Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 9, 2008 George Bush, who had been President thanks to his dad’s mates on the Supreme Court, told the G8 “Goodbye from the world’s greatest polluter.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George Bush had served two terms as President having been handed the first one by the Supreme Court and then legitimately winning the second albeit with some boxy help, during the second debate with John Kerry
Bush at the G8 had that typical smirk and wanted to, as we now call it, “own the libs,” which he was very good at. And he conceded that yes, the US is the world’s biggest polluter. And it goes back to notions of the United States “way of life” being non negotiable, as his spokesperson had said in early 2001.
What I think we can learn from this is that when high carbon behaviours are “non-negotiable” and you don’t have any decent forms of mass provision, then yeah, you’re gonna be the world’s biggest polluter, and it’s actually not something to be proud of, or joke about, asshole.
What happened next
The world’s biggest polluter kept at it. Obvs.
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, on this day, July 9, 1987, oceanographer and all-round smart guy Wally Broecker warned of “Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse?” in the journal Nature.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
Context
Broecker wrote the first article (ish) – see also 1961 AMS/NYAS solar variation meeting to use the term “global warming”. He had been trying to educate politicians (including Paul Tsongas) for a long time.
What we learn
The 1988 ‘explosion’ of concern was preceded by lots of patient work.
What next
A year minus two days later, the editor of Nature, John Maddox, inadvertently revealed that he didn’t read what was published in his own journal. Or if he did, he was incapable of understanding it.
“ the US launched a thermonuclear warhead into space from the Pacific Ocean. The resulting explosion turned the skies into a technicolor light show of nuclear fallout. In Hawaii, where the effects were most visible, hotels arranged “rainbow bomb parties” so their guests could have a rooftop view of the radioactive particles drifting across the sky.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the atmospheric test ban was about to come into force. And the nut job Dr. Strangeloves just wanted to see what would happen if they burst an H-bomb in the Pacific atmosphere. Could have wiped out the Van Allen belt for all they knew, but hell, why not have a laugh?
What I think we can learn from this is that boys and their toys, get drunk on power. And could easily have been the quick death of us, and definitely are going to be the slow death of us.
What happened next
The bombs moved underground.
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 one years ago, on this day, July 8, 1962, mentions the “Glasshouse Effect” in an article by George Kimgle, about the weather and climate – “But Somebody Does Something About It” New York Times Magazine,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
This article includes a useful summation of the carbon dioxide issue, which by this time was popping up in newspapers everywhere (though not at the same level as it had appeared in the 1950s).
What I think we can learn from this is that people, educated people in 1962 would have been aware of a problem.
What happened next
The following year, the Conservation Foundation held a meeting in New York about carbon dioxide buildup. And within a couple of years, the first book that wasn’t about the weather to mention climate was published – Murray Bookchin’s Crisis in Our Cities.
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 7, 2008, the Liberal Party in Australia, perhaps bewildered to be in Opposition, started backtracking from the (pissweak) commitments it had taken to the 2007 Federal election.
THE Coalition split over climate change policy is growing, with Brendan Nelson refusing to embrace publicly the policy he has agreed to in private with senior colleagues.
Dr Nelson refused again yesterday to state simply that the Coalition supported the introduction of an emissions trading scheme regardless of whether the world’s major polluters were also prepared to act.
While taking an increasingly sceptical line towards climate change, the Opposition Leader denied there was an internal split over policy, claiming instead that it was “a question of emphasis”.
But he is falling foul of senior colleagues including the deputy leader Julie Bishop, the shadow treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, and the environment spokesman, Greg Hunt.
Until this week the Coalition policy was to introduce a domestic emissions trading scheme no later than 2012.
On Monday [7 July] Dr Nelson walked away from that, saying nothing should be done until major polluters such as China and India were also committed, otherwise it would be economic suicide.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Brendan Nelson had become leader of the Liberals after John Howard had lost his seat in the 2007 election. Let’s say that again. John Howard lost his seat in the 2007. Election. Nelson was by this time finding it pretty hard to square the circle because many Liberal MPs and especially National Party MPs, (the party the Liberals were in coalition with) did not like the idea that the hippies had been right and that greenhouse gases were something to worry about. And he was finding it hard to square the circle. And by this time, he must have known that Malcolm Turnbul, the ambitious merchant wanker was circling, wanting the top job.
What I think we can learn from this is that climate change is driving us mad both as individuals but also as organisations. It is an impossible object, a bit like what Captain Picard wanted to implant in the captured Borg in that episode of Star Trek. It is simply driving everyone mad because to use an old Marxist bit of jargon, “the contradictions” cannot be contained and papered over indefinitely.
What happened next is that Turnbull knifed Nelson, tried to bring the Liberals along with climate policy, was left swinging by Kevin Rudd, was then toppled and took everyone by surprise. Tony Abbott became opposition leader. Turnbull eventually toppled Abbott as Prime Minister in 2015. Yes, this is a soap opera. And then Turnbull was himself toppled as Prime Minister. And one of the people who voted against him in that leadership contest mentioned, Brendan Nelson The writers of the soap opera have clearly been paying attention to the back catalogue, and taking way too much acid.
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.
On this day in 1988, the editor of Nature, John Maddox kept going with his general harrumphing and ignorance of what the science was actually saying, with his “jumping the greenhouse gun” editorial. It drew responses from scientists Kenneth Hare and Kenneth Mellanby
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Maddox had been being aggressively wrong about climate change for a long time (1971 – on ABC television, for instance. And earlier.).
What I think we can learn from this
Old white men who have been in jobs a long time paint themselves into a corner and can’t find ways to back down gracefully, by saying the simple words “I was wrong.”
What happened next
Hare and Mellanby replied in Nature a couple of weeks later.
Also – for fans of obscure Meatloaf…
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 years ago, on this day, July 6, 1993, the Canberra Times reported on how everyone had a beef with the Keating government on climate…
The agreement between Commonwealth and state and territory governments on broad environmental issues was widely criticised yesterday by both sides of the debate during an environmental law conference in Canberra
The chief protagonists were Phillip Toyne, former chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation and now Visiting Fellow at the ANU’s Centre for Environment law, and Dr Brian O’Brien, a Penh based consultant and physicist and former chairman of the WA Environmental Protection Authority.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Labour government of Paul Keating had just won the “unwinnable” election of 1993, despite the economy having been in the toilet. The ALP had been silent on the greenhouse issue, as had the Liberals, and the concern of 1988-1991 a distant memory.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can have two people attacking a government from “opposite perspectives” (so Toyne is a greenie and O’Brien as “nothing to see here everything is okay” kind of guy) but that doesn’t mean that the government is right. It can simply mean, as it does in this case, that one lot of critics are simply wrong.
But we so often take triangulation as the safest course. And of course, “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”
What happened next
Toyne ended up as a civil servant, albeit briefly, trying to get a carbon tax through. O’Brien kept trading on his time with NASA. And being an ass. The carbon dioxide kept accumulating.
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, July 5, 1973, a Nobel laureate called Dennis Gabor gave a speech at Lindau on “The Predicament of Mankind.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was running around with a computer, either Malthus or otherwise, proclaiming Limits to Growth or the need for blueprints to survival especially by the year 2000 (odometer years are seductive things). And look, here comes some Nobel Prize winners to stroke their chins and either add to clarity or add to confusion.
What I think we can learn from this
The thing that we should really remember about “Nobel Prize winner X” or a “x Nobel Prize winners sign open letter” is just because they’re really really smart in one particular domain mean doesn’t mean that their self-confidence in that domain, let alone other domains, is necessarily justified. Because for every prescient warning at gatherings like Lindau, there was another one that was completely barking. As Nils Bohr said, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
What happened next
The Lindau lot kept meeting. There have been highlights and lowlights. This year a guy on a manel bemoaned how hard it was for young white men…
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 seven years ago, on this day, July 4, 1996, in an issue of Nature,
“Benjamin Santer, K.E. Taylor, Tom M. Wigley, and ten other researchers published an article that concluded: “The observed spatial patterns of temperature change in the free atmosphere from 1963 to 1987…are similar to those predicted by state-of-the-art climate models… It is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities,…”
Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 220
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 365ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the IPCC second assessment report was coming out. And the authors of this article, especially Santer, had been attacked on spurious grounds repeatedly, publicly and viciously by demented [see addendum at foot of post] old men who were being funded by cynical fossil fuel interests. These assholes were at base, very well aware of the climate science, which was not really in dispute.
What we learn again, there are no depths to which these mongrels, these monsters, will not stoop.
What happened next
Santer’s career continued. The science kept getting stronger. The Global Climate Coalition was able to fold in 2002 to having achieved its aims of stopping the US taking any serious climate action.
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.
Addendum
A commenter has raised an eyebrow over the adjective demented, and they are 100% correct. It was simply wrong to throw a medical term around as an insult. It also medicalises and explains away a political decision. I will try to do better in future. If you, reader(s?) see other examples of dodgy thinking/language, feel free to drop me a line.
On this day in 1957, Sir Edward Appleton makes a passing reference to the possibility of climate change in an article about the International Geophysical Year in the magazine The Listener – “For we do know this: that more carbon dioxide should help the atmosphere to trap more heat from the sun”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that the International Geophysical Year was just beginning, and the BBC had just broadcast “The Restless Sphere”, hosted by Prince Philip. Meanwhile, in April the New Scientist had run a brief story on carbon dioxide.
What we can learn is that we knew enough to be worried, and to set up a proper watching brief. We didn’t.
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.
