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Climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson weighed in on  the debate on whether the recent warming is beyond what the models predict, pointing out that “it’s not just the scale of change, it’s the  timeline of that scale of change. And that’s the real difference between Hansen and Mann. Really, it is one of timeline. They both end up being in a terrible place. The Hansen analysis gets us there a little sooner than that of Mann, but in the absence of deep and rapid cuts in emissions both are going to get there.”  

Interviewed before making a presentation at a January 30th public meeting in Glossop, England, Anderson was asked about the “Team Mann versus Team Hansen” debate (this was before Hansen et al.’s paper Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? was published) 

I see a lot of good reasons to be taking more notice of  the Hansen end of the spectrum. But as with all science, there’s a range of uncertainty that comes out of equally robust analysis. So Mann’s analysis could be correct, and so could Hansen’s, and we can’t, we can’t know which of those are more accurate until we get an improved understanding and more empirical data. 

But does that affect our policy framework? No, not really. Risk is an important part of policy, risk and uncertainty. So we should start planning for the repercussions of the Hansen end of the spectrum being correct. The consequences of Mann analysis are pretty disastrous anyway, but Hansen’s conclusions land more within a dire to catastrophic framing. And from a responsible political perspective, I think we have to lean our policies more towards the worst case than hoping for more optimistic interpretations to play in our favour.

As it is today policy makers fail to have the courage or clarity of vision to even grapple with the Mann end of the spectrum. To put it bluntly, at both the global and national level the policy realm embeds a soft form of denial. 

The interview covered a range of topics, and will be released in portions. You can read the first part here. It was conducted by Dr Marc Hudson, who has interviewed Professor Anderson on several occasions over the past 15 years. Dr Hudson runs All Our Yesterdays, an  “on this day” website about climate politics, technology, protest that covered events from 1661 to the present day.

The transcript of the relevant portion of the interview can be found below.

You are free (and of course encouraged) to use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Please cite both the source (i.e. that the interview was conducted by Marc Hudson, and the URL of this page.

Give me the conch back. Two observations and the next question. Observation one is in the 60s and 70s, or early 70s, it was this toss up between, “are we going to freeze or are we going to burn?” Obviously, the science has come on a very long way, but we’re kind of still in the same place and interesting. 

And then I’m reminded of the late, great Wally Broecker, the oceanographer, who said of ocean currents and climate, that we were poking the beast with a sharp stick, and there might be trouble if we woke the beast up. I think the beast is snuffling. And in that pre awake, yes, pre awake phase, 

OK. Next question. So here’s my rough characterization. There is “Team Michael Mann” that says, you know “the temperature anomalies of 2023 24 while surprising, are within what the models kind of suggest and expect and quote.‘The truth is bad enough.’” And then there is “Team Hansen with people like James Hansen, Leon Simons, saying, “no, no. no no The lessening of the sulfates from the marine pollution and other factors means that the models that we have been using, including the IPCC, are no longer adequate.” 

And even Gavin Schmidt, they would say, is having to admit that he’s confused [Guardian]. And you know, Gavin Schmidt is kind of at the smart end, shall we say, of climate scientists. 

So where is Kevin Anderson? Is he firmly in the camp of … First is this a fair characterization of the debates that are happening among the scientists? Or is it. unfair? And second question is, where does Kevin Anderson fit? Is he Team Mann or Team Hansen, or is he a substitute, or is he playing a different game altogether?

Kevin Anderson  10:14  

I see a lot of good reasons to be taking more notice of  the Hansen end of the spectrum. But as with all science, there’s a range of uncertainty that comes out of equally robust analysis. So Mann’s analysis could be correct, and so could Hansen’s, and we can’t know which of those are more accurate until we get an improved understanding and more empirical data.

 

But does that affect our policy framework? No, not really. Risk is an important part of policy, risk and uncertainty. So we should start planning for the repercussions of the Hansen end of the spectrum being correct. The consequences of Mann analysis are pretty disastrous anyway, but Hansen’s conclusions land more within a dire to catastrophic framing. And from a responsible political perspective, I think we have to lean our policies more towards the worst case than hoping for more optimistic interpretations to play in our favour.

As it is today policy makers fail to have the courage or clarity of vision to even grapple with the Mann end of the spectrum. To put it bluntly, at both the global and national level the policy realm embeds a soft form of denial. There’s an acceptance of the science, but a denial of the need to act accordingly; behind the eloquence and rhetoric, fingers remain firmly crossed that we’ll somehow be ok.

marc hudson  11:48  

Don’t talk about the airport expansion. That’s my next question.

Kevin Anderson  11:52  

Is it. Okay. 

Thinking about how we, the academic and wilder climate expert realm, engage with policy makers, I see it  incumbent on us to start by asking what does the policy landscape look like if we’re to deliver the deep cuts in emissions needed in a climate emergency? But also, of course, how on earth do we adapt? How do we, and the ‘we’ is important in this, adapt to the scale of change that is implied by the Hansen framing of these issues?” 

And it’s not just the scale of change, it’s the  timeline of that scale of change. And that’s the real difference between Hansen and Mann. Really, it is one of timeline. They both end up being in a terrible place. The Hansen analysis gets us there a little sooner than that of Mann, but in the absence of deep and rapid cuts in emissions both are going to get there.  

marc hudson  12:44  

We’ve had these warnings since 1988 in public,

Yep

 and from scientists since late 70s. I think it’s fair to say 

Yep

though you can, you can heckle me when I’m doing my presentation, because I cover this though. The omens – if past performance is the best indicator of future performance – the omens are not good. 

For more of Kevin’s work see climateuncensored.com

Tomorrow’s blog post –  UK aviation emissions and the proposed Third Runway at Heathrow.

Additional info:  Team Mann versus Team Hansen

Anderson, K. 2025 Has Global Warming Accelerated – a short response to Hansen et al

Berwyn, B. 2025. James Hansen’s research documents global warming acceleration. Inside Climate News, February 4.

also just published –
Cheng, L., Abraham, J., Trenberth, K.E. et al. Record High Temperatures in the Ocean in 2024. Adv. Atmos. Sci. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-025-4541-3

Thirty three years ago, on this day, February 12th, 1992, Liberal Party John Hewson decides to give up on pretending to give a shit about “the environment”.

The federal coalition will reconsider its radical position on curbing emission of greenhouse gasses.

The Opposition Leader, Dr Hewson, said yesterday that he had asked the environment spokesman, Mr Chaney, to review the Opposition’s policy of endorsing a target of a 20 per cent reduction in these emissions by 2000.

Grattan, M. 1992. Coalition To Rethink Greenhouse Policy. The Age, 13 February, p.3.

[Here ends the competitive consensus!!]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was the Libs had gone to the 1990 election trying to win over small g green voters because (big G green voters didn’t exist) and were unsuccessful and believed that they were stabbed in the back. The new Liberal leader John Hewon, was looking forward to the 1993 election, which he must have felt fairly confident that he was going to win, given the recession that we had to have, which had Paul Keating’s name all over it. Keating was by now installed as prime minister, and so Hewson was looking to, in the words of a later conservative leader, cut the green crap. 

This was noticed, at the time, by the way. See this

“According to the director of science and technology policy at Murdoch University, Fightback would result in a six per cent increase in car use immediately, and 28 per cent in a few years.

The table shows that Australia is the third worst polluter in the OECD region and that our poor performance is very much related to low fossil-fuel prices.

If Australia is to get its carbon emissions down to a level comparable with other OECD countries, some form of carbon tax will have to be introduced.

International pressure to move in this direction is likely to intensify over the next decade.”

Davidson, K. 1993. Hewson Error Of Emission.The Age, 11 February, p.13. 

What I think we can learn from this is the Libs had a policy. It didn’t serve them with the electorate. They ditched it, and they never got it back, and this was the moment when Hewson ditched it.

What happened next Hewson lost the unlosable election in part thanks to a birthday cake and how much his flat tax would cost.  But now goes around bleating on about the environment and saying Market Forces are gonna fix it. Australia has been so badly let down by its political and economic “elite”. Buncha idiots at absolute best.

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.

Merry Christmas/Atheistmas. Have a read of this – “How Dickens Made Christmas White”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181217-how-dickens-made-white-christmas-a-myth

The context was it turns out that white is not normal. To conceive of white as the normal, everything else as a disappointment is simply wrong. Am I talking about white supremacism and the normative bias around that? Well, yes, of course I am. But I’m also talking about the idea of a white Christmas – that it would snow on Christmas Day. Enough for postcards and all that. And the amazing thing is that you can #BlameDickens. There’s a really good article See, link here, pointing out that when Dickens was writing in the 1840s and 50s, he was harking back to some really severely cold winters including the last time the Thames froze solid, in 1814. Enough for an elephant to walk across. 

What we learn is that our memories and norms around what the weather was like are exceptionally unreliable. For all sorts of well-understood reasons about how memory functions – with the peak end bias and so forth. 

What happened next denialists keep pointing out that memory is faulty as if that is a knockdown argument. 

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.

Also on this day: 

December 25, 1988 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands says “the earth is slowly dying”

December 25, 1989 – business press pushback about Global Warning “panic” begins…

Fifty eight years ago, on this day, November 26th, 1966, the UK Conservation Society has its first meeting.

Inaugural General Meeting of the Conservation Society, Herring 2001 

Lady Eve Balfour, ‘Inaugural address to the Conservation Society’, 26 November 1966, 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the great British public were getting a little worried about pollution, species loss, pesticides, you name it. And there had been a letter in The Observer a few months earlier, that kick started the whole thing. And this was the first meeting of the Conservation Society. (Compare it with, for example, Amnesty, which also started with a newspaper article followed by a letter.)

What we learn is that by the mid 1960s, the problems were becoming apparent, and couldn’t be denied really. And groups of citizens were taking it upon themselves to come together to try to inform/lobby governments. 

What happened next, the Conservation Society held some useful meetings. In 1968 its president was Lord Ritchie Calder. And he gave a blistering speech called Hell on Earth which had a small mention of the problem of C02 buildup, something that he had been talking about in mildly apocalyptic terms, at least in 1963 and had already mentioned on radio at the beginning of 1968. 

And the ConSoc, had its high watermark, probably with Paul Ehrlich’s visit in 1971. But thereafter, the fact that it was a small, relatively small c-conservative organisation, and there were newer, more media-attuned organisations like Friends of the Earth and then Greenpeace meant that ConSoc was on a long, slow decline. However, this can be overplayed. And in the mid 70s, there’s a series of really interesting and useful reports by ConSoc groups in different parts of the UK.

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.

Also on this day: 

November 26, 1996 – Australian climate modelling is ridiculed

November 26, 1998 – “National Greenhouse Strategy” (re)-launched

November 26, 2008 – pre-CPRS meeting (yawn)

November 26, 2008 – Climate Change Act becomes law

Three posts today about something that happened on Monday 9th October 2006

1. Australian scientists and charities produced a report  “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change”  – see this blog post
2. The Australian Labor Party piggy-backed its own statement about climate refugees – see this blog post

3. Therefore someone born on that day in the South Pacific would be turning 18. Happy Birthday (a letter to them here)

The only thing left to talk about, imo, is what is to be done now, by people of good intentions and determination?

I offer – for what it is worth, a few suggestions about what white middle-class people like me, with training and education, might usefully do. I am happy to be told I am wrong, but please be specific. I am happy to be told what I have missed – as per the organisations, I will add advice.  

Then I link to organisations working on this stuff. I have no idea if they’re any good. The list is NOT exhaustive. If you know of other good organisations, please share and I will add them.

What is to be done

1. Educate yourselves and others about climate change – not the science (bare bones is enough there) but the politics, the techniques used by those who want to slow or stop action, the pathologies that affect social movements and civil society in their (so-far not all that impressive) efforts to make states and corporations be less ecocidal. Or do the ecocide slower.

One resource (I don’t do false modesty – is the AOY site. It’s ramshackle, under-signposted but not actually THAT hard to use. There’s a search box.

Another resource (I don’t do false modesty; it’s a passive-aggressive extortion bid for attention and reassurance) is ME. I am MORE than happy to come on podcasts, do workshops etc.  I am, on my day, a good communicator and also designer/executor of formats that are genuinely participatory and energising. Hit me up

You need to know about – the history (at least a little) of Australia’s international criminality on climate change, which is ABSOLUTELY 100% bipartisan.  There is net zero significant different between LNP and ALP on this.

2. Take sustained action. Sorry, but that means being involved, at least a little bit, in a group.

Groups suck.  They are riven with (usually undeclared) turf wars, brittle egos, dysfunction etc.  They waste time on pointless meetings

But if you try to do stuff on your own you will be a) less effective and b) very likely shorter-lived in your efforts.

Groups suck. But suck it up…

3. Try to be a less-terrible ally.

People of colour, poor people etc have got far more immediate (and, gasp) important things to be doing than helping well-meaning white people be less-terrible allies. It’s exhausting emotionally, it means they have less time for the stuff they need to do.

There already exist LOADS of resources for white people to get stuck into.  Here’s a brief. Please suggest additions. Please USE these resources.  Please step into discomfort (together) and stay there.

What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri (2021 book)

No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally by Nova Reid (Guardian 2021)

And for people who find they benefit from academic work

• Hesford, Wendy S. “Reading the signs: Performative white allyship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 239-244.

• Badenhorst, Pauli, James Jupp, Jenna Min Shim, Timothy J. Lensmire, Zachary A. Casey, Samuel J. Tanner, Veronica Watson, and Erin Miller. “Doesn’t Your Work Just Re-Center Whiteness? The Fallen Impossibilities of White Allyship.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (2022).

• Clark, Meredith D. “White folks’ work: Digital allyship praxis in the# BlackLivesMatter movement.” Social Movement Studies 18, no. 5 (2019): 519-534

• Liu, Helena. “White allyship.” In Redeeming Leadership, pp. 141-156. Bristol University Press, 2020

4. If you have academic training and access to resources, do two things

First, share the skills you have – research, writing, etc – with people who want to take on those tasks. Don’t be a chokepoint,  for your own particular needs

Secondly, expose lies and tell the truth. Study the rich.  There is so much to be done, so few doing it.

Organisations

[NB This is from a google search. If someone else who actually knows first-hand has made a better list, I will take this down and point to their work]

South Asian Climate Solidarity

Asia Pacific Network of Refugees

Home

Melbourne Friends of the Earth (held a workshop in February – 

How we build solidarity for climate justice lunch & workshop

This workshop will explore how we can build solidarity with climate impacted and marginalized communities, by understanding the ways that systems of oppression impact our activism, everyday lives and those of our communities.

Rising Tide Australia

Human Rights Law Centre (policy stuff, legal advocacy)

You might also be interested in

Australia commits $9 million to help Pacific neighbours meet climate targets by Joshua Hill [reeweconomy]

Accidents will happen. It’s what you do next.

On Saturday 6th (well, Sunday 7th am Australia time)  I was uploading already written and proofed blog posts to the website. I had enough attention left in me to  realise that at least a year ago I had fouled up my database, and the upcoming post for “October 9” was utterly invalid.  To see if I could easily Close The Gap,I went to my SHED (Secret Huge Eco Database) to see what I had for that date.

I found something old that I knew about but had never really understood its implications. Or maybe, to be extra-fair to myself – the implications weren’t apparent when I entered it.

This has led to, shall we say “a flurry of activity.”