The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that after the 1972 Stockholm Environmental Conference the United Nations Environment Program had been set up, and there was money and interest sloshing around for computer modelling of climate. It was fairly crude by today’s standards, but, you know, baby steps. There was Bolin, Flohn and the others. And presumably, Olof Palme was being kept informed. Flohn certainly briefed Palme at some point. I think that year
What we learn is that the scientific understanding of the build up of the consequences of the buildup of CO2 came along in leaps and bounds in the 70s. They’re only a couple of years away from “yellow danger light” as per Thomas Malone in July of 1977. Of course, the old beasts – Landsberg Charney and John Mason, were pooh poohing it all together. And Reid Bryson was angry that his dust theory was going tits up. But it was real, the emerging carbon consensus. That’s what we learned.
What happened next. A meeting in Norwich the following year put the death to the cooling idea. The Energy and Climate report of the National Academy of Sciences came out in 1977. And then, of course, the First World Climate conference in 1979. And that’s the end really, of there being serious debate about the CO2 problem.
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.
Sixty nine years ago, on this day, August 9th, 1955, Gilbert Plass submits a paper… You can read it here.
(Manuscript received August 9 1955
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Plass had been talking, researching, writing about CO2 buildup for a while. He made public statements in May of 1953 [see my Conversation article], at the American Geophysical Union that went viral. And here he was submitting an article to Tellus, a Swedish academic journal. (Tellus was the watering hole for atmospheric physics those people at that time.)
What we learn is that smart people could see what was happening.
What happened next. Plass wrote that paper. He wrote another paper, I think, in 1959. And he also had an article in Scientific American in 1959. That, btw, was advertised in the Observer.
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 six years ago, on this day, June 6th, 1988 there is a well-publicised warning by scientists in Stockholm (Bolin etc) releasing study.
We are entering a new phase….
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that ever since the pivotal meeting in Villach, in September 1985, scientists had been trying to raise the alarm – briefing senators, writing reports etc etc.
What we learn is that James Hansen’s testimony, on June 23 1988, did not appear in a vacuum. The terrain was being prepared by many others.
What happened next was that Hansen’s testimony – and the Changing Atmosphere meeting in Toronto the week after, at the end of June – set the ball rolling.
The emissions have kept climbing, of course. As have the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. And here we are.
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.
Sixty seven years ago, on this day, May 13th, 1957, English steam engineer Guy Callendar, who had been pointing to carbon dioxide build-up as an explanation for increased global temperatures since the late 1930s, wrote to Gilbert Plass, who in 1953 had brought the problem to global attention (see my Conversation piece here).
How easy it is to criticise and how difficult to produce constructive theories of climate change! and ““A point of special interest is the large discrepancies between the apparent increase of atmospheric CO2 given by the air-CO2 observations . . . and the predicted increase derived from the size of the exchange reservoirs as now revealed by radio carbon measurements.”
Letter from Callendar to Plass 13 May 1957 (Fleming, 2007: chapter 5)
Guy Callendar
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Guy Callendar had been banging on about climate change and carbon dioxide buildup since 1938. And Plass had been doing the same since 1953. The two were corresponding and Callendar made a very good point about how the more conventional/mainstream/whatever people were resentful of an outsider committing that terrible crime of being right and proving the experts to be wrong.
What we learn is that sometimes the experts are wrong. Other times they’re right but sometimes they are wrong. Don’t expect them to applaud you.
What happened next Callendar had another great piece in 1960 – see here. He died in 1964. Plass kept writing about climate for a few more years but eventually moved on to other things. And the emissions kept climbing.
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
Fleming, J. 2009 The Callendar Effect – The Life and Times of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964), The Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of: The Life … of Climate Change
Professor Jason Scott-Warren (Twitter account here) is the organiser of an open letter signed by 2500 academics to the Royal Society about its climate stance. He has kindly answered a few questions about the campaign. (You can read an August 2023 article in TheGuardianhere. There’s a piece in the Financial Times[paywalled] today, about the RS saying ,in effect, “yeah, nah.”
BTW, the Royal Society has – understandably – a long history in the UK around climate change, which will have to wait for another day. For now, there’s this from 2006, when it chided Exxon for funding denialist groups.
1. What is the campaign trying to achieve?
The campaign is asking the Royal Society to speak out about the fossil fuel industry and how dangerous it is, both in its determination to carry on exploring for new reserves and in its lobbying activities. Both aspects of its behaviour should be red lights for scientists, at a time when the Paris Agreement goals are hanging by a thread. If the Royal Society were to make a statement about this, it would help to galvanise action in the UK academic community, and to sway public discourse.
2. How did it get going?
I’ve been involved in campaigns at the University of Cambridge, initially to persuade the University to divest from fossil fuel companies and more recently to ask it to cut all research and philanthropic ties with them. It became clear to me that some scientists at the University were willing to give the likes of BP and Shell the benefit of the doubt because the Royal Society had not given a clear steer in this area. So I decided to start an open letter calling for an unambiguous statement. The letter now has more than 2500 signatures from UK academics.
3. What has the Royal Society’s response been – was it in anyway surprising?
The Royal Society has engaged with us, albeit at a pace that has not always inspired confidence. They agreed to hold a meeting with a small group of signatories, and discussed our demands in detail. But we were not surprised when they eventually turned our request down, pointing to all the other worthy things that they were doing on climate, and saying it would be inappropriate to condemn one sector ‘within a complex system where multiple actors need to engage urgently with these challenges’.
Decoded, this means they have swallowed the fiction that fossil fuel companies are ‘part of the solution’. At some point in the future, the story goes, these companies are going to suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere and bury it under the ocean, just so long as they can carry on generating obscene profits in the here-and-now. The susceptibility of the Royal Society to this narrative is not entirely surprising. The idea of a technological solution to the climate problem flatters their rather narrow sense of their mission. More broadly, the entanglement of some parts of the scientific establishment with the petrochemical industry is so deep that they cannot register what is happening before their eyes. They cannot admit that they have created a machine that has run out of control, and which is rapidly destroying the biosphere.
4. What are the next stages, and what help are you looking for?
In a way, this is all just more evidence (as if we needed it) that petitions and polite debates don’t work. Money trumps everything, and institutions would rather watch the world burn than bite the hand that feeds them. We need more direct action to demand changes that will never come by asking nicely. But I do think we need to keep putting pressure on the timid institutions that we inhabit, and to alert them to the fact that they have urgent moral responsibilities that they are failing to address. Their behaviour is going to look as shameful in retrospect as propping up the slave trade or apartheid. They still have an opportunity to rectify this.
5. Anything else you’d like to say.
We should celebrate the institutions that are taking a stand in this area—the UN, the International Energy Agency, the BMA and others.
Forty-three years ago, on this day, May 1st, 1981, a scorching editorial was submitted to a new-ish academic journal (I know, hold the front page, right?). The writer reviews some recent studies and says, well…
“Still, these studies of energy and climate might lull us into concluding that we can put off worrying seriously about man-made climate change for a half century or so. For both physical and political reasons, both conclusions may be terribly wrong.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425.85ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was clear consensus among scientists that there was a problem. They had done their level best to get politicians alert, interested, concerned. And it was fairly clear by the time this editorial was submitted, that they had failed, that there would be at least four years of ignorance and resistance ahead, and that the clock was running out.
What we learn from this is that you have to know enough to be able to contextualise a given document. And the first time I read this, I thought, “wow, gee, this guy was prescient.” And, you know, I still think that he was smart. But now that I know how much was going on in the background, with the Global 2000 report, which I was only dimly aware, Council on Environmental Quality, Charney, Department of Energy, AAAS, the European moves, it was clear that this guy was writing at a time when lots of other people were also pointing at climate change and going “shit shit shit”. Other context would be that the journal Climatic Change was set up by Stephen Schneider. Anyway…
What happened next? We didn’t take action, the emissions kept rising. It would be 1988 before the alarm bell was heard widely enough.
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.
Sixty eight years ago, on this day, March 19th, 1956, the question of possible climate change due to carbon dioxide build-up gets an airing (sorry) in the Washington Post.
19 March 1956 Washington Post story on Revelle’s predictions
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Roger Revelle as well as being a really good scientist was a really good political operator. He knew how to tell Senators interesting stories so that they would give big science, big money. And one of the stories Revelle was telling in ‘56, ahead of the impending International Geophysical Year was that carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere might cause some interesting physical effects.
What we learn from this is that the idea of the independent scientists mucking around with his test tubes is a comforting myth, but only a myth. And already, by the end of the 40s, this was entirely obvious, given how the war had been one, Manhattan Project, Vannevar Bush, all of that stuff.
What happened next? With some of the money, a tiny portion of the money that Revellel got, he hired Charles David Keeling to make fantastically accurate measurements of atmospheric CO2, giving us the Keeling Curve and evidence that yes, carbon dioxide was definitely building up in the atmosphere. Until that point this was not entirely certain, though it was strongly suspected. It’s always good to have proper evidence to back up your suspicions, isn’t it?
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
Norman, L. 1956. Fumes Seen Warming Arctic Seas. The Washington Post and Times Herald; March 19, pg. 3
Ten years ago, on this day, March 17th, 2014, the wheels on the bus went round and round…
‘CARBON BUS’ NORTHERN TOUR 17-20 MARCH 2014
Eleven lucky applicants participated in the tour, which left from Townsville QLD and visited the Lansdown Research Station, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, ‘Wambiana’ Station and the Wambiana Research Site. Participants heard from leading specialists in climate science and agriculture and practising agriculturalists, including:
Professor Snow Barlow, University of Melbourne
Dr Ed Charmley, CSIRO
Dr Chris Stokes, CSIRO
Dr Steven Bray, QLD DAFF
Peter O’Reagain, QLD DAFF
Andrew Ash, QLD DAFF
Geoff Dickinson, QLD DPI
Roger Landsberg, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, Charters Towers
John Lyons and Michelle Lyons, ‘Wambiana’ Station, Charters Towers
The tour was enlightening and beneficial for all participants, but you don’t need to take our word for it, click here to hear from them direct…or watch the Virtual Tour video to see the tour highlights.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399.9ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had recently abolished – or was in the process of abolishing – the emissions trading scheme that Julia Gillard had shepherded through parliament in 2011. And climate activists were at a low ebb, and understood that they really had to go out and engage people who didn’t “get” to the climate issue. The trouble is that these sorts of tours from the south, to educate the benighted, ignorant, rural savages don’t work. Now, for the avoidance of any doubt. I’m sure that that’s not what the organisers of this carbon bus tour thought or felt on any level: but it’s easy for their good intentions to be painted.as such. I don’t have a solution. I suppose the climate education has to come from within these communities, from people who are trusted? Who those people are and how they might be supported, is beyond me. I guess. There’s always the internet….
What happened next? Well, the most infamous example of all this is the 2018 tour of Queensland by a whole bunch of greenies who thought that they were helping Bill Shorten get elected, and most definitely were not. This was something that was curiously absent from the Bob Brown hagiography about the tall giants or whatever it’s called. (see film review here).
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 377ppm. As of 2024 it is 422 ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Bush had been doing sweet FA. And he had had the British scientist Robert Watson removed as chair of the IPCC – it’s hard to play Athens to their Sparta when they won’t even give you a bow….
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had been making the right noises about climate change but doing sweet FA, it was obvious that there was failure baked into the Kyoto process, which many at this point time were thinking was just dead. And that UNFCCC might be dead. And therefore emissions reductions were dead. China was galloping forward with its emissions, the US was not cutting it. And therefore, of course, you’re gonna speak out of school and hope for technofixes.
What we learn is that chief scientific advisors can, on occasion, be troublesome priests. They tend to denounce someone over the water or across the border, rather than their own bosses. And when they are fed up with their own bosses, well, it’s more likely that they’ll quit and keep tight lips. For example, the Australian CSA Penny Sackett in February 2011.
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.
Fifty six years ago, on this day, January 8th, 1968,
According to a Newsweek report (8 January 1968), Professor L. C. Cole of Cornell University (in a paper delivered at the 134th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) asks whether man is not destroying the earth’s natural supply of oxygen. He points out (1) that the increasing combustion of fossil fuels has greatly accelerated the formation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and (2) that, in the United States alone, some one million acres of suburbanised forest and grassland each year lose their ability to regenerate the oxygen supply through photosynthesis.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was concern among a few scientists that levels of oxygen would drop and that we would all ultimately suffocate. That was rendered null a year or two after this, but there was generalised concern about oxygen levels, carbon dioxide levels, you name it. As the consequences of modernity, as we laughingly call it, were becoming apparent. Cynically, you could also say that people were so fed up with the Vietnam War, but there were costs attached to speaking out against that, that they found something else to be worried about….
What we can learn is that there have been scientists warning of trouble ahead. But those scientists may have sometimes understandably picked something to be concerned about that wasn’t actually there. That doesn’t mean that all warnings are bad warnings.
What happened next, as above, the oxygen depletion thing was put to bed in 1970 or so. Lamont Cole died in I think, 1979.
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
Cole, L. 1968. Can the World Be Saved? BioScience, Vol. 18, No. 7 pp. 679-684 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1294188 .https://doi.org/10.2307/1294188
