Thirty nine years ago, on this day, August 20th, 1987,
MJ Elliott in the Legislative Council of the South Australian parliament
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 349ppm. 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 South Australian Parliament had been hearing about carbon dioxide build up intermittently since 1971, usually from figures in the right-wing Liberal Party.
The specific context was that by 1987 these statements were becoming more frequent, in the context of the 1985 Villach Scientific Conference and the CSIROs present at Division of Atmospheric Physics presentation to the Australian Environment Council in 1986 and the forthcoming greenhouse project of the CSIRO atmospheric physics people and the Commission for the Future.
What I think we can learn from this is that this politician was not at all lying. We had adopted a “wait and see” policy, even though from the mid 70s various scientists have been making point that a wait and see policy was not risk-free and in effect not acting in itself was an action, and it was an action in favour of increased risk.
What happened next is that in 1988 the issue exploded in the UK, the US, Australia and since then politicians have had to take a stance and most of them have chosen to pay lip service, though some especially on the right have delighted in “owning the libs” by saying they don’t actually care if there is indeed a problem, we will tough it out and technology will save the day.
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.
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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:
August 20, 1988 – Hansen’s model released
August 20, 1996 – Denialist wastes time, energy in stupid smear
August 20, 1997 – Australian Mining Industry operative misrepresents the #climate science. Obvs.