Twelve years ago, on this day, February 18, 2011 Australia’s chief scientific advisor Penny Sackett downed tools. She said in her statement – “”Institutions, as well as individuals, grow and evolve, and for both personal and professional reasons the time is now right for me to seek other ways to contribute.” (source)
This move was regarded at the time – rightly or wrongly – as a rebuke/frustration with the lack of ambition on climate policy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in the middle of a shitstorm over climate policy that continued for months (Feb to August 2011).
What I think we can learn from this
Offering scientific advice to politicians is at best a very tough gig. At worst, you’re a fig leaf/complicit.
What happened next
Following chief scientific advisors were more willing to sing the praises of fantasy technologies and keep their heads down. Whether or not current and future generations are well-served by that is, well….
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Sixteen years ago, on this day, February 13 2007, a Canberra Times journalist had a cracking story about the politics of knowledge.
The CSIRO has confirmed coal industry bodies have the power to suppress a new report questioning the cost and efficiency of clean-coal carbon capture technologies because they partly funded the research. Dr David Brockway, chief of CSIRO’s division of energy technology, told a Senate estimates committee hearing yesterday it was ”not necessarily unusual” for private-industry partners investing in research programs – such as Cooperative Research Centres – to request reports be withheld from public release if findings were deemed to be not in their best interests. His comments followed questions by Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne regarding the release of an economic assessment by a senior CSIRO scientist of a new carbon capture technology to reduce greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power stations.
Beeby, R. 2007. Industry can gag research: CSIRO. Canberra Times, 15 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
John Howard and his government had been systematically undermining all other organisations that might keep tabs on them, or forcefully propose alternatives. Have a look at “Silencing Dissent” by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison for the gory (and they are gory) details.
What I think we can learn from this
Those who want things to stay the same will do whatever it takes to poke out the eyes and stuff up the mouths of anyone with brains and other ideas, while rewarding lackeys and toadies.
What happened next
Nothing good. The demolition of the CSIRO has, basically, continued. Oh well.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Sixty seven years ago, on this day, February 9, 1956 scientist Hans Seuss (cosmic rays) wrote to his colleague Roger Revelle (marine science, among other things)
“I am not too happy about the whole thing” –
Weart, 1997, p 346, footnote 78
The thing he wasn’t happy about was being able to account for Gilbert Plass’s point about the build-up of atmospheric CO2…
Further context here, via an excellent 1990 book by Michael Oppenheimer and Robert Boyle, called “Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect” (a race we have clearly lost, btw).
“According to Gordon MacDonald of the Mitre Corporation, who spent some time at Scripps during the 1950s, the Revelle-Suess collaboration on the CO2 question was fortuitous, for neither was studying climate. Suess was interested in the cosmic rays that produce the carbon-14 isotope in the atmosphere. Revelle was an expert in marine sediments, which were the presumed graveyard for carbon removed from the air by the ocean. Suess and others had noted a small decline in the carbon-14 content of new tree rings versus ones that were fifty years older, indicating that the carbon dioxide taken in by plants in recent years was deficient in carbon14 compared to earlier times. Fossil fuels are lacking in carbon-14 because it disintegrates by radioactivity over the eons of burial. The two scientists proposed that fossil-fuel combustion had gradually diluted the carbon-14 that is produced continually by cosmic rays, by adding the dominant carbon-12 to the atmosphere. In other words, emissions had not been removed completely and immediately by the ocean. From this and other data they surmised that carbon-dioxide levels would grow significantly in the future and affect climate.”
Oppenheimer M. and Boyle, R . (1990) Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect. London I.B. Tauris, page 224
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The scientists, Suess and Revelle were puzzling over what would become their seminal paper released in early 1957. That paper suggested that scientists had made an unsafe assumption, (based on Revelle’s 1930s work), that carbon dioxide would be absorbed by the ocean because the layers of the ocean mixed well.
This kind of dissatisfaction and puzzling is what scientists are paid to do. If they didn’t, we’d still have “earth and air and fire and water” as per the Aristotlean version of The Elements song by Tom Lehrer.
What I think we can learn from this
Smart people have been puzzling on this for a long time, and came up with some good answers that should have had us sit up and take notice. But at a societal species level, that is too much to ask, because everyone has so much else going on at any given time. And if they don’t, it is “given” to them via pay cuts and reality television.
What happened next
Suess and Revelle published their paper. Revelle hired David Keeling to measure CO2 accurately. Other people paid attention. And here we are 70 years down the line with atmospheric concentrations 100 PPM higher than they were at the time.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Weart, S. 1997. Global Warming, Cold War, and the Evolution of Research Plans. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences Vol. 27, No. 2 (1997), pp. 319-356
February 8 — Dr. Barry Commoner, hearing on the Council on Energy Policy
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Barry Commoner by this stage was “Mr. Environment.” He’d appeared on the cover of Time in February of 1970. His book “The Closing Circle”, and the other one were very well received and known. Commoner had been writing about, in passing, the buildup of CO2 for several years. And his statement here is a reasonable summation I guess of what was going on.
What I think we can learn from this
US politicians, especially House members and senators, were well informed or aware of the carbon dioxide buildup issue a lot earlier than you might think. The hilarious “Grant Swinger” parody that we will come to in the middle of the year makes more sense once you know this…
What happened next
Commoner ran for president in 1980, as did one of the Koch brothers. Neither of them troubled the scorebook particularly. In the short term, the first oil shock made all of this moot because coal was on the comeback (making Carl “Mr Coal” Bagge happy – we will come to this).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Short version: he moved to Australia from the US in 1977, and spent the rest of his life there. He was a KEY communicator of the science, as well as being a very good scientist indeed. I think of him in the same bracket as the late Stephen Schneider (that’s about as high as praise goes, btw).
I remember him at the 2011 climate conference in Melbourne, during the white hot debates on Gillard’s so-called “carbon tax.” I spoke to him briefly, and watched him engage with other people who he didn’t know from Adam. He was courteous, thoughtful, calm (and this was at the time of lunatics brandishing nooses), and his answers to questions were supremely rich in fact and insight. He did this without ever ever seeming pompous or condescending.
He is a HUGE loss to the Australian (and global) science community.
Thirty nine years ago, on this day, January 24, 1984, Canadians got to understand what was coming, via a CBC documentary, including Stephen Seidel, one of the authors of a recent US EPA report “Can we delay a greenhouse warming?”
As per the Climate State website –
Topics discussed include, the scientific consensus, weather patterns, sea level rise, adaptation, climate actions, or the greenhouse effect. This 1984 documentary outlines our understanding of global climate change at the time.
There’s weather, and then there’s climate. Weather patterns come and go, but forecasting has become much more accurate through improved meteorological techniques. Climate change is harder to predict. But, as the CBC’s Peter Kent shows in this 1984 documentary, it’s happening.
Carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere have been steadily rising, and by the year 2100 the average global temperature may rise by five degrees Celsius due to the greenhouse effect.
“Good evening. Tonight on The Journal a full edition devoted to the greenhouse effect, which will eventually cause the greatest global climatic change since prehistoric times. The full effect won’t be felt for a century or more, but younger members of our audience may well live to experience the first changes. Our grandchildren almost certainly will. We fully expect a certain amount of scepticism among viewers in this unusually cold winter to the proposition that warmer weather is ahead for Canada and the rest of the world. However, as you’ll see, the scientific community is virtually unanimous in the prediction of a warming trend, and that the irreversible warming will create major disruptions of what we’ve come to consider as normal weather patterns. The only disagreement seems to be in the timing and magnitude of the disruptions caused by the greenhouse effect.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 344.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 419
The context was that in late 1983 two big reports on climate (an EPA one saying ‘srsly, trouble ahead’ and an NAS one saying ‘meh’) had been released. Climate was now a suitable topic for documentaries and panel discussions, at least to break up the monotony of “are we all going to fry in a nuclear war?” And the two kinda dovetailed, what with the concerns about a nuclear winter…
What I think we can learn from this
Again, we have known. The people who were children then are adults now, and I don’t see a whole lot of transformational change, so expecting today’s kids to organise transformational change when they are “grown up” is, um, optimistic.
What happened next
Broadcasters kept broadcasting. Four years later, in Toronto, the world did finally wake up…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Fifty five years ago, on January 19, 1968, the American publication“Science” reported on the (typical) capture of an advisory group by engineers and technocrats..
Many ecologists doubt the ability of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to advise the government properly on problems of environmental pollution and disturbance. Moreover some environmental scientists within NAS itself find it deplorable that, in setting up an Environmental Studies Board last year to co-ordinate studies of environmental problems the leaders of NAS and NAE saw fit to include five people with backgrounds in industrial research but no one with a background in environmental biology. In the view of these critics, the environment’s “despoilers” may be better represented on the new board than its “preservers.”
Carter (1968)
Carter managed to get a great quote out of Lamont Cole, president of the Ecological Society of America – “The National Academy doesn’t know enough about ecology to know how ignorant it is.” This pithy summary is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect before that was named…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 418ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was beginning to get seriously perturbed by water/air pollution in the US (and some were beginning to grok the global implications). So what do you do? You ask the experts to set up an investigatory/advisory panel. And then they do – made up of people exactly like them….
[According to a new journal Environmental Science and Technology, the aforementioned Environmental Studies Board had been set up in early 1967. Ah, no, wait, further down in the Carter article there is this –
“This board was appointed in January 1967 by Frederick Seitz, president of NAS, and Eric Walker, president of NAE. THE board, establishment of which was recommended in a 1965 report (Restoring the Quality of Our Environment) by PSAC’s Envrionmental Pollution Panel, was assigned the responsibility of over-seeing and coordinating environmental studies carried on within the two academies. With this sweeping mission the board’s role is potentially one of great influence.” ]
Frederick bloody Seitz…
What I think we can learn from this
Any panel or programme – or research and innovation centre – will get captured by one tribe of academics, who will then funnel funding and prestige to their own tribe, at the expense of another tribe. That’s just how humans play the game. Every-so -often a Leviathan may knock heads together and insist the tribes play nice with each other, in order to get actual inter or multi-disciplinary working, but the silos – cognitive and financial – are always lurking, like the plague in that cheerful little book by the Sisyphus guy…
What happened next
Oh, a couple of token ecologists were probably appointed, if only to shut up Lamont Cole.
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..
References
Luther J. Carter (1968) National Academy of Sciences: Unrest among the Ecologists. Science, Jan. 19 Vol. 159, No. 3812 , pp. 287- 289
Forty seven years ago, on this day, January 19,1976, people were talking about the carbon footprint of cement.
R.M. Rotty, ‘Global Carbon Dioxide Production from Fossil Fuels and Cement, A.D. 1950-A.D. 2000’, presented at Office of Naval Research Conference on the Fate of the Fossil Fuel Carbonates, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 19-23, 1976
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 331.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that US scientists (and to a lesser extent perhaps European ones) were beginning to think about what reducing emissions – or just slowing the increase – might look like at a sectoral level.
Rotty did good work (there’s no wikipedia page for him, which someone should rectify, imo.)
What I think we can learn from this
People have been thinking about cement as a carbon problem for longer than you’d think…
What happened next
Nothing much on the cement front for a very long time…My impression it was still pretty niche even in 2003…
Two years ago, on this day, January 13, 2021, Robert J Sternberg, an American academic who has been studying intelligence for decades, argues in a New Scientist article that, well
“We’ve got intelligence all wrong – and that’s endangering our future”
IMAGINE a world in which admission to the top universities – to Oxford or Cambridge, or to Harvard or Yale – were limited to people who were very tall. Very soon, tall people would conclude that it is the natural order of things for the taller to succeed and the shorter to fail.
This is the world we live in. Not with taller and smaller people (although taller people often are at an advantage). But there is one measure by which, in many places, we tend to decide who has access to the best opportunities and a seat at the top decision-making tables: what we call intelligence. After all, someone blessed with intelligence has, by definition, what it takes – don’t they?
We have things exactly the wrong way round. The lesson of research by myself and many others over decades is that, through historical accident, we have developed a conception of intelligence that is narrow, questionably scientific, self-serving and ultimately self-defeating.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 415.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 418. .
What I think we can learn from this
Robert Sternberg has produced so much useful work (on love, on creativity/intelligence).
The game is rigged, and those rigging it want to keep the game as it is. Basically, a bunch of extractivist violent arrogant planet-killers think they are God’s gift, because they made God in their image. And here we are.
What happened next
We keep relying on our “intelligence” to get us out of this.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Sternberg. R. (2018) “Why Real-World Problems Go Unresolved and What We Can Do about It: Inferences from a Limited-Resource Model of Successful Intelligence”
Thirty two years ago, on this day, January 10, 1991, the New York Times ran a story that has become very very familiar.
The earth was warmer in 1990 than in any other year since people began measuring the planet’s surface temperature, separate groups of climatologists in the United States and Britain said yesterday.
A third group, in the United States, reported record temperatures from one to six miles above the earth’s surface. These were recorded from balloons from December 1989 through November 1990.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2023 it is 419. .
The context was that the US had finally been forced to agree to take part in negotiations for a world climate treaty (what became, in June 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The denial and delay campaigns were kicking into gear (the so-called ‘Global Climate Coalition’ doing its predatory delay thing). Part of the context for the whole climate awakening was how warm the 1980s had been (mild by today’s standards, of course).
What I think we can learn from this
The “warmest year ever” meme does not, on its own, ‘wake up the sheeple’. If you want to have effective long-term action, you need effective long-term social movement organisations.
