On this day, May 1953, Time Magazine reported on Gilbert Plass’ presentation at the American Geophysical Union
.Careful readers of this site will know that a Western Australian newspaper had already covered this –
Why this matters
The idea of a greenhouse world was well understood by the mid-1950s (albeit a smaller concern than – say – thermonuclear war)
See May 28th for another (early) timely Time piece.
On this day, May 24 2007 James Hansen’s paper “Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise” was published.
Hansen made the basic point that – ah, hell, here’s the abstract –
I suggest that a ‘scientific reticence’ is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control. I argue for calling together a panel of scientific leaders to hear evidence and issue a prompt plain-written report on current understanding of the sea level change issue.
Why this matters.
Despite what the lunatic climate deniers will tell you, scientists are generally very very cautious, unwilling to extrapolate beyond their datasets. They are human, make mistakes, come to false conclusions, sure. But on the whole “science” is pretty damned hot. And it if there is a bias, it is towards reticence – that’s before we even talk about the chilling effect of smear campaigns etc etc.
What happened next?
Hansen has kept on trucking. A mensch [on second thought, does someone have a better word that isn’t so gendered?]
On this day, March 23, 1977, Jimmy Carter, then President of the United States, announced that he was gonna look into the future.
”I am directing the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State, working in cooperation with … other appropriate agencies, to make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources, and environment through the end of the century.”
President Jimmy Carter May 23,1977
This finally came out in mid-1980 as the “Global 2000” report, when he was a dead duck (rather than a lame one, which came later).
The Global 2000 report gave us the phrase “sustainable development” and, of course, had a section on carbon dioxide.
This was, after all, after the Charney Report, after the First World Climate Conference and so on.
Exxon knew, we knew.
Why this matters.
States had been doing these sorts of forecasting things for a few years. This one could have mattered. Oh well.
What happened next?
Carter was thoroughly blasted out of office in November 1980 (with an independent splitting the “progressive” vote), and Ronald Reagan became the meat puppet representative of a whole lot of ever-so-slightly regressive guys, who did everything they could to slow down the awareness of/consensus around the “carbon dioxide problem” as it was then called.
On this day, 23 May 1980, Don Jessop, a Liberal senator from the great state of South Australia raised the alarm about climate change from carbon dioxide build-up in the Australian senate.
Senator JESSOP (South Australia) – “I also welcome the Antarctic Treaty (Environment Protection) Bill 1980 and will make a few brief remarks about it. “ “The first article, entitled ‘World ecology is endangered’, is from the Melbourne Age of 16 April, and deals with an examination by a panel of internationally recognised scientists. They told the United States Congress: . . that the world could face an ecological disaster unless the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere is controlled. The second article is older, having been written on 28 February 1977. It is entitled ‘Heating Up: Global Race for Antarctic’s Riches’, [From U.S. News & World Report] and I wish to have only highlights of that article incorporated in Hansard.
Leave was granted.
Here’s the wikipedia picture of Jessop
Why this matters.
We knew. The people who get elected to look after the future, who are paid to look after the future – they knew.
What happened next?
Jessop, who had raised the climate issue as early as 1973, was dropped by his own side-
Grattan, M. 1987 SA Libs demote Hill, drop Jessop. The Age, 9 June. p 3 Senator Jessop “is known for his independence and willingness to be outspoken”
On this day, May 22nd 2007, the Canberra Times reported on an announcement by two big coal miners that they were going to build a “carbon capture and storage” plant by 2014. Oh yes.
Dobbin, M. 2007. BP, Rio in clean coal power bid; Project based on Canberra research. Canberra Times, 22 May.
BP and Rio Tinto announced joint plans yesterday for a $2billion coal- fired power station at Kwinana in Western Australia that would be the first in Australia to capture and store its greenhouse gas emissions deep underground. The so-called clean coal station which could be completed within seven years would produce enough power to supply 500,000 houses.
Why this matters
When we hear the latest promises, we should
a) remember the old ones
b) think about hype cycles
What happened next
It. didn’t. happen. Because the taxpayer wasn’t willing to stump up….
Anon. 2007. CO2 trading no solution. Canberra Times, 27 May. L AST week’s announcement that BP and Rio Tinto have teamed up to look at building a ”clean” coal power station in Western Australia is great news. There’s only one catch. The project won’t go ahead if it depends on the key proposal to encourage clean energy contained in a report due to be handed to the Prime Minister on Thursday. This need not pose an insuperable barrier. But it suggests the Government will have to do more than simply rely on setting up a market for trading greenhouse gas emissions, which the report, from a joint business/public service task group, is expected to recommend. The idea is to issue a limited number of permits to release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which the Government says contributes to global warming. These permits will then be traded in a government-run market designed to create a price which is supposed to increase the cost of emitting high levels of greenhouse gases when products such as electricity are made. According to a spokesman for Rio Tinto, Ian Head, ”An emissions-trading scheme alone will not be enough to encourage the clean coal project in Western Australia to go ahead”
On this day, May 21, 1971 Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On was released
What’s Going On is a concept album with most of its songs segueing into the next and has been categorized as a song cycle. The narrative established by the songs is told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran returning to his home country to witness hatred, suffering, and injustice. Gaye’s introspective lyrics explore themes of drug abuse, poverty, and the Vietnam War. He has also been credited with promoting awareness of ecological issues before the public outcry over them had become prominent (Mercy Mercy Me).
“Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” was released as a single on 10 June.
Woah, ah, mercy, mercy me
Ah, things ain’t what they used to be (ain’t what they used to be)
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the north and south and east
Why this matters
Before the 1986-1992 wave of concern (deforestation, ozone, greenhouse) there was another big wave of concern – 1969-1972. Same dynamics of media, legislative interest and organisations going up like a rocket and tumbling down like a stick. We should know this, while appreciating the genius of people like Gaye.
What happened next
Gaye was murdered by his father iin 1984.
On this day, May 20, 45 years ago, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said coal (which Australia had fucktonne of) was the future, not solar (because, you know, Australia is not sunny, and has no scientists who could figure out how to harness that. Obvs).
An article in the Canberra Times begins thus
“Energy research funds would go largely to studies of coal use rather than solar energy the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, said in Hobart yesterday.”
Davidson, G. 1977. Top priority to coal. Canberra Times, 21 May, p.9.
But on the same day, at the same time, environmental activists were holding an alternative energy fair.
Another article on the same page contains the following-
“Demonstrators rode bicycles and walked, peacefully, carrying placards, to Civic from the lawns of Parliament House, where, organisers said, more than 500 demonstrators had set up tents as part of an ‘alternative energy festival’. They went to the Department of Natural Resources, in Hobart Place, where they put up placards and chanted. About 70 of them invaded the department’s office in the AMP building, putting up stickers. They were ushered out by policemen. They then went to the department’s office in Tasman House to talk to the Secretary, Mr James Scully. Policemen stopped them in the foyer. Then they went to the Civic shopping area. An organiser, Mr John Holmes, said the protest was aimed simply at getting media exposure on the uranium-use issue.”
Veteran activist “Takvera” has a simply wonderful blog post I urge you to read, here.
On this day 32 years ago, in the middle of the first big public and legislative wave around the issue, the Washington Post carried a report about what we now call “geo-engineering.”
IRONING OUT ‘GREENHOUSE EFFECT’ By William Booth Washington Post May 20, 1990 Scientists trying to battle the “greenhouse effect” have seriously proposed dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of iron into the ocean to create giant blooms of marine algae that could soak up much of the excess carbon dioxide believed to be responsible for global warming. If the massive scheme is carried out, researchers say, it would be among the greatest manipulations of nature ever attempted.
This image below, from a Guardian newspaper article from 2013, sums up the mechanism by which is is supposed to work..
Why this matters
Geo-engineering is still on the table – space mirrors, sulfur cannons, you name it. And we will do it because rich people will figure “hell, why not, nothing left to lose.”
What happened next
Big geo-engineering “solutions” kinda disappeared into their own niche, to get occasional media coverage (see here). They are slowly climbing into policymaker awareness. Expect some big publicity campaigns and action in the coming decade, when it is clear that everything else – ETS, BECCS etc, have failed…
On May 19, 1997, 25 years ago, and months before the Kyoto meeting at which the world’s richest countries are supposed to agree binding emissions cuts, the Chief Executive Office of one of the world’s biggest oil companies, John Browne of BP, makes a speech at Stanford University.
This marks the end of the united anti-climate front of the oil majors, exemplified by the “Global Climate Coalition.”
Browne said, in part
“There is now an effective consensus among the world’s leading scientists and serious and well informed people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible human influence on the climate and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature … it would be unwise and potentially dangerous to ignore the mounting concern.” He added: “If we are to take responsibility for the future of our planet, then it falls to us to begin to take precautionary action now.”
You can read the whole thing on the Climate Files website.
And here’s the video.
What happened next
BP changed its logo.
Why this matters
Fracture points and critical junctures that turn out to… well, not matter as much as they seemed to. What can ya do?
See also
“The overlapping and nesting of organizational fields implies that developments in one country or industry can disrupt the balance of forces elsewhere. For example, the landmark speech by British Petroleum’s Group Chief Executive, John Browne on 19 May 1997 represented a major fissure in the oil industry’s position, which bore implications for other industries in Europe and in the USA”. (Levy and Egan, 2003: 820)
On this day, 85 years ago, a paper with the catchy title “THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON TEMPERATURE” landed on the desk of the editor of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Journal. It was by one Guy Callendar, who was not even a “proper” scientist, “merely” a careful and diligent collector of data…
Historian James Fleming has written about Callendar – see here.
What happened next?
The paper was accepted. Callendar presented his findings, to general indifference (people who, 40 years later were serious players in the emerging climate consensus were present in the room, e.g. Kenneth Hare).
Callendar’s work caught the attention of scientists such as Hermann Flohn and Gilbert Plass, and was well known to the Roger Revelles and Hans Seuss’s of the world.
Why this matters
At this point, I should make clear what I am NOT saying.
I do not think anyone in 1938, hearing Callendar, should have dropped everything and raised immediate alarm. In 1938 the species – or at least the British Establishment – had other things on its mind.
I don’t even particularly “blame” people much later. I think it is really only in the late 1970s that the precautionary principle properly kicks in, and that the evidence and scientific consensus is strong enough to warrant serious action. This action did not come. Thanks Ronald. Thanks Margaret. Thanks Malcolm.
[The question of whether that consensus could have been accelerated if proper action was taken at the end of the 60s? I am agnostic. It is also not the most useful question to ask, I guess.]
So, we should know the history, but not use it to blame people for things that they could not by any reasonable measure have done that much about.