Category: Scientists

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Science Scientists United States of America

June 23, 1988 – it’s time to stop waffling and say the greenhouse effect is here

Thirty five years ago, on this day, June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen gave his pivotal testimony to senators.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that since the 1985 Villach meeting advocates of climate action had been pressing every button and pulling every lever that they knew. Hansen had testified before and this testimony timed to sensitise journalists before the Toronto “Changing the Global Atmosphere” conference was held on a very hot day in Washington DC with the windows closed and the air conditioning turned off.

What I think we can learn from this

You have to say the same thing over and over and over again to get anywhere. You have to be lucky with your timing. And crucially James Hanson was a small c-conservative person at that point, so coming from him it was a big deal to say that the greenhouse effect was here. Those words would not have had the same effect from some other people…

What happened next

 The issue exploded. Presidential candidates were forced to address it. Hansen got smeared and ignored and uninvited to important meetings. This continued until he retired. He’s been getting arrested a lot.

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.

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Science Scientists

May 5, 1953 – Gilbert Plass launches the carbon dioxide theory globally

Seventy years ago, on this day, May 5, 1953, the modern “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” era began.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Plass had become interested in the question of carbon dioxide buildup while being paid by Ford Motor Company. He had corresponded with British steam engineer and scientist Guy Callendar. Plass only looked at how carbon dioxide actually functions in the real world, and whether the bands become saturated or not (they don’t).

What I think we can learn from this

This is the pivotal moment, when someone takes the carbon dioxide theory and starts hammering it out…

This  classic warning went around the world. It was eye-catching, and it was syndicated, certainly in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. And it probably helped. George Wendt in his writing in the UNESCO magazine Courier, which also got syndicated. So you can see these couple of people speaking up about it.  

Plass’s warning also popped up in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere, this was really consequential. 

What happened next

Plass kept writing and thinking about climate build up carbon buildup. In 1956, he had an academic article published in Tellus, the Swedish scientific journal.- “the  carbon dioxide theory of climate change”, and also a popular article in the American Scientist.  

He was there in 1961 at the New York Academy of Sciences/American Meteorological Society meeting and at the 1963 Conservation Foundation meeting. But that was his last gasp on the topic… 

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.

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Academia Science Scientists United States of America

April 25, 1969 –  Keeling says pressured not to talk bluntly about “what is to be done?”

Fifty four years ago, on this day, April 25, 1969, Dave Keeling gave a speech at the “Symposium on Atmospheric Pollution: Its long-term implications” just over 10 years after he started measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa.

He was asked to change the title to “Is carbon dioxide from fossil fuel changing man’s environment? from  If carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is changing man’s environment, what will we do about it?”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that by now Charles Keeling had been collecting atmospheric co2 data at Mauna Loa for 10 years and there was a distinct upward trend. So his first title was proposed as this and then for whatever reason, he had to tone it down. Which is interesting. 

What I think we can learn from this

There are pressures within communities be they scientific activist, academic, political, designed to minimise disruption. One to hammer down any tall nails. And you can argue that human society is not possible, really without those mechanisms. You  could also argue that by hammering down nails by cutting down the “tall timber” in the words of the Skyhooks, you’re less likely to get important shit done in the time that you need to. 

See also that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Half a Life,”  with David Ogden Stiers Willis, where he’s a 60 year old guy who’s going to have to be Logan’s Run, even though he possibly has the way out for his endangered society.

What happened next

Keeling kept taking his measures. He gave an even more interesting speech in May 1969. Keeling was proved right. And we are toast 

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.

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Denial IPCC Science Scientists United States of America

April 23, 1998 – Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick paper published.

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.

http://www.desmog.uk/2015/04/04/how-creation-mann-s-hockey-stick-led-counter-attack-climate-deniers

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..

References

Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hughes, Malcolm K. (1999), “Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations” (PDF), Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (6): 759–762, Bibcode:1999GeoRL..26..759M, doi:10.1029/1999GL900070

see also

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2167127-why-the-hockey-stick-graph-will-always-be-climate-sciences-icon/

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Academia Science Scientists United States of America

March 12, 1963 – first ever carbon dioxide build-up conference

Sixty years ago, on this day, March 12, 1963, in New York

 “Dr. Keeling was concerned enough about rising carbon dioxide levels to participate in a panel by the Conservation Foundation on March 12, 1963 “Implications of Rising Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere”, the report issued being among the first to speculate that anthropogenic global warming could be dangerous to the Earth’s biological and environmental systems. It includes on page 6: “many life forms would be annihilated” [in the tropics] if emissions continued unchecked in the upcoming centuries. They also projected that carbon dioxide emissions could raise the average surface temperature of the earth by as much as 4°C during the next century (1963-2063)”

Source

Probably the first gathering of scientists and policymakers devoted specifically and explicitly to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The Conservation Foundation had been set up in New York in 1948

The International Geophysical Year was now 5 years in the past, a lot of data had been collected. In January of 1961, there had been a five day scientific conference organised by the American Meteorological Society and the New York Academy of Sciences with plenty of people talking about carbon dioxide buildup, and alongside that there had been other scientific efforts. So the Conservation Foundation, which had been aware of CO2 buildup as a potential problem for a while, held a gathering, the first ever carbon dioxide build up conference

What I think we can learn from this

Well, these sorts of events are fascinating for the legacy they leave. And for several years –  really till the end of the 1960s – the publication about this meeting was cited whenever in writing about carbon dioxide buildup for years, and it only really fell away entirely after the 1971 study on the man’s impact on climate. 

It also seems to have been the “last gasp” in climate science for Gilbert Plass whose statements and work from 1953 had been so important for the growth of acceptance of the carbon dioxide theory.

And in all probability, it was where Lewis Herbert aka Murray Bookchin got his facts for the section in his book written in 1964 and published in early 1965, called Crisis in our Cities, which will be discussed soon.

And the reason I say this is that the event was in New York, Bookchin was in New York and it’s impossible to imagine that he wasn’t aware of the Conservation Foundation’s activities. Bookchin’s politics were not of the technocrats. But just because he didn’t agree with the funders does not mean he’d have ignored what was happening under their auspices.

What happened next

Plass dropped out. 

Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling kept doing what they were doing. 

And the closing statement – well, it came to pass…

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Science Scientists United States of America

March 7, 1988 – “We are ratcheting ourselves to a new warmer climate” 

Thirty five  years ago, on this day, March 7 (or thereabouts) 1988 at a conference on Gaia running from 7 to 11 March…

Richard Gammon of the US government’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at Seattle in Washington state, seems to have been the first off the starting blocks. After seeing the complete data for 1987 and the first results for 1988, he told a conference in March 1988: “Since the mid-1970s we have been in a period of very, very rapid warming. We are ratcheting ourselves to a new warmer climate.”

(Pearce, 1989:3)

[“The Gaia Controversy: AGU’S Chapman Conference” in San Diego was from March 7 to 11.]

Rarely has a hypothesis immediately sparked such a passionate response. There is something in it for everybody, from hard core scientists to philosophers, ultraconservationists, students of world religions, mystics, politicians, and space enthusiasts; they were all there in San Diego, March 7–11, 1988, for the AGU Chapman Conference on Gaia Hypotheses. For 4 days an impressive list of specialists presented and debated the pros and cons of Gaia Hypotheses from diverse perspectives: modern and ancient biology, ecology, biochemistry, the physicochemical systems of the Earth, oceans, and atmosphere, and the evolution of the solar system.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 352.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that “earth systems” scientists were very interested in the Lovelock and Margulis Gaia theory, enough to have a conference about it. And from the October 1985 Villach meeting onwards, the scientists and politicians were all getting more interested in just how soon the signal would emerge from the noise on climate change…

What I think we can learn from this

James Hansen was not an outlier in his June 1988 testimony.  Sure, there wasn’t necessarily a majority, but what Hansen said was not all that unusual or surprising (see Schneider’s Greenhouse Century for accounts of how journalists kept looking for quotes from him to try to set up a “Hansen/Schneider split” story.)

What happened next

Within months climate change would become unavoidable for politicians. No more long grass…

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

Kaufman E., 1988. The Gaia Controversy: AGU’S Chapman Conference  Eos, Transactions American Geophysical UnionVolume 69, Issue 31 p. 763-764 https://doi.org/10.1029/88EO01043

Pearce, F. (1988) New Scientist

Pearce, F. (1989) Turning up the heat

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Academia Australia Science Scientists

February 18, 2011 – Scientist quits advisor role (because ignored on climate?)

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.

 https://www.smh.com.au/national/tensions-blamed-as-science-chief-quits-20110218-1azm2.html  and 

https://skepticalscience.com/Australias-departing-Chief-Scientist-on-climate-change.html

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.

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anti-reflexivity Australia Science Scientists

 February 13, 2007- Industry is defo allowed to silence scientists…

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.

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Science Scientists

February 9, 1956 – Scientists puzzle over where the carbon dioxide is going….

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

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Australia Science Scientists

Vale Will Steffen: gutsy, intelligent, compassionate climate scientist

I will add obituaries and appreciations to the man as they appear (please alert me to any you know of that aren’t on this list.)

Here’s a really good piece by Graham Readfern of the Guardian Australia.

Here’s a lovely tribute by former Chief Scientist Penny Sackett

Here’s a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Here’s his Wikipedia page.

Here’s a tribute page on the Climate Council website. If you ever met him, or were influenced by him, please do leave a message.

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.