Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 23rd, 1993, Peter Walsh’s brain vomit confronted readers.
The substance of O’Brien’s paper was that greenhouse scaremongering – embraced and promoted by the chattering classes – was wildly speculative, potentially dangerous and, to the extent that it had any scientific basis, was based on dated estimates of temperature and sea level rises which in most cases the original authors had revised downwards. Moreover, the scientific findings of the 1990 International Panel on Climate Change had been widely misrepresented.
Walsh, P. (1993) PUTTING GREENHOUSE IN ORDER The Australian Financial Review, February 23, page 17
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Peter Walsh had stopped being an MP at the 1990 Federal election. The former Treasurer, perhaps suffering Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, had thrown himself into various causes, including greenhouse denial. This particular column was a gloating attack on the ACF’s Mark Diesendorf.
What I think we can learn from this
Old White Men who’ve had all the power they’ll have but still breathe: what are you gonna do?
What happened next
Walsh went on to be a leading light in the Laughable Group Sorry “Lavoisier” Group.
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.