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
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.
December 30, 2007 – Bert Bolin dies. He was a Swedish scientist, did more than anyone else (I would argue) from the 1950s to the 1980s to get carbon dioxide build-up on the political agenda (he was most certainly not alone in doing this – proper group effort). Find posts about him on this site here.
Bolin’s death was exquisitely well-timed. He had been the first chair of the IPCC, and that organisation had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of weeks earlier. The COP meeting of the UNFCCC in Bali had agreed – over US objections – a two year plan of negotiations for a big important/solve the post-Kyoto problem meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Bolin, I hope, died believing that, finally, at last, possibly too late, the rich nations were being successfully corralled into doing something serious on the issue he had been so responsible for.
Bolin’s book – A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – is fairly dry, but great if you’re a geek like me
Btw, at that time atmospheric CO2 was 384ppm. It’s roughly 418 now
On this day, December 11 in 1895, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius read his would-eventually-be-’famous’ paper On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground at the Swedish Academy of Science.
Hamblyn, R. 2009. The whistleblower and the canary: rhetorical constructions of climate change. Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 35, pp.223-236
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 295ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
Why this matters
This has become the touchstone for “how long we’ve known” pieces.
What happened next
Arrhenius’ assumptions (and those whose work he drew on) were challenged by Angstrom et al. The idea that a build up of carbon dioxide could cause warming was thrown in the dustbin, and – despite Guy Callendar – only really got pulled out in the 1950s…
On this day, December 10, 1978 a five day Workshop co-hosted by the CSU and SCOPE
“Workshop on Climate/Society Interface” began in Toronto..
This was (presumably?!) a kind of sequel/follow up to the February 1978 IIASA workshop “Carbon Dioxide, Climate and Society” which had been cosponsored by WMO, UNEP, and SCOPE, February 21 – 24, 1978.
Papers included
Margolis, H. (December 1978) Estimating social impacts of climate change–What might be done versus what is likely to be done.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 335ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
On this day in 1980 an international gathering of scientists took place in Villlach, Austria.
“The first major initiative to result from the establishment of the WCP was an international conference on climate change, held in Villach, Austria, from 17 to 22 November 1980. Under the chairmanship of Professor Bert Bolin of the University of Stockholm, the delegates issued a warning that the accumulation of greenhouse gases posed a great risk to the earth’s natural equilibria; they declared that the issue consequently had to be addressed with some urgency. Although their pronouncement drew some attention, its political impact was negligible.”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 338.7ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
Why this matters
This is part of the long slow growth of awareness and concern
What happened next. One of the attendees was Australian scientist Graeme Pearman. Later that year, in September 1980, the Australian Academy of Science held a symposium about carbon dioxide build-up in Canberra.
In 1985 another Villach meeting set the international ball properly rolling, thanks to US Senators paying close attention…
And the emissions? Oh, they kept climbing. Of course they did. I mean, we didn’t stop burning the fossil fuels, did we?
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 315ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Through the 1950s, American and Swedish scientists (and others) were looking at carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and saying to themselves “now that’s interesting.”
Why this matters.
We knew
What happened next?
Bolin? It became Bolin’s life work. He shepherded the climate science agenda forward with skill and patience for decades. He was a key player all through the 1970s and 1980s. First chair of the IPCC. Thank goodness for him he died when he did, before the farce of Copenhagen and so on.
On this day, November 1 in 1975, climate scientist Stephen Schneider tried to keep folks eyes on the prize, given how many various books and hypotheses were already being thrown around
On the Carbon Dioxide–Climate Confusion Stephen H. Schneider J. Atmos. Sci. (1975) 32 (11): 2060–2066.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 331ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
By the mid 1970s, a cottage industry had grown up around “weird weather.”
Why this matters.
We need to remember that there were claims and counter-claims, some outlandish
What happened next?
By the late 70s it was pretty damn clear that it was a carbon dioxide problem…
