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On March 10 1963, “Summer Holiday” sung by Cliff Richard and the Shadows, reached the top of United Kingdom’s pop charts. The accompanying film, which had been released three weeks earlier, follows a group of friends retrofitting an iconic double-decker bus and driving it to Athens, so they can enjoy a holiday “where the sun shines brightly.”  

Two days after the song’s chart triumph, what was probably the first ever meeting given over to the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere took place across the Atlantic, in New York.  Although the science was far more than rudimentary than today, the basic message is unchanged – releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (which happens when you burn oil, coal and gas) would trap more heat on the earth’s surface, melt ice caps and change weather patterns. The intervening sixty years have not changed that.

While some want you to believe climate science is a figment of the imagination of George Soros, “the Chinese, Greta Thunberg or Al Gore, the origins of the carbon dioxide theory stretch back almost two hundred years. In 1824 the French scientist Joseph Fourier pointed out that, given the Earth’s distance from the sun, and the temperature being higher than you would otherwise expect, then something was trapping a certain amount of the sun’s heat. He even used the term “glasshouse.”  Thirty years later, an American feminist and scientist Eunice Foote proposed that carbonic acid (carbon dioxide in solution) might be one cause (her work was only rediscovered in 2010, but may have been read by John Tyndall, the Irish scientist whose 1861 paper made the carbon dioxide idea better known (Tyndall lives on in the naming of the Tyndall Centre). As many conversation readers will know, in 1895 Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist and later Nobel-prize winner suggested that, given the amount of carbon dioxide being released by the burning of oil coal and gas, over time (centuries, he thought) there could be an appreciable warming. This, thought Arrhenius, would be a good thing, opening up new areas for growing food.  Although some scientists (erroneously) said carbon dioxide could not cause such a build-up, there was a certain amount of popular acceptance.  

In 1938 a British steam engineer, Guy Callendar, ascribed the uncontroversial increase in the Earth’s temperature over the previous 50 years to a build up of carbon dioxide. His ideas were more ignored than rebutted.  After World War Two (in which he had helped devise fog-dispersal devices for returning RAF bombers), he continued to push his theory.  Crucially he caught the attention of an American physicist Gilbert Plass.  In May 1953 Plass’s warming warning went around  the world

C02 or not co2, that is the question

While it is easy to draw direct lines and argue “they should have known back then, straight away”, we must remember that carbon dioxide build-up was seen as only one of many possible influences on weather, alongside wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, changing intensity of the Sun and much else. It was not even, according to some, that carbon dioxide levels were climbing. A 1955 US Weather bureau paper pointed to the “noisiness” of the data, and the unreliability of some measurements.  Swedish scientists interested in carbon dioxide had gotten wildly differing measurements.

However, already by the mid-1950s important scientists were saying carbon dioxide build-up might be an influence. 

The Hungarian polymath Jonny Von Neumann told Fortune readers in December 1955

“The carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by industry’s burning of coal and oil-—more than half of it during the last generation—may have changed the atmosphere’s composition sufficiently to account for a general warming of the world by about one degree Fahrenheit”

Speaking to lawmakers (about getting more funding for science) Roger Revelle said in 1956…

“We may actually, for example, find that the Arctic Ocean will become navigable and the coasts become a place where people can live, then the Russian Arctic coastline will be really quite free for shipping, as will our Alaskan coastline, if this possible increase in temperature really happens. . . .”  (source)

To solve the empirical questions, Revelle hired Charles “Dave” Keeling, with Pentagon funding made available for the International Geophysical Year (a global stock-taking effort) to investigate. In March 1958 Keeling started taking careful measurements at an extinct volcano in Hawaii, Mauna Loa, (the site was chosen to be far from sources of error such as forests and factories). By May 1960 Keeling was able to confirm that not only could reliable carbon dioxide measures be compared (he was also collecting in Antarctica) but aht carbon dioxide levels were reports co2 is indeed climbing. A 1961 New York Academy of Sciences meeting responded to this and other work,, and presumably was part of the impetus for the March 1963 conservation foundation meeting.

Conservation foundation meeting

It was in this context that the Conservation Foundation meeting, snappily titled “Implications of Rising Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere” took place. It was attended by a small number of scientists, including the aforementioned Plass and Keeling, and an Englishman, Frank Fraser Darling. The meeting resulted in a short report.

On page 6: “many life forms would be annihilated” [in the tropics] if emissions continued unchecked in the upcoming centuries.”  It also  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)”

We should not imagine this led to immediate acceptance. Revelle worked on various panels, including the President’s Science Advisory Committee. In February 1965 president Lyndon Johnson gave an address to Congress about environmental issues, mentioning that 

“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels”

However a big Conservation Foundation meeting two months later, on “Future Environments of North America” saw only one brief mention (by Fraser Darling) which was met with bland dismissal –    “So far the increase in carbon dioxide with time in the open country is still so small that there are people who don’t believe there has been one.  This is reassuring.”

However, the carbon dioxide issue did not go away, appearing in a reports about weather modification (then a military dream) and the books about environmental crisis that began to crop up in the second half of the 1960s.

Carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere began to mentioned in US congress (see 1966 and 1969) and when Frank Fraser Darling gave the Reith lectures in November 1969 he mentioned carbon dioxide

“There’s a carbon dioxide cycle which naturally keeps levels right. It’s a system of great age and stability which we are now taxing with the immense amounts of carbon dioxide which we’re adding from the fuel we burn.”

Dave Keeling, who measured carbon dioxide till he died, was similarly speaking out.

What’s happened since (“how our understanding has changed since then?”)

By the late 1960s conferences on climate change (ice age or hothouse?!) were being held, especially in the United States and UK. The upcoming Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, to be held in June 1972, provided added impetus, and in June 1971 scientists met for three weeks in Sweden for a workshop on “Man’’s Impact on Climate”. One outcome of the Stockholm conference was the creation of the United Nations Environment Program, which together with the pre-existing World Meteorological Organisation began collecting data and holding conferences.

By late 1970s, scientists were  pretty sure there was serious trouble ahead because of carbon dioxide build-up.. UK chief scientific advisory tried to use an interdepartmental committee’s findings to brief Margaret Thatcher, who had referenced carbon dioxide build-up in mid-1979 in a pro-nuclear comment at the G7 meeting in Tokyo. She responded with incredulity – “you want me to worry about the weather?”

[Source – John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher. Vol. 2: The Iron Lady (London, 2003), 642-643.]

In 1981 Warming Warning, the first documentary solely focused on Carbon Dioxide as a climate changer appeared, directed by Richard Broad, who  had made other crucial  films.

Only in 1988, after another decade of dotting the is and crossing the tees did it become an unavoidable issue. Thatcher famously changed her mind (and changed it back  later).

As of 2023, we now developed sophisticated “integrated assessment models” and all manner of ways of charting the collapse of the Antarctic sea ice, sea level rise etc.  But there’s a simple test for all our fine words about (future) fine actions. – are we bringing emissions down rapidly (no)?

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that day in New York,  60 years ago, was about 319 parts per million (ppm). Today, it’s 420ppm, and its terrible cousin methane is also booming.

In 1963 if Cliff Richard and pals wanted warm weather they had to retrofit a double-decker bus and drive all the way to Greece. Last summer the UK hit 40 degrees for the first time ever. Summer has come here. What else is coming may be no holiday…

“Put out that joint right now!”, yells the cop.

“Of course”, I reply, almost without thinking. I rub the joint against the grass and show it to him.

“Smoking weed in front of the police station! Unbelievable!”, he mutters begrudgingly, and goes back in.

I’m still processing what just happened. I had just arrived at the urban garden, and as a welcome gesture somebody had handed me that joint. Right beside the fence of the garden lies the police station. Two different worlds very close to each other.

It’s the first time I’m working on this garden. While uprooting grass near the spinach, I’m having a conversation with two women about feminism. One of them criticizes how indigenous men from her hometown make their wives carry all their heavy stuff, including their babies, while they themselves don’t carry a thing besides a machete.

In their culture, I tell her, the men need to protect the women from the many dangers of the jungle. She then tells me her mother is indigenous and she was bullied and shamed growing up because of it.

Later on, as we’re starting to light a fire, another cop arrives. He’s asking what we’re gonna cook. We’re just gonna make some aguapanela, we explain. “Only aguapanela?”, he asks. “Y’all should add some alcohol to it”. Which is a really weird thing for a cop to say.

He also gives advice on how to light a fire in such a way that’s suitable for cooking. He is very knowledgeable. He probably comes from the countryside. But he keeps giving us orders, which feels weird. Before he leaves I shake his hand, ask him his name (he gives me his surname), and promise to bring him some aguapanela later.

The water is boiling. We add panela to it, as well as lemongrass, mint, rhubarb and a few other herbs from the garden. A fellow gardener tells us she, as a victim, was feeling very uncomfortable with that cop. This is supposed to be a safe space, she says, free from guns and uniforms. She doesn’t say what she’s a victim of, but it was probably cops. Or soldiers.

Two cops arrive on a motorbike. “Put that fire out”, one of them shouts. We approach the fence to talk to them and explain we have a permit from the city’s Botanical Garden. “We’ll see about that”, he replies. These cops clearly don’t belong to the police station because they arrived from the other side of the park.

We realize we don’t have any cups, so I go to a nearby tienda to buy some. When I come back, a middle-aged woman and her son are talking to some gardeners. Apparently they’re upset that there is a community garden here.

“Where do you live?”, she asks me, defiantly, when I join the conversation. I tell her my address. As it turns out, I live nearby, as do most of the other gardeners. But I know she was assuming I lived in a faraway, poorer part of town, and she was getting ready to tell me to go back there and make a fire there. Now she’s feeling uneasy but still tells me to go make a fire in my home.

I still try to explain to her this is an initiative to create a more sustainable way of living in the city, and to strengthen community bonds in the neighborhood. But her son replies that this is not a good park to have a garden because it attracts junkies.

They seem unable to truly say why they dislike the garden, but I assume they’re frightened conservatives. When the mother leaves, however, the son changes his tone and seems eager to learn about the garden. Even though he doesn’t stay for the aguapanela, he still asks for our numbers.

We’re drinking the aguapanela and doing some planning. We want this year’s garden activities to follow the Muisca calendar. But we don’t get very far because all of a sudden twenty cops arrive.

They stand defiantly at the fence and tell us it is forbidden to light fires in Bogotá, unless we have a permit from the Mayor’s ffice. This is a tense moment. We tell the policemen about a decree from the Botanical Garden, but they don’t seem to buy it. We don’t have that decree handy. We need to look it up on our phones.

An authoritarian woman arrives. She’s a city official. She’s accompanied by other city officials and some cops. “Put that fire down immediately”, she screams. We don’t comply. Somebody scrambles to find the decree and shows it to her on a phone, but she wants none of it. She’s asking for a permit, not a decree. Some of the gardeners get angry. One of them is recording the scene with her phone.

The police chief, however, is trying to de-escalate. He takes the phone we’re handing them, reads the relevant paragraph, and explains the situation to us. Apparently some neighbor called them because they didn’t like the fire. “These are fake environmentalists. They say they wanna protect the Earth, yet they burn wood” is what the neighbor had said. To be fair, that’s not a bad argument.

We end up putting out the fire as an act of goodwill. After all, this is a community thing, and if a neighbor is bothered by the smoke, we respect that. But why do they have to call the cops on us? And why do cops behave like butlers of rich people?

We still end up bringing some aguapanela to the police station later on.

Learn more about our urban garden at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080354461241

Ten years ago, on this day, January 7, 2013, an Australian climate activist sent out a press release pretending to be a bank…

Jonathan Moylan of Front Line Action on Coal … purported to be ANZ’s Group Head of Corporate Sustainability, Toby Kent. Mr Moylan falsely claimed that ANZ was cancelling its $1.2 billion loan facility for Whitehaven Coal’s open-cut mine project in Maules Creek, NSW.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/story/jonathan-moylan-and-300-million-dollar-hoax 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 395.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419. .

The context was that, as ever, state governments were bending over forwards, backwards, sideways to make it easier for companies to dig up and sell coal to people who would burn it.  And activists had tried all the legal means to try to stop it, getting tied up in consultations, petitions etc etc. And then they branched out, into other non-violent (but certainly illegal) tactics…

As ABC journo Sarah McVeigh wrote in 2017

Moylan had been living in the forest for months. He’d started the Maules Creek blockade in the hopes of stopping the mine. The protest made headlines when Wallabies star David Pocock was arrested for chaining himself to a bulldozer. But when the New South Wales government gave it its final tick of approval, Moylan’s hopes were dashed.

“The only two legitimate options were to try and get the (then) federal environment minister Tony Burke to protect the critically endangered woodland in the Leard State forest or to get the ANZ Bank to try and change its decision about financing the project.”

What I think we can learn from this

Making fun of money gets you in trouble.  See that early Michael Haneke film “The Seventh Continent”, where well, spoilers, cash is destroyed

What happened next

On Friday 25 July 2014 Jonathan Moylan was sentenced by the Supreme Court: 1 year 8 months, suspended with the condition of good behaviour for 2 years.

Non-violent protest continues in Australia, despite the best efforts of State and Federal governments to chill it with ever more draconian policing and sentencing

See also

Tim DeChristopher.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

McVeigh, S. (2017)  “I wanted to stop the mine”: Jonathan Moylan and the $300 million hoax. ABC 3 October https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/jono-moylan/9010874

On this day, December15  in 2009 those galaxy brains at the Daily Express ran a front cover “100 reasons why global warming is natural.”

Pricks.

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 387ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

The newspapers at this point were full of stories about climate change because the Copenhagen COP15 conference was underway and since 2006, a wave of climate activism and legislation had been happening. The Daily Express readers wanted to be able to dismiss it all as just another green hoax-  god forbid it turned out that the hippies and the eco nuts were actually right.  That would cause mental anguish in the tiny brains of Express readers.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember just how how stupid and irresponsible the popular press has been on the question of climate change (for well understood reasons – grok the Propaganda Model of Herman and Chomsky).

What happened next?

The Daily Express has continued to be a newspaper by and for idiots.