Category: Denial

Categories
Denial Taiwan

May 16, 2011 – UKIPPER in Taiwan parliament  

Fifteen years ago, on this day, May 16th, 2011, 

I was conscious that I could not abuse the privilege by speaking for more than say five minutes — and that a dense, technical speech might challenge the interpreter, excellent though she clearly was.

So I expressed my regret that in the available time I could not develop the arguments or the detail — I could do no more than state my position (but I offered to send my “Cool Thinking” book to anyone interested — and had several requests for it afterwards).  I said that a large and increasing number of highly qualified scientists were challenging the orthodox view.  I pointed out that by general agreement mean global temperatures in the last hundred years had risen less than one degree C — a very modest and normal sort of change.  I said that many people thought that the small changes we had seen were entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate cycles.  I briefly mentioned the Roman Optimum/Dark Ages/Mediaeval Warm Period cycle, and said that we appeared to be moving towards a new 21st century climate optimum.

I said there were sound scientific reasons to believe that CO2 was not a major factor in climate change — though sadly I had no time to develop that point.

Ukipper MEP tells Taiwanese parliament CC is doubted… Comedy gold!!  http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/i-address-the-taiwanese-parliament-on-climate-change/

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that there has always been a “head banger” wing to right wing thought. unconvinced by hippie greeny hoax bollocks like, oh, I don’t know, 19th century physics. And you can use words like anti-reflexivity, but ultimately it comes down to willful stupidity and selfishness, which is quickly followed by unwillingness to admit that they’ve been wrong for a long time, so they paint themselves into more and more corners.

The specific context was that UKIP was exemplary of this.

What I think we can learn from this is that stupid is going to stupid, and there’s no cure for stupid. 

What happened next. UKIP, I’m told, is still around, but the energy has moved to Reform, but that is in danger of splintering as well (Restore, Advance etc). 

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 16, 1972 – “Carbon and the Biosphere” symposium

May 16, 1973 Energy and how we live. UNESCO seminar at Flinders – All Our Yesterdays

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese says critical action on #climate being delayed by 20 years… #auspol

May 16, 2006 – UK Prime Minister Tony Blair goes nuclear…

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese, eco-warrior…

May 16 – Interview with Rosie, about zero population growth, zero climate progress, etc…

Categories
Australia Denial

May 15, 2007 – Nick Minchin in denial mode

Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 15th, 2007, a stupid politician is stupid,

A SENIOR Federal Government minister has expressed serious doubts global warming has been caused by humans, relying on non-scientific material and discredited sources to back his claim.

One month after a United Nations scientific panel delivered its strongest warning yet that humans were causing global warming, the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, has questioned the link between fossil fuels and greenhouse gas pollution.

In a letter he wrote on March 5 to Clean Up Australia’s founder, Ian Kiernan, Senator Minchin took issue with Mr Kiernan’s criticism of the minister’s scepticism.

 Frew, W. 2007. Minchin denies climate change man-made. Sydney Morning Herald, March 15.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/minchin-denies-climate-change-manmade/2007/03/14/1173722560417.html#

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that there’s a kind of Australian politician who takes delight in what we now call “owning the libs” and being a hate figure. They believe that they are somehow heroic Galileos, defending Western civilization or some such. Nick Minchin is one of those, and in 2000 he led the successful campaign to defeat an emissions trading scheme in John Howard’s second cabinet. 

The specific context was that the climate issue had burst back into public prominence in September, October, 2006 for a variety of reasons, including the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, a fracturing business consensus about Kyoto ratification and the ongoing IPCC process, all of which were taken and being taken advantage of by Labor, the opposition party. In December 2006 Kevin Rudd had become Labor leader, toppling Kim Beasley, and had used climate change as one of his two sticks to beat John Howard with. So here we see the Liberals feeling cornered and flustered, but you can always rely on someone like Nick Minchin to say the stupidest thing possible. 

What I think we can learn from this. Some people are just well, they’re who they are. 

What happened next. The climate wars continued unabated. The most vicious period was maybe 2011 because we had a female prime minister who was “intentionally barren” trying to do the smallest, most inadequate thing to put a price on carbon dioxide. And those climate wars bubble under today, and you have the problem being that there is no competitive consensus, and that you have a Labor party that has basically given up on everything except being in power. 

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 15, 1932 – great deluge forecast by science, reports New York Times… – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 1950 – Getting Warmer? Asks Time Magazine… – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 1963 – JFK gets told “Yeah, Rachel Carson was Right” 

May 15, 1972 – Clean Air Conference in Melbourne – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 2006 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard spouting “nuclear to fix climate” nonsense

May 15, 2010 – another pointless overnight vigil.

Categories
Denial

May 11, 2001 – classic delaying tactic of asking for more studies

Twenty five years ago, on this day, May 11th, 2001, the Bush administration does what assholes always do…

“In a letter of 11 May 2001 The White House asked the US NAS for assistance in identifying the areas in the science on climate change where there are greatest certainties and uncertainties. The NAS was also asked for its views on whether there are any substantive differences between the IPCC reports and the IPCC summaries. An answer to the request was expected in early June, i.e., within less than a month. The NAS quickly appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Dr Ralph Cicerone, chancellor of the University of California, Irving, CA, and a well-known researcher in atmospheric chemistry (and president of the NAS since 2005). Its report was ready in June…”

(Bolin, 2007) Page 179

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that scientists had been offering detailed warnings about carbon dioxide build up as a threat that must be responded to immediately since, well, really, let’s say 1979 the Charney report. And politicians had been nodding and then doing nothing.

The specific context was that George W. Bush, the son of HW, had on the campaign trail in 2000 said that CO2 would need to be regulated. In March of 2001, shortly after his inauguration, and after the Supreme Court had handed him the 2000 presidential election. Bush had pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.

So Bush needed to do – or to be seen to do – something on climate change. And here he reverted to the classic tactic of calling “for further research” as a delaying tactic. So it’s not denial which will rile liberals, but it is that sort of soft “ah, we need further research. (We are responsible. We’re not rushing into anything, even though the time for that action has long passed.) It is still, if not catnip, then acceptable as a talking point for lots of centrist pundits who can then talk about sober statesmanship and who should be on the panel and what its terms of reference should be, and all the rest of it. Meanwhile, the planet burns. 

What I think we can learn from this. The old tactics keep working. Because civil society never learns, never pushes.

What happened next. The National Academies of Science came back with the same report that they’d been coming back with since 1989 when Bush’s dad had been a new president. And they had said, it’s real and we really ought to do something about it, and nothing was done. 

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

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

May 11, 1990 – Money or the Planet. You decide (except you don’t).

Categories
Denial United States of America

April 22,  1996 – Denial on Earth Day  

Thirty years ago, on this day, April 22nd, 1996,

A more organised opposition to the IPCC’s conclusions began in the USA on Earth Day (22 April 1996), with a message distributed widely, including to every member of the US Congress, and with the first issue of the State of the Climate Report attached in which the IPCC conclusions were challenged. However, just as this report was about to be published, the Union of Concerned Scientists denounced it in a press release, based on earlier contributions to the media debate about global warming by the man in charge, Patrick Michaels: “The forthcoming climate change report sponsored by Western Fuels Association is like a lung cancer study funded by the tobacco industry.”

(Bolin, 2007) Page 128

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that the denialists had won major battles in 1989 to 1992 by convincing George Bush to play hardball and to threaten to boycott the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the Rio treaty, if targets and timetables were included in the treaty text.

Then denialists had also defeated Bill Clinton’s BTU tax in 1993.

The denialists were also gearing up for a battle royale over the upcoming Kyoto conference, and here we see them sending a message on Earth Day to all congresspeople as part of the day-to-day routine of blitzing politicians with talking points, which will be picked up and used by friends and allies and will be a reminder to those who were not their friends and allies that they the bad guys still exist and can make trouble.   

The specific context was that the Kyoto battles were just beginning…

What I think we can learn from this is that evil never sleeps, never takes a step back unless forced to.

What happened next: Evil has kept on winning. Oh well.

Also on this day: 

April 22, 1965 – Manchester Evening News article on C02 and global warming – All Our Yesterdays

April 22, 1975 – UK Civil Service scratches its head on #climate

April 22, 1993 – Clinton’s announcement used by anti-carbon pricing Aussies

Categories
Australia Denial Kyoto Protocol

April 3, 2001 – Kyoto Protocol most serious challenge to Australian sovereignty since Coral Sea

On this day 25 years ago a nutjob wrote…

 Australian government is being applauded by corporate polluters and corporate front groups at home and abroad. The Global Climate Coalition, the major front group for US corporate polluters, features on its web site an article by Alan Wood in the April 3 Australian (<http://www.globalclimate.org>). Wood’s article, titled “Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests”, urges Australia to back the US in pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Wood comments favourably on a paper written by climate sceptic Alan Oxley for the Lavoisier Group, an Australian “think tank” which argues that the Kyoto Protocol poses “the most serious challenge to our sovereignty since the Japanese fleet entered the Coral Sea on 3 May, 1942”.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/canberra-covers-bush-greenhouse

AND

The US has called Europe’s bluff, LISTEN to the Europeans and you could be forgiven for thinking George W. Bush has just sent the world to the gas chamber – the greenhouse gas chamber, that is. What Bush has really done by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol is shatter a European dream of running the international energy market, or at least a substantial bit of it.

This dream arose from a mix of Europe’s quasi-religious green fundamentalism and cynical calculation of commercial advantage. Jacques Chirac gave the game away at the failed COP6 talks at The Hague last November, when he described the protocol as “a genuine instrument of global governance”.

Wood, A. 2001. Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests. The Australian, 3 April, p13.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that, well, as discussed yesterday, link, the Kyoto Protocol was inadequate, but essential – necessary but wildly insufficient. What you see here is the bat shit, crazy, conspiratorial One World Government crap from someone with an academic background, but no grasp on reality. This language of sovereignty, of “taking back control” is immensely powerful and useful for the nutjobs, and they use pretty much every opportunity they can to deploy it.

So much for one fragile world. The Treaty of Westphalia is a treaty of failure, as was predicted by many observers in the late 1970s who knew that getting nations to agree to emissions cuts would be virtually impossible.

The specific context was that Bush Jnr had followed Dick Cheney’s instructions, and pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol.

What I think we can learn from this is that we are doomed.

What happened next:  Howard pulled Australia out the following year, but this was a major factor in his eventual political demise.

Also on this day: 

April 3, 1995 and 2001 – Australia’s international trajectory – from bullshit to batshit delusion (but honest)

April 3, 1980 – US news anchorman Walter Cronkite on the greenhouse effect

April 3, 1991- Does coal have a future?

April 3, 2000 – Australian diplomats spread bullshit about climate. Again

Categories
Denial Interviews Sea level rise

Interview: Sonny Whitelaw on sea-level rise, the CO2 Newsletter and … stargates

Sci-fi writer (among many hats) Sonny Whitelaw [personal website here], curator of https://climateandnature.org.nz/ kindly agreed to answer some questions

1. A bit about who you are/where you grew up.

I was born in Sydney, Australia; my family had a holiday home on a northern coastal town. I grew up surfing, snorkelling, and running around the local rivers on a small dinghy, fishing and trapping mud crabs. I was endlessly fascinated by the natural world, particularly dynamic earth system processes, something my high school geography teacher must have realised because she always asked me questions that sent me to the library on weekends. One of those questions was, ‘What is isostasy and eustasy?’ Trying to understand why ice ages came and went and the complexity of sea level changes led me to study coastal systems at the University of Sydney. It was 1975, straight after the devastating coastal erosion caused by the 1974 storms, so there was a lot of interest on the topic.

2. Do you remember when/how you first heard about carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem and what your reaction was?

There was no specific ‘ah ah!’ moment when I Iearned the connection between CO2 and global temperatures. It just made sense, because it explained the primary mechanisms driving eustatic sea level changes.

3. How did you come to be doing a Masters at U of Sydney?

Starting an MA in 1979 was a natural extension to understanding how sea level changes during the Eemian (125kya) created the coastal landscapes where I had spent much of my childhood.

From 1979-1981, to understand the implications for future coasts,

4. Do you remember who put you onto the CO2 Newsletter, and what your reaction to it was?

 I was reading everything I could find on the mechanisms for global temperature change.  When I saw your post of the CO2 Newsletter, I immediately recognised it, so it must have had an impact on me at the time.

5. What’s your favourite climate fiction and why?

Favourite climate fiction: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. But my favourite books are non-fiction because they generate so many cool ideas. Current favourite: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp.

6. Tell us a bit about your own books, and also “what next?”

I lived on a yacht in Vanuatu for 20 years, making a living as a freelance photographer and features writer. When I moved back to Australia in 2000, I wrote a novel. It won an award, and was invited to write tie-in novels based on the television series Stargate-SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. In 2008, I moved to Aotearoa New Zealand. The unfolding story of climate change is far more compelling than fiction, so I now write lengthy reports in my capacity as technical climate change advisor for Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.

7. Complete this sentence – “It’s important to know, at least in outline, the loooong history of our awareness of carbon dioxide build-up because…

this one gas acts like a control knob on the planet’s thermostat. And we’re turning it up at pace.” (And I’m 100% sure I stole that from one of the many climate scientists telling the same story).

8. Anything else you’d like to say.

In 2005, I was signing Stargate novels at a science fiction convention when someone asked me, ‘What’s it like to walk through the Stargate?’ Similar questions popped up over the next few years. No amount of explaining convinced them that the Stargate wasn’t real and that the stories were entirely fiction. I was also coming up against climate change denial, which is also rooted in fallacies and fiction. So I went back to uni to find out why, and ended up with an MA thesis titled ‘The Attraction of Sloppy Nonsense’. Still doesn’t help me convince climate denialists that believing in bullshit is not a survival strategy.


[see interview about The Attraction of Sloppy Nonsense here.]

Categories
Denial United Kingdom

March 17, 2013 – Daily Mail idiot makes idiotic climate claims 

Nineteen years ago, on this day, March 17th, 2013,

In the four-page version published in the Mail on Sunday on 17 March, he calls climate science the “Great Green Con”. And, when David writes one of his exposés, Carbon Brief like to expose his errors. 

https://storage.googleapis.com/gpuk-archive/blog/climate/mail-fake-cover.html

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 400ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that the Daily Mail has been mostly but not entirely, hostile to the idea of carbon dioxide build up. There was this article from 1979 based on a book, World without Trees.

But on the whole, the Daily Mail mostly has derided hippies and anti-capitalists and grant grubbing-scientists. Every so often, they’ll run a story or an editorial to show that they’re somehow “balanced”, but they’re not really fooling anyone

The specific context was that their journalist, if you want to call him that, David Rose, was a reliable repeater of the latest denialist memes and talking points and bullshit to come out of the United States. (and, self-confessedly at the time of the Iraq war, security services disinformation). And so it came to pass here, in 2013 after the Copenhagen failure and ahead of David Cameron saying “cut the green crap.”

In 2013, Media Matters named Rose’s publication, the Daily Mail “2013 Climate Change Misinformer of the Year” for its stirring up of “faux controversies about climate science.” In 2014, Greenpeace made an official release noting that David Rose is “not a credible source.”12 13

David Rose – DeSmog

What I think we can learn from this is that there is a conveyor belt of ass-hollering, where denial, half truths and outright lies get washed into newspapers, and then some of it ends up in people’s heads. I am not proposing a hypodermic model;  it is more of an air mist than a hypodermic. 

What happened next The Mail has kept on being awful on climate, alongside the Express, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph, as per Carbon Brief.

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

March 17, 1976 – UK Weather boss dismisses climate change as “grossly exaggerated”

March 17, 2006 – Rio Tinto says “CCS is key to cutting greenhouse gases.” Oops, then…

March 17, 2007 – Edinburgh #climate action gathering says ‘Now’ the time to act

 March 17, 2014 – Carbon Bus sets off to the North

Categories
Denial United Kingdom

March 8, 2007 – Great Global Warming Swindle 

Nineteen years ago, on this day, March 8th, 2007,

Great Global Warming Swindle broadcast on Channel 4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that climate change had come alive as an issue in the summer of 2006 especially in the UK, thanks to various factors, including “Camp to Climate Action,” (which I was involved in), and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth. Therefore the backlash would have to begin. 

The specific context was that the idiots who made the documentary had form. They had produced something in the late 90s called Against Nature that said, in effect, “Hitler was vegetarian, therefore vegetarians are at least Nazi-adjacent.” 

What I think we can learn from this is that mud and shit will be flung by opponents of action towards stopping us killing ourselves more quickly than we otherwise might. This is especially the case if “stopping our killing ourselves quickly” involves cutting into the profits of rich white people and the so-called liberties of rich white people. It’s not just the rich, of course, I’m being tabloid here. 

What happened next

 The Swindle enabled middle class people who didn’t want to take a stand and change anything to say “Oh, well, there’s still doubt. Scientists are still not sure.” Blah, blah, blah. 

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

March 8 – International Women’s Day – what is feminist archival practice? 

March 8, 1971 – The Future cancelled for lack of interest…

March 8, 1978 – Minister for Science speaks proudly of Australia’s carbon dioxide monitoring…

March 8, 1999 – Direct Air Capture of C02 mooted for the first time

Categories
Denial Science Scientists United States of America

March 6,1996 – Michael McCracken testimony about “skeptic” scientists

Thirty years ago, on this day, March 6th, 1996,

“On March 6, 1996, Michael MacCracken submitted prepared testimony to the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives. One part of that testimony addressed recurring criticism by the skeptic scientists of IPCC findings that corroborate increased atmospheric warming and attribute that increase to human emissions of greenhouse gases”.

Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 198

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was  with the coming of the climate issue in 1988, the denial campaigns had cranked into gear. Initially it was attacks on James Hansen, but by 1989 it had spread thanks to outfits like the George C Marshall Institute, which had been set up to shill for Star Wars, the Space Defence Initiative, and outfits like Western Coal Association and the “Information Clearinghouse on the Environment.” Things had really cranked into higher gear in 1994-95 because the  IPCC second assessment report was being produced, and the denialists needed to attack it and cast doubt on it as much as they could.

The specific context was that the Second Assessment report had come out in November of ‘95 and had included the fateful phrase that humans were already exerting a “discernible” influence on the climate. I think the wording had been suggested by Bert Bolin. 

Anyway, here’s one of the good guys, Mike McCracken trying to educate congresspeople about scepticism, science, climate, etc. 

What I think we can learn from this is that the denialist campaigns are partly about rich white men wanting to stay rich. They also provide a platform for superannuated scientists like Nirenberg and Seitz and Singer to feel that they are somehow still relevant when frankly they’re not – or certainly not relevant scientifically, but somehow manage to have an enormously pernicious influence for the future of our species. 

Though, to be fair, even without the denialist campaigns, we would have probably still fumbled the ball. We’ll never know. 

What happened next. The denialist campaigns kept going. Within a year or two, they’d found what they thought was “soft target” in their ongoing “Serengeti Strategy” – Michael Mann, and the caravan went on.

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

March 6, 1992 – #survival emissions versus outright denial 

March 6, 2002 – ABARE cheerleads Bush. Blecch

March 6, 2009 – first “Low Carbon Industrial Strategy” announced 

March 6, 2009 – the UK gets its first “low carbon industrial strategy”

Categories
anti-reflexivity Denial United States of America

February 24, 1994 – Ted Koppel versus the lies. No contest.

Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 24, 1994,

On February 24th, 1994, ABC’s Nightline aired a news segment titled, “Is Science for Sale?” Its host, Ted Koppel, explained the piece was prompted by a conversation with then Vice President Al Gore. The segment features many prominent climate change deniers including:

The comments in this segment reflect some of the most common arguments used by climate deniers attempting to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change such as:

  1. Current science is unable to tie increases in greenhouse gases to human activities;
  2. We should rely on present observations rather than inaccurate climate models which are unable to predict future climate scenarios effectively;
  3. Climate policies are unnecessary and would hurt the economy, endanger people, and harm our way of life.

On air, Koppel reported the financial ties of his guests, largely comprised of fossil fuel entities, including consulting fees to Fred Singer from Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil (14:50); funding to Patrick Michaels and Sherwood Idso from the coal interest group Western Fuels Association (12:20; 13:30) ; and support of Ron Arnold’s Wise Use Movement from corporations like Exxon (5:30). The segment also included a clip of Rush Limbaugh, referred to as the “archdeacon of conservatism” boasting, “I can produce as many scientists that say there is not global warming as they can produce that say there is.” He referred to Pat Michaels as “one that I rely on” (12:15).

The segment featured environmental advocates Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund and Vice President Al Gore, however, Jerry Mahlman, previous director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was the only scientist interviewed who challenged the opinions of deniers like Fred Singer, of whom Koppel also referred to as a “scientist.”

Despite the segment’s lack of scientists representing the global consensus on anthropogenic climate change, Koppel comments:

“This is not, you understand, a close call. It’s not as though US scientists are evenly divided or even close to being evenly divided on issues like the greenhouse effect or depletion of the ozone layer. But environmentalists are concerned about even the appearance of a scientific dispute.” (6:09)

1994 02 24 Nightline Ted Koppel – https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/1994-nightline-special-science-for-sale/

UK-EN | D7960 | Curate for cash | Home | Seller | 16×9 | 15s | .mp4

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that from 1988,eighty-nine onwards, the denialists in the United States had been pushing back as hard as they could against climate science using superannuated physicists like Nirenberg and the George Marshall Institute to muddy the waters. They had done this with significant success.

The specific context was that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had had their asses handed to them over the proposed BTU (i.e.petrol) tax and Gore was therefore probably in a bad mood about all this, and so got talking to Ted Koppel, who was one of the sort of famous news anchors and they did a full on expose of the denialist tropes/

What I think we can learn from this is that politicians have been trying to educate the public and Gore, bless him, has within the constraints of his particular ideology, done more than most. But telling people that they’ve been lied to and showing how they’ve been lied to, turns out it doesn’t work that well, because you’re asking people to admit that they fell for lies, and nobody wants to admit that they fell for lies. 

What happened next: Lies kept coming. They were convenient to believe. The lying campaign stepped up a notch around 1997 as the Kyoto negotiations were underway, and alongside the lies came the emissions, came the increasing concentrations. And I’ve already said this about 10 times this month already, so I won’t repeat myself.

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: 

February 24, 1971 – aims of the Department of the Environment

February 24, 2003 – UK Energy White Paper kinda changes the game (a bit).

February 24, 2011 – the fateful press conference of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Greens Bob Brown…