Category: Science

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Ignored Warnings Science United States of America

April 30, 1985 – New York Times reports C02 not the only greenhouse problem

On this day, the 30th of April 1985, The New York Times reported that “Rare Gases May Speed The Warming of the Earth: Rare Gases May Be Speeding Earth’s Warming”

The reporter, James Gleick, opened his story thus

“Tiny quantities of more than 30 rare gases threaten to warm the earth’s atmosphere even more rapidly over the next 50 years than carbon dioxide will, according to a study by a team of atmospheric scientists.

“Their findings reinforce a growing conviction among scientists that the trace gases, many of them industrial byproducts, are playing a leading role in the “greenhouse effect,” the warming of the earth as less and less heat is able to escape the atmosphere.”

This research was then presented at Villach in October of 1985, and helped convince people that climate change wasn’t anthropogenic global warming was not a threat for the relatively distant future, but something that would need a policy response right now. So even before Villach1985 there was a sense that shit was getting real.

Why this matters. 

We need to understand that our problem is not that senior politicians don’t understand the problem. Our problem is that we are unable to keep the problem at the front of their attention and to turn it into a set of policy proposals that are then implemented. 

What happened next?

Well Villach meeting happened WMO. UNDP ICSU. They tried to get the ball rolling that were successful. You got an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And since 1990, we have burned more carbon dioxide, released into the atmosphere, then all of human history to that date, which tells you how successful these international agreements have been.

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Science United States of America

April 29, 1970 – Washington DC symposium talks about carbon dioxide

On this day, the 29th of April in 1970 a symposium was held in Washington DC on “Aids and Threats from Technology.” One of the topics of conversation was, well “Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change”

PDF here.

The newly minted Council on Environmental Quality would use this (and other research) to include a chapter about climate change in its first report, published a few months later.

Why this matters?

We knew enough to be worried, and to make a SERIOUS effort at research, throwing money and scientists at the problem.

What happened next

The scientists did the best they could. By the end of the decade, we definitely knew enough. Then Reagan and his cronies came and cost us the thick end of a decade. And then, well, the rest is history.

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Denial Science

April 28, 1975- Newsweek’s “The Cooling World” story.

On this day, April 28 1975, Newsweek ran a story ”The Cooling World” (pdf here) based on the idea that an ice age was imminent because of the amount of particulates thrown up into the atmosphere.

It wasn’t alone in this – The previous year (June 24, 1974) Time had an article titled “Another Ice Age?” which said “the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades” but noted that “Some scientists… think that the cooling trend may be only temporary.”

These articles have been used ever since, as the part of the myth that, in the 1970s, “all scientists were convinced that an ice age was coming. And therefore, carbon dioxide build-up is just the latest iteration of a scare that we need to pay no attention to.” This idea has faded somewhat in mainstream culture, but it still persists in the nuttier corners of the internet.

What we learn is that journalism around climate is very difficult because the issues are very complex, and that people choose not to accept the journalists and scientists can get it wrong and change their mind because they are looking to have a gotcha moment.

Why this matters. 

Denialists have kept using it.

What happened next?

Denialists kept using it

See also:

The original author, Peter Gwynne, writing in 2014

Scientific American in 2015 – For Its 40th Birthday, Let’s Retire Newsweek’s Global Cooling Story

Wikipedia on Global Cooling.

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Denial International processes IPCC Predatory delay Science Scientists

April 19, 2002 – Exxon got a top #climate scientist sacked.

On the 19th of April 2002, the chair of the IPCC, Bob Watson failed to get a second term as chair, even though he wanted one, and (almost) everyone else wanted him to have it. 

As per the Guardian’s coverage

“At a plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva, Robert Watson, a British-born US atmospheric scientist who has been its chairman since 1996, was replaced by an Indian railway engineer and environmentalist, R K Pachauri.

Dr Pachauri received 76 votes to Dr Watson’s 49 after a behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign by the US to persuade developing countries to vote against Dr Watson, according to diplomats. The British delegation argued for Dr Watson and Dr Pachauri to share the chairmanship.

The US campaign came to light after the disclosure of a confidential memorandum from the world’s biggest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, to the White House, proposing a strategy for his removal.”

[see also the Ecologist in 2018]

tt’s an example of how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change works – the word to look for is governmental. 

Why this matters. 

We’re not getting the politics- free science, which the denialists say they want. We’re getting the science that has been deemed acceptable to the politicians who are often little more than Meat Puppets for vested interests.

And this is a very, very familiar story.

What happened next?

The IPCC has kept going. The message hasn’t changed. Except the time horizons keep shrinking (have shrunk to nowt).

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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….

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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