Twenty nine years ago, on this day, November 3rd, 1997,
Greenhouse & innovative energy solutions into the 21st Century : Monday, 3 November 1997 – Sydney / presented by the Greenhouse Challenge Office in association with the Electricity Supply Association of Australia Limited and The Australian Gas Association.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 365ppm. As of 2026, 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 from 1950s it had been obvious that fossil fuel usage for energy and electricity generation, whether that was heat, power, cars, was going to have significant ecological and social consequences, and therefore other energy sources might be the way forward, be that nuclear or renewables, or whatever.
The specific context was that from the late 1980s there had been talk of a global climate treaty, which would involve rich nations cutting their emissions first, that had been partially successfully resisted. But there was the Kyoto conference coming up in a month’s time, and so anticipating that there would be some agreement by industrial nations, the idea of “innovative energy solutions” was more likely to catch headlines.
What I think we can learn from this is that you should never see events and claims in isolation from the historical events they are in; that’s a banality, but mostly what I do is banalities.
What happened next we did eventually, 20 years later, start seeing some of these innovative energy solutions, not actually that innovative. But anyway, have they helped bend the emissions curve down? No, not particularly. Will they? Possibly. Will that do much of anything about the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide? No, for that, you would need all sorts of magical “draw down” technologies, which don’t exist, and unless we repeal some laws, won’t exist. “Repeal some laws?” you say. “Well, that sounds doable.” Yes, but those are laws of physics…
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
November 3, 1916 -measurement of ice flow shows climate change
November 3, 1988 – priorities revealed via adverts
November 3, 1990 – more smears about the IPCC, in the Financial Times
November 3, 1990 – money for independent climate scientists? Yeah, nah
November 3, 2007 – Second Rising Tide Australia boat blockade