Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, January 25, 1995 the tension between making lots of money in the near-future and doing something about climate change became obvious.
AUSTRALIA’S electricity reforms and greenhouse policy appear to be headed in contradictory directions. While senior Federal ministers concede that a carbon tax would not be a single solution to meeting greenhouse targets, demand management reforms that would have a substantial impact on greenhouse emissions have been proposed by a working party of the National Grid Management Council. Yet the latest drafts of that report suggest that the NGMC will step back from critical recommendations. On December 7, the NGMC’s working party on demand management in the emerging competitive power market, produced a third draft that listed three specific options – Budget allocations, an energy efficiency levy or tax incentives – to promote energy efficiency. But when the “final draft” was produced on January 25 by the NGMC itself – in preparation for its ultimate submission to the Council of Australian Governments – each of these recommendations was substantially different…
1995 Gill. M. 1995. The meek take the running on electricity reform. Australian Financial Review, 13 February, p.12.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that state owned electricity systems in the states of Australia, were busy being privatised. The idea was also to have a national grid excluding Tasmania, but still excluding Western Australia, because there was money to be made. And of course, if you had to have greenhouse, and environment considerations included, that would interfere with rich white people getting even richer. And we can’t have that now, can we? Because that would be communism.
What we learn – failure was systematically baked in.
What happened next? Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Greenhouse was kept out of the documents that set up the Australian energy market and all of that who had the national grid. And this is a good part – by no means the only part but a good part – of why Australia has had until recently astonishingly high carbon intensity in its electricity generation. I mean, brown coal, I ask you.
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.
As everyone with a hint of scientific training knows by now, the world is facing a troublesome present and uncertain future due to the changes in the global climate caused by man-made activity, and specifically the greenhouse effect. It is an interesting – and important – question to ask what warnings were made by scientists over the past few decades. This brief investigation sheds some light by looking at the articles on climate change issues published in a Welsh-language scientific journal.
The Welsh scientific journal Y Gwyddonydd (‘The Scientist’) was launched in 1963, and its genesis reflects the challenges that faced the Welsh language at that time. The percentage recorded as speaking Welsh in the 1961 census had fallen to 26%, which acted as a spur to the campaign to secure official rights for the language and to increase its use in education. Establishing a journal to present scientific matters through the medium of Welsh was a statement that the language should be part of the modern world, and not ghettoised as a medium only suitable for literary, antiquarian or theological discussions.
The journal sought to introduce current scientific developments and arguments to the Welsh-speaking audience and so it is a fair assumption that it was responsible for the first discussions in Welsh of topics that are now all too familiar. Thus in 1985 there are two sizeable articles investigating ‘glaw asid’ (acid rain), whereas the first reference to the ‘haenen osôn’ (ozone layer) can be found the following year.
The phrase ‘effaith tŷ gwydr’ (greenhouse effect) appears for the first time in Y Gwyddonydd in the edition of December 1972, in a report which considered the possible effects upon the climate from man-made pollution.
Would the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activity lead to a rise in the world’s temperature, or would the increased number of particles in the atmosphere reflect the sun’s rays back into space, leading to global cooling? At the time the answer was unclear, and the ‘effaith tŷ gwydr’ is referred to as a theory. One unknown variable to be thrown into the equation was the expected rise in supersonic aircraft, pouring SO2 and water vapour into the upper atmosphere, the effect of which could not be predicted.
It appears that the next treatment of this topic in Y Gwyddonydd was in December 1981, where John Gribbin’s recent article in the New Scientist was discussed.
He had postulated that the enhanced greenhouse effect due to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to a rise of 2 to 3 °C by 2025, according to the best available computer models. The report goes on to consider the effects of this upon the world’s food production, and hints at the geo-political turmoil that would follow. The conclusion is that time is against us.
The text of a speech by Eirwen Gwynn is printed in the next issue, in which she warns of the possible dire effect upon the climate of continuing to burn fossil fuels. (Interestingly, having been keen on nuclear power back in the first issue of Y Gwyddonydd back in 1963, by 1982 she declared that atomic energy was not the answer).
The next instance of a discussion of the greenhouse effect appears in late 1988, in an article which has in its title the phrase ‘Hinsawdd Newydd’ (‘A New Climate’) – the phrase used today, ‘Newid Hinsawdd’ (Climate Change) is not one that appears in the discussions at that time. The first evidence I have found of a break-through into the Welsh broadcast media happened at the same time, with a Radio Cymru programme focussing upon the ramifications of the greenhouse effect in November 1988.
In 1990, Y Gwyddonydd published an in-depth explanation of the phenomenon by a physicist from Aberystwyth University.
From then on there is a stream of articles in the journal considering the likely effects of global warming upon the planet, and which are explicit in their warning of the dangers.
In late 1991, for example, the headline of an article adapted the words from an ancient Welsh poem to warn ‘Truan o Dynged a Dyngwyd i Ddynoliaeth’ – ‘Wretched is the fate that will befall mankind’.
One can also find more Welsh-language radio and television programmes that seek to explain the dangers.
Thus the evidence here is unambiguous. In the Welsh public sphere, the dangers of global warming were understood and discussed by the early 1990s at the latest. The scientific predictions made were broadly accurate. As we approach 2025 we can see that the prediction made in 1981 of a rise of 2-3 °C was overly pessimistic, but that the disruption that even 1.5 °C will cause will be enormous. The warning was made about 42 years ago that time was running out to stop the catastrophe, and it was widely disseminated. The follow-up question of why warnings by scientists were not taken seriously by decision-makers is beyond the scope of this brief article, but is one that needs to be asked.
Dr Gethin Matthewsis a senior lecturer in the Department of History, Heritage and Classics at Swansea University. His PhD research was in the history of the Welsh in the Gold Rushes, but for a decade and more he has been researching the impact of the First World War upon Wales. He is currently working on a book for the University of Wales Press, Visions of War, which will examine how WW1 was seen and imagined in Wales.When he manages to escape the trenches, he intends to investigate how climate change discourse has developed in Wales over the past sixty years.
Fifty seven years ago, on this day, January 24th, 1967,
Such a forecast was certainly disquieting. Upon reviewing the document, Graham Sutton, inaugural chairman of Britain’s recently established Natural Environment Research Council, stressed that “by no means” should the report be “dismissed as ‘science fiction,’” though he conceded that “one cannot yet tell if the decline in temperature is part of an old old story of natural fluctuations or is something triggered off or enhanced by pollution.”13
13. Graham Sutton, letter to Victor Rothschild, 24 Jan. 1967, box 76, part 3, Archive Collection of Professor James Lovelock.
Leah Aronowsky, 2021
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Graham Sutton, former Met Office boss, was head of the newly established Natural Environment Research Council and probably wanted to have a relative lid on such seemingly outlandish claims. And you see the sorts of claims of responsible men to damp and things down but fairplay to Sutton he didn’t do that.
By now, the BBC had already broadcast Challenge, in January of 1967…
But then what did Sutton do? What did NERC do? It’s a good question.
What we can learn. There were conversations going on among scientific elites about this.
What happened next the following year, July 1968. Lord Kennett made what’s so far the earliest mention of the greenhouse effect by an elected politician (or at least a minister in an elected government!). Then in 1970, in August, it blew up publicly. And here we are.
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
Aronowsky, L. (2021). Gas guzzling Gaia, or: a prehistory of climate change denialism. Critical Inquiry, 47(2), 306-327
Thirty two years ago, on this day, January 23rd 1992 the allegedly fact based business newspaper, the Australian Financial Review” (“the Fin”) published more denialist shite, including the inevitable quote from Pat Michaels.
SEA levels may be unlikely to rise significantly for many decades to come, but the flood of published material about the enhanced greenhouse effect has become a matter of serious concern.
The flood threatens to inundate small libraries around the world and force the larger ones to build retaining walls in their periodical sections. Fortunately, the main book collections are so far unthreatened.
But while most of us can only watch the increasing flood levels of articles about the effect and wonder what it all means, there are signs that the worst may be over….
Lawson, M. 1992. Cooling the global warming predictions. Australian Financial Review, 23 January . SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.3ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Fin had been running denialist hit pieces, which was very common in the business press this time, even in the quality business press, like the FT allegedy part of the battle of ideas.
The denialists were very good at calling themselves truth tellers and claiming that they were being censored and silenced. See Boykoff and Boykoff 2004 “Balance as bias” – it is really good on this. And the denialists also knew how to give the elite and business press what they wanted, or what was needed to get something printed. So getting a prestigious American over to yap some bollocks was still enough to get published.
What we can learn from this is that the denialists were cunning and persistent. And of course, the organizations were well-funded.
What happened next? The denial kept going, kept escalating, and reached an early peak in 97 before Kyoto. Then the Lavoisier group came along, just to stiffen Howard’s anti Kyoto spine and then it exploded into public in 2009-11. And here we are.
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 two years ago, on this day, January 22nd 1992, the delayers and deniers deployed the dollar dilemma argument,
CANBERRA: Australia would be sent to the poorhouse by the Federal Government’s attitude towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it was claimed yesterday.
It would be “grossly wrong” for Australia to do this at the expense of living standards in a time of recession, said the chief executive of the Australian Institution of Engineers, Mr John Enfield.
He criticised the Minister for the Environment, Mrs Kelly, for acting “prematurely” on the issue, before further research confirmed or disproved predictions on the greenhouse effect.
Chamberlin, P. 1992. Green govt warned of poorhouse effect. Sydney Morning Herald, January, 23 p3.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.3ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that although the battle against the carbon tax had really already been won, not everyone had gotten the memo. And anyway, they want to lay down some suppressing fire and that’s what was happening here, in the immediate period before the Rio Earth Summit. Industry is determined to dampen down government ambition because – nightmare – scenario -rush of blood to the head might get the government promising things (unlikely under Keating!).
What we learn. Assholes gonna asshole.
What happened next World leaders all went to Rio (except Paul Keating, the only OECD nation leader not to attend) and they signed the empty treaty. And you know, the emissions kept climbing and you know the rest.
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.
“ an aircraft accident, sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident (/ˈtuːli/; Danish: Thuleulykken), involving a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber occurred near Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The aircraft was carrying four B28FI thermonuclear bombs on a Cold War “Chrome Dome” alert mission over Baffin Bay when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft before they could carry out an emergency landing at Thule Air Base. Six crew members ejected safely, but one who did not have an ejection seat was killed while trying to bail out. The bomber crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay,[a] Greenland, causing the conventional explosives aboard to detonate and the nuclear payload to rupture and disperse, resulting in radioactive contamination of the area.“
(Lind et al., 2015)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Americans were busy rattling their dicks and swinging their sabres and the world was consistently on a nuclear knife-edge, to use a cliche, and all across the world B52s with nukes were having near misses. And this was just another.
What we learn is that the waste remains, the waste spreads. We have poisoned this beautiful planet. “We” being sabre swingers and those who benefit from that sabre swinging and stay silent. And now everything has been ruined and you know the rest.
What happened next? We almost tried ourselves in 1983-4. Things got dialled back a bit. See also Barry Commoner on radiation building up in the system.
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
Lind, O. C., Salbu, B., Janssens, K., Proost, K., & Dahlgaard, H. (2005). Characterization of uranium and plutonium containing particles originating from the nuclear weapons accident in Thule, Greenland, 1968. Journal of environmental radioactivity, 81(1), 21-32
2014 years ago, on this day, January 20th, 2014, John Gummer calls some green extremists close to trotskyists” in a Guardian interview,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that environmentalists, especially with Paris coming up and the coalition government having “cut the green crap” were getting more outspoken about the need for serious action. And Gummer was pushing back against this.
What we can learn is that establishment greens like Deben, and so forth, have a problem when the physics and the reality start to show that their incrementalist measures haven’t worked, won’t work can’t work. They need to lash out at someone; they’re not going to lash out at themselves, they’re not going to lash out against capitalism or question further industrialization and economic growth, because there are psychological and career consequences for doing that. So they have to lash out at someone and lashing out at so-called green Trotskyists. is risk free and feels good. So they do it. The cost is of course, that they create a caricature, a straw man or woman – green straw, which is not healthy, and everyone’s screwed.
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 two years ago, on this day, January 19th, 1992,
“One of the CSIRO’s top scientists says doubters of the greenhouse effect are gambling with the future of the world. Dr Graeme Pearman, coordinator of the CSIRO’s climate change research program, said yesterday there was little doubt global warming was a reality according to all the best scientific models.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the denialist campaigns in Australia, helped by imported American scientists, had been successful. And the Hawke and then Keating governments had significantly softened their stance, their already weak appetite for economic measures, such as a carbon tax. Pearman, who had been studying the climate issue for 20 years by this stage, knew what was at stake and was publicly pushing back.
What we can learn from this is that scientists have been correctly predicting that the gamble was going on and correctly predicting that there might be losers in that gamble.
What happened next is that a carbon tax came back onto the agenda in 1994-95. It was again defeated, then tax became ETS in the late 90s. Everyone was talking about it. And then finally Tony Abbott killed it off. More broadly Pearman has been very public about the struggles back then.
And we are toast.
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.
Sixty years ago, on this day, January 18th, 1964, Nature published an article about the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) meeting in September 1963, at which Peter Ritchie-Calder (yes, him again!) had spoken about CO2 build-up,
“Discharge of combustion products into the atmosphere had increased its content of carbon dioxide by 10 per cent in a century. The ‘green house effect’ could be expected to increase average mean temperature by 3·6° C in the next 4Q-50 years. This would radically affect the extent of glaciers and ice-caps with resultant rise in sea- and river-levels and increasing precipitation.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by 1963 people like Ritchie Calder were speaking publicly about CO2 buildup. It was no secret among the scientific elite in the United Kingdom. And well. You know, Nature was covering it. This is probably before John Maddox came along as editor.
What we learn is that there’s an entire history of admissions about CO2 build up. It’s not a secret, it’s not considered outlandish. It’s just one of those things. This is also two years after Mariner had gone to Venus and captured a lot of information.
What happened next? It would be 1967 before the CO2 issue really received a boost with the BBC programme Challenge and so forth.
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.
It was a reprint of a recent article by the Scottish thinker Peter Ritchie-Calder, called “Mortgaging the Old Homestead” which appeared in “Foreign Affairs,” the journal of the then hugely influential Council on Foreign Relations.
That article, which was also reprinted in Sports Illustrated and elsewhere, contains the following paragraphs (which were in the Bulletin too).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian magazine The Bulletin liked to sell copies of course, and it had gotten hooked into the eco-trend that had started in late 1969. And therefore, there was a cover you can see here and large excerpts from an article by Ritchie Calder called Mortgaging the Old Homestead. And yes, there was explicit mention of carbon dioxide build up. So, anyone reading a popular magazine in Australia would have been aware of the potential issue.
What we can learn is that by late 1969, the eco fears were serious and large. We can learn that Ritchie Calder was a prominent public intellectual. And we can learn that Australians knew about carbon dioxide build up. There had after all, been in September of 69, various symposia, conferences, radio programmes, you name it. We knew we flipping knew.
What happened next. There were all sorts of events, protests, laws, ministers appointed, but by 1973, the eco fad had run its course; everyone was bored, frustrated. The battles that then happened were, understandably, about local issues such as Concorde and whether it should fly to Australia and logging and Lake Pedder.
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.
