Thirty three years ago, on this day, September 28th, 1992,
Costs, Impacts, and Benefits of CO2 Mitigation.
Proceedings of a Workshop Held on 28–30 Sept. 1992 at IIASA
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 356ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that IIASA had been established in the early 1970s as a way for scientists on either side of the “Iron Curtain” to meet and share notes. IIASA was one of the key places where discussions about energy and climate were happening in the mid-1970s – it’s where, for example, the idea of CCS was broached.
The specific context was that the conference was planned and announced before the Earth Summit, so will have been one of the first opportunities for scientists and some policy-makers to take stock, and look at the implications of what had been agreed.
What I think we can learn from this is that the “smartest” people in the room haven’t been able to prevent civilisational failure – maybe they aren’t all that smart, and/or have been looking at it all wrong…
What happened next – the workshops kept happening. The conference class like their privileges.
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.
References
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Also on this day:
September 28, 1997 – Australian denialist spouting tosh to his US mates.
September 28, 2000 – Liberal MP goes full cooker on Kyoto as threat to sovereignty.
September 28, 2007 – Bush invokes “technology” to fix climate. Like morons everywhere.