Twenty two years ago, on this day, August 12th, 2003,
French heatwave
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3190585.stm
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 376ppm. 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 the things scientists warned us about? Yeah, they were starting to come true. Science can be irritating like that.
The specific context was – the Europeans had long been better (slightly less terrible) on climate than the settler colonies (USA, Australia)
What I think we can learn from this – you fuck around, you find out. Except those who find out first (the poor, and to some extent the old) did the least fucking around. Nobody said life was fair.
What happened next. We continued to fuck around. Now we are finding out. We will continue to find out. We will not enjoy finding out.
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:
August 12, 1970 – US Senate warned about climate change
August 12, 1990 – Channel 4 shows crackpot documentary “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”
August 12, 2009 – Deutsche bank enters modelling war in Australia – All Our Yesterdays