecology and/or technology running amok) that I read compulsively (2).
If you tell stories about how technological innovation X, which is necessary for the “transition” is impossible (“batteries aren’t being/can’t be recycled”) you look like (3) the grown-up in the room, the person who is not a gullible rube taken in by all the hype (4).
And so, the myths persist, with new factoids (67.4 percent of statistics are made up on the spot) and anecdotes (its plural is not data) sprinkled on top.
But also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the Cocker Protocol.
Footnotes
And if anyone tries to tell you that academics are partially or entirely immune to this tendency, you have my permission to laugh in their faces.
The 1970s were the time when Whitey stopped being in charge in the way he had been for hundreds of years. The techno-eco-disasters are in part a way of working through that loss of primacy. But also, giant ants are fun.
In your own eyes. It turns out other people don’t always share our opinions of ourselves. Who knew.
There are also pleasures in being the reply guy, the concern troll, but that can be for another time.
Sixty seven years ago, on this day, June 17th, 1957, Guy Callendar submitted an article – “On the Amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere” to Tellus, the Swedish scientific journal.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Guy Callendar had now been writing about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the warming planet for 20 years. He had presented this work in 1938 at the British Meteorological Society and received a polite but relatively dismissive hearing. Callendar must have been looking at the work around the IGY and hopefully, he was feeling at least a small sense of vindication. I don’t know, even though he’s been largely ignored by or tolerated by the British scientific establishment.
What we learn is that the old Hollywood trope of the lone genius, who’s right when the establishment is wrong or looking the other way, is not entirely without foundation.
What happened next Callendar had one more significant paper in him in 61/62. I think he must have been too sick to be invited to the Conservation Foundation meeting in 63. And he died in 1964 on the same day of the year, Svante Arrhenius had died, in 1927.
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.
NB Hutchinson was aware of C02 build-up at the latest in 1948
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Conservation Foundation had been set up seven years previously. And they were hosting this big meeting of all sorts of prestigious environmental thinkers, scientists, etc. And there was just one glancing mention of carbon dioxide build up, despite the facts that
Gilbert Plass had flagged it two years earlier
One of the big names – G. Evelyn Hutchinson had been aware of C02 build-up, and writing/talking about it from 1948…
What we learn from this is that smart people think that they can spot future problems. But actually, the real problem might be something they’ve overlooked as trivial. And that although it’s important to listen to experts, expecting them to be able to gaze into the crystal ball with anything approaching usefulness is maybe unwise…
What happened next? Well, the Conservation Foundation did indeed get cracking with work on CO2 in 1963. But then, at the follow-up meeting of the Conservation Foundation in I think 1964, or 1965, also had only one fleeting mention. And that was when Frank Fraser Darling raised it in q&a, only for it to be dismissed, essentially.
It’d be interesting to see if there’s archives of that started it. And if there were people in the States that I could ask to do the research or where the files might be.
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.
