Category: United Kingdom

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United Kingdom

September 12, 1958 – Letter in The Times about … carbon dioxide build-up

On this day, September 12 1958, the Times newspaper carried a letter about … the build up of carbon dioxide…

As Hamblin, in his excellent “Arming Mother Nature,” notes

Peter Ball noted that “it is time that our school of meteorologists should take their heads out of the sand and, short of experiment or other definite proof to the contrary, give the benefit of the doubt to the worst possibility.” There might not be enough evidence to make the link, but equally so, there was not enough evidence to deny the possibility. Why take such a definitive stand? Ball pointed out that meteorologists already believed humans were having an effect on the climate. The slight warming in polar regions over the past century, he said, was undeniable, and it most likely was a result of humans burning up fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Why was it so hard to accept that another human activity might have an effect as well?

(Hamblin, 2013: 124-5)

Peter Ball, letter to the Times, September 12 1958

On this day the PPM was 313.2

Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

We knew C02 was building up. We knew it might well have implications.

What happened next?

We sat on our thumbs.

Categories
Denial United Kingdom United States of America

September 4, 2006 – Royal Society to Exxon: “Knock it off with the funding to #climate deniers”

On this day, September 4 2006, the Royal Society (venerable Science outfit, 360ish years old) asked the American oil company Exxon to knock it off with the climate denial support.

https://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2006/royal-society-exxonmobil/

On this day the atmospheric carbon dioxide level was 379.04 ppm Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

Exxon had been/has been an enormous source of climate denial, despite their own scientists saying in the 1970s that yes, indeed, global warming because of the burning of fossil fuels was going to be a serious thing. A bunch of scientists who don’t like hand-to-hand combat coming out and saying “stop right there thank you very much” was a big deal.

What happened next?

Exxon got sneakier about it, is all.

Categories
Ignored Warnings United Kingdom

September 1,1972 – “Man-Made Carbon Dioxide and the “Greenhouse Effect” published in Nature

On this day, 1st September 1972, the British meteorologist J.S. Sawyer had a paper “Man-made Carbon Dioxide and the “Greenhouse” Effect” in Nature..

Sawyer, in four pages, summarised what was known and what could be reasonably expected in the short-term (up to the year 2000).

In September 2007, 35 years later, the Australian meteorologist Neville Nicholls had a letter in the same journal, argued  that  “Sawyer’s prediction of a reversal of this trend, and of the correct magnitude of the warming, is perhaps the most remarkable long-range forecast ever made.”

On this day the atmospheric CO2 level was 324.84 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters

It is unfair to blame politicians for not having acted in 1972. But they could/should have started paying attention then. By the late 1970s there really was enough certainty among scientists for real action to begin  (to be clear, real action has still not – 40 years on from that putative deadline – begun. Oh well).

What happened next?

Sawyer kept working. 

As Agar (2015) notes   “In 1974, the Met Office had marked an expanding interest in climate by starting a working party on world climatology, ‘with specific emphasis on climatic change’, under J.S. Sawyer, the Met Office’s director of research.”

Sawyer was asked by the Cabinet Office in 1976 for his opinion of American climate scientist Reid Bryson (see All  Our Yesterdays post about that here).

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

August 31, 2005 – “Stop Climate Chaos” launched

August 31, 2005 – “Stop Climate Chaos” launched

On this day, August 31, 2005 the “Stop Climate Chaos” coalition was launched in the UK – the usual suspect NGOs big and small.

“Up to 500 campaigners formed a giant human banner next to the London Eye to launch a major new alliance. Eighteen groups representing millions of supporters have created the UK’s biggest climate change coalition.

“The Stop Climate Chaos group wants to put pressure on the government to reduce gas emissions. At the G8 summit, the US and UK called for greater investment in clean technology to replace Kyoto-style curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. But others warn new technology will come too late and emissions targets are needed to tackle the problem. The group of volunteers lined up along London’s South Bank to form a giant “human banner” in Jubilee Gardens in the shape of the group’s logo.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4201400.stm

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 378.9 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

We’ve had coalitions of NGOs. They tend to be “lowest conman denominator”, with the most staid organisations vetoing anything at all useful, so that even a march comes to be seen as “edgy.” 


FFS.

What happened next?

The terminally stupid “wave” march in December 2009 was the end of the road for “Stop Climate Chaos”, and, effectively, that particular “wave” of climate concern. It was avoidable, but would have required guts and brains that outfits like Stop Climate Chaos did not have. So it goes. There are other outfits now, I think there is one called the “Climate Coalition”. All failed, all useless. We’re toast.

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

August 26, 2006 – First “Climate Camp” begins

On this day, 26 August 2006, after many months of planning the first “Camp for Climate Action” begins, near Drax Power Station, in Yorkshire.

However, we now know that the police let it happen as a “wave through”. Given how many undercovers there were (just the ones we know about!) they could have stopped this if they’d wanted to. They didn’t, because they didn’t want to. Too many opportunities to track who got involved. A honey pot. And here we are.

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 380.6 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

We mustn’t forget previous resistance, or what happened to it. Hell, we might even learn something from it, and not make exactly the same mistakes, over and over again.

What happened next?

Climate Camp kept having annual camps for a few years, and then imploded.

Climate camps happened in other countries, for a whiile.

Categories
Coal United Kingdom

August 13, 1882 – William “Coal Question” Jevons dies

On this day 13 August 1882, William “Coal Question” Jevons died

Eh? What AM I talking about?

Well, Jevons (a very interesting character) had written a book called “The Coal Question” in 1865. In it he pointed out that if you make a procedure more efficient, you don’t actually reduce the total amount of resources used, because when a producer is now using less of a resource, the price drops, more producers enter the market and the total consumption of the resource goes up. This is known as “Jevons Paradox.”


And somebody even made a video about it.

And for more on this, see, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/02/16/207532/debunking-jevons-paradox-jim-barrett/

PS 1882 happened to be the First International Polar Year.

On this day atmospheric PPM was – dunno, 292 ppm, according to the ice cores. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

The rebound effect matters very much

What happened next?

Fourteen years after Jevons died, Svante Arrhenius’s work on the build-up of carbon dioxide was released…

Categories
Denial United Kingdom

August 12, 1990 – Channel 4 shows crackpot documentary “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”

On this day, August 12, in 1990 a crackpot documentary was broadcast on Channel 4. The “Greenhouse Conspiracy” criticised the theory of global warming and asserted that scientists critical of global warming theory were denied funding. Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Roy Spencer, Sherwood Idso etc the usual suspects. Directed produced and presented by Hilary Lawson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Lawson

And, of course, he got to write a 3000 word piece in the Sunday Times (the Murdoch press already spewing shite about climate change, something they have – mostly – kept doing over the last 30 years).

I wonder if Lawson admits he got that one a bit wrong?

Video here

Transcript here

https://web.archive.org/web/20080527135745/http://fufor.twoday.net/stories/3428768/

On this day the atmospheric C02 was 353 ppm.  Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

To be totally fair, at this stage, such a documentary MIGHT have been makeable in good faith. Maybe. Hmmm. The denial has kept on keeping on.

What happened next?

Oh, the smear merchants kept at it, and still keep at it. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” in 2007 was probably the last time they were effective, in documentaries, but the theft and misrepresentation of emails from UEA in late 2009 (so-called Climategate) was also pretty potent.

The ABC, to its credit, did not bow to the IPA sorts who campaigned for it to be shown. It ended up being screened on SBS…

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

August 4, 2008 – Police pepper spray #climate campers

On this day, August 4, 2008, the forces of law and order provided law. And order. Forcefully.

At the Third Climate Camp

“Police used pepper spray on the crowd at the Climate Camp 2008. It was around 6am Monday 4th August and campers had been woken to the alarm of ‘cops on site’. They were trying to seize vehicles that campers had parked at a top gate of the camp. It was denied later the same day by Sir Ian Blair that any pepper spray would have been used, but this footage clearly shows its unnecessary use.

This was the same Climate Camp where the Met put it about that police had suffered injuries and been hospitalised. A Labour Minister said 70 police had been injured.

The right wing media picked this up (of course) and ran stories about crazed violent eco-anarchists.  

But guess what, it turned out that NONE OF THIS WAS TRUE.

The Liberal Democrats put in a Freedom of Information Act request. The answer 

“showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters. Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and “possible bee stings”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/dec/16/kingsnorth-environment-police-inquiry-injuries

And, of course

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time yesterday [December 15]: “I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn’t the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled.”

“If”. Yeah, sweet non-apology apology. Stay classy, Vern.

On this day the PPM was 384.32 ppm. As of August 2021  it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

The media love a good beat-up. And most are in a symbiotic relationship with our lords and masters.

What happened next?

Climate Camp imploded (it wasn’t just down to the undercover cops, btw). Various groups kept the NVDA flame alive. Extinction Rebellion came along in 2018 and learnt absolutely nothing from the history. Nothing. Nada. Nowt.  

Oh well.

Categories
United Kingdom

July 30, 1989 – UK Conservative politician warns “we have at most 25 years to take action.”

On this day, July 30  1989 Conservative Politician Sir Ian Lloyd was quoted in The Sunday Times as saying ‘we have, at the most, a quarter of a century to make the assessments and take action. The life of the planet may be at stake.’

Wikipedia has him saying “civilisation is clinging by our fingernails to the cliff”. 

The man led an interesting life.

Also from wikipedia.

“He was a member of the Select committee on Technology for 10 years, and then chairman of the Select Committee on Energy for 10 years. He drove the establishment of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (Pitcom), and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)”

for which academic (and other) researches owe him a debt of gratitude.

Lloyd was a prescient guy who, well, later started wittering on about pyramids of uncertainty, and Bjorn Lomborg. It happens. It’s sad when it does, but it happens. See obituary here.

Why this matters. 

Did the rhetoric help us resist our own death grip? No, it didn’t. It never does.

What happened next?

We tightened the death grip on ourselves.

Categories
Coal Denial United Kingdom United States of America

July 28, 1990 – American #climate denial comes to London

On this day, July 28 1990, journalist John Gribbin (author of several books about climate change published in the 1970s and 1980s) had a nice snippet to help us build the picture of the international efforts to scupper climate action, back in the crucial 1988 to 1992 period.;

“last month, when members of the George C. Marshall Institute, a privately funded think tank based in Washington DC, were flown in to present their maverick views on climate change, it came as no surprise to find that the room at the Hyde Park Hotel in which they gave their talks… had actually been booked by British Coal’ (John Gribbin, Why caution is wrong on global warming’. 

New Scientist, 127,  28 July 1990, p. 18)

The “George C. Marshall Institute” had been set up in 1984 to slow down environmental regulation (slippery slope to Pol Pot and Stalin, don’t you know) for a while. They became an early and important node of organised climate resistance. They were – and this is gonna shock you – funded by fossil fuel companies.

You can read more about these ass-hats in Oreskes and Conway’s “The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.”

Why this matters. 

The transatlantic links have not weakened. They have, in fact, strengthened.

What happened next?

The UK accelerated the decline off its coal industry, and imported lots of natural gas. This made it seem like they were making progress on emissions reductions. So that’s nice.