Author: drmarchudson

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United States of America

May 14, 2007 – another C40 large cities summit

Seventeen years ago, on this day, May 14th, 2017, the second “C40 Large Cities” summit was held. Backs were slapped, business cards exchanged, palms probably greased, and all the other things that happen at these events happened. And we are not saved.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Climate Group had been set up in 2004. And this summit, well, I wasn’t there, but it was surely another interminable junket, people getting together to display their virtue and swap business cards and give each other copies of glossy reports full of carefully chosen smiling individuals with the solar panel on their roof. 

And it was 2007, being the year that the IPCC fourth assessment report came out, Al Gore, everyone looking towards Bali, for what would be the “roadmap to Copenhagen,” “gosh, we can fix this,” etc, etc. And in the meantime, get some nice contracts.

What we learn is there is an endless circuit of this stuff, this guff. And you can have a nice career feeling good about yourself, going from event to event, talking about how the cat should wear a bell. And some of it does actually happen. Because technology is improved, because social movements have success, because companies see a market. It’s not that nothing has happened. It’s that we smother ourselves in bullshit about how much will happen and how easy it will be to do in the face of obduracy and resistance.

Although the penny does seem to be dropping that we are screwed. So there’s that. 

What happened next C40 kept going. The caravan kept rolling. Occasionally the wheels would fall off and need to be glued back on, as after Copenhagen but it’s too valuable to too many people, too essential, in fact, to pretend that business as usual with some tweaks will get us out of the mess that business as usual has created. And to think or, even worse, say otherwise renders you unemployable and a weirdo who might infect others with their weirdo germs. 

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.

Also on this day: 

May 14, 2002 – well-connected denialists gather in Washington DC to spout #climate nonsense

May 14, 2010 – a day of action/mourning on climate

Categories
United Kingdom

May 13, 1977 – UK energy experts gather at Sunningdale

Forty-seven years ago, on this day, May 13th, 1977, Tony Benn, then Energy Minister, met assorted experts at Sunningdale to grapple with nuclear versus solar etc.

NB Wasn’t it Sunningale where the Police ‘processed the Libyans after the Yvonne Fletcher shooting??

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the British state was in a financial hole. Energy was a big part of the problem,  

What we learn is that, well, the civil servants in the nuclear lobby were very powerful and were capable of outwitting the politicians who were not necessarily the sharpest tools in the box. 

What happened next, the climate issue was bubbling along. And in 1978, an interdepartmental group was set up to study the issue, producing a pipsqueak report that almost got suppressed or not released, before coming out in February 1980.

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.

References

Sedgemore, B. 1980. Civilisation: keeping the options open . The Guardian, March 10, p.7

Also on this day: 

May 13, 1983 – idiots get their retaliation in first…

May 13, 1991 – UK Energy minister fanboys nuclear as climate solution. Obvs.

May 13, 1992 – Australian business predicts economic armageddon if any greenhouse gas cuts made

Categories
Scientists United Kingdom United States of America

May 13, 1957 – Guy Callendar to Gilbert Plass on how easy it is to criticise, how hard to build theories

Sixty seven years ago, on this day, May 13th, 1957, English steam engineer Guy Callendar, who had been pointing to carbon dioxide build-up as an explanation for increased global temperatures since the late 1930s, wrote to Gilbert Plass, who in 1953 had brought the problem to global attention (see my Conversation piece here).

How easy it is to criticise and how difficult to produce constructive theories of climate change! and ““A point of special interest is the large discrepancies between the apparent increase of atmospheric CO2 given by the air-CO2 observations . . . and the predicted increase derived from the size of the exchange reservoirs as now revealed by radio carbon measurements.”

Letter from Callendar to Plass 13 May 1957 (Fleming, 2007: chapter 5)
Guy Callendar

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Guy Callendar had been banging on about climate change and carbon dioxide buildup since 1938. And Plass had been doing the same since 1953. The two were corresponding and Callendar made a very good point about how the more conventional/mainstream/whatever people were resentful of an outsider committing that terrible crime of being right and proving the experts to be wrong. 

What we learn is that sometimes the experts are wrong. Other times they’re right but sometimes they are wrong. Don’t expect them to applaud you. 

What happened next Callendar had another great piece in 1960 – see here. He died in 1964. Plass kept writing about climate for a few more years but eventually moved on to other things. And the emissions kept climbing. 

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.

References

Fleming, J. 2009 The Callendar Effect – The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964), The Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of: The Life … of Climate Change

Also on this day: 

May 13, 1983 – idiots get their retaliation in first…

May 13, 1991 – UK Energy minister fanboys nuclear as climate solution. Obvs.

May 13, 1992 – Australian business predicts economic armageddon if any greenhouse gas cuts made

Categories
Sweden

May 12, 1971 – Swedish protest against the culling of Stockholm trees (the “Elm Conflict”)

Fifty-three years ago, on this day, May 12th, 1971, some trees in Stockholm became a focal point

 One Swedish political history was the Almstriden – “the Trees”, in 1971: street demonstrations against the Stockholm park, Kungsträdgarden. “Listen to the hu tree, you who make decisions at city hall and in the future you hear humming there”, the journalist’s words that echo Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are A-changing”

Veckojournalen 18 may 1971

There’s a wikipedia page here.

And see also this from “Stockholm Art Walk”.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that this was four years into the Swedish “environmental turn” (Heidenblad), with the big conference on the environment due to happen in another year.

 What we learn is that there are these local flashpoint protests, which in and of themselves, seem insignificant but may have various consequences around radicalising some people (while also perhaps dismaying others so much that they steer clear of action). And these flash points may also reveal the fine words of politicians, just that just fine words.

What we learn is that there are lots of these little “brown m&ms” events where you can – if you want to – see that those in charge of things are not paying attention and not competent. Now, if you’re a rock star, getting on a stage and you’re worried that a spotlight will fall on you or someone else, then you’re highly incentivized to push the red stop button or pull the big lever that says stop. If however, you personally are less likely to suffer consequences, then it’s easier and safer to just go along… (and this is what was good in the neoconservative Robert Kagan’s article in November 2023 about the so called resistance to Trump; that people will make a calculation to avoid trouble and that for bad things to stop, people have to put aside their personal short-term interest and make a bigger longer decision “taking one for the team.”). 

What happened next? I think the tree got cut down. I think it didn’t matter in the cosmic scheme of things except to the tree but it’s a real brown m&m moment,

 and is also the end of Peddler and Davis BrainWrack, which should be worth mentioning. 

sidebar if you can produce all of this for something like all like yesterdays simply by going out and talking with a piece of paper, why can’t you use that exact same habit to get first drafts down have other bigger better things? There’s no reason why. So just get on with 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.

Also on this day: 

May 12, 1989 – USA says it will, after all, support the idea of a #climate treaty

May 12, 1995 – Another bet between cornucopians and realists

Categories
United Kingdom

May 11, 1990 – the Financial Times on good intentions not cutting it

Thirty four years ago, on this day, May 11th, 1990, the pink’un pointed out that the problem would be difficult to solve.

If the world’s environmental problems could be solved by high-powered conferences, then the planet would have nothing to worry about. Officials from the world’s environment ministries, activists from green pressure groups and scientists specialising in environmental problems have spent the year jetting from one international gathering to another.

Thomas, D and Hunt, J. 1990. Wave on wave of good intentions: The issues facing the world’s environmental diplomats. Financial Times, 11 May.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there were, as the FT article says, endless meetings for diplomats and negotiators to attend, on either “sustainable development” or climate or both. The Earth Summit was due in June of 1992. 

And the FT had been running some good pieces, some good reportage and the usual bullshit denial because that’s what a portion of its audience wanted. 

What we learn is what the FT is, quite rightly pointing out is that good intentions will get you so far, fine words butter, no parsnips, etc. 

 What happened next, the FT kept running the occasional denial bullshit, but on the whole, reasonably good reportage and reasonably good opinion within its worldview, obviously. Pretty much everyone acts within their worldview all the time, especially if they’re a big organisation that needs its gatekeepers. 

See also Herman and Chomsky propaganda model 

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.

Also on this day: 

May 11, 1971 – U Thant gets The Message

May 11, 1988 – “Greenhouse Glasnost” USA and USSR to co-operate on climate

Categories
United States of America

May 10, 1968 – “The Age of Effluence” says Time Magazine. C02 build-up mentioned…

Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 10th, 1968 Time magazine published an article on “The Age of Effluence.” It began thus –

WHAT ever happened to America the Beautiful? While quite a bit of it is still visible, the recurring question reflects rising and spreading frustration over the nation’s increasingly dirty air, filthy streets and malodorous rivers—the relentless degradations of a once virgin continent. This man-made pollution is bad enough in itself, but it reflects something even worse: a dangerous illusion that technological man can build bigger and bigger industrial societies with little regard for the iron laws of nature….

Under the sub-heading “The Systems Approach”

It seems undeniable that some disaster may be lurking in all this, but laymen hardly know which scientist to believe. As a result of fossil-fuel burning, for example, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen about 14% since 1860. According to Ecologist Lamont C. Cole, man is thus reducing the rate of oxygen regeneration, and Cole envisions a crisis in which the amount of oxygen on earth might disastrously decline. Other scientists fret that rising carbon dioxide will prevent heat from escaping into space. They foresee a hotter earth that could melt the polar icecaps, raise oceans as much as 400 ft., and drown many cities. Still other scientists forecast a colder earth (the recent trend) because man is blocking sunlight with ever more dust, smog and jet contrails. The cold promises more rain and hail, even a possible cut in world food. Whatever the theories may be, it is an established fact that three poisons now flood the landscapes: smog, pesticides, nuclear fallout.

There’s this too…

Man has tended to ignore the fact that he is utterly dependent on the biosphere: a vast web of interacting processes and organisms that form the rhythmic cycles and food chains in which one part of the living environment feeds on another. The biosphere is no immutable feature of the earth. Roughly 400 million years ago, terrestrial life consisted of some primitive organisms that consumed oxygen as fast as green plants manufactured it. Only by some primeval accident were the greedy organisms buried in sedimentary rock (as the source of crude oil, for example), thus permitting the atmosphere to become enriched to a life-sustaining mix of 20% oxygen, plus nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and water vapor. With miraculous precision, the mix was then maintained by plants, animals and bacteria, which used and returned the gases at equal rates. About 70% of the earth’s oxygen is thus produced by ocean phytoplankton: passively floating plants. All this modulated temperatures, curbed floods and nurtured man a mere 1,000,000 or so years ago.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that everyone was worrying about air pollution, especially smog in cities, and water pollution and noise and so forth. And Time Magazine, as was its want ran articles like the age of effluence, which has a glancing mention of CO2 buildup, which had really come to some I wouldn’t call it prominence, then at least awareness in 1965 with Lyndon Johnson’s special message to Congress.

Since then, it had been popping up here and there, especially in science publications, but also, Roger Revelle had mentioned it in the Saturday Evening Post. Barry Commoner mentioned it in his 1966 book Science and Survival.

What we learn is that we learned nothing, to go full Hegel. 

What happened next? The following year, the environment broke through in part because of the Santa Barbara oil spill as a focusing event. The time was right. The end of ‘69, you know, there was an Earth Day coming, lots of people talking about all these issues, and one of them was CO2 buildup. 

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.

Also on this day: 

May 10, 1978 – Women told that by 2000 “we will be frantically searching for alternatives to coal.”

May 10, 1997 – Murdoch rag in denialist shocker 

Categories
United States of America

May 10, 1931 – Daily Oregonian mentioning greenhouse….

Ninety three years ago, on this day, May 10th, 1931, an Oregonian newspaper provides some facts

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 308ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that newspapers love to write stories about the weather and climate – “is it getting hotter?””Is it getting colder?” “boffins are undecided” This is a staple and it’s easy to write and readers have opinions on the weather and will write in.

So it’s not a huge surprise that the Daily Oregonian would run a piece. Nor is it a surprise really that carbon dioxide and Svante Arrnehius would get a mention because although scientists had wrongly dismissed Arrhenius on the basis of assumptions about how carbon dioxide would behave in the stratosphere, his ideas made a kind of intuitive sense for other people. (Now this isn’t to say that all ideas that have been dismissed by scientists which make intuitive sense are right!. But in this case…)

What happened next? Well, there was in England a steam engineer called Guy Callendar beavering away. And a few years later, he would submit the paper and then present it at the Royal Meteorological Society. And that would interest a German called Herman Flohn, and also a Canadian called Gilbert Plass from 1953 onwards. Meanwhile, the emissions climbed. 

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.

Also on this day: 

May 10, 1978 – Women told that by 2000 “we will be frantically searching for alternatives to coal.”

May 10, 1997 – Murdoch rag in denialist shocker

Categories
Sweden United States of America

May 9, 1959 – “Science News” predicts 25% increase of C02 by end of century (Bert Bolin’s guesstimate)

Sixty five years ago, on this day, May 9th, 1959, a popular science journal, Science News, covered the findings of Swedish climate scientist Bert Bolin.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 316ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bolin had been paying attention. His boss Carl Rossby was now dead and Bolin was stepping up and had spoken at the AAAS meeting earlier that year. 

What we learn – it wasn’t a big secret or surprise or particularly controversial, that CO2 would increase rapidly. Since Gilbert Plass’s statements in 1953 this was common knowledge. 

What happened next Bolin kept working on it, kept pressing. By the early 1970s had got the United Nations Environment Program, created at Stockholm, on side and then became first IPCC chair. He died in 2007.

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.

Also on this day: 

May 9, 2009 – Another white flag goes up on the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”

May 9, 2016 – South Australia’s last coal-plant shuts down 

Categories
Academia Interviews Science Scientists United Kingdom

“Institutions would rather watch the world burn than bite the hand that feeds them” – Interview with organiser of open letter to Royal Society about its climate stance

Professor Jason Scott-Warren (Twitter account here) is the organiser of an open letter signed by 2500 academics to the Royal Society about its climate stance. He has kindly answered a few questions about the campaign. (You can read an August 2023 article in The Guardian here. There’s a piece in the Financial Times [paywalled] today, about the RS saying ,in effect, “yeah, nah.”

BTW, the Royal Society has – understandably – a long history in the UK around climate change, which will have to wait for another day. For now, there’s this from 2006, when it chided Exxon for funding denialist groups.

1.  What is the campaign trying to achieve?

The campaign is asking the Royal Society to speak out about the fossil fuel industry and how dangerous it is, both in its determination to carry on exploring for new reserves and in its lobbying activities. Both aspects of its behaviour should be red lights for scientists, at a time when the Paris Agreement goals are hanging by a thread. If the Royal Society were to make a statement about this, it would help to galvanise action in the UK academic community, and to sway public discourse.

2.  How did it get going?

I’ve been involved in campaigns at the University of Cambridge, initially to persuade the University to divest from fossil fuel companies and more recently to ask it to cut all research and philanthropic ties with them. It became clear to me that some scientists at the University were willing to give the likes of BP and Shell the benefit of the doubt because the Royal Society had not given a clear steer in this area. So I decided to start an open letter calling for an unambiguous statement. The letter now has more than 2500 signatures from UK academics.

3. What has the Royal Society’s response been – was it in anyway surprising?

The Royal Society has engaged with us, albeit at a pace that has not always inspired confidence. They agreed to hold a meeting with a small group of signatories, and discussed our demands in detail. But we were not surprised when they eventually turned our request down, pointing to all the other worthy things that they were doing on climate, and saying it would be inappropriate to condemn one sector ‘within a complex system where multiple actors need to engage urgently with these challenges’.

Decoded, this means they have swallowed the fiction that fossil fuel companies are ‘part of the solution’. At some point in the future, the story goes, these companies are going to suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere and bury it under the ocean, just so long as they can carry on generating obscene profits in the here-and-now. The susceptibility of the Royal Society to this narrative is not entirely surprising. The idea of a technological solution to the climate problem flatters their rather narrow sense of their mission. More broadly, the entanglement of some parts of the scientific establishment with the petrochemical industry is so deep that they cannot register what is happening before their eyes. They cannot admit that they have created a machine that has run out of control, and which is rapidly destroying the biosphere.

4.  What are the next stages, and what help are you looking for?

In a way, this is all just more evidence (as if we needed it) that petitions and polite debates don’t work. Money trumps everything, and institutions would rather watch the world burn than bite the hand that feeds them. We need more direct action to demand changes that will never come by asking nicely. But I do think we need to keep putting pressure on the timid institutions that we inhabit, and to alert them to the fact that they have urgent moral responsibilities that they are failing to address. Their behaviour is going to look as shameful in retrospect as propping up the slave trade or apartheid. They still have an opportunity to rectify this.

5. Anything else you’d like to say.

We should celebrate the institutions that are taking a stand in this area—the UN, the International Energy Agency, the BMA and others.

Categories
United States of America

May 8, 1980 – Nature article “CO2 could increase global tensions.” Exxon discussed underneath. Delicious ironies abound.

Forty four years ago, on this day, May 8th, 1980, there was an ironic juxtaposition in the British science journal Nature…

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the synfuels battle had just happened. And Americans, political leaders had been warned about the geopolitical consequences of CO2. Other people were saying the same stuff. 

What we learn is that CO2 was a really live issue in the late 70s, early 80s. People knew what was coming, they couldn’t say exactly when. And history is full of these delicious little moments, I guess.

What happened next, Exxon gave up on renewables and being vaguely responsible and all the rest of it and switched to denial very effectively. American politicians continued to be aware of CO2. There were congressional hearings, Senate hearings and then after 1985 it really picked up steam. 

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.

Also on this day: 

May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London

May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.

May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.

May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper