Author: drmarchudson

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Energy United States of America

January 3, 1984 – US report on energy transition to combat climate released. 

Thirty-nine years ago, on this day, January 3, 1984, the New York Times science journalist Walter Sullivan had a story that began with words that could have been written yesterday, more or less…

“A GLOBAL strategy to reduce a potentially dangerous increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has been outlined by engineers and economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

“In a report to the National Science Foundation, the specialists propose that the use of fossil fuel, largely responsible for the carbon dioxide increase, can be substantially reduced by greater efficiency in energy production.”

Sullivan, W. (1984)  “Report Urges Steps to Slow Down Climate Warming,” The New York Times, January 3.

Sullivan had been writing about carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere for the NYT since the early 1960s (having become aware of the issue during his coverage of the 1957-8 International Geophysical Year).

The report’s lead author, David Rose had been quoted in an August 1980 Wall Street Journal article (which we will come to later) as saying that if the CO2 theory were right “that means big trouble.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 344ppm. As of January 2023 it is 417. .

The context was that by the mid-late 1970s, US scientists were able to get funding for decent studies of carbon dioxide build-up, and were even getting some sympathetic hearings from the Jimmy Carter White House. That all ended when Reagan and his goons turned up… In October 1983 two “conflicting” reports about CO build-up had been released. (something AOY will cover later this year).

What I think we can learn from this

We knew. As I have argued here, and elsewhere, ad infitum  and nauseam, there is not an information deficit,,but there is a sustained radical social movements deficit.

What happened next

The issue finally was forced onto the agenda in 1988.  Reports like the MIT/Stanford one have been written pretty much every year since then.  Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gses have climbed almost every year. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have gone up and up and up.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Rose, David J.; Miller, Marvin M.; Agnew and  Carson E. (1983) “Global energy futures and CO\2082-induced climate change: report prepared for Division of Policy Research and Analysis, National Science Foundation https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/60493

Sullivan, W. (1984)  “Report Urges Steps to Slow Down Climate Warming,” The New York Times, January 3. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/03/science/report-urges-steps-to-slow-down-climate-warming.html

Categories
Activism

January 2, 2008 – tiresome (but sound) “Green Fatigue” warning is made.

Fifteen years ago, on this day, January 8 2008, an article appeared on the IEMA website (the article now seems to be missing) under the headline Green Fatigue and Ambivalence in an Overloaded World?

“Analysts say few people are taking action to deal with the threat of climate change, although over the past 12 months the vast majority have come to accept that it poses a real threat to the world. Opinion polls reveal much confusion among the public about what Britain should do to combat the problem. A backlash is now a real threat, said Phil Downing, head of environmental research for Ipsos Mori. ‘There’s cynicism because on the one hand we’re being told [the problem] is very serious and on the other hand we’re building runways, mining Alaskan oil; there’s a lot going on that appears to be heading in the opposite direction.’

http://oldsite.iema.net/news?search_api_views_fulltext=&page=128

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 417ppm. .

The context was that for the previous year and a half, basically since “An Inconvenient Truth” and Climate Camp and so on, the Western media had been having one of its periodic ‘gosh, let’s pretend to care about climate change’, periods, without actually naming any of the root causes because that would be awkward for our owners and advertisers’ waves.  And, sure as night follows day, about 12 to 15 months in the “fatigue” pieces start to be written…

What I think we can learn from this

The fatigue is ‘real’, but nobody (to my knowledge) ever says

“gee, it might be that if you present scary information to people and tell  them it is their fault, but don’t make it easier for them to find other like-minded people so they can form into sustained and sustainable social movement organisations, that help them make sense of the world and channel that anger, grief and fear into political action, then, you know, after a while, people who are busy, depressed, defeated will in fact stop paying attention to bulletins from the real world. Go figure.”

What happened next

The wave peaked and crashed, as it has done so before (Downs, 1972). By early 2010, the numbers of articles about – and protest activity about – climate change had dropped right off. It would come back in 2018. And then be reduced again by 2022…

See also

AOY post June 26, 1991 “environment is not flavor of the month any more”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Downs, A. (1972) Up and Down with Ecology: The “Issue Attention Cycle The National Interest.

Categories
Site info and updates

All Our Yesterdays – climate histories for the future

Hi,

at the start of the second year of “All Our Yesterdays – 365+ Climate Histories” here’s a few basic facts.

Please do ask questions, share this post, comment.
Best wishes

Marc Hudson

What it is

A website (and associated twitter feed) with at least one entry for every day of the year about something that happened on that day – stretching back to the 1950s but especially from the 1970s onwards – around climate science, politics, protest and technology. I’ve already done it for all of 2022, with some great guests posts from various friends (see here).

Why it is

Generally I am very curious about how much we knew, when (i.e.. before the great Thatcher Awakening of 1988) and how little has been achieved since then.  All Our Yesterdays is one way of coping with that pathological curiosity, while also (fingers crossed) making what I have found out useful for other people.

What is different about this year

This year I’ve decided to orient the posts more to “what we can learn from this?” – whether it is a tactic used by the opponents of action, or a bit of the science that is worth remembering, or the backstory to some of the technologies and policies that are still getting a lot of attention (lookin’ at YOU, carbon capture and storage).

I’m also keen to expand beyond the relatively “three country”  focus – many many posts have been about Australia (where I am originally from), the United Kingdom (where I now live) and the United States (in the words of Leonard Cohen, “the cradle of the best and of the worst”). In the first month of 2023 there are posts from  New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, but these of course are also part of the Anglosphere….

How I want people to use it

My dream is people learn about a tactic that has been used in the past, and then when they see the same tactic being used now by denialists or delayers they can say (and tweet!) “oh, this is just a re-tread of what they did [twenty five/thirty years] ago. ” Or that people use the site to think – on their own and with the friends and colleagues – about how protest groups around climate have tended to go up like a rocket and come tumbling down like a stick.

If you have a date you think is worth writing about, please check out to see if I have (see here),and then if I haven’t email me.  (I may already know about it, but I’d rather get repeat suggestions than not at all).

If you want to write a guest post about something, do get in touch.

And, as I write on every post What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
anti-reflexivity United States of America

January 1, 1988 – President Reagan reluctantly signs “Global Climate Protection Act” #CreditClaiming

Thirty-four years ago, on this day, January 1, 1988, US President Ronald Reagan

“reluctantly signs the Global Climate Protection Act” (Agrawala and Anderson, 1999: 459) 

A climate bill had been introduced in the Senate in 1986 by Joe Biden, but died in the Senate. According to Politifact “a version of Biden’s legislation survived as an amendment (29th January 1987) to a State Department funding bill.”

The bill

  • Directs the President to establish a Task Force on the Global Climate to research, develop, and implement a coordinated national strategy on global climate. Requires such Task Force to transmit a United States Strategy on the Global Climate to the President within a year. Requires the President to then report to specified Members of Congress on such report.
  • Directs the President to appoint an ambassador at large to coordinate Federal efforts in multilateral activities relating to global warming.
  • Directs the Secretary of State to promote the early designation of an International Year of Global Climate Protection.
  • Urges the President to give climate protection high priority on the agenda of U.S.-Soviet relations.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/senate-bill/420

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 417ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

There had been a pivotal meeting of scientists in Villach in October 1985 [see AOY post October 15, 1985 – Villach meeting supercharges greenhouse concerns...] It had been sponsored by WMO, UNEP and ICSU. After it, US Senators (both Republican and Democratic) had held hearings, including with Carl Sagan as a witness in December 1985 [see AOy post December 10, 1985 – Carl Sagan testified to US Senators on #climate danger].  Biden’s proposed legislation was one result, and was not exactly the first bite at this cherry – see George Brown on January 4 1977 (if you wait three days, you can learn about it on this very site).

What I think we can learn from this

That it’s hard work to get politicians to actually listen to scientists, but it can, eventually be done.
That the narrative of “nobody knew anything/was doing anything until summer 1988” is so vacuous to be  “not even wrong.”

That (see below) – liars will rewrite history to try to make their (senile-by-then) hero look good; this is the incumbent’s advantage – anything they were forced to do can later be retconned as part of their farsightedness/largesse.  This #CreditClaiming is part of the erasure of history that keeps us perpetually confused and placated. So it goes…

What happened next

The climate issue finally exploded that summer. Four years of brinksmanship and incumbent bastardry followed, resulting in the too weak “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” in June 1992.


More recently, Reagan fanbois have tried to rewrite the history, of course;  https://climateconservative dot org forward slash /americas-original-climate-hero/  (no, I am not going to link to those idiots). 

For more on the Reagan administration versus everything environmental, see  McCright and Dunlap (2010)

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Agrawala,S. and Andresen, S. (1999) Indispensability and Indefensibility? The United States in the Climate Treaty Negotiations. Global Governance, Vol. 5, No. 4  pp. 457-482

McCright, A. and Dunlap R. (2010). Anti-reflexivity. Theory, Culture & Society. Volume 27, Issue 2-3 https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764093560

Categories
Letters to publications

Letter in FT about Thatcher, Just Stop Oil, #climate

Whoop, the Financial Times has published my letter!(31st December 2022)

The excellent letter from Patricia Finney (‘It’s simple physics and chemistry – climate change will kill us all’, FT 17 December) will hopefully give readers of the FT in high places pause for thought. 

There are two points I wish to clarify. First, she states “scientists have been warning about it for 30 years.” Sadly, the warnings go back to the 1950s. Through the 1970s various UK civil servants and scientists became steadily more concerned. (see Jon Agar, 2015  “Future forecast – changeable and probably getting worse”: the UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change . Twentieth Century British History, Volume 26, Issue 4). Finally, in 1980 they briefed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. who replied incredulously, “Are you telling me I should worry about the weather?” (see John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher. Vol. 2: The Iron Lady (London, 2003), 642-643.)

Secondly, Finney argues that “nothing else has worked, not petitions, not marches.” Agreed, but what hasn’t been tried, or tried repeatedly and reflexively enough, is the building of coalitions between workers, environmentalists, the young, pensioners, academics that can resist the lure of repeated feel-good mobilisations and also the dangers of being brought inside government and corporate tents for feel-good do-nothing roundtables and consultations.  

Just Stop Oil has, I would guess, around 1000 activists. The UK has a population of over 65 million.  In the words of the police chief in the film Jaws, “we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

Dr Marc Hudson

Categories
Australia

December 31, 2012 – Murdoch employee throws predictable inaccurate shite at Greens…

On this day, December 31, 2012, a Murdoch employee called Piers Akerman (actual facts will have to wait for a change in the libel laws, or the grim reaper) took a pop at the Greens. Of course he did. With a sprinkling of condescension that a mere woman – and a Tasmanian at that – should dare to lead a political party…

“FACING falling support, the Greens are trying to find a different colour scheme to fool the voters.

They want to be seen as green but perhaps not as deep a green as their party policy platform paints them.

Their problem, of course, is that they are not really green as much as a murky red and even their hard-core support base is fracturing under the pressure of adjusting to the shrill leadership of Senator Christine Milne after 16 years of former Senator Bob Brown’s more avuncular style.”

Akerman, P. 2012.  Greens’ true colours come shining through. Hobart Mercury, 31 December p.16.

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 394ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

The Greens had arrived, and weren’t going away, so Akerman (and his ilk) instead needed to create a soothing (to them) narrative of imminent demise. You see this again and again…

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that rich white men with incredibly brittle egos are constantly proclaiming the imminent demise of their political/cultural opponents, hoping that if they say it often enough, loud enough, then at least they themselves might come to believe it.

What happened next?

The Greens, fwiw, doing quite nicely, thank you.

Categories
Science Scientists Sweden

December 30, 2007 – Bert Bolin dies.

December 30, 2007 – Bert Bolin dies. He was a Swedish scientist, did more than anyone else (I would argue) from the 1950s to the 1980s to get carbon dioxide build-up on the political agenda (he was most certainly not alone in doing this – proper group effort). Find posts about him on this site here.

Bolin’s death was exquisitely well-timed. He had been the first chair of the IPCC, and that organisation had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of weeks earlier. The COP meeting of the UNFCCC in Bali had agreed – over US objections – a two year plan of negotiations for a big important/solve the post-Kyoto problem meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Bolin, I hope, died believing that, finally, at last, possibly too late, the rich nations were being successfully corralled into doing something serious on the issue he had been so responsible for.

Bolin’s book – A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change –  is fairly dry, but great if you’re a geek like me

Btw, at that time atmospheric CO2 was 384ppm. It’s roughly 418 now

Categories
United States of America

December 30, 1976 – President Jimmy Carter is lobbied about #climate change

On this day, December 30 in1976 Congressman George Brown(of the Democrats) wrote to incoming President Jimmy Carter

“In his letter to President-Elect Jimmy Carter [on 30th] December 1976, for instance, Brown hesitated to put the blame on human factors, given serious uncertainties about the influence of other causes of climatic change. ‘‘Our knowledge,’’ he noted, ‘‘is primitive concerning the importance of not only natural factors, such as solar activity or orbital behavior, but also of man-made effects due to CO2 and particulate emissions, or fluorocarbon and NOx interaction with the ozone layer.’’

Brown’s tone was certainly not an indictment of efforts to understand the influence of human activities on the global climate system, but rather a preliminary conveyance of urgency to stimulate a much larger effort to understand the nature, causes, and potential impacts of climatic change on human affairs.” 

Henderson, G. (2016) Governing the Hazards of Climate — The Development of the National Climate Program Act, 1977-1981. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 46, Number 2, pps. 207–242

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 332ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Scientists were beginning to say they were fairly sure that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already – and would be – a problem.  But not “sure sure”.  Politicians were trying to get more money for them to do better research…

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that these things take time – and skill – to get up the policy agenda so that ignoring comes with significant political cost..

What happened next?

Brown was “successful” and Carter, by the end of his fraught four years, had done something towards getting the US government to look at climate (if you ignore the synfuels debacle).  All that would be swept aside by Reagan, of course….

Categories
Australia

December 29, 1995 – Sydney Morning Herald points out year has been hottest yet…

On this day, December 29 in 1995, the Sydney Morning Herald had a front page story from its very very competent and clear environment beat hack.

“With 1995 in its dying days, global records compiled by British climate scientists show that it has been the planet’s hottest year since reliable records began.

With 11 months’ data from every continent and ocean, they are confident that it will emerge as the hottest year in the past 140, putting pressure on world governments to take more seriously the negotiations for the Climate Change Convention”

Gilchrist, G. (1995) Scorcher Of A Year Rekindles Fears Of Greenhouse Mayhem. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December , p1.

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 361ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Things had been heating up, fairly steadily. 1995 was also a “hot” year in terms of climate science and the fights around it, with the denialists getting barbed wire wrapped around their baseball bats and swinging for the offences…

Why this matters. 

We have watched it warm up

What happened next?

In response to this, Australian policymakers said. “We’re gonna make it easier to dig up and burn/sell coal. Obvs. And kneecap anyone who tries to get in the way. Double obvs.”

And that is exactly what they did, Labor or Liberal. And here we are.

Categories
Australia

December 28, 1994 – Australian Financial Review says “say yes to Tradeable Emissions Quotas”

On this day, December 28 in 1994 the Australian Financial Review (“the Fin” – and on its best days merely a poundstore version of the Financial Times) had an editorial about the value of emissions trading schemes.

A very large part of the contribution of rich, energy-intensive economies such as Australia should be the financing of emission-reduction projects in countries where the social cost of emission reduction is lower.

One mechanism for this kind of transfer is the often proposed system of tradable emission quotas (which the quotas distributed in a way to transfer income to the developing nations).”

Anon, 1994, 28 December

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 359ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

The Labor Federal Environment Minister John Faulkner was trying to get a carbon tax proposal through into the next budget. There was a major effort to stop this, and the Fin’s editorial was a minor part of it (“look, there’s a more efficient way of pricing carbon”).

Why this matters. 

It doesn’t, in the big picture. Just be aware that whatever you propose, if the rich and powerful don’t like it they will either oppose it outright or – more subtle version – go for a concern troll approach “we both want the same thing, but HERE’s how you should do it…[proposes something that will never work].”

What happened next?

The carbon tax died in February 1995, didn’t get in the budget. Emissions trading became flavour of the month for more than a decade.  Delivered nowt, except fat fees to consultants and bankers. (You can argue about the reduction in emissions after Gillard’s scheme came in, and others will point to Tasmanian hydro entering the picture.)