Twenty years ago, on this day, September 23rd, 2005,
IPCC report on Carbon Capture and Storage 22-24 September 2005
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 380ppm. 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 from the late 1990s CCS had come onto the radar of policymakers, since if the Kyoto Protocol were to come into force, then rich nations would have to reduce emissions. CCS might, they thought, be a convenient (if not cheap) way of meeting these obligations.
The specific context was that pro-CCS scientists and technologists had lobbied successfully for the IPCC to produce one of its “Special Reports.”
What I think we can learn from this – every new technology, even (especially the Unicorntech) needs big fat reports with hundreds of footnotes to make it seem real and safe.
What happened next – CCS has been through repeated hype cycles. God help us all.
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 five years ago, on this day, May 28th, 1990, the Canberra Times reports on the report of Working Group 1 (the science bit) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the IPCC had been agreed in 1988, with pressure from the United States Government, which was keen to avoid a repeat of the ozone issue, where uncontrollable scientists had “bounced” (in the perception of politicians and state functionaries) governments into action. It was not a precedent they wanted reinforced, so the IPCC was set up to head off things like the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases….
The IPCC was asked to produce reports in November 1988 and did so in record time. The Working Group 1 report was presented to Thatcher’s cabinet by John Houghton, head of the Met Office and head of Working Group 1.
What I think we can learn from this. The politicians were briefed. It is not a question of whether they knew enough. They did.
What happened next. The negotiations for a climate treaty were deformed by resistance from the United States, the Gulf states and then Australia. No targets and timetables were set for emissions reductions by rich countries. The IPCC sank into a routine of producing special reports as requested and assessment reports on a five or seven year cycle.
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-nine years ago, on this day, April 8th, 1995, Fred Pearce of the New Scientist points out that there is a gamble going on (as did Australian climate scientist Graeme Pearman three years earlier).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the first COP had just finished. Rich nations had been resisting emissions cuts using scientific uncertainty as their final excuse. But Swedish scientist Bert Bolin, who had been banging on about climate change, and carbon dioxide build up since 1958, at the latest, was telling them that the IPCC Second Assessment Report would be out later this year and that they shouldn’t expect to be able to use the uncertainty card for very much longer, more or less.
What I think we can learn from this is that the really sharp battles at the end of 1995, were all about that. I hadn’t quite grokked that before.
What happened next
Well, there were really sharp battles at the end of ‘95. From the middle of ‘95 efforts by denialists to smear individual scientists (the “Serengeti Strategy”) and the process in order to slow progress towards a serious protocol.
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 five years ago, on this day, November 9, 1988, the director of the United Nations Environment Program, the Egyptian scientist Mostafa Tolba, gave a stark opening address at the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Tolba, M.: 1988, ‘Warming: Warning’, Opening Speech at the First Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, November 9.
Oreskes and Conway 2010, page 184
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the IPCC had been set up after negotiations, especially with the Americans. They wanted an intergovernmental panel that was frankly dependent, because they didn’t want to get “bounced” in the way they perceived they had been over the question of Ozone, by Bob Watson and his ilk (including Tolba).
What I think we can learn from this is that the institutional settings the terms of reference, who’s going to fund what, who’s going to deliver what and how matter.
What happened next
The IPCC delivered its first assessment report in 1990. Was attacked (see Ted Benton in the Greening of Machiavelli anecdote about Sundsvall).
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 three years ago, on this day, November 2, 1990, scientists who had been involved in the pre-IPCC “Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases” were trying to see if they could get funding (they couldn’t, and the caravan had moved on).
“In November 1990 he wrote to WMO asking that ‘the AGGG should be either abolished or established on a formal financial basis with a clearly defined role’ (Dooge, 1990). There was no response and the AGGG was neither abolished nor given a continuation of its mandate. In Dooge’s words ‘it was death by starvation’.”
In Agrawala, S. (1999). Early science–policy interactions in climate change: lessons from the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases. Global Environmental Change, 9(2), 157-169. Chicago
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the IPCC had released its first report in August 1990 (it had been preemptively criticised by Greenpeace as inadequate). It wasn’t clear that the IPCC would necessarily go on and on as we know – so this letter about continuing to fund the AGGG was not as bizarre as it seems
The AGGG had been set up after the pivotal meeting in Villach in September 1985, as an attempt to get decent scientific information under everyone’s noses. It’s the kind of thing that pissed off the Departments of State and Energy and got the Americans kiboshing things, to control process.
What I think we can learn from this
We should remember that the IPCC was a compromise. It has obviously done great work, but we should never forget that it was created the way it was because that’s what the Americans wanted. And on that occasion the Americans were able to prevail…
What happened next
The AGGG died for lack of money, and the existence of a big shiny alternative.
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, May 30, 1996, Fred Seitz, energetic and lunatic denialist, tries to smear the IPCC, focussing on one particular scientist, Ben Santer
“This controversial issue also resulted in two letters (dated 30 May and 26 June), being sent to me, one from the Global Climate Coalition (John Schlaes) and the other from The Climate Council (Donald Pearlman). Copies of these were also sent to ten key members of the US Congress as well as the Advisor for Science and Technology and Assistant to the US President (John Gibson), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Eileen Clausen).”
Bolin 2007, page 130
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 365.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Global Climate Coalition was in full beast mode, trying to attack specifically Ben Santer. And as one of the authors of the lead authors of a particular chapter of the IPCC’s second assessment report (which said that there was evidence of a discernible impact of man’s activities on the climate). Almost 30 years later, it’s not really regarded as controversial. But this was the first statement of the IPCC to that effect. And the Global Climate Coalition was wanting to try to stop it or failing that, send a warning to other scientists. Let’s try and chill the debate or slow it down.
What I think we can learn from this
This is an age-honoured tactic, that you shoot messengers and hang the body on a gibbet with a sign that says “This is what happens if you open your big fucking mouth”. It was ever thus. And having it come from multiple sources, and be distributed to lots of people is also standard – makes a lot of noise, kicks up a lot of dust and dirt…
What happened next was that someone at the Wall Street Journal probably got a copy of that letter because a few days later, there was an editorial smearing Santer.
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-five years ago, on this day, April 1, 1998, American climate scientist Michael Mann’s paper about temperatures during the last thousand years was released.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Second Assessment Report of the IPCC, released in 1995/6 said that there had already been a discernible impact of human activity on the climate. This enraged the denialists, who were looking for new scientists and science to attack. Michael Mann’s work, which was clearly going to end up in the Third Assessment Report (published in 2001) was one such target.
What I think we can learn from this
Denialists are always looking for targets, and what they perceive to be easy ones – what Mann has since dubbed ‘The Serengeti Strategy’.
What happened next
It properly kicked off, with endless attacks on Mann, lawsuits back and forth. You can read the Wikipedia page here. The science was robust.
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 years ago, on this day, February 19 2003, carbon capture and storage got another nudge forward, at least in terms of rhetoric…
19 to 21 Feb 2003 As discussed earlier, the 2002 Geneva meeting produced a plan for an exploratory workshop on the issue, which took place in November 2002 in Regina, Canada. The actual process of report preparation began after the formal decision to compile the report, made at the IPCC meeting in February 2003 in Paris.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
In the aftermath of the President George “The Supreme Court got me the gig” Bush having pulled the USA out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, attention turned to various techno-fixes, including Carbon Capture and Storage, which had been in the background/on the drawing board for a decade plus.
Longer term context – some had clearly been eyeing the deep oceans as places to dump waste, and this had gotten the ‘right’ scientists curious…
“Second, ocean mixing. Here too Revelle had a long-established curiosity, and here too nuclear energy pushed the topic forward. The wastes from nuclear reactors must be disposed of somewhere, and the ocean floor seemed a likely choice. In 1955 when Revelle spoke of studying ocean circulation he emphasized the need to bury the “unbelievable quantities of radioactive substances” expected to pour from civilian reactors…”
Weart 1997 342
What I think we can learn from this
Dreams of technological salvation are very popular, but always need someone to write them. And the money to pay those people to write those fantasies has to come from somewhere…
What happened next
The IPCC’s special report on CCS came out in early 2005, and was a very big deal – an example of the halo effect of the credibility of impact science being lent to production science. But the CCS plants have still not yet been built, and the ones that did were all about Enhanced Oil “Recovery”.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
On this day, 33 years ago, February 5 1990, President George H.W. Bush gave a welcoming address to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was then meeting in the US to push towards its first report (released May/August that year).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Bush had mouthed all the right words on the campaign trail in 1988 “those who worry about the Greenhouse Effect are forgetting about the Whitehouse Effect” blah blah. Once in office, he’d allowed various attack dogs to slow down any progress.
The speech, we now know, had been the subject of bureaucratic fighting…
REINSTEIN: The President made a welcoming speech at the January 1990 meeting, but it was unusually warm. Every time we hosted an international meeting on climate change, it was exceptionally warm, record warmth for the day.…
As an indication of the White House approach, the leaders of the Energy Department and EPA had collaborated to produce a text for the President for this meeting, and they proudly brought it to the White House and gave it to [pictured, White House Chief of Staff] John Sununu saying, “We have got a statement here that both of us can agree on: Energy and environment.”
Sununu’s response was to tear up the document and throw it in the trash and say, “Thank you but no thank you. Don’t do this again unless I ask you to.” Sununu and I got along for whatever reason….
Behind most speeches/statements there’s an untold tale of fighting….
What happened next
Bush and his dogs kept on keeping on. In 1992 the Europeans blinked in a staring contest, and targets and timetables were removed from the draft of the text of the climate treaty…
On this day, November 21, an invitation to climate “skeptic” Pat Michaels to take part in the IPCC’s second assessment report was sent by a lead author, Tom Wigley.
“Patrick Michaels was invited to contribute to Chapter 8. He declined to do so. One of the lead authors of Chapter 8, Tom Wigley, wrote to Pat Michaels on November 21, 1994, and on February 21, 1995, soliciting comments on the portrayal of Michaels’s Franklin Institute paper in a December 8, 1994 version of Chapter 8. Prof. Michaels did not respond to these requests.”
Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 235 [Compare to Saudis not attending ad hoc group that Houghton organised at end of 1995 in Madrid!! Easiest way is to not turn up, then continue sniping!!]
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 359ppm. At time of writing it was 417ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
The first IPCC assessment report, in 1990, had come under attack by the usual suspects of oil industry lobbyists and various goons (see here). The climate denial machine geared up, knowing that they would need to get ahead of the game for the second assessment report, to weaken and discredit in advance.
Why this matters.
We need to remember that the scientists did provide the information. The politicians chose to ignore it. The social movements were not good enough – they were outgunned and outspent. The propaganda blitzes, and the institutional biases away from truth and sanity were too strong.
What happened next?
Michaels declined Wigley’s offer.
The second assessment report came out, and sure enough, the denialist machine launched as ferocious attack on it as it could manage.
