Four years ago, on this day, August 14th, 2021,
On August 14, 2021, it rained, an event so remarkable that it made news around the world. (“For the First Time on Record, Rain Fell at the Summit of Greenland,” ran the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald.) Kolbert New Yorker 2024 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/when-the-arctic-melts
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 416ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that we had had, by this point, almost 70 years of warnings, if you take it (as I do) from Gilbert Plass in May 1953. By 1988 the politicians could pretend the problem wasn’t an issue no longer.
The specific context was that the top of the world is beginning to defy our efforts at understanding what is going on and what comes next. Fun times.
What I think we can learn from this – to paraphrase Jason Bourne to the journalist Simon Ross in the third (and best?) Bourne film – “You have no idea what you’re into here”.
What happened next – we kept on keeping on. There were no efforts worthy of the name at rapid decarbonisation. We’re so fubarred.
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:
August 14, 1989 – South Australia creates “interdepartmental committee on #climate change”…
August 14, 1971 – Stanford Prison Study begins…
August 14, 2002 – Australian economists urge Kyoto Protocol ratification
August 14, 2007 – CCS report in Australia “between a rock and a hard place”