Twenty years ago, on this day, July 9th, 2004, popular conservationist David Bellamy made a complete fool of himself.
David Bellamy – Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we’ve had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere – and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist – will blame the weather on global warming. (Daily Mail, 9 July 2004)
Gavin et al.: Climate change, flooding and the media in Britain Public Understand. Sci. 20(3) (2011) 422–438
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that David Bellamy was suffering a certain amount of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. His star had waned since the 1980s. And along with a lot of other curmudgeonly old white men, he couldn’t bring himself to see that because fossil fuels have given us such power they’re also deadly. One of the ironies is that Bellamy pops up in a 1984 documentary called “What to do about CO2?”, directed by Russell Porter. And a mere 90 seconds into that, he gives a concise and compelling summary of… the greenhouse effect.
What we learn is that just because someone’s on television, banging on about nature doesn’t actually mean they’re capable of seeing the really Big Picture. They, like everyone else, have their blind spots, because they’re human.
What happened next? Shortly after (in April 2005) Bellamy made a tragic miscalculation about ice glacier melt. George Monbiot, eviscerated him and basically ended his career, something he was bitter about, till he died.
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:
July 9, 1962 – rainbow bomb parties as hydrogen bomb explodes
July 9, 1965 – “Spaceship Earth” is launched, trying to get us to see our fragility (didn’t work)
July 9, 1987 – “Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse” warns Broecker
July 9, 2008 – President Bush operating at his peak intellectual capacity