Five years ago, on this day, January 28th, 2020, a deeply unfunny clown got an education.
A slide show that Prime Minister Boris Johnson says helped convince him on climate change has been revealed for the first time. The slides used to “teach” him about climate science have been released after a Freedom of Information request by UK climate website Carbon Brief. While Mr Johnson has urged action on climate change, he previously, as a journalist, expressed scepticism. He called the presentation, given just after he took office, “very important”. The “teach in”, as it was described in email correspondence, took place in the Cabinet Room of Number 10 Downing Street on 28 January 2020.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 414ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Johnson had been dismissing climate change and renewable energy for decades. His dad, as a journalist for The Spectator in the late 1960s had written sensibly about carbon dioxide build up and environmental issues. Pity his son never read any of that, eh?
What I think we can learn from this is that an expensive education will not make you serious or smart.
What happened next. The pandemic. The emissions dipped a bit. Then came roaring back.
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.
Thirty eight years ago, on this day, January 28th, 1987.
1987 Scientific basis for the Greenhouse effect.
Testimony by Gordon MacDonald given to a joint hearing before the Subcommittees on Environmental Protection and Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Substances of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senate, One-hundredth Congress, first session, 28 January 1987.
page 123 of Abrahamson 1989
(Wally Broecker also gave testimony)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that after the scientific meeting in Villach, Austria in October 1985 atmospheric scientists saw both an opportunity and a need to push hard on carbon dioxide build up. And so you had various bits of testimony, perhaps most famously, Carl Sagan in December 1985 . You’d had other greenhouse hearings all through the 80s, thanks in part to people like Al Gore. Some of these had been the subject of television news stories (for example Walter Cronkite in 1980).
What’s perhaps interesting about this is you have Gordon MacDonald, who, by this time, had been writing about weather modification and carbon dioxide for 20 years, and also Wally Broecker, who had been trying to get politicians interested (see his 1980 letter toPaul Tsongas).
What I think we can learn from this is that before the issue finally broke through in 1988 there was a steady increase, especially from the mid 80s, of scientists pushing to turn a problem into an issue.
What happened next
The Long, Hot Summer and drought, the endless summer, as Andrew Revkin would have it, of 1988 provided the final impetus. That was the year that James Hansen gave his testimony and the Changing Atmosphere conference happened. Candidate for the presidency, George Herbert Walker Bush, talked about solving the greenhouse effect with the White House effect. And then Margaret Thatcher gave her speech at the Royal Society, and the issue had indeed arrived.
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.
Fifty eight years ago, on this day, January 27th, 1967,
After the usual litany of localised issues, it ends with this remarkable set of paragraphs.
Other scientists are concerned about the tremendous quantities of carbon dioxide released into the air by the burning of “fossil fuels” like coal and oil. Because it is being produced faster than it can be absorbed by the ocean or converted back into carbon and oxygen by plants, some scientists think that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 10% since the turn of the century. The gas produces a “greenhouse” effect in the atmosphere; it allows sunlight to penetrate it, but effectively blocks the heat generated on earth by the sun’s rays from escaping back into space.
No Apocalypse.
There has already been a noticeable effect on earth—a gradual warming trend. As the carbon-dioxide buildup continues and even accelerates, scientists fear that average temperatures may, in the course of decades, rise enough to melt the polar ice caps. Since this would raise ocean levels more than 100 feet, it would effectively drown the smog problems of the world’s coastal cities.
The waters, however, need never rise. Within his grasp, man has the means to prevent any such apocalyptic end. Over the short run, fuels can be used that produce far less pollutant as they burn. Chimneys can be filtered so that particulate smoke is reduced. Automobile engines and anti-exhaust devices can be made far more efficient. What is needed is recognition of the danger by the individual citizen and his government, the establishment of sound standards, and the drafting of impartial rules to govern the producers of pollution. Over the long run, the development of such relatively nonpolluting power sources as nuclear energy and electric fuel cells can help guarantee mankind the right to breathe.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Time had first covered the possible problem of C02 build-up in 1953, in response to Gilbert Plass’s statements at the AGU meeting. The more immediate context was that questions of pollution, air, water, noise had been exercising American journalists and writers for several years. There’s the wonderful song Pollution by Tom Lehrer two years earlier.
What I think we can learn from this is that if you were reading either Science or Time magazine or both back then, the idea of carbon dioxide build up as a problem was there at the beginning of 1967 which is 58 years ago. This was not arcane. This was not bizarre. This was 1967. Alongside this, you also had, of course the book Science and Survival, by Barry Commoner, that had come out the previous year.
What happened next
Time and Newsweek kept doing the sort of hand wringing, “What have we done?” reports As did US News and World Report. And then, really, by late 1969 the environment “took off” as an issue.
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.
Fifty three years ago, on this day, January 26th, 1972, a new technology came along.
CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been carried out in the United States and Canada since the 1960s. The world’s first large-scale CO2-EOR project, Scurry Area Canyon Reef Operating Committee (SACROC), has been implemented by Chevron in the oilfield in Scurry County, Texas since January 26, 1972 [13]. The CO2 for this project comes from the natural CO2 fields in Colorado and is pipelined to the oilfield for flooding. More than 175 million tonnes of natural CO2 in total were injected in the SACROC project during 1972–2009 [14].
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that economies were still growing at a rate that we would now consider either astonishing or Chinese. Energy companies were looking to extract more oil and gas, of course, and to do it as cheaply as possible. In retrospect, we can now see this is the formal beginning of enhanced oil recovery. But at the time, I guess it was just one more experiment (EOR had already been piloted on a much smaller scale).
What I think we can learn from this is that EOR, which is still the raison d’etre behind CCS, or the only way that it will make money, has a long history, longer than 1972.
What happened next
Well, CCS had a long, slow development process. There were studies in the late 70s through the 80s. There was momentary interest in it in 1989 and then the people who would have done it realized how much it would cost and how they could get more bang for their buck elsewhere. And CCS finally took off in the 2000s because the Kyoto Protocol looked like it might come into force, and rich nations needed something with which to pretend to be taking action.
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.
Eighteen years ago, on this day, January 25th, 2007, Australian Prime Minister John Howard tries to explain away his late-2006 U-turn.
“I regard myself as a climate change realist. That means looking at the evidence as it emerges and responding with policies that preserve Australia’s competitiveness and play to her strengths.” John Howard, Address to the National press Club, 25 January 2007
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a few months earlier John Howard had been forced to begin to pretend that he cared about the possibility of climate change from carbon dioxide build up. This was because of a whole sequence of events, including the ongoing Millennium drought, the release of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and The Stern Review into the economics of climate change by Her Majesty’s Treasury. And so Howard had created the Shergold Group to look into the possibility of an emissions trading scheme. And this was, of course, stacked with the usual suspects and left out people who might have different, stronger opinions. But Howard wasn’t really convincing anyone. And so Howard was using words like “realism” in his National Press Club speech. And anyone who knows or has been around for any length of time knows that “realism” and “realistic” are code words that people use trying to frame themselves as the “sensible center” and their opponents as either wild eyed fanatics or dreamers.
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians will always try and do U-turns if cornered. Of course they will, but these may not work.
What happened next Howard became only the second Australian Prime Minister to lose his own seat at a Federal election. In November of 2007 the world got Kevin, “I’m from Queensland, and here to help” Rudd, who said he was going to sort out the climate issue. And he did as much on that as he did on the wheat to Iraq scandal and many others- that is to say, fuck all.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, January 24th, 1989, an Australian Federal Minister calls it like it is.
“Weather fluctuations and the greenhouse are topics of current real concern as media coverage demonstrates. For example, in The Australian of 24 January 1989, the Minister for Resources, Senator Cook, was reported to have called for active co-operation among Asian countries in developing practical ways to minimize the threatening greenhouse effect. He said: “The greenhouse effect is an environmental issue of global dimensions…. It is not simply an energy issue. The challenge for energy policy makers is to assess the range of possibilities that would make an appropriate contribution to reducing the greenhouse effect.”
(Henderson-Sellers and Blong, 1989:3)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that since late 1988 Australian society had been talking up “the Greenhouse Effect”, thanks in large part to a Commission for the Future/CSIRO effort (Greenhouse 87 and Greenhouse 88). The Hawke Government had been making the right noises too, while also, obviously, seeking to flog more coal overseas.
What I think we can learn from this is that governments are always a bunch of cats in a sack, with motivations pulling in all directions.
What happened next
By early 1990 the fossil interests had decided this wasn’t a passing fad, and that they had better bring their A-game. Their A-game wasn’t all that good, but it was enough, in large part because Paul Keating became Prime Minister in December 1991.
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.
Fifty seven years ago, on this day, January 23rd, 1968, a US federal government bureaucrat, Roy F Bessey, flags the possible long-term problem of carbon dioxide build up.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that more and more people were switching on to the possibility of global, rather than local, impacts of “the Great Acceleration”. President Lyndon Johnson had namechecked carbon dioxide build-up in a February 1965 address, and in January 1967, the editor of Science had led an editorial about the atmosphere with C02 build-up…
What I think we can learn from this is that by 1968 it is not terribly surprising to see experts saying that there might be trouble ahead.
What happened next
That trouble ahead? It’s arrived, hasn’t it?
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.
Ten years ago, on this day, January 22nd, 2015, a very good reporter broke an important (and largely ignored) story about industry associations.,
Fossil fuel companies have taken up majority positions in key renewables trade groups steering them towards a pro-gas stance that influenced Europe’s 2030 clean energy targets, industry insiders claim
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the EU policymaking process was grinding on. And the big fossil fuel companies were thinking about ways to make sure that EU policy got nudged in directions that would make them richer.
If renewable energy might cut your profit margins, there’s one obvious thing to do, which is to make sure that renewables advocates are not as powerful as they otherwise might be. And one fairly painless way of doing that, rather than picking a fight in public (which has costs both financial and reputational) is simply to make sure that the trade associations that might push renewables are, if not absolutely captured, then at least partially so, with at least one hand tied behind their back.
Basically,the fox wants to be inside the hen house.
What I think we can learn from this is that this tactic of capturing the opposition is quite normal. It happened in Australia (see Paddy Manning on what was happening in 2009)
Manning, P. (2009). The fox in the hot house. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 August.
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.
What stressors and pressures to mainstream climate scientists face (and create) online when dealing with “non-experts”? To what kind of good online etiquette might we all aspire as the world bu… turns. Who will read this? All reasonable questions, kinda sorta answered below.
It started with a (snarky) repost, as internet spats so often do. And for once, it wasn’t me who started it.
I put up an interview with Professor Eliot Jacobson, a mathematician who posts regularly on social media about temperatures, and records falling. I then posted on the All Our Yesterdays (AOY) Bluesky account. which included “If you don’t already, please follow him on BSky and also All Our Yesterdays!”
Someone who does not follow the AOY Bluesky (but does follow my personal account) quote posted saying words to the effect “No, don’t. Follow actual climate scientists.” (maybe there was no adjective in there at all, but that was the gist and tone).
I replied, saying with something to the effect “that’s a very odd post; if you don’t want it amplified, Streisand effect? Would you like to do an uncensored, unsnarked interview to appear on All Our Yesterdays? I will follow you so you can DM me.”
He then replied, “idea, do good interviews.“
I replied with something like “ah, doubling down. Okay, fine. The offer still stands. An uncensored unedited interview where you can say what you want. The last question is always “anything else you want to say?”
Then, crickets.
I don’t have proof of this because he both blocked the All Our Yesterdays account
and deleted his quote post, which meant the replies went with it. (1)
Samaras’ bio btw is thus
Climate, energy, emerging tech, resilience, & policy professor. Carnegie Mellon Univ. Institute for Energy Innovation Director. Former Biden-Harris White House OSTP Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition. Personal account. He/Him. costasamaras.com
So what?
There is an easy victim-y (narcissistic) narrative that you can build about “brittle mainstream climate scientists who are frustrated at what they perceive to be amateurs muscling in on their turf with unnecessarily apocalyptic rhetoric.”
The other half of this tedious narrative is “amateur truth-tellers blatantly trolled, dismissed etc” And then there’s the whole battle about who blocked, you know, etc.
Yawn. YAWN.
Besides being boring, there are two other reasons not to go down that route. First, it would probably be unfair to Prof Samaras (see below). Second, it would be unproductive, a waste of bandwidth and a missed opportunity to think about slightly deeper questions.
So, I’d like to try both an immediate and a longer term contextualization asking the question, how do we expect scientists to behave on The Internet? (btw they are human beings, with all of the capacities that ordinary human beings have.)
So let’s try, without being patronizing or condescending, to put this in context.
First,, anyone can have a bad day on the internet, and everyone does have bad days on the internet. I have had at least my fair share of bad days, and have been met with both hostility back, but also grace and compassion, etc.
Second, the specifics, -and this again, was without me trying to either make excuses for Samaras who possibly regrets his action (or doesn’t; that ‘s kind of irrelevant.)
If you had worked very hard on the most important issue that humans face, and you had slogged your guts out working for the Biden White House trying to get better energy policy through, then January 20, 2025, which is when this interaction happened, would be a very, very shitty day.
The goons and the loons have now taken over the White House and are going to destroy pretty much everything that you’ve built, except maybe some bits that the oil companies like around Direct Air Capture and CCS. (leaving the Paris agreement, drill baby drill).
They’re also destroying the last lingering shreds of any credible response to the dominating issue of the 21st century. And they’re able to do this because they have convinced enough people that climate change is not an/the existential threat in the democracy
This is a very, very sucky day for someone who had, as per Leonard Cohen, been sentenced to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within (2).
But wait, there’s more
There is a deeper problem for “mainstream” climate scientists. How do they respond – if at all – to people who do not have their extensive training and access to information, chiming in? How do they respond to what they probably perceive as irresponsible edge-lording, people who are saying it’s worse than it is in order to generate clicks or attention?
This can be personally galling, especially if the putative edge-lord has either a lot of followers or a disproportionate impact on conversations that you are trying to have.
And the danger goes back as far as at least as far as Paul Ehrlich et al in the late 60s, early 70s. If there are people out there saying it’s going to be a disaster really, really soon, and then there is not a disaster really, really soon, this makes the job of maintaining public concern, and policymaker interest that much harder.
So mainstream climate scientists with big social media footprints feel an obligation to stamp down what they perceive to be “unhelpful alarmists.”
And let’s not pretend over here on the apocalyptic climate end of things, that there haven’t been unhelpful apocalyptic alarmists – Guy McPherson comes to mind,
So as Samaras would see it, he is trying to prevent the spread of unhelpful disinformation, albeit by, erm, amplifying it (I think my opening sentence, that this was an odd action probably pissed him off because it was true).
I don’t know, perhaps Samaras also looked at the interview and felt that there were no challenging questions. This is absolutely fair, there were no challenging questions, which is something that I won’t do again. I did it consciously on this occasion, because it was my first interview with Eliot Jacobson (3).
What’s at stake?
So we need to understand how there are climate scientists who feel themselves caught in the middle trying to explain to a public that is largely confused and misinformed that, “yes, it’s very bad,” without giving in to “it’s so bad that we can’t do anything.” And I don’t know what Prof Samaras’ opinion of Eliot Jacobson is, but I can guess.
But let’s take a broader historical view. The first person to bring carbon dioxide build up to public attention (ish) in the 20th century was not a climatologist or a meteorologist. He was a steam engineer, Guy Callendar. It turns out that sometimes outsiders see things the insiders – in love with existing theories – do not. As per Kuhn and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions etc.
Secondly, let’s remember how James Hansen was treated in 1988-89 as an irresponsible outlier who was premature in saying that the “Greenhouse Effect” was here.
Now, I am not comparing Eliot Jacobson to James Hansen. That would be foolish, but I wouldpoint out that Hansen is still publishing, still on the record. He’s saying it’s going to be really bad. (4) I
Finally, I’ve tried to avoid pop psychology and cod-Freudianism and saying that this is all about jealousy and wanting attention, feeling aggrieved or whatever. I probably haven’t succeeded. It’s hard to talk about other people’s positionality and potential emotional responses without coming across as a superior tool.
Fear factor: Things are getting worse quicker than mainstream scientists said they would
Anyone with much knowledge and even a small amount of imagination (or indeed direct experience of the 1 in a 100 year events that roll around every year or two) is going to be scared.
I think everyone feels scared.
The carbon sinks are failing, it seems. That doesn’t mean we’re all going to drown/cook next week, but it DOES mean shit is getting real for people who assumed their wealth (relative or absolute) would help them ride it out.
But it’s harder for some than others perhaps. If I were a climate scientist devoted to models, projections and predictions, then as well as feeling scared, I would feel frustrated and perhaps a little bit humiliated and out of my depth. The thing that I thought was, if not controllable, that at least predictable, turns out not to be.
I would be looking for outlets for that frustration, and I would find outlets. One would probably pointing at people who might have had the temerity to be closer to seeing what was actually unfolding (or unravelling) but having done so without having the exact qualifications. I’d be particularly pissed off by people using language that I had considered intemperate, but was now becoming a little bit harder to dismiss.
And if I’d spent 4 years building policy to see it torn up, I’d be sore. And I’d be thinking about another person who spent four years in a Democratic Party controlled White House trying to make energy policy work, Gus Speth, who was in the Carter Whitehouse.
So what do we learn?
Well, if you come this far, you’ll be saying “not as much as I needed to for the return on investment.”
As far as I can tell, this (drumroll please) we need to be as kind as possible to each other on the internet. That’s it. That is all I got.
Doing this is difficult because a) “human nature” and b) the algorithms and the snark possibilities seemingly baked in (6).
Secondly, over the next four years, and however long after that, we are going to see more of these sorts of flash points with mainstream climate scientists feeling hemmed in and ignored and attacked or whatever.
We should also remember that these scientists are getting it in the neck big time from “the right” and so forth and so forth,
So all I can say is, let’s try to be as kind and compassionate and patient with people, Short of tolerating racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, etc, or if tolerating it, being aware of the dangers of validating it, encouraging it, etc.
This stuff is all really, really difficult. If it weren’t difficult, we’d be much better at having a sustained public sphere and dialogs between experts, be they natural scientists, social scientists, whatever, people with non-accredited knowledge, and the “broader public”
But we suck at it,
Footnotes
As well as some weird snark from some rando, I also was then accused of blocking Costas and lectured about being an intellectual, etc. It’s all somewhat tedious. The person did apologize, which is a rarity on the internet. Here’s the receipts.
Again, perhaps Samaras rolls like this all the time? I’m just trying to lay out one scenario to explain how this came to be. It might not be right. It might not be appreciated. Whatever.
But I digress – this post is not about me, or should not be about me, trying to tidy up my reputation or display my bona fides, because, frankly, who cares?
I don’t know what (if anything) Hansen has said about Jacobson’s efforts, but I’d be interested if anyone knows any more.
I did not handle all the interactions perfectly. For example, when proving my bona fides again, who cares? I linked to a different piece that I put on Nature Climate Change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Obama had already done everything he was going to do on climate change (i.e. nowt). He had been unwilling to spend political capital in 2009-10 to overcome Republican opposition, since getting some healthcare through was his main game. But it was the beginning of his second term, and small l-liberals needed to keep projecting Hope onto him, and churning out listicles like this.
What I think we can learn from this
Ooof. We believe, or pretend to believe, what we want about Saviour Politicians.
What happened next
The emissions kept climbing. What else is there to say, really?
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.
