Category: Scientists

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Scientists

March 10, 2012- RIP Sherry Rowland

On this day in 2012 the famed and Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Sherry Rowland died. Rowland had been instrumental in the 1970s in translating scientific concern around the ozone-depleting effects of chlorofluorocarbons into policy action. (Ozone depletion concerns and action were key to the development of awareness of climate issues and the ability to “do” something about them).

As Rowland said, “What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true.”

You can read a lovely “in memoriam” about him here.

There’s also a video about his work

Discovery of a Lifetime: F. Sherwood Rowland and the Ozone Layer – YouTube

You can read more about Rowland in the excellent book by Oreskes and Conway the Merchants of Doubt

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Science Scientists

March 5, 1950 – first computer simulation of the weather…

On this day in March 5 1950, Jule Charney and Jonny von Neumann produced the first computer simulation of the weather. Who were these people? Jules Charney was, according to Wikipedia considered “the father of modern dynamical meteorology, Charney is credited with having “guided the postwar evolution of modern meteorology more than any other living figure.” 

And in 1979, he helmed what’s now known as the Charney report, which told the politicians that yes, there was no reason to doubt that a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to a three degree temperature rise. 

Jonny von Neumann was Hungarian, possibly the smartest person who’s ever lived. And in 1955 he would warn Fortune magazine of the buildup of carbon dioxide shortly before his death in early 1957.

Why this matters. 

The work Neumann and Charney did was foundational for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, set up in 1963 under NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to model the atmosphere.

Computer simulations, computer models of the climate have been extremely important for creating the understanding (and global awareness) of weather and climate. And there is a book by Paul Edwards called A Vast Machine which will tell you a lot more. 

What happened next?

It would be another five or six years before the buildup of carbon dioxide started to impinge properly on people’s consciousness.

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anti-reflexivity Predatory delay Scientists United Kingdom

March 1st 2010 – scientist grilled over nothing burger…

On this day in 2010, Professor Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, gave testimony to a parliamentary committee (the Science and Technology Select Committee since you ask) on the subject of the so-called Climategate hack (or the “Climatic Research Unit email controversy”).

In late 2009, in the run up to Copenhagen, the servers of the University of East Anglia had been infiltrated, a vast archive of emails downloaded, and then selected releases to make it look as if climate scientists were colluding to keep critics out of peer review. And this was designed to make the negotiations at Copenhagen COP more problematic. Whether it mattered or not is impossible, perhaps to say, but no single bullet ever wins a war… 

The broader context is that climate scientists had been coming under fierce public attack since at least 1989. (Never mind James Hansen’s funding being pulled in 1981 because of a New York Times front page article displeasing the Republican Administration). 

But the kind of personal, bitter ad hominem attacks really took off 1995-96 around the second IPCC assessment report. Michael Mann, who became the subject of attacks himself, calls this the Serengeti Strategy.

Why this matters. 

The narrative of “there is doubt about how severe climate change will be/the climate scientists may be – if not lying – exaggerating” is an immensely powerful narrative. Because it allows middle class professional people to continue not to pay attention to the issue. And that’s why the predatory delayers have played the card for so long. 

What happened next?

The “climategate” emails were found, after multiple investigations, to be – in the words of the right wingers –  a “nothing burger.” Jones continued his career, having admitted that he had contemplated suicide at the time. Meanwhile, the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have continued to climb

Atmospheric C02 concentration at that time: 390.1ppm

Atmospheric C02 concentration at time of publication: 416.71ppm

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Science Scientists

 Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

On this day, in 1861, Irish scientist John Tyndall read his paper about carbon dioxide at the Royal Society at the annual Bakerian lecture. Tyndall was not, we now know, the first person to point out what he called carbonic acid had greenhouse water warming potential. That honour belongs to Eunice Foote in the United States a few years earlier. There’s an interesting and useful summary of this at the beginning of Alice Bell’s excellent 2021 book “Our Biggest Experiment.” And of course the idea that there must be something, some gas, keeping the planet warmer than it otherwise would be dates back to Fourier in 1824.

Tyndall did the research, reported it. It wasn’t for another 35 years that someone, Svante Arrhenius. said, “this is in fact going to be a thing (but not for centuries, and it will be a good thing.”. He was trying to distract himself from a messy divorce by doing laborious calculations, which your mobile phone could probably do in about three seconds now. 

Why this matters,

We’ve understood the science – this is 19th century physics – for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have not acted. And as I’ve said before, I will say again, that “we” first person plural pronoun is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[On this question of ‘we’ see this 2018 piece by Genevieve Gunther – h/t Sam]

What happened next

The Tyndall Centre got set up in 2000.

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Agnotology Science Scientists United States of America

Jan 29, 2006: Attempts to gag James Hansen revealed

Jan 29

On this day, the New York Times released a report, written by Andy Revkin, about how famed climate scientist James Hansen was being subjected to attempts at gagging him by some of George W Bush’s appointed goons. You can read all about it here. There’s a whole (very good) book about the campaign, called Censoring Science.

Hansen had already been up against this sort of stuff in 1981, when the incoming Reagan administration had cut his funding in retaliation to a previous front page story on the New York Times.

Why this matters? 

Because if scientists, charities, think tanks, civil trade unions, etc, are gagged and silenced, then the public don’t get a real sense of “what’s up” (though by now, it amounts to wilful ignorance, and anyway, information on its own counts for nothing). This is all part of the long war against impact science, usually by no means exclusively, on the part of the “ right “. You have to remember that when the “left” is in charge, it also doesn’t go particularly well for independently minded scientists.

What happened next

Hansen is still publishing. You can see his Google Scholar page here  because Hansen is in the old Yiddish term, a mensch.

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Ignored Warnings Scientists

2007, Jan 1: “If we fail to act, we end up with a different planet”

On this day, 15 years ago, the now defunct newspaper the Independent, ran a front page interview with famed climate scientist James Hansen.

This came with climate change already high on the agenda – the previous year had seen the first “Camp for Climate Action” and the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. New Conservative Party leader David Cameron had decided environmentalism was a leading way to detoxify the Tory brand, and in April 2006 had travelled to the Arctic to ‘hug a huskie’. More generally, humanity was going through its second big “something must be done” moment on climate (and its third on environmental matters more broadly – see “issue attention cycles” in the concepts page of this site).

In the interview Hansen, famous for his efforts to raise public awareness and concern, predating his iconic June 23 1988 testimony in front of a Senate committee (which we will return to later) said

““If we go another 10 years, by 2015, at the current rate of growth of Co2 emissions, which is about 2 per cent per year, the emissions in 2015 will be 35 per cent larger than they were in 2000. But if we want to get on a scenario that keeps global temperature in the range that it’s been in for the last million years we would need to decrease the emissions by something of the order of 25 per cent by the middle of the century and by something like 75 per cent by the end of the century“

Hansen is usually out in front on these matters. Events have overtaken him on this one, and there is now scientific consensus around much much steeper cuts in emissions. There is an alleged political consensus around “zero carbon” by 2050.

So, an ignored warning from the past. So what? This matters because there will still be people who tell you ‘”we’ve only just become aware of the problem, we need to give technology time to work”.

What happened next? We kept burning the fossil fuels – (we’ve burnt more between 1991 and 2019 than we did from 1751 to 1990). Hansen wrote a book (see further reading), and, well, Groundhog Day has kept on coming around again…

References

Connor, J. (2007) ‘If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet’. The Independent, 01 January, p.1

Further reading

Hansen, J. (2009) The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Bloomsbury Press

Millman, O. (2018) Ex-Nasa scientist: 30 years on, world is failing ‘miserably’ to address climate change. The Guardian, 19 June.