Thirty seven years ago, on this day, May 8th,
https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/NYTimes.1989Week07May.pdf
“All three networks on May 8, 1989 did greenhouse effect stories based on Senate sub-committee hearings in which NASA scientist James Hansen told Senator Al Gore that he had been ordered by the Bush administration to change the conclusions in written testimony regarding the seriousness of global warming.”
Sachsman 2000:5)
And
“More specifically, on 8 May 1989, the Office of Management and Budget confirmed that it had altered the Congressional testimony of NASA’s James Hansen, thereby weakening his conclusion that enough was known about the phenomenon to justify immediate action. The Whitehouse defended this action by claiming that it wanted to avoid the appearance of policy disagreements within the Administration. The political fallout from this episode was considerable, not only within the United States but also internationally.”
Rowlands (1995) Page 76
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been warning politicians and had mostly been simply ignored. But from 1988 onwards, ignoring came with costs.
The specific context was that James Hansen had given testimony to a Senate Committee on 23rd of June, 1988 and this, as much as anything else, had set the ball rolling. Happy dogs. But new president, George H.W. Bush was opposed to an environmental agenda. I think it’s fair to say, despite his promises on the campaign trail. And here we see evidence of Hansen’s testimony being altered and sidelined, and this being exposed by Democratic senator from Tennessee, Al Gore.
What I think we can learn from this is that if you’re a politician, you can ignore people, but actually actively changing their words… well, someone is going to leak it, and you’re going to get in hot water.
What happened next. Hansen decided just to go back to doing his science, understandably, but he changed his mind in 2005 and has since then been an incredibly effective, active scientist and advocate for action. Bush continued, and scuppered the chance of any strong response to the climate threat by threatening to boycott the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, if targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries were in the treaty on climate that was up for signature. This worked. Targets and timetables for rich countries were taken out of the text. And here 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.
Also on this day:
May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London
May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.
May 8, 2008 – Carbon Rationing Scrapped
May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.
May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper