Category: Denial

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Australia Denial

November 3, 2000 – Australian denialists get American scientist to testify about Kyoto Protocol, smear IPCC

On this day, November 3 in 2000,  American scientist Richard Lindzen  testified to an Australian Senate investigation of Kyoto Protocol, at the behest of the denialist group that grandly and inanely took the name of a French chemist called  Lavoisier…

According to the final senate report

“Professor Richard Lindzen, a Professor of Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, questioned the idea of ‘scientific consensus’ of reports of the IPCC. He claimed that the IPCC has hundreds of scientists, each working on a couple of pages, with none ever polled to assent to the summary. This, he claimed, is used as a bludgeon for questioning. Further, he claimed that scientists permit this to happen for their own self-preservation and to maintain an interest in the science.”

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 369 or soppm. At time of writing it was 416ish ppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Australia had extorted an absurdly good deal at the December 1997 climate conference in Kyoto, with a “reduction” target of … an 8% increase in emissions,  and a huge loophole for “avoided emissions” for deforestation.

But Prime Minister John Howard really didn’t want to ratify it.

There was argy-bargy back and forth, as climate was used as a chip in the “culture” war.

A Senate Investigation was underway and the so-called Lavoisier Group invited Richard Lindzen to give testimony.  (The links between Australian and the USA on climate denial go back to the very early 1990s).

Why this matters. 

The creation of ignorance and doubt about basic scientific facts has been a favoured tool in the hands of those who want things to carry on as they are.

What happened next?

Howard, on June 5 2002 (World Environment Day) announced he was not going to ratify Kyoto.

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Australia Denial

October 16, 1997 – Australian businessman declares climate change “no longer an issue”

On this day, October 16 in 1997, Australian businessman Hugh Morgan, executive director of Western Mining Company, speaking on ABC radio, claimed that climate change was no longer an issue.

“Also, in responding to Senator Parer’s comments regarding the “Club of Rome” reported in The SMH on 14.3.97, both BHP Limited and CRA Limited executives were reported to confirm their commitment to environmental performance. The CRA Limited executive made it clear that his company considered climate change a serious issue. In contrast to this, on 16.10.97 Hugh Morgan, the Executive Director of Western Mining Company Ltd. stated the change in the science indicated that the experiment test of climate change had not been met which implied that climate change was no longer an issue (ABC radio news, AM program).”

(Duncan, 1997:84)

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 360.98ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Australian business had mobilised strongly and successfully in the early 1990s against the threat of a carbon tax. The new threat was that international pressure at the upcoming Kyoto conference might lead to the Australian government accepting actual cuts in emissions. Prime Minister John Howard was moving heaven and earth to avoid this, and doubtless was pleased when Hugh Morgan came out with this.

Morgan was an old-fashioned culture warrior, who had previously said Aborigines had practiced cannibalism etc etc. The stuff he came out with in the 70s and 80s was just wild.

His consigliere, Ray Evans, was already neck deep in co-ordinating international anti-climate  collaboration, with US denialists. Evans was later a founder of the misnamed “Lavoisier Group.”

Why this matters. 

Let’s remember who has been working hard to stop anything being done about climate change, yes?

What happened next?

Australia got a sweet sweet deal at Kyoto and STILL didn’t ratify.

Categories
Australia Denial United States of America

September 28, 1997 – Australian denialist spouting tosh to his US mates.

On this day, September 28, 1997, Australian denialist Ray Evans sprayed his usual nonsense.

1997 Climate Treaty fosters economic impoverishment and endangers US Sovereignty. Washington, D.C. Heritage Foundation, backgrounder No 1143.

The forthcoming Conference… on Climate Change.. in Kyoto… is the next occasion where the Environmentalists will seek to build their Berlin Wall. That Wall will take the form of an international institution… empowered to monitor, and regulate, the C02 emissions of the countries who sign the Kyoto Protocol, and, presumably, impose penalties upon those countries.

NR Evans, Executive Officer, WMC Resources Ltd Australia, speaking at the International Conservative Congress, Washington DC, Sept 28, 1997.

Context – Australian fossil interests had been pushing hard against a climate treaty since 1990. The Australian Government had been sorta divided on this, but always with the pro-coal interests having the upper-hand. Then John Howard became Prime Minister (March 1996) and went all-out in 1997 to try to get Australia the most generous terms imaginable. This effort by the vile Ray Evans should be seen against that backdrop.

On this day the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 360.44 ppm. At time of writing it’s 420ish.

Why this matters. 

The denial campaigns worked. Bravo

What happened next?

We didn’t act at the speed and scale we needed to.

Categories
Australia Denial

September 24, 1991 – Australian denialist gives “Greenhouse Myths” seminar.

On this day in 24 September 1991, an Australian scientist called Brian O’Brien gave a seminar called “Greenhouse Myths and Messages” at a seminar of the Tasman Institute. The Tasman Institute had been set up pretty much to combat momentum towards environmental protection legislation. They published a series of “reports” and seminars/speaker tours (including international visitors).

O’Brien is dead now, so libel laws don’t apply.

What a prick. What an arrogant moron.

His obituary here https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2020/August/UWA-physicist-leaves-behind-stellar-legacy

is suitably silent on his disgraceful and damaging action on climate change (there’s a lot more than a mere seminar.”)

The context – Tasman – and others – were trying to kill off proposals for economic responses to carbon dioxide build-up, especially a carbon tax. This seminar will have been scheduled in the knowledge that the draft chapters of the “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process were to be released. A seminar like this would provide a nice hook for a press release/puff piece by a sympathetic journalist…  That’s how this stuff works.

On this day the PPM was 352.34

Now it is 420ish – but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

Old men with relevance deprivation syndrome throwing their weight and over-confidence around. Gaia help us all.

What happened next?

The Tasman Institute was a dead duck by the late 90s – with the arrival of a Liberal National Government there was no need for it, and its sponsors pulled the plug.

O’Brien may or may not have had second thoughts. I don’t know or care. When it mattered, he was wrong.

Categories
Australia Denial

September 8, 1990 – Australian #climate denialist spouting his nonsense…

On this day, 8 September 1990 a climate denialist called John Daly was spouting his soothing nonsense.

The worsening of the greenhouse effect is not inevitable, according to the author of The Greenhouse Trap, John Daly. Sea levels may not be rising, the planet may not be warming and studies indicate that the real increase in carbon-dioxide emission world-wide since 1850 is not the commonly reported 80 per cent but about 25 per cent, he says.

Mr Daly, a marine electronics engineer, spoke in Canberra on Saturday night [8 September] on what he calls a program of misinformation.

His recent exposure of inaccuracies in a schools’ brochure issued by the Minister for the Environment, Ros Kelly, led to its withdrawal.

Mr Daly quotes several eminent Australian scientists and many American ones as having compiled

evidence casting doubt on the existence of the greenhouse effect.

“I just want people to realise that there is some doubt,” Mr Daly said.

He says that in 20 years’ study of weather and science, particularly during the greenhouse effect’s “fashionable” period, the ’80s, he has found little to prove its existence.

Anon. 1990. Author questions greenhouse effect. Canberra Times, 10 September, p. 5.

Idiot.

On this day the PPM was 351.38. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

There was a very successful campaign by over-confident and wilfully ignorant “contrarians” for decades. Daly was present at the creation.

What happened next?

The denial stuff kept on going. Old white men painted themselves into a corner and admit they were wrong. So it goes.

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Denial United Kingdom United States of America

September 4, 2006 – Royal Society to Exxon: “Knock it off with the funding to #climate deniers”

On this day, September 4 2006, the Royal Society (venerable Science outfit, 360ish years old) asked the American oil company Exxon to knock it off with the climate denial support.

https://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2006/royal-society-exxonmobil/

On this day the atmospheric carbon dioxide level was 379.04 ppm Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

Exxon had been/has been an enormous source of climate denial, despite their own scientists saying in the 1970s that yes, indeed, global warming because of the burning of fossil fuels was going to be a serious thing. A bunch of scientists who don’t like hand-to-hand combat coming out and saying “stop right there thank you very much” was a big deal.

What happened next?

Exxon got sneakier about it, is all.

Categories
Australia Denial International processes IPCC

August 30, 1990 -Australian diplomats (probably) tried to water down IPCC recommendations

On this day August 30 1990, the IPCC’s meeting in Sundsvall, Sweden featured attempts by the USA and Australia to water down policy findings.

The IPCC had been set up in 1988, in part to stop climate scientists being too independent and making a repeat of what happened over ozone less likely (The Reagan Administration had felt ‘bounced’).  It had delivered its first report ahead of the Second World Climate Conference (which had been pushed back a few months so that it could also serve as the starting point for international negotiations for the impending climate treaty).

Some nations (but not – at this point – Australia) had said, with varying degrees of sincerity/seriousness, that they would try to cut their emissions by 20 per cent by 2005. This target had been agreed at a conference in June 1988, and so was known as the “Toronto Target” (Some NGOs at Toronto had been pitching even higher, btw).

The Australian Federal Labor Government was wrestling over this – The previous Environment Minister, Graham Richardson, had lost a Cabinet battle over it in May 1989.  HIs successor, Roz Kelly, was still trying to get it through, in the face of opposition – e..g.  A “Labor Party’s caucus primary industries and resources committee report, [chaired by] Brian Courtice (Qld). The report said the Government had been conned by green groups and would risk future electoral success if it continued to “appease” them.”

So, anyway, against that backdrop, this is entertaining – 

“Mrs Kelly said reports last week that the Australian delegation to the International Panel on Climate Change in Sweden [IPCC 4th Session SUNDSVALL 27-30 August 1990] had supported moves by the United States to water down its policy findings were being investigated. The delegates had been told before leaving for the meeting to support the Toronto targets.”

Seidel, Helen (4 September 1990). “Emissions target a hard sell for Kelly”. The Canberra Times.

My Conversation piece about the Sundsvall meeting here.

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 353 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

There are no “pure” processes from which we fall. Everything is messy, contested. Organisations (states, corporations etc) defend their interests, try to shape narratives.

What happened next?

A weak weak treaty was agreed in 1992.

Since 1990, human emissions have gone up by about 67% per cent. The age of consequences is here for some (ironically mostly those least to blame) and is imminent for everyone.

Categories
Denial

August 28, 1971 – snarky opinion piece in New York Times. Stephen Schneider rebuts days later.

On this day , August 28, 1971, a snarky opinion piece appeared in the New York Times, written by an oil lobbyist called Eugene Guccione (not the Penthouse guy!).  It ran with the now-all-too-familiar sneers and (deliberate?) misunderstandings of what was being said.

A few days later, scientist Stephen Schneider wrote a good rebuttal, his first ever letter to a newspaper.

There’s a very good piece on this in Real Climate by Gavin Schmidt.

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 325.43 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

The ignorance, complacency and motivated reasoning? Goes way back,

What happened next?

Schneider spent the rest of his life being very very sound on climate change. A mensch.

Categories
Denial Industry Associations International processes United States of America

August 24, 1994 – first signs of a split in the anti-climate action business coalition…

On this day, August 24th, in 1994 the first signs of a split in the business opposition to climate action appeared.

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 357.59 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

“An additional factor was the splintering of industrial interests. The Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council had been the main industry participants in the INC, representing mainly coal and oil interests. However, a development within INC 10 was the emergence of an industry lobby in favour of the convention’s further C02 reductions (ECO, 24 August 1994: 4; 26 August, 1994: 1). There was now a wide coalition of industrial interests favouring action on climate change. One consisted of parts of the insurance industry, scared of losses from freak weather (and whose interests have been forwarded, interestingly, by Greenpeace). Another was the ‘sunrise industries’ of renewables and energy efficiency. Yet another was the gas industry. 

Matthew Paterson 1996 page 194

Why this matters. 

Splits in the previously united church/state/business sector are part of ‘how things change’ if you believe all that dialectic stuff. It’s immaterial now though, given how the atmospheric concentrations have climbed, will climb…

What happened next?

A few re-insurers turned up for a day at the COP1 meeting in Berlin the following year, but were of course outnumbered, outgunned and outfought by the fossil lobbyists. (See Jeremy Leggett’s “The Carbon War” for an account of this).

Then, in 1997, BP became the first sizeable defector from the Global Climate Coalition. Now actual outright denial is relatively rare. But resistance to appropriate action continues…

Categories
Australia Denial Industry Associations Kyoto Protocol

August 20, 1997 – Australian Mining Industry operative misrepresents the #climate science. Obvs.

On this day, August 20, 1997, a mining trade industry figure, Dick Wells of the Minerals Council of Australia totally misrepresents what the IPCC was by this time saying about climate change.”

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 362.4 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

“In an interview on ABC television, 7.30 Report on 20.8.97, Dick Wells stated that industry did not support the assertion that most scientists believe a build up of gases will cause climate change. Instead, industry supports the IPCC results which, he asserts, conclude that there is doubt about the science. Mr Wells goes on to say industry takes the issue seriously, that there is a “need for caution and we like good science … we’re a science based industry …” and concludes “there are a wide range of scientific opinions about what the impacts are going to be of any global warming and what we’re saying is it’s still prudent to do cost effective measures now and that’s what we’re embarking on with government but to go beyond those measures which deliver economic benefits, we think it would not be prudent to do so at this stage.””

(Duncan, 1997:84)

Yes, this would be the same IPCC whose second assessment report had – to howls of confected outrage from the Global Climate Coalition – concluded that the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

Why this matters. 

Industry gets to seem reasonable. Australians don’t get up out of their armchairs and demand much much more of their elected leaders. Result!

What happened next?

The mining industry kept on keeping on. Who do you think supplied that lacquered lump of coal to Scott Morrison to brandish in parliament? Who do you think his inner circle was made up of?