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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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…
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?
On this day, August 19 1997, a denialist conference took place in Canberra, in the run up to the Kyoto Conference of the Parties
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 362.4 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
There had been various acts of collaboration between the American and Australian denialists (Ray Evans, Hugh Morgan’s henchman, had been in Washington the year before, and various US scientists and activists had visited Australia for speaking tours, but this was ‘next level’.)
John Howard was trying to get Australia off the hook – as a developed country with high per capita emissions (all that coal-burning!) and huge coal exports, it could be expected to be in the firing line. He’d launched a diplomatic assault on this, and it suited the corporate interests in the United States to have Australia as an ally.
The Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative corporate funded US think tank organised a conference in Canberra in conjunction with the Australian APEC Study Centre. The conference, entitled Countdown to Kyoto, was organised, according to the Australian, to “bolster support” for the Government’s increasingly isolated position on global warming in preparation for the Kyoto conference. US Senator Chuck Hagel, who co-sponsored the Senate resolution on a treaty agreement in Kyoto, was a speaker as was US Congressman John Dingell. Other speakers included the Chairman of Australian multinational BHP and the Director of the think tank, the Tasman Institute.
Malcolm Wallop, who heads the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, chaired the conference with Hugh Morgan, the head of Western Mining. Wallop was a US Senator for 18 years who boasts of his achievements in promoting SDI and opposing welfare, progressive taxation, Social Security, and government funding for higher education. Wallop said in a letter to US conservative groups: “This conference in Australia is the first shot across the bow of those who expect to champion the Kyoto Treaty.” He also stated that the conference would “offer world leaders the tools to break with the Kyoto Treaty.” The conference was opened by Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer who argued that tough emission reduction targets could put 90,000 jobs at risk in Australia and cost more than $150 million.
Patrick Michaels argued at the Countdown to Kyoto conference that the science to support “expensive and potentially disruptive policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions…is sorely lacking.” Michaels also gave the good news about global warming to a global warming seminar organised by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia, when he recently visited Australia. He has travelled the world on behalf of anti-climate treaty interests. In October he attended a conference similar to Canberra’s Countdown on Kyoto in Vancouver organised by the conservative think tank, The Fraser Institute. Also attending this conference was Robert Balling.
See also
Scorcher, Hamilton, 2007; p. 67
The Carbon Club by Marian Wilkinson
And tomorrow’s blog post too…
Why this matters.
It’s not just “progressives” who can do international cooperation… And when it really mattered, when there was still the outside chance of doing something meaningful on climate change, the “carbon club” was properly transnational…
What happened next?
Australia got a super-sweet deal at Kyoto. But then, the next President, selected by the Supreme Court, pulled the US out of the Kyoto process, and a year later, in 2002, Australia followed suit.
Kyoto was not “all that” – see the solid article on “The Veil of Kyoto”…
On this day, August 18 in 1996, Brian Tucker, who had headed up the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, and attended some important scientific meetings, reveals himself incapable of understanding that the world does not conform to how you would wish it to be.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 361.55 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
“Brian Tucker, previous Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, is now a Senior Fellow at the IPA where he trades on his scientific credentials to push an ideological agenda. In 1996 in a talk on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor he stated that ‘unchallenged climatic disaster hyperbole has induced something akin to a panic reaction from policy makers both national and international”
Tucker, B. 1996. A Rational Consideration of Global Warming. Ockham’s Razor, ABC Radio National, 18 August.
Tucker was also busy writing screeds in the IPA’s magazine that, looking back, were frankly an embarrassment
Why this matters.
Beder notes that
Tucker’s article The Greenhouse Panic was reprinted in Engineering World a magazine aimed at engineers. The article, introduced by the magazine editor as “a balanced assessment,” argues that “alarmist prejudices of insecure people have been boosted by those who have something to gain from widespread public concern.”[42] This article, which would have been more easily dismissed as an IPA publication, has been quoted by Australian engineers at conferences as if it was an authoritative source.”
And thus is a counter-common sense “engineered.” Once bullshit is republished in other venues, it gains a halo effect from those other places, and gets repeated again, until finally it seems a solid piece of fact.
The CIA used to call it ‘surfacing’ (maybe still do?). Plant stories in local newspapers in the countries you’re trying to subvert, then quote those as “evidence” when trying to get more money out of the US government…
What happened next?
We kept digging up and exporting coal. Of course we did.
On this day, August 12, in 1990 a crackpot documentary was broadcast on Channel 4. The “Greenhouse Conspiracy” criticised the theory of global warming and asserted that scientists critical of global warming theory were denied funding. Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Roy Spencer, Sherwood Idso etc the usual suspects. Directed produced and presented by Hilary Lawson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Lawson
And, of course, he got to write a 3000 word piece in the Sunday Times (the Murdoch press already spewing shite about climate change, something they have – mostly – kept doing over the last 30 years).
I wonder if Lawson admits he got that one a bit wrong?
On this day the atmospheric C02 was 353 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
To be totally fair, at this stage, such a documentary MIGHT have been makeable in good faith. Maybe. Hmmm. The denial has kept on keeping on.
What happened next?
Oh, the smear merchants kept at it, and still keep at it. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” in 2007 was probably the last time they were effective, in documentaries, but the theft and misrepresentation of emails from UEA in late 2009 (so-called Climategate) was also pretty potent.
The ABC, to its credit, did not bow to the IPA sorts who campaigned for it to be shown. It ended up being screened on SBS…
