Category: Science

Categories
Science Uncategorized United Kingdom

April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-up

Okay, fourth of April 1978, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government Sir John Ashworth writes a letter in which he says – well, here is Janet Martin-Nielsen (2018) Computing the Climate: When Models Became Political  Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018) 48 (2): 223–245.

“The Meteorological Office’s ‘‘important and very helpful’’ work on Concorde, Ashworth wrote in a secret letter to Berrill, proved the value of climate modeling to U.K. interests—and since ‘‘the real worry is now the CO2 level in the atmosphere’’ he continued, the Meteorological Office needed to focus its energy in that direction   . J. M. Ashworth to K. Berrill, re: ‘‘Meteorological Research,’’ 4 Apr 1978, secret KEW, CAB 184/567W01211, 

The context for this is that the UK Government had started looking via its World Trends Study Group at the climate issue, also paying attention to what was happening in the United States. Also you have to factor in the the aftermath of the very hot summer of 1976, and the very cold winter in the US and Canada of 1977. 

And it’s clear that they were trying to get their head around the problem. But not everyone in the UK scientific establishment was at all sold on this. And it would require other entrepreneurs as well, like Solly Zuckerman and Herman Bondi to push further. Unfortunately, all of this culminated in 1980 with Ashworth trying to brief the new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and her response was an incredulous “you want me to worry about the weather?”

And it would be another eight years before that she would do one of her turns because it turns out the lady was frequently for turning 

Why this matters. 

We need to puncture the myth that Thatcher deserves any credit whatsoever. She was warned a decade earlier,did nowt.

What happened next?

The problem stream entrepreneurs tried to get the issue paid attention to, but everything was against them.  And it had to wait until 1988 for attention to be paid….

Categories
Science Scientists

April 2, 1979 – AAAS workshop in Anaheim begins…

On this day, April 2 1979. Yes, the same year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science started a four day workshop in Anaheim, Maryland. 

The following from the rather good recent Verso book “The Great Adaptation” helps set the scene

“The US Department of Energy was no longer willing to overlook the climate question. In collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAA) the leading US scientific body and publisher of the journal Science, it financed a research programme on the social and economic impacts of climate change. Roger Revelle and Stephen Schneider were each involved in organising the programme, which in 1979 resulted in the first international conference dedicated to the social sciences of global warming. This seminar, held in Annapolis, Maryland, sought to bring together speialisgts in economic history, anthropology, economics and political science to think through the consequences of global warming and the responses it demanded: Schneider, Revelle, Kellogg, Orr Roberts, Kenneth Hare and Crispin Tickell all took part…”

(Felli, 2015/2021: p44)

Why this matters. 

Again? I keep banging on about the late 1970s. There’s a method to my madness, which you’ll hopefully read about in a gasp yes, book at some point. 

What happened next?

More studies, but then basically, with the coming of the Reagan administration in 1981, the funding dried up, and Reagan appointees tried, for a few years, at least, to silence the climate scientists. See, for example, what happened to James Hansen in 1981 after his front page story in the New York Times. By the mid-80s, this became much harder, and eventually they had to move to plan B…

Categories
Science United States of America

April 1, 1979 – JASONs have their two cents on the greenhouse effect

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60434299

On this day first of April 1979, the Jasons released their study into climate. Who were the Jasons? They were the elite, high security clearance, nuclear Cold War warriors,of very confident scientists

Wikipedia has it thus-

“JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate the idea of having the nation’s preeminent scientists help the government with defense problems, similar to the way that scientists helped in WWII but with a new and younger generation. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members.”

 who had decided to take a look at the burgeoning climate question. 

In the late 70s everyone was doing this including the World Meteorological Organisation, which had in February that year hosted the First World Climate Conference.  

Reading the foreword to the Jasons report, which you can see here, all of the usual names, Revelle, Keeling, Smagorrinsky, etc, turn up. So too William Nirenberg who would three years later, produce a report for the National Academy of Sciences in a heightened period of climate concern (more of that report later in the year).

. 

So what does Jason’s report say? In essence (i.e. a loose paraphrase),  there may be a problem at some point, but we can’t really be expected to do much about it. And our best bet is technology. 

The JASON Report, The long term impact of carbon dioxide on climate (1979)

Why this matters. 

We have been failing to do anything substantive about climate change, other than make it worse for 50 years. And it’s worth therefore having some scepticism about the politics of experts…

What happened next?

Well, Nierenberg went on to produce the NAS report in 1983 – you can read more about that here. Later that year. Jule Charney, who had been quite rude about Stephen Schneider convened a study or chaired a study that was convened at Woods Hole. And it said that there was no reason to doubt that if the atmospheric concentration of co2 doubled then the planet would warm by three or so degrees. This is the so called Charney Report. And so it continued…

Categories
International processes Science Scientists UNFCCC

March 29, 1995- Kuwaiti scientist says if global warming happening, it’s not fossil fuels. #MRDA

On the 29th of March 1995, in Berlin at the first “Conference of the Parties” of the UNFCCC, Kuwait, put forward a scientist, who said that if global warming was happening, it wasn’t the fault of coal and oil. Of course, they would say that;  “Mandy Rice Davies applies.” You need to think about Kuwait, as a spoiler in all of this, along with Saudi in the US and Australia. And if you’re looking for the gory details, Jeremy Leggett’s book, The Carbon War is really good on this. 

What happened next?

COP1 ended with the Berlin Mandate – rich countries agree to cut emissions first.  Two years later, in Kyoto, the first agreement to reduce emissions was agreed for what that was worth (not much). Kyoto was not replaced, and eventually a laughable “pledge and review” system got implemented (Paris). And the emissions climb and climb.

Categories
Science Scientists

March 26, 1979 – Exxon meets a climate scientist

On this day in 1979, a few weeks after the end of the First World Climate Conference, Wally Broecker, the oceanographer met with Exxon scientists who were studying climate change and fossil fuels.

Broecker, to his apparent dismay, had coined the had been the first to use the term global warming in an academic context. (According to Alice Bell’s book “Our Biggest Experiment”, he  offered 200 bucks to anyone who could find an earlier example so he wouldn’t be lumbered with the unwanted title. 

Broecker also famously later compared the climate system to a sleeping beast and suggested that we stop poking it with a sharp stick.

What’s Exxon in all this? Well, “Exxon knew”. Exxon was doing its own studies of the climate problem, the carbon dioxide problem in the late 70s, early 80s. And this involved talking to scientists who knew what they were talking about. And Broecker most certainly was one of the scientists who really knew what he was talking about 

You can read more about this at the truly excellent “Inside Climate News”

Wallace Broecker

See also the page on Inside Climate News about “Exxon: The Road not taken.”

Exxon: The Road Not Taken

Why this matters

We need to remember that Exxon knew, and that scientists, quite rightly will talk to different constituencies they are paid out of taxpayer funding, and they should talk to not just the grassroots groups, but the biggies. And we need to know that in 1979, there were people seriously worried about climate. And these weren’t just hippies living in communes. This was the elite and it would be another 9 or 10 years before the issue would successfully break through and the co2 concentration had gone up and more kit had been built, and more norms around production and consumption had been established. And yes, yes, the population had gone up too;  we have two problems. The one that we in the West really need to do something about is overconsumption, exploitation, imperialism, hyper-extractivism, murder, you name it. And once we’ve done all of that, and paid reparations, then we can start to lecture other people about having too many babies.

Categories
International processes IPCC Science

March 25, 1988- World Meteorological Organisation sends IPCC invites.

On this day in 1988 the World Meteorological Organisation, (the clue is in the name) sent out invites to be part of what is now known as the IPCC

“In the absence of an official US initiative, WMO took the lead and held discussions with UNEP on this proposal. Eventually, a slightly modified version was sent out by the Secretary General of WMO on March 25, 1988 to member governments inquiring whether their country would like to be represented on a proposed ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (Obasi, 1988).”

Agrawala, S. (1998a, p 615)

The context is this

The discovery of the ozone “hole” gave atmospheric scientists a high profile and trust.  Atmospheric scientists had finally decided at a meeting hosted by WMO, UNEP and ICSCU,, in Villach, Austria, in October 1985, that the carbon dioxide problem they had been studying and talking about in-depth for roughly 15 years, needed proper policy responses

The right-wing administration of the US “President” Ronald Reagan was split, but mostly opposed to this. They DEFINITELY did not want independent scientists pushing them around.  So, we get an intergovernmental panel rather than an international one.  They key sources – but by no means the only ones –  for this, are

Agrawala, S. Context and Early Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39, 605–620 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005315532386

Agrawala, S. Structural and Process History of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39, 621–642 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005312331477


What happened next

The IPCC first met in November 1988, in Geneva. Within a year and a half its first assessment report was ready. It was, of course, attacked and enormous attempts were made to water it down.  Things really got heated (ho ho) when the second assessment report came out.  That was very very nasty indeed…

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates

Categories
Energy Science Scientists United States of America

March 23, 1989 – cold fusion!!

On March 23 1989, cold fusion was announced by a couple of overexcited scientists. (the gory details of why they came to be releasing this when they did can be found here).

The implication in fusion (hot or cold, but especially cold) is of limitless energy, which sounds like a good idea until you start thinking about how infantile human societies would actually use that limitless energy: we would just intensify our exploitation/exploration. [Comedy fact, the Portuguese have one word that covers both of those]. 

And limitless energy would accelerate our doom in all probability without some serious wisdom in our institutions. And I see no evidence of any wisdom in our institutions. (There may have been some, but we have moron-ified ourselves over the last 40 years or more.)

But anyway, this particular bout of cold fusion was quickly debunked, and there were many articles and books about what it all “meant.” Science and Technology Studies was then a relatively new thing.

And the following day…

Categories
Science Scientists United States of America

March 12, 1963 – first scientific meeting about C02 build-up

On this day in 1963, the first ever policymaker meeting – in the West at least(1) – specifically around carbon dioxide bonding happened in New York under the auspices of Laurence Rockefeller’s organisation, the Conservation Foundation, (not to be confused with the Conservation Society launched in the UK three years later, and not funded by Rockefeller.)

The account of the meeting, which you can read here, had the snappy title “Implications of rising carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere; a statement of trends and implications of carbon dioxide research reviewed at a conference of scientists.”

Present at the meeting were Roger Revelle, Gilbert Plasss, Charles Keeling, and an Englishman called Frank Fraser Darling – someone we will return to…

The context was that as of 1959, it has become clear that carbon dioxide was indeed building up in the atmosphere, and that eventually, this would lead to warming of the planet. And this would lead to ice caps melting in flooded cities, changing weather patterns, etc. 

But at this stage, in early 1963 the assumption was, this would be a problem in a couple of 100 years as per Svante Arrhenius

Why this matters. 

The Conservation Foundation report of this symposium was not a best-seller, but it DOES pop up in the reference list of various books and articles over the rest of the decade, before it starts to be supplanted by later events with more information.

What happened next?

Revelle worked on a report for Lyndon Johnson’s science subcommittee with Margaret Mead Frank Fraser Darling would talk about the build up of co2 as a problem and his reef lectures for the BBC in November of 1969

And the CO2 would continue to accumulate

For more about the Rockefellers role in postwar environmentalism this article “The Eco-Establishment “by Katherine Barkley and Steve WeissmanRamparts Magazine, May 1970, pp. 48-50

Footnotes

(1) “Fedorov and Budyko were both key instigators of a specially convened meeting on the transformation of climate which took place in Leningrad during April 1961.40 This meeting, together with a related workshop the following June, represented the first focussed Soviet discussions concerning anthropogenic climate change” (Oldfield, 2018: 45).

Oldfield, J. (2018) Imagining climates past, present and future: Soviet contributions to the science of anthropogenic climate change, 1953e1991. Journal of Historical Geography 60 41- 51.)

Categories
Science Scientists

March 5, 1950 – first computer simulation of the weather…

On this day in March 5 1950, Jule Charney and Jonny von Neumann produced the first computer simulation of the weather. Who were these people? Jules Charney was, according to Wikipedia considered “the father of modern dynamical meteorology, Charney is credited with having “guided the postwar evolution of modern meteorology more than any other living figure.” 

And in 1979, he helmed what’s now known as the Charney report, which told the politicians that yes, there was no reason to doubt that a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to a three degree temperature rise. 

Jonny von Neumann was Hungarian, possibly the smartest person who’s ever lived. And in 1955 he would warn Fortune magazine of the buildup of carbon dioxide shortly before his death in early 1957.

Why this matters. 

The work Neumann and Charney did was foundational for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, set up in 1963 under NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to model the atmosphere.

Computer simulations, computer models of the climate have been extremely important for creating the understanding (and global awareness) of weather and climate. And there is a book by Paul Edwards called A Vast Machine which will tell you a lot more. 

What happened next?

It would be another five or six years before the buildup of carbon dioxide started to impinge properly on people’s consciousness.

Categories
Science Scientists

 Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

On this day, in 1861, Irish scientist John Tyndall read his paper about carbon dioxide at the Royal Society at the annual Bakerian lecture. Tyndall was not, we now know, the first person to point out what he called carbonic acid had greenhouse water warming potential. That honour belongs to Eunice Foote in the United States a few years earlier. There’s an interesting and useful summary of this at the beginning of Alice Bell’s excellent 2021 book “Our Biggest Experiment.” And of course the idea that there must be something, some gas, keeping the planet warmer than it otherwise would be dates back to Fourier in 1824.

Tyndall did the research, reported it. It wasn’t for another 35 years that someone, Svante Arrhenius. said, “this is in fact going to be a thing (but not for centuries, and it will be a good thing.”. He was trying to distract himself from a messy divorce by doing laborious calculations, which your mobile phone could probably do in about three seconds now. 

Why this matters,

We’ve understood the science – this is 19th century physics – for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have not acted. And as I’ve said before, I will say again, that “we” first person plural pronoun is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[On this question of ‘we’ see this 2018 piece by Genevieve Gunther – h/t Sam]

What happened next

The Tyndall Centre got set up in 2000.