Sixty three years ago, questions around appropriate and possible technologies were on the agenda. Ritchie Calder, about to really get his head around the carbon dioxide problem, was present.
Forty six years ago, alongside American efforts, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis was holding another climate meeting (something they’d been doing since about 1976).
Thirty three years ago, coal exporters and their allies/minions were making sure all this stupid “greenhouse” nonsense wouldn’t get between them and their profits…
Twenty eight years ago today, a bent state department, ABARE, got a mild rebuke for its dodgy economic modelling that was being used as an excuse not to take climate action.
Twelve years ago the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the Trades Union Council release a report on how wonderful CCS will be for the UK economy.
The tl;dr “Governments are indeed lying to you about climate change – but not in the way the deniers claim. The situation is not better than we are told. It’s actually far worse.”
That’s a line that didn’t quite survive in my latest Conversation piece, which you can read here.
You may’ve seen coverage of a new report on the threat to national security from environmental collapse.A common response that’s got my goat is: “Look, it’s not just tree-hugging enviros saying this, it’s hard-nosed spooks!”A short thread on why this framing is bad history & bad politics🧵😡😉
Next, I’d add the point that there is a (largely unjustified) mystique around military assessments. They can be wrong, not just for budget-grubbing (threat inflation) reasons, but because they’re written to grab attention. See this from 2004.
Then, well, what is to my mind a key point got axed from my Conversation piece. The 1st British PM to be formally briefed abt climate change was… drumroll… Margaret Thatcher, in mid-1979. She responded with an incredulous “you want me to worry about the weather?”
Ultimately though, all the warnings, with all the graphs and precision and passion and the rest of it don’t amount to a hill of beans in this cooking world unless there are broad-based, non-co-optable, non-exhaustible and – frankly – radical social movement organisations that can help people deal the feelings of anger and despair any rational human who can read a Keeling Curve and understand its implications feels. Without those social movement organisations, you get spasms, disavowal & acting out. But action? Not so much.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, February 3 2010 newly-minted Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was being his true self.
Tony Abbott’s decision to meet Lord Monckton was contemptible — but smart politics. Abbott is just doing what he has been hired to do: dog-whistle to the extreme right of the party.
Tony Abbott met with conspiracy theorist Chris Monckton yesterday at lunchtime, but Abbott wouldn’t allow photographers to record the meeting or publicly comment on what was discussed.
Keane, B. 2010. Abbott to the lunatic fringe: it’s OK, I’m one of you. Crikey, 4 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that since 1990 the Liberal and National party had been terrible on climate change (they had gone to the March Federal election with a more ambitious carbon dioxide reduction target than the ALP, and felt betrayed by the greenies).
The specific context was that Abbott, a manifestly unfit and overpromoted idiot, had become Liberal Leader the previous November, toppling Malcolm Turnbull.
What I think we can learn from this is that Abbott and his goons were brilliant at opposition. Running anything? That’s a different skillset.
What happened next: Oh, the soap opera. Abbott became Prime Minister in 2013. He was toppled two years later, by Turnbull, who was then in turn toppled by… I can’t type this. Meanwhile, the coal exports continued, the impacts grew. Australia is now on the frontline of the Fafocene.
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 six years ago the piss-weak daily business paper “The Fin” reprints a piece from the Financial Times about the crazy radical idea of, erm, putting a price on carbon dioxide.
Twenty one years ago scientists gather in Exeter to discuss “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.” Er, we didn’t, it’s here and it’s going to get so much worse. Oh well.
Sixty three years ago, on this day, January 31st, 1963
At a meeting of the Federal Council on Science and Technology in 1963, Revelle, then the science advisor to Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and the chairman of the PSAC’s Committee on Natural Resources, observed “a shift from earlier ‘Malthus’ attitudes of apprehension over scarcity … to an optimism that science could help meet resources needs, but with a new concern on man’s contribution to pollution of his own environment.”195
Revelle’s words are quoted in: Edward Wenk, Executive Secretary, Federal Council for Science and Technology, “Minutes and Record of Action,” 31 Jan 1963, I. I. Rabi Papers, LOC, Box 45, “Meetings, agenda and minutes, 1957-1972 (1),” 4. Loetscher 2022
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was as that after World War Two, and especially from the 1950s with coming in military Keynesianism, there was an enormous explosion of economic innovation, activity growth, partly to do with pent up consumer demand from the war, growing populations, but also all the new technologies of production that had been invented during or refined during World War Two; radar, sonar, jet engines, computing, the list goes on and on. This has become known as the “Great Acceleration.”
The specific context
So the early 60s is an interesting period, because people like Revelle are well aware of carbon dioxide build up and probably some other long-term issues, and they’re thinking about a switch over from scarcity thinking ie Malthus to cornucopia, but not a cornucopia without consequences.
What I think we can learn is that thoughtful people like Revelle were “on it”.
What happened next. Climate change, oddly, continued Revelle kept being relatively into climate issues
Then in his literally dying days in the early 1990s he was scammed by a failed scientist called Fred Singer, who put out a bullshit article under both their names.
You also had Murray Bookchin tackling similar issues to Revelle here in his post scarcity anarchism essay. And, of course, Bookchin was aware of CO2 build up, as per his “Crisis in our Cities” book, published in April 1965.
The other thing to think about is the tensions between impact science and production science.
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.
January 30, 1961, in a story that would later be used by incoherent denialists, Walter Sullivan, New York Times science reporter, reported that the world was… cooling,
On the morning of Monday 30 January 1989, the ABC 7.45am news reported the Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, had begun an overseas trip to Korea, Thailand, India and Pakistan, with the primary aim of promoting Australian exports, particularly coal, iron ore and agricultural products.
On this day, January 30, in 1989, James Baker, Secretary of State for the new George HW Bush administration gives a speech propounding so-called “no regrets” actions on climate change
Below is the text of an article by William Barbat, in the second issue of his CO2 Newsletter, published in December 1979. I’ve added hyperlinks and references.
How fast can the ocean waters and other natural sinks take up the CO2 produced by man? This question has been the center of heated controversy which occupied a large share of the Dahlem (Berlin) Conference on ‘Global Chemical Cycles’ in 1976 and ERDA’s Miami Beach Workshop on the ‘Global Effects of Carbon Dioxide from Fossil Fuels Combustion’ in 1977.
One school of thought holds that man-created CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere at a rapid rate – possibly as high as 6% per year – once man’s outpourings of CO2 have ceased. If so, any legacy of a CO2-induced climate change would be short-lived except possibly for any destruction of icecaps that has taken place before a CO2~induced warming ended. Natural uptake of CO2 this fast would essentially relegate the CO2 problem to a reversible status similar in certain respects to smoke pollution and acid rain. Also, the contributions to the CO2 build-up due to fossil-fuel consumption by people in the United States (which comprise 5% of the world’s total population) in such a case figures to be 12% of the overall atmospheric build-up rather than 24%.
The leading advocate of this rapid-uptake hypothesis is biologist George Woodwell of Woods Hole. Woodwell’s position is based on his estimate that the cutting and burning of forests (essentially for farm-clearing in the tropics) is currently a major source of CO2 – possibly as much as 20 to 100 percent of that released by the burning of fossil fuels. Woodwell’s estimate of the deforestation rate is not based on hard data, but is projected from very limited statistical samplings, which statistics have also been interpreted by some others as showing a slight increase in forest biomass.
The opposing school of thought holds that uptake by the oceans is very slow and depends on the turnover rate of undersaturated deep ocean waters, which is of the order of 1000 years. If true, then as man’s cumulative output of CO2 exceeds certain threshold values to cause impacts such as a decrease in agricultural productivity, a decrease in marine habitat cause icecaps to become unstable, these impacts would become irreversible for many generations to come. Also the slow uptake carries the implication that the highly industrialized nations bear most of the responsibility for the CO2 buildup rather than sharing it almost equally with farmers in the tropics.
The slow uptake view is shared by the geophysicists, geochemists and ocean scientists who have made extensive studies of the world’s overall carbon budget. Notable among this group are Wallace S. Broecker, Taro Takahashi, and associates of Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory and Columbia University, C.D. Keeling and associates of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Minze Stuiver of University of Washington, and H. Oeschger and U. Siegenthaler of Switzerland.
An article published in Science 26 October 1979 by Broecker and his associates notes that “several versions of recent atmosphere-ocean models appear to give reliable and mutually consistent estimates for carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans calling for a modest increase in the size of the terrestrial biosphere order to achieve a balance in the carbon budget.” These workers further provide hard data on the distribution of carbon isotopes between various carbon reservoirs which provide constraints on the size of the known carbon reservoirs. The authors also note that Woodwell rapid uptake hypothesis and deforestation estimate demands that between one third and one-half of all the tropical forest would have disappeared in the last two decades, which should be more readily apparent if true. (Projected at a constant rate per year rather than at the exponential rate of growth exhibited by the CO2 buildup, one notes that Woodwell’s hypothesized deforestation rate would result in complete elimination of’ tropical forest cover in two or three more decades.) In resolving the apparent carbon budget contradiction, Broeckerl’s group concluded that “regrowths of previously cut forests and enhancement of forest growth resulting from excess CO2 the atmosphere have probably roughly balanced the rate of forest destruction during the past few decades.”
While the controversy over deforestation and ocean uptake is not yet settled to everyone’s satisfaction, majority scientific opinion seems to strongly favor the slow-uptake school of thought. With slow uptake by oceans, there is no safe allowable rate of CO2 output which could prevent temperature thresholds from being reached. Rather every single contribution of CO2 is likely to have a long-lasting effect. Acceptance of the slow uptake theory shifts the social concern from slowing the rate of CO2 production to limiting the total amount of CO2 produced from the combustion of fossil fuels.
Citation: Barbat, W. 1979. Will impacts remain for one generation or thirty? ‘Tropical Deforestation’ issue seeks the answer. CO2 Newsletter, Vol 1. No. 2 p. 3
Annotations:
This is vintage Barbat – the ability to synthesise a large amount of information, summarise ongoing scientific debates in clear and judicious language. It looks easy, but then playing tennis like Roger Federer looks easy.
W S Broecker, T Takahashi, H J Simpson, T H Peng. 1979. Fate of fossil fuel carbon dioxide and the global carbon budget Oct 26;206(4417):409-18. doi: 10.1126/science.206.4417.409.
The Dahlem Conference was this – Global chemical cycles and their alterations by man : report of the Dahlem Workshop on Global Chemical Cycles and their Alterations by Man, Berlin 1976, November 15-19
Fifty seven years ago, on this day, January 29th, 1968,
Far from deploring the possible damage to people and property, the President of the United States, on January 29, 1968, proposed the spending of $351 million for the development of a supersonic liner in fiscal 1969; this represented $223 million in new appropriation. l8 318 feet long, is designed to carry 300 passengers at 1800 miles per hour. It was estimated by Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey that the U. S. 19 supersonic transport fleet may eventually number from 200 to 1200 planes.
Concerned physicists have supplied us with information about the generation of a boom that is unavoidable for any object which travels in the air at a speed exceeding that of sound. The sonic boom produced by a supersonic transport plane accompanies the plane throughout its supersonic flight path; thus, a single flight across the U. S. would affect 10 to 40 million people.
The specific context was Lyndon Johnson was on his way out. It was an election year, and there had been a growing “Dump Johnson” movement in the Democrats. There was also the small matter of the war in Vietnam, which wasn’t going so well…
What I think we can learn from this is that there was huge opposition to supersonic travel (sonic booms etc etc) and concerns about ozone depletion and climatic impacts were a part of all that.
What happened next Johnson had to declare he wouldn’t contest the 1968 election. In 1970 Congress basically killed supersonic transport, de facto if not de jure. This led, amusingly, to the creation of the Heritage Foundation…
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.
From 1979 to 1982 American geologist William N. Barbat published 18 issues of the CO2 Newsletter. His family have kindly supplied copies and given permission for these to be digitised and shared. Every three weeks or so, an issue will be uploaded. To accompany each issue there will be a brief commentary. For the second issue, Dr Abi Perrin (see interview here) has written with her customary clarity, insight and honesty.
Dr Abi Perrin
The second installment of William Barbat’s CO2 newsletter continues his mission to “aid enlightenment on the CO2 problem, to promote constructive and timely solutions, to reduce disagreement and to encourage cooperation”. It expands on the warnings distilled in the first issue and continues to cut through the noise of scientific discussions ongoing at the time, summarising them succinctly and effectively.
Barbat brings the role of ecosystems such as forests and oceans into focus, turning attention to the attractive idea that natural carbon sinks could “relegate the CO2 problem to a reversible status”. Detailing how a growing consensus amongst scientists was unfortunately not so optimistic, he surmises that “there is no safe allowable rate of CO2 output which could prevent temperature thresholds from being reached. Rather every single contribution of CO2 is likely to have a long-lasting effect.”
With an air of hopefulness and conviction that now feels enviable, Barbat seems confident that the dawn of the 1980s would be an inflection point, stating that his newsletter intends to be “informative of an impending revolutionary change to leaders in government and industry.” He celebrates the presentation of a report (an “impartial examination of the validity of CO2 forecasts”) to President Carter’s science adviser as a moment of progress: the next step towards the consideration of global warming in US energy policy.
Amidst optimism, he is not blind to some of the hurdles on the route to action and change. “The revolutionary energy policies which are now being considered by the scientific community to bring the CO2 buildup to an early halt would require much more cooperation between government and business than appears to exist”, he acknowledges. In his discussions of carbon sinks and their capacity (or lack thereof) to reverse the “CO2 problem” he seems to realise how alluring the more convenient or comforting ‘interpretations’ of the science can be, in a way that feels prescient of many of the popular narratives that have delayed necessary accountability and action to this day.
Looking back from 2026, a time where a rapid worldwide transition to renewable power is considered feasible and highly cost-effective, Barbat’s skepticism about the future of wind and solar is one thing that ages his writing. But perhaps the biggest is this: “Fortunately, the CO2 problem has not become an adversary issue. This issue is being treated rationally in the scientific community, in the news media, and in politics.” He identifies apathy as a problem – that’s still with us, but 46 years later we also have to contend with widespread, mounting adversariality and irrationality. In recent months we’ve seen not just denial but effective censorship of basic climate science in the US, while in UK newspapers the volume of editorials attacking climate action overtook those supporting it. Meanwhile global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise defiantly, we continue to trash the lands and oceans that buffer us from even-more-deadly impacts, and announcements that we have passed specific points-of-no-returnreceive little attention.
There were many passages and statements in this newsletter that are frustrating and depressing by virtue of their relevance and repetition ever since. Lurking in one of the ‘Excerpts from recent reports’ was this one: “The problem facing us today is this: When should the studying stop and political action begin?” To see this kind of sentiment expressed a decade before I was born, 30 years before I cheerfully embarked on a career in scientific research, felt especially jarring. A very similar question motivated my exit from academia: was I describing a dying world at the expense of acting to protect it?
Reading these CO2 newsletters caused me to ask myself another uncomfortable question, about the communication work I’m involved with now: am I replicating the approach Barbat and others took for decades, but expecting different results? Concerted action on climate and nature must be empowered and underpinned by knowledge, but even with deadly impacts on our doorstep we cannot put our faith in awareness alone leading to proportionate, rational responses.
I have a list of people I am inviting to provide commentaries (you may be on it – nominate yourselves or other people!) I would send a pdf of the relevant issue and you read it then write (or draw? make a video? a song?) 600-900 words in response, to be published just after the issue goes up.
