Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 15th, 1988, the satirical “Grant Swinger” took aim at climate policy in an hilarious article “Racing on Capitol Hill for Title of “Mr Greenhouse” in Science and Government Report. He skewers it, absolutely.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Daniel Greenberg had been doing the spoof Grant Swinger (get it – someone who can swing grants) satirical columns for quite some time. And let’s look at how big science works. And the scramble and scramble a knife fights for funding for prestige. It’s hilarious.
The context here was also, of course, that it was that long, hot summer. It was post-Hansen and Toronto but before Bush finally came out and said his thing on the campaign trail.
What we learn is that good satire is timeless, even if the exact targets are no longer present, because human behaviour doesn’t change (the satyricon and Juvenal, etc.)
What happened next? Grant Swinger kept swinging for the fences. The climate issue burst onto the scene and has kind of stayed there ever since.
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 three years ago, on this day, July 15th, 1991, the famed US scientist Roger Revelle died. Just before he died there was an article published (he’d been arm-twisted etc by that turd Fred Singer, whom he’d known for decades) which said climate change was nothing to worry about. This article was used as a denialist talking point for decades, as part of the confusion campaigns funded by Big Oil etc.
Revelle helped to establish that carbon levels in the atmosphere were steadily rising and also taught science to a young Al Gore in the 1960s. As Revelle wrote in 1992: “There is a good but by no means certain chance that the world’s average climate will become significantly warmer during the next century.”
Singer approached him off the back of this statement, asking if the two men could collaborate on an article for The Washington Post.
Conned at death
That night Revelle suffered a heart attack and was rushed from the airport to a local hospital for a triple-bypass, and was not discharged until May that year.
Singer nevertheless continued to press the scientist to work on a journal article. “Whenever Singer sent him a draft, Revelle buried it under piles of paper on his desk. When Singer called, [Revelle’s secretary] would dig up the draft and put it on the top, and Revelle would bury it again,” records American historian of Science at the University of Harvard professor, Naomi Oreskes, in her account of the episode.
“Some people don’t think Fred Singer is a very good scientist,” Revelle told his secretary.
Later that year Singer published his article, with Revelle named as second author, in the journal Cosmos. It stated boldly: “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”
The words were copied and pasted from an earlier article published by Singer – and directly contradicted Revelle’s own publicly stated views.
Revelle died of a heart attack the following July. Family members, friends and students all claimed that Singer had pressured or tricked the dying scientist into signing off a journal article which presented an argument opposed to his own.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Revelle was old, had been sick for some years. He was a giant of all sorts of science. The one is probably most remembered for the climate stuff, but there was a lot of formidable oceanography work going on for decades.
Why this matters is that Fred Singer latched on to Revelle and got him to “co author” a piece that said CO2 wasn’t really a problem. He then used it as part of the denial war.
George Will wrote stupid column (I know, hold the front page). Revelle’s daughter pushed back. Then when Al Gore tried to set the record straight, some anchordroid – I want to say Tom Brokaw – tried to say that it was all part of the culture war.
What we learn is that slinging mud works.
What happened next? The grad student who had to bend recanted that. Singer is dead at last, thank goodness, but my goodness, the damage he did.
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 24 years ago, Wind Power Energy Association types tried to get some sensible stuff going. Yeah, good luck with that.
CANBERRA, July 14, AAP – Labels telling consumers their electricity came from fossil fuel should be put on power bills, supporters of the wind energy industry said today. President of the Australian Wind Energy Association Grant Flynn said most consumers were unaware that most of their power was derived from the burning of fossil fuels.
Putting a sticker on power bills telling consumers the source of their electricity would go a long way to making the public more aware of greenhouse gas issues. “A lot of people don’t really understand that a significant proportion of their electricity, about 90 per cent of it, comes from burning fossil fuels,” he said.
Mr Flynn’s group was one of several to make submissions to a review of the government’s renewable energy bill.
2000 Wright, S. 2000. Fed – Labels should tell consumers where their power comes from. AAP, 14 July.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 370ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Federal government of John Howard was doing everything it could to renege on its 1997 promise of more renewables (made as a pre-Kyoto distraction). Evil evil people
What we learn – the hope that the mythical Ethical Consumer will save the day is a powerful one.
What happened next. John Howard kept being a climate criminal. Renewables eventually took off, but later than they could have. Oh well, nice planet while it lasted.
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.
Btw, Hare had been present for Guy Callendar’s presentation at the Royal Meteorological Society in 1938
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that scientists had been doing further study about CO2. It was definitely building up. No one disputes that. What impact that might have on our species as a whole remains to be seen. That’s not entirely surprising. 50 years ago, Kenneth Hare would cover this.
What we learn is that if you were paying any attention, you could see the threat coming. But then we’ve been paying attention since 1988, which is only two thirds of that time 50 years and we’ve done nothing. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. We’ve made things worse.
What happened next? Every so often carbon dioxide would pop up as an issue in Australia. Further context is that there had been the 1972 Friends of the Earth seminar, the 1973 UNESCO-sponsored conference at Flinders University, and Senator Don Jessup had made his statements in Parliament. You know, it wasn’t unheard of…
What happened next; more news articles, more awareness, no action, and the emissions kept climbing.
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.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, July 13th, 2008 some nice direct action (albeit symbolic) took place.
July 13 & 14, 2008: Newcastle, NSW, Australia Climate Camp stops coal trains at worlds’ largest coal export port
On July 13, 2008 approximately 1000 activists stopped three trains bound for export at the Carrington Coal Terminal for almost six hours. Dozens of protesters were able to board and chain themselves to the trains while others lay across the tracks. Hundreds were held back by mounted police. Police arrested 57.[19] Sunday 13th July 2008: 1000 people gathered at Islington Park in Newcastle for a rally and march to the Carrington Coal Terminal. It was a colourful and eclectic crowd of local residents, parents and children, percussionists, clowns, students, and concerned citizens from every state in Australia. Their message was simple and clear: let’s see renewables instead of more new coal.
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/community-protest-stops-coal-trains-all-day 2008 Climate Camp Australia demo
Climate Camp Australia 2008
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that Newcastle is the biggest export terminal for Australian coal mined in the Hunter Valley. It had been growing and growing all through the 90s and noughties because Australia was selling more and more coal and screw the planet who cares. And I remember seeing just how long those cold frames were, filled to the brim. Anyway, this was the first Australian climate camp inspired by English Climate Camp in summer of 2006. Some people got arrested, some people got injured. The issue got flagged, some code was delayed.
What we learn is that putting your bodies in the gears of the machine is very painful. And really fruit to work. You’d need a bigger boat load of people.As per Chief Brody, “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
What happened next? It’s a repertoire that the Australian coal protesters have returned to again, because it gets news coverage because it reminds them of their own power because it’s the right thing to do. But I refer you to yesterday’s rant about how doomed 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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 12th,2009 there was a spat that Al Gore was expected to referee.
WHEN climate change guru Al Gore arrives in Melbourne today, he will find a conservation movement in vitriolic disagreement with itself.
A split has developed between the country’s preeminent environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), and a bloc of other green lobbyists over the foundation’s public support for the Rudd Government’s carbon trading scheme.
Bachelard, M. 2009. Feuding climate camps seek Gore blessing. Sunday Age, 12 July , p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been trying to get support for its ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And they’d found it at least with the so-called Southern Crust coalition, led by the ACTU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. But all the other green groups thought that this was an outrageous sell out. Ambition was too low. And that Rudd should be resisted. It was your fairly standard. NGO fight between people who are determined to keep their place in the room where the decisions are made, and are willing to carry water and get out and defend the indefensible versus those who weren’t in the inside of the room or didn’t want to be on the inside of the room, or were willing to be on the inside of the room as long as they weren’t being used as fig leaves. It’s a pattern you see over and over again. Anyway, apparently, Al Gore was being expected to resolve the dispute. I don’t know if he did.
What we learn from this is that the same patterns over and over again, for understandable reasons. It’s mildly entertaining that Gore should be regarded as a fair actor. I guess he had prestige. And he didn’t have skin in the game instantly. But to expect Gore to come on down on the side of people pushing for higher ambition or maybe. I mean, this was only three years after An Inconvenient Truth, after all.
What happened next? Rudd’s legislation was introduced for a second time in November 2009. It fell thanks to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and the Greens possibly in that order, and then had to be introduced again in 2011 by Julia Gillard, the far superior parliamentarian but everything was in pieces and it all went tits up. Not that it would have mattered, I guess, really? I mean, we’re doomed. We have been doomed for a long time. It’s just taking us a while to catch up with that fact.
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.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, July 12th, 1996, COP2
GENEVA, July 12 (Reuter) – Top specialists on the effects of global warming on human health on Friday accused energy corporations of working to undermine international efforts to halt climate change.
The attack came amid growing controversy at a two-week United Nations conference on how far to limit “greenhouse gas” emissions, mainly from burning of oil and coal, blamed by key scientists for rising world temperatures.
“The fossil fuel lobby is beginning to behave like the tobacco industry did 30 years ago, as adverse health effects of smoking first emerged,” Anthony McMichael of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said.
“It is using a typical rearguard action, through attempts at distortion, delaying tactics and making enough noise to drown out the arguments for strong moves by the world’s political leaders to cut emissions,” he told a news conference.
1996 – Evans, R. 1996 Doctors hit energy groups over global warming. Reuters News 12th July
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that COP1 had finished with the so-called Berlin Mandate, which meant rich nations were going to have to come to Kyoto with an agreement to reduce their emissions. The new federal government in Australia was distinctly unimpressed. And so was industry, which had seen off a domestic carbon tax and had it replaced with a meaningless Greenhouse Challenge probably saw no reason why that same victory couldn’t be repeated on the international stage. Yes, you’d have to ignore brown people living in low lying countries and islands. But that was hardly difficult.
What we learn is that fossil fuel interests had had successes domestically, and had every confidence that they could repeat that internationally. And it turns out, sadly, for our species, and all the other species on this beautiful planet, that their confidence was well-founded. They managed to gut the ambition and the Kyoto Protocol. And they’ve managed to keep winning. Now, they were joined in this by inertia, complacency, neoliberalism, whatever set of explanations, nouns you want to use. But they were a key factor in making sure nothing significant got done. And they were very, very good at doing that.
What happened next? Australia carved out an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto in 1997. And then, still refused to ratify. When they finally did in 2007 it was a meaningless gesture. The sort of thing that Kevin Rudd excelled at. Actually doing policy and implementation, he found somewhat more challenging.
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, July 11th, 1994, it turns out promises are easier than delivery
Environment Minister John Faulkner says the Federal Government won’t be able to tell if it can meet its targets on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until August….
On Monday’s ABC Lateline program, Senator Faulkner said the government will have a better idea when statistics on levels of greenhouse gas emissions are released in August.
Anon. 1994. Greenhouse performance uncertain. Green Week, July 15, p.5. [Lateline show will have been Monday 11th July]
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 was Faulkner hadn’t been in his post long. And Australian climate policy was a complete freaking mess. Anyway, there wasn’t one, except for the meaningless National Greenhouse Response Strategy, which was a watered down consolation prize for the Ecologically Sustainable Development process.
What we learn is that even on the most important issue of all time, there was an incredibly lackadaisical “yeah, whatever doesn’t matter” attitude. And this really is the fault of Paul Keating. As prime minister, that’s where the buck stops.
What happened next is when the first emissions report did come out, it showed that surprise, surprise, emissions had not gone down, but continued to go up. And this was a problem both for the Rio stabilisation target of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. But also, there was still supposed to be the “minus 20% by 2005” of the Toronto target, agreed in October 1990. Faulkner, then, proposed a carbon tax which was defeated.
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.
And, in the long list of more vivid and salient problems around water, oil, species loss etc etc, there was this –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that various scientists had been getting worried about carbon dioxide build-up. There wasn’t really an “epistemic community” about it yet (though that would come, soon enough). But they were getting it onto the agendas, and into the reports of various three and four letter acronym bodies, both UN and ICSU. And, at that time, of course, the US of A, before it went apeshit on these isssues, from the early 1980s onwards.
What we learn
We knew enough to be worried, two generations ago.
What happened next:
In December 1968 the UN General Assembly agreed to Sweden’s proposal for a conference on the Human Environment. It was held in June 1972. It would take another 16 years for climate change to actually get the attention it deserved. All that wasted time, in which not only was more carbon dioxide poured into the sewer we call an atmosphere, but – crucially – infrastructure and momentum to suicide were built. And here we are.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, July 10th, 1996, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story about the NGAP report, saying it had ignored the tricky issue of climate change.
The day before, the Australian had had this –
FUEL and power subsidies, poor planning and political inaction have slowed Australia’s drive to cut its greenhouse emissions, a government advisory panel has warned.
The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, representing industry, conservation, science and community sectors, has advised the Federal and State governments to consider imposing firm targets for greenhouse reductions in the manufacturing, agriculture, transport and household sectors.
It has urged governments to start planning for the effects of higher temperatures and rising sea levels caused by global warming next century.
NGAP’s chairman, Professor Paul Greenfield of the University of Queensland, yesterday said the panel’s two-year review of Australia’s official greenhouse policy had identified “shortfalls”. “There needs to be a bit of revitalisation in the response,” he told The Australian, on the eve of United Nations negotiations in Geneva for a new climate change treaty.
“I think it has slowed down a bit. It’s not that it’s all been totally a disaster, but it’s fair to say not a lot has happened.”
Statistics due to be released today show that Australia’s greenhouse emissions rose 3 per cent last year – in breach of an international target to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to 1990 levels by 2000.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the NGAP was set up in June 1994, when Labor Environment Minister John Faulkner was trying to show he ‘got it’ and gave a damn. The Howard Government had come in, in March, and had taken a chainsaw with it to COP-2 in Switzerland and the National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, which, to be fair, was merely advisory, not statutory and so could be (and was) easily ignored.
What we learn is that there’s a real risk to you if you get involved in these advisory panels that you’ll be used as a fig leaf and then presented with a choice of “shut up and be still be in the room with the big powerful people, but lose all credibility beyond” or “walk and be accused of spitting the dummy and not understanding how politics is done,” when in actual fact you understand all too well; you have the brains but not the stomach for the lies and evasions and bullshit.
What happened next? The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel was killed off a few years later and was not mourned or missed.
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.
