The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 342.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measurements.
The context was that the EPA had, like others, been taking an interest in long-term effects. Long-before “the Greenhouse Effect” became a threat (finally) acknowledged by our lords and masters, smart people were doing the sums.
What we learn – nothing. We never learn anything
What happened next – the issue broke through in 1988, for what it was worth. And we have spent the 35 years since then making things worse.
Sixty eight years ago, on this day, October 23, 1955, the Los Angeles Times ran an article on the changing weather that included mention of carbon dioxide build-up as one of the possible causes…
“Many scientists believe that the earth’s rising temperatures may be partly due to the six billion tons of carbon dioxide dumped into the earth’s atmosphere each year from the smokestacks of industrial plants…”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by 1955, there were more and more of these stories because the weather seemed to be changing. And we were taking better measures (not yet satellites, obviously). And talk of “weather modification” (especially as a weapon of war) was all the rage as well. The broader context is, of course, that the people of Los Angeles had more immediate air pollution issues on their plate, namely smog, which they wanted to believe, and were encouraged to believe came from well, anywhere, but the motor car.
(note to self – this was 8 days after the Macleans Magazine article by Berrill; did they just clip it and get a react quote from George Kimble?]
)What happened next
There would be more and more carbon dioxide stories for two years, to the late 50s. And then, oddly, because it was no longer speculation, because it was fact, the whole thing became less newsworthy (especially without the International Geophysical Year hook).
Btw one of the people cited in this article (George Kimble) wrote a 1962 article in the New York Times.
What I think we can learn from this
And I suppose it’s the speculation, “the competing theories” that help a journalist pad out a story and leave the reader with a sense of being informed about an ongoing scientific controversy. Once it’s over, well, the reader then would be focusing on “what can we do?” And certainly on carbon dioxide, not much is the answer, whereas there is a bewildering plethora of solutions for nitrogen, sulphur, etc. See, the “Breath of Life” book published in 1965.
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 four years ago, on this day, October 22, 1969, an article by Edmund Muskie, a senior American politician (someone seen as a contender for president, and had been the prospective VP on Hubert Humphrey’s ticket in 1968) was published. Muskie was aware of the issue (as were many others, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan).
22 Oct 1969 Edmund Muskie article- ENVIRONMENTAL JURISDICTION IN THE CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE – published which includes the following – “The increased use of fossil fuels affects not only local environments but the global environment as well. The increased introduction of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere contributes to the greenhouse effect, raising temperatures.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
A couple of months earlier, Daniel Moynahan had raised the question to a higher level with his memo which Muskie may or may not have seen. But Muskie would have been aware, presumably, that from a foreign policy perspective the US were trying to create the environment as a separate entity which they could dominate (Nixon had given a speech about it to the North Atlantic Council in April 1969, hoping people would just stop talking about the napalming of babies). The UN Secretary General U Thant was speaking about the issue by June 1969.
See also ”Arming Mother Nature”
What I think we can learn from this is that from 1968-69 senior politicians in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, we’re talking about fossil fuels causing catastrophic climate change. This is far earlier than I think most people understand.
What happened next
I think Muskie made a bid to be the Democratic nominee and if I recall, rightly, his mental health history talked against him.
MUSKIE WAS CARTER’S SEC OF STATE AT THE END. NAME IS ON THE GLOBAL FUTURE TIME TO ACT REPORT
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.
Forty years ago, on this day, October 21, 1983, another climate change report was released, just a couple of days after the Environmental Protection Agency one. It took a much more “yeah, nothing to worry about really” line.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 342.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was –
The report had been commissioned in 1979, thanks to the efforts of a Democratic Senator, the lead author William Nirenberg. It is now seen as a direct rebuttal if you will, of the EPA report though, obviously, it wasn’t written as such. For the lowdown, see two articles, one by Naomi Oreskses and the other by Nirenberg’s daughter.
The point of the Changing Climate report is that it gave aid and comfort to those who were saying “oh still nothing to see here.” The Reagan administration was still pretty deep in denial, having shat all over the Global 2000 report. And here we are.
What I think we can learn from this
A variation on the “horse race politics”
What happened next
“Despite their conflicting conclusions, both reports actually confirmed the inevitability of greenhouse warming, but George Keyworth and Whitehouse counsel Ed Meese played up the disparities between Nierenberg’s “sober” NAS report and the “unnecessarily alarmist” EPA study, imbuing press coverage of the climate issue with a sense of confusion rather than concern. The press, not surprisingly, took more interest in the “debate” between the EPA and NAS scientists than in the broader implications of the science itself. Both studies were soon forgotten.“
(Howe, 2014:134)
See Merchants of Doubt chapter about this – argues it is two different reports, the physical scientists agreeing with other reports, and two chapters by economists…
MOD page 180
Has also led to two articles – From Chicken Little to Dr Pangloss
It would be another four years or five years before climate was able to properly take off again. And Nirenberg was still in the thick of nonsense like the George Marshall Institute.
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.
Twenty years ago, on this day, October 20, 1983, the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian gave a tolerably accurate summation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s report.
The Australian page 3 climatic change (based on EPA report)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 342.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Australian runs a page three greenhouse gases story that isn’t a complete shit show?! By this point, climate change was well understood as a potential long-term problem in Australia, various magazines, newspapers would run stories. Senators would make speeches…
What I think we can learn from this
I guess, what we learn is that The Australian newspaper has decayed markedly, perhaps never from a particularly high baseline. But now it’s just a fucking rag.
What happened next
There was another climate report released by the National Academy of Science the following day. And that is the topic of tomorrow’s blog post….
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.
Twenty one years ago, on this day, October 19, 2002, another civil society organisation – Doctors for the Environment – joined the fray.
“David Shearman with his amazing persistence undertook to complete the necessary paperwork and on the 19th October 2002 “Doctors for the Environment, Australia” was well on its way to becoming a fully constituted environmental entity at the Mornington meeting”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that it was clear that at the federal level, the Howard Government was determined to avoid doing anything about climate change. It had already said no to even an emissions trading scheme, and a few months earlier John Howard had taken delight in saying that Australia would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This despite having extracted a fantastically generous deal. The other context is that public health academics had been worrying about climate impacts for a while, and probably felt there needed to be a specific organisation.
What I think we can learn from this
Groups form. But my goodness it’s hard to keep them going, especially when it’s clear that the government is determined to do nothing, or only lip service…
What happened next
What happened next? Well, doctors for the environment is still going 20 years 21 years later.
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.
Forty years ago, on this day, October 18, 1983, your average television-watching American gets a dose of reality.
On October 18, 1983, all three U.S. television networks ran two-minute stories on the greenhouse effect, and CBS and ABC placed their stories at or near the top of the news programs. What had happened? The Environmental Protection Agency had issued a report analyzing the impact of the greenhouse effect on the temperature of the earth. CBS and ABC featured John Hoffman of the EPA urging that preparations be made for the future.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 342.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Can we delay a greenhouse warming?” had come out. It said that, well, you could institute a global carbon tax or rather even if you could, which was a long shot, it would only delay warming by a few years. This was, I think, the first time that all three major networks simultaneously covered the environment story.
What I think we can learn from this
We should remember that Walter Cronkite had been talking about climate in his documentary, The 20th Century, in the episode, The Power of the Sea on March 22 1960. Spilhaus had said what he said.
What we can learn is that 40 years ago, American people were told what was happening pretty clearly. I don’t think there was any massive spike in membership of the Sierra Club or EDF or whatever. And as Joshua Howe in his excellent “Behind the Curve” notes, they just weren’t taking it on as an issue because it’s too big. It’s too diffuse,
“Joseph Smagorinsky, author of the climate-modeling chapter for Changing Climate, was highly critical of the EPA report. Speaking at Youngstown University, he said, “Evidently the EPA was hell-bent on coming up with spectacular numbers. . . . It’s bad enough when an individual does this kind of thing, but when a federal agency does it . . .”105” (Nierenberg et al. 2010:344)
What happened next
The American people did not rise up and save themselves, because some of them at least probably thought “why bother, we’re all gonna get nuked anyway?”
This, you see, was also the time of the Second Cold War fears of the nuclear winter, if there were a “nuclear exchange” (of course that also got people thinking about the atmosphere as something that humans could seriously fuck up.)
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 years ago, on this day, October 17, 1973, a “coup” happened at the Australian Conservation Foundation. The ACF had been set up by “Great and Good” figures in the mid-1960s. By the early 1970s its membership had shot up (as part of the global wave of concern about pollution. Lots and lots of the newcomers had a different understanding of what the root causes of the problems were, and how to solve them. Matters came to a head…
“How The ACF Was Taken Over: A report to ACF Members on the events of 17th October, 1973, by the Seven Councillors who resigned on that day”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the ACF had been set up in the mid 60s by the great and the good. Garfield Barwick etc, as your typical elite conservationist programme. I think there were moves for it to actually be the official offshoot of the then new World Wildlife Fund, but I could be wrong. And for a few years, it was able to put out newsletters and hold conferences. It was fantastically well connected with the Australian industrial and political elite. But then with the coming of the late 60s, many more people started to get interested in and concerned about conservation, ecology, etc. And the fact that the ACF had been founded by and was being still controlled by a bunch of extremely well-connected, what we would now call old white men. began to be a problem. Because people were moving beyond the idea that the problems were caused either by greedy, poor people or a lack of information. And so there was a two or three year power struggle within the ACF – people getting elected to the board with different perspectives from the founders, countermoves, et cetera.
What I think we can learn from this
You see this a hell of a lot when a group has been established and then there’s an influx of people with a different view. Now, on one side, the incumbents can say, “Well, why don’t you just go and found your own group?” and on the other, the challengers can say, “Hang on, I thought this was a democratic organisation? And anyway, we’re the ones who brought in all the extra money and members and ideas. And we shouldn’t have to walk away from that.” It’s an age old dilemma. In this case, it was solved by a putsch. And the old ACF guard had to quit. The document described their version of history, and may or may not be accurate. I don’t care – that’s beyond the point of this website, which to remind you, is here to help people understand the patterns.
What happened next – The ACF became more “radical” if you want to call it that, it depends what your baseline is. And we also saw the rise of Friends of the Earth and Ecology Action, which is best I can tell was a very New South Wales and especially Sydney focused thing.
By the mid 70s, because of the enormous economic dislocations, the environment movement in Australia had shrunk. This was a worldwide pattern. “Whatever happened to the revolution,” as the Skyhooks sang
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 three years ago, on this day, October 16, 1990, some big green groups said “yes” to a policy process. It’s more significant than it sounds…
“The Federal Government’s sustainable development consultations received a fillip yesterday with the long-awaited decision by three of the four main environment groups to take part in industry working groups.
However, the three groups – the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature – refused to take part in the forestry working group on the grounds that it duplicated a Resource Assessment Commission inquiry into the industry.
The fourth main green group, the Wilderness Society, decided not to take part in the working groups, saying the Government’s recent environmental decisions showed it was unlikely to put ecologically sustainable development ahead of “conventional economic growth”.”
Garran, R. 1990. Green groups to join govt inquiry. Australian Financial Review, 17 October.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
In order to win the March 1990 Federal election Labor had had to cuddle up to green organisations, and promise them that it would be different next time, that the green organisations would be invited into the room with the big boys who were making the decisions. The “ecologically sustainable development policy making” process was part of this big picture but obviously that came with risks for everyone…
What I think we can learn from this
Is that for green groups there is an eternal dilemma – if they engage closely with state policy-making processes they can use up their time energy and credibility on something that goes nowhere, but if they refuse and are the perpetual outsiders than the foundation money is less forthcoming, ambitious people go elsewhere because aren’t you trying to change the system from within. “If you’re not trying to change the system from within, well what’s the point of you?” say middle class people who don’t understand how power works.
But then maybe they do, maybe without these sorts of efforts – even though they often go wrong – we would be in an even worse position? Who knows…
What happened next
The green groups went in, and the ESD process went tits up. And this was most evident in the middle of 1992 when a planned two-day conference ended in farce. New Prime Minister Paul Keating kicked ESD into the long grass. And it is mentioned ruefully now if at all; you have to be quite old to have any history 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.
Fifty two years ago, on this day, October 15, 1971, a crucial book was published…
Man’s Impact on Climate
Edited by William H. Matthews, William H. Kellogg and G. D. Robinson
Hardcover
9780262130752
Published: October 15, 1971
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326,4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that American scientist William Kellogg had pulled together a bunch of people to meet near Stockholm in the summer of 1971. This was a follow-up to the Williamstown meeting (the Study of Critical Environmental Problems) in July of 1970 that had been held under the auspices of Carroll Wilson (. The secretariat function for the Man’s Impact on Climate meeting was partly under the control of a young Stephen Schneider (see quote from global warming his 1989 book).
What I think we can learn from this
The early 1970s was the time when the institutional interest and architecture around carbon dioxide began to take shape. If you are a climate history geek like me well, you’re one of very few.
What happened next
After the 1972 to Stockholm conference this sort of ad-hoc gathering was complemented by more official processes under the sponsorship of the UNEP and so forth. There was a flurry of meetings through the early mid 1970s, many of which have been discussed on this site. Funding also came from the Rockefeller Fund which means obviously that the climate scientists were merely unwitting dupes of our evil Davos overlords.
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.
