On this day , August 28, 1971, a snarky opinion piece appeared in the New York Times, written by an oil lobbyist called Eugene Guccione (not the Penthouse guy!). It ran with the now-all-too-familiar sneers and (deliberate?) misunderstandings of what was being said.
A few days later, scientist Stephen Schneider wrote a good rebuttal, his first ever letter to a newspaper.
UPDATE – Drake was not the beginning. Two years previously, some Romaninans had been at it in the city of Ploiesti (h/t to Jonathan Schofield – @schofield).
Meanwhile, as @AmitavGhosh has pointed out
This is actually not true. In Yenangyaung, Burma, commercial oil wells had existed long before the 19th century.
Wikipedia here – “home to one of the world’s oldest petroleum industries, with its first crude oil exports dating back to 1853”
But that’s only crude oil exports. You’ve also got this.
Yenangyaung (or Yenan Chaung) can be translated as ‘creek of stinking water’ and the fact that ‘yenan’ became the Burmese word for ‘oil’ gives a clue to what those early travellers witnessed. In 1755 George Baker and John North en route to King Alaungpaya’s capital, Shwebo, found “about 200 families who are chiefly employed in getting Earth-oil out of Pitts (sic)”. Forty years later, in 1795-96, Major Michael Symes was leading a delegation from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava at Amarapura and gave a more detailed account of the Yenangyaung riverside export point:
“…the celebrated wells of Petroleum which supply the whole empire (of Ava) and many parts of India, with that useful product were five miles to the east of this place….The mouth of the creek was crowded with large boats waiting to receive a lading of oil, and immense pyramids of earthen jars were raised in and around the village… The smell of oil was extremely offensive. We saw several thousand jars filled with it ranged along the bank. Some of these were continually breaking, and the contents mingling with the sand…”
When (not if) I get things wrong
a) please tell me
b) I will correct the record, without pretending I didn’t make the mitake.
On this day, August 27 in 1859 “Colonel” Drake hit oil
On this day, 26 August 2006, after many months of planning the first “Camp for Climate Action” begins, near Drax Power Station, in Yorkshire.
However, we now know that the police let it happen as a “wave through”. Given how many undercovers there were (just the ones we know about!) they could have stopped this if they’d wanted to. They didn’t, because they didn’t want to. Too many opportunities to track who got involved. A honey pot. And here we are.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 380.6 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
We mustn’t forget previous resistance, or what happened to it. Hell, we might even learn something from it, and not make exactly the same mistakes, over and over again.
What happened next?
Climate Camp kept having annual camps for a few years, and then imploded.
Climate camps happened in other countries, for a whiile.
“Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901–November 15, 1978) and James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) sat together on a stage in New York City for a remarkable public conversation about such enduring concerns as identity, power and privilege, race and gender, beauty, religion, justice, and the relationship between the intellect and the imagination.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/19/a-rap-on-race-margaret-mead-and-james-baldwin/
This only tangentially has much to do with climate change, but Mead and Baldwin are both stone-cold geniuses, so indulge me here.
Mead was part of Roger Revelle’s subgroup about the atmosphere for President Johnson’s science advisory committee in 1964.
Baldwin? Stone cold genius, on so many issues. Key quote – ”Not everything that is faced can be dealt with, but nothing can be dealt with until it is faced.”
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 324.69 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
If we don’t want to listen to the smartest among us, then what is the point?
What happened next?
Mead would go on to co-chair the 1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ conference with Stephen Schneider, that has the denialists all aerated [see here].
On this day, August 24th, in 1994 the first signs of a split in the business opposition to climate action appeared.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 357.59 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
“An additional factor was the splintering of industrial interests. The Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council had been the main industry participants in the INC, representing mainly coal and oil interests. However, a development within INC 10 was the emergence of an industry lobby in favour of the convention’s further C02 reductions (ECO, 24 August 1994: 4; 26 August, 1994: 1). There was now a wide coalition of industrial interests favouring action on climate change. One consisted of parts of the insurance industry, scared of losses from freak weather (and whose interests have been forwarded, interestingly, by Greenpeace). Another was the ‘sunrise industries’ of renewables and energy efficiency. Yet another was the gas industry.
Matthew Paterson 1996 page 194
Why this matters.
Splits in the previously united church/state/business sector are part of ‘how things change’ if you believe all that dialectic stuff. It’s immaterial now though, given how the atmospheric concentrations have climbed, will climb…
What happened next?
A few re-insurers turned up for a day at the COP1 meeting in Berlin the following year, but were of course outnumbered, outgunned and outfought by the fossil lobbyists. (See Jeremy Leggett’s “The Carbon War” for an account of this).
Then, in 1997, BP became the first sizeable defector from the Global Climate Coalition. Now actual outright denial is relatively rare. But resistance to appropriate action continues…
On this day in 1856 American scientist and women’s rights campaigner Eunice Foote illustrated her findings in a paper entitled, “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays,” which was accepted at the eighth annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on August 23, 1856 in Albany, NY. Back in the day, what we now call carbon dioxide was known as carbonic acid…
On this day, August 22, 1981 the New York Times had a front page story about climate change. Written by its legendary science writer Walter Sullivan, it began
STUDY FINDS WARMING TREND THAT COULD RAISE SEA LEVELS
A team of Federal scientists says it has detected an overall warming trend in the earth’s atmosphere extending back to the year 1880. They regard this as evidence of the validity of the ”greenhouse” effect, in which increasing amounts of carbon dioxide cause steady temperature increases.
The seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of ”almost unprecedented magnitude” in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would ”flood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the world” within a century or less.
It was based on a study by James Hansen. Hansen’s unit was punished by having Department of Energy funding pulled – 5 people lose their jobs (See Bowen Censoring Science page 212)
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 338.48 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
Scientists getting punished for reporting the facts. Always a good look, eh? Never ever sends a chilling message.
What happened next?
Hansen and others kept going. That’s what good scientists do. By 1985, they realised shit was about to get real.
On this day, August 22, 1988, two Australian scientists warned that eventually Australia might need to take in Pacific islanders whose homes had disappeared under the waves.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 350.49 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Australia may need to take in a wave of environmental refugees from coral atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans, according to two scientists.
The islands’ inhabitants face being displaced by a likely rise in sea level due to the greenhouse effect, they say.
The prospect was raised yesterday at the 26th Congress of International Geographical Union in Sydney by Dr Peter Roy, of the NSW Department of Mineral Resources, and Dr John Connell, of the University of Sydney.
Quiddington, P. 1988. Scientists warn of islands’ peril. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August
Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans mentioned this sort of thing. Did nowt significant, but it came up in at least one of his speeches, iirc.
Why this matters.
The levels of injustice, the harm caused to future generations. It’s just mind-boggling.
What happened next?
Australia has basically continued to shit on everyone’s future.
On this day, 21 August, 1972, the editor of Nature, John Maddox, was on the ABC’s “Monday Conference” (a high brow TV show). And he dismissed climate change as a problem, as he had in his recent book “The Doomsday Syndrome.”
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 326.3 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
ABC, 1974. Saving our small world: Monday Conference on population, ecology and resources. Sydney: ABC Books
Why this matters.
We knew a lot earlier than 1988. Sure, you can’t really blame anyone in the early 70s – but by the late 70s, “we” knew enough.
On this day, August 20, 1997, a mining trade industry figure, Dick Wells of the Minerals Council of Australia totally misrepresents what the IPCC was by this time saying about climate change.”
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 362.4 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
“In an interview on ABC television, 7.30 Report on 20.8.97, Dick Wells stated that industry did not support the assertion that most scientists believe a build up of gases will cause climate change. Instead, industry supports the IPCC results which, he asserts, conclude that there is doubt about the science. Mr Wells goes on to say industry takes the issue seriously, that there is a “need for caution and we like good science … we’re a science based industry …” and concludes “there are a wide range of scientific opinions about what the impacts are going to be of any global warming and what we’re saying is it’s still prudent to do cost effective measures now and that’s what we’re embarking on with government but to go beyond those measures which deliver economic benefits, we think it would not be prudent to do so at this stage.””
(Duncan, 1997:84)
Yes, this would be the same IPCC whose second assessment report had – to howls of confected outrage from the Global Climate Coalition – concluded that the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
Why this matters.
Industry gets to seem reasonable. Australians don’t get up out of their armchairs and demand much much more of their elected leaders. Result!
What happened next?
The mining industry kept on keeping on. Who do you think supplied that lacquered lump of coal to Scott Morrison to brandish in parliament? Who do you think his inner circle was made up of?
