Nineteen years ago, on this day, September 30th, 2006,
A group of 14 Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, sends a letter to the inspector generals of both the Commerce Department and NASA requesting formal investigations into allegations that Bush administration political appointees suppressed evidence linking global warming to increased hurricane intensity…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 382ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that until about 1989 concern over climate change was broadly bi-partisan (this is NOT to say that the people running Reagan were ‘greenies’ – they were not). From 1989 we see serious efforts to silence or sideline top scientists (Hansen, Bolin) and to rile up a culture war. This was under George H.W. Bush.
The specific context was HW’s son, Dumbya – sorry, Dubya – took it to the next level. James Hansen, for example, was on the receiving end of many efforts to sideline/silence him.
What I think we can learn from this is that the people running the show are greedy, stupid, selfish, have no respect for impact science (while loving production science).
What happened next –
Launtberg held hearings the following year –
The War on Science went on, and has accelerated dramatically in the nine months – everybody knows the good guys lost…
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.
Eighteen years ago, on this day, September 27th, 2007,
2007 Kyoto Protocol Inaction Demonstration, Washington D.C.
Four environmental organizations including Greenpeace, Oil Change International, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, staged a protest against climate change inaction and the Bush Administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Demonstrators gathered outside the State Department, where Bush was (ironically) holding an international meeting on climate change. Nearly 50 activists, including Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando, were arrested on civil disobedience charges, i.e. refusal to disperse.
and more here – https://climateandcapitalism.com/2007/09/23/dc-rally-to-protest-bush-climate-change-conference/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 364ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the US had signed up to the UNFCCC treaty in 1992, having made sure – via threatening to boycott the Earth Summit – that the text contained no commitments for reductions of emissions.
The specific context was that there was a huge industry lobbying effort in the run-up to the Kyoto conference (to be held in December 1997) to ensure that profits would not be harmed. This effort by the green groups is part of the fight.
What I think we can learn from this – the green groups are always outspent, of course, and are up against the Western belief that “some technology will turn up at the last minute…”
What happened next – the Kyoto conference delivered a weak protocol, which the US pulled out of in 2001. There was then an effort to create a sequel, in Copenhagen in 2009. That failed. Then, in 2015 the world-saving “Paris Agreement”, oh yes.
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.
Seventy five years ago, on this day, September 26th, 1950,
On 26 and 27 September 1950, the U.S. Navy conducted a secret experiment named “Operation Sea-Spray” in which balloons filled with S. marcescens were released and burst over urban areas of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Although the Navy later claimed the bacteria were harmless, beginning on September 29, 11 patients at a local hospital developed very rare, serious urinary tract infections. One of the afflicted patients, Edward J. Nevin, died.[27] Cases of pneumonia in San Francisco also increased after S. marcescens was released.[28][29] (That the simulant bacteria caused these infections and death has never been conclusively established.) Nevin’s son and grandson lost a lawsuit they brought against the government between 1981 and 1983, on the grounds that the government is immune,[30] and that the chance that the sprayed bacteria caused Nevin’s death was minute.[31]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was the “Cold War” and all the “national security” stuff was offering opportunities to conduct wild experiments with pretty much no oversight or risk of exposure. So scientists went wild.
What I think we can learn from this That when governments bang on about “national security”, watch out for your health. Or watch it decline because – absent an extremely vigorous civil society – you are gonna get used as some kind of guinea pig.
In the Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the Army revealed:
Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City and Key WestFlorida with no known illnesses resulting.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed zinc cadmium sulfide, a known cancer-causing agent, over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles were detected more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away in New York state.
Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places.
In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system. Army officials concluded in a January 1968 report that: “Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic disease-causing agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death.”[17]
In a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington’s National Airport and its Greyhound Lines bus terminal, more than 130 passengers were exposed to the bacteria and traveled to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.[5]
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.
Seventy years ago today, on Thursday September 22nd 1955, a scientist employed by General Electric stood in front of an audience of engineers and told them that the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “may be having a greenhouse effect on our climate” because mankind was “contaminating the earth’s atmosphere faster than nature can clean it.”
The audience was a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, hosted by the Cleveland Engineering Society. The scientist giving the after-dinner speech, titled “Fact and Fantasy” was John G. Hutton, originally English, who had gained a PhD in electrical engineering at Yale.
The following day the newspaper the Plain-Dealer carried the story under the headline “Clears H-Bomb as Weather Climate.” From there the story got picked up by UP (United Press) which quoted Hutton – having explained that trees and plant life absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen – as saying
“However… when people chop down trees, bulldoze once-rural land for suburbs, and build factories on former open fields, they lessen the amount of carbon dioxide nature is cleaning from our air.”
Hutton also referred to the Los Angeles smog problem (see Rebecca John’s investigation for DeSmog on how fossil fuel companies warped the scientific research effort around this, burying the carbon dioxide aspect).
Hutton had been born in 1916, Sunderland, England. Having failed his exam to enter secondary school, he worked in manual labour and went to night school in order to be accepted to Durham University. From there he was awarded a fellowship to attend Yale, where he got his Masters and Doctorate. After brief stints in Canada and teaching at Cornell, he started working for General Electric in 1943 as an electrical engineer.
Hutton’s inspirations
Hutton already was an experienced after-dinner speaker by this time, and it is not clear why he chose to talk about climate change.
Two years previously Gilbert Plass, drawing on the work of Swedish Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius, and the more recent work of English Steam Engineer Guy Callendar, had pointed to the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a long-term threat. Also in 1953 economist Willam J. Baxter, author of the very popular “Today’s Revolution in Weather” had touched on the theory. When Hutton spoke, Plass’s first academic paper on CO2 build-up had been submitted but not published, and Roger Revelle, the famous scientist and administrator, had not yet begun to use carbon dioxide build-up as one part of his (successful) campaign to convince US federal politicians to fund expensive science.
It may simply have been that the International Geophysical Year – a world-wide collaboration of data gathering – was coming soon (1957-1958) and he thought it worth talking about; he told his Cleveland audience that carbon dioxide build-up would be investigated during the IGY.
Two other possible sources of inspiration deserve a mention. In June 1955, Fortune magazine had published an article by the extremely well-known and respected Jonny von Neumann. In “Can we survive technology?” the Hungarian genius noted that
“[t]he 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.”
The second source is internal to GE. Another – far more prominent – General Electric scientist was already making waves on the question of carbon dioxide and the atmosphere, albeit from another perspective.
From the late 1940s, pursuing work he and others had conducted during the second world war, Irving Langmuir advocated using frozen carbon dioxide (“dry ice”) to see clouds.
On the afternoon of October 13, 1947, an Air Force B-17 aircraft penetrated a hurricane 415 miles (667 km) east of Jacksonville and dumped several pounds of crushed dry ice into the storm, just to see what would happen. This was the first attempt to modify a tropical cyclone by seeding it with freezing nuclei.
Regardless of Hutton’s specific impetus, the idea that man might modify the weather and climate – either deliberately (as a weapon of war, or to improve crop growth) or accidentally was “in the air.” In June 1953 tornados had occurred in places that had rarely had them before, and there was a great deal of speculation and anxiety around the possibility that H-bomb tests had caused them (for a great summary of this see McBrien, 2019).
What happened next
There was immediate newspaper coverage around the United States in local papers. Usually this was buried in later pages, but on several occasions it was front page news. (e.g. “Engineer lays hotter weather on growing industrialization” The Buffalo News, September 23, page 1) and “Auto Exhaust May Change Climate More Than A-Bomb” Omaha World-Herald, November 18, page 1)
Over the following months, the story was syndicated elsewhere, often with the “no, it’s not H-bombs” angle emphasised.
In February 1956 the science correspondent for the Washington Evening Star (then a far more important paper than the Washington Post) covered Hutton’s speech.
Other publications, including Journal of the Franklin Institute, “Management” and “Power Plant Engineering” also ran articles covering his speech.
Most intriguingly, in 1956 the long-running radio program sponsored by GE, “Excursions in Science,” covered the question of carbon dioxide build-up. Hutton’s speech was not mentioned – the episode was based on Gilbert Plass’s paper which had just come out. You can listen to it here: Climate Change and Industrial Activity – Excursions in Science Radio Program from 1950s
What we learn and what happened next
The value of this is that it builds a picture of carbon dioxide build-up as a persistent (albeit minor) factor in US print media coverage of what would later be called “pollution” narratives. The carbon dioxide theory had received a boost thanks to Gilbert Plass’s May 1953 presentation to the American Geophysical Union. Hutton’s speech, the first I have found, came before Revelle, Teller and others, before we even had “the Keeling Curve”
Hutton seems not to have repeated his warning. He spent 39 years working for GE, retiring in 1981. He died in 1995 after an extended illness, just after the first “COP” meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and a few months before the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report stated that human activities were already having a “discernible” impact on the world’s climate.
When Hutton made his speech in Cleveland, the atmospheric concentration of C02 was 313ppm and annual human emissions were 7.4bn tonnes.
When he died they were at 360ppm, with emissions at 23.27bn tonnes.
Today they stand at 424ppm, with emissions at 37bn tonnes.
There is a very great deal of trouble ahead. Some of it has arrived, but much much more is on its way. We can’t say we were not warned.
McBrien, Justin. 2019. “‘The Tornado Was Not the A-Bomb’s Child’: The Politics of Extreme Weather in the Age of Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Autumn 2019), no. 40. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/8814.
Billionaire investor Chris Sacca yesterday said that spraying particles into the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays and slow global warming may now be the only way to save humanity.
Why it matters: The Lowercarbon Capital founder has helped turn a fringe idea into one now attracting serious attention.
Driving the news: “We have no opportunity for survival on this planet unless you reflect back sunlight,” Sacca said at a summit in New York City organized by venture capital firm Equal Ventures.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 421ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was the rich have always loved geo-engineering, because it sidelines questions of justice (it doesn’t really, but in the short term it does) and appeals to their messiah/god complexes.
The specific context was that the COP process was obviously dead (again) and the “well, let’s Hail Mary” this was in the air.
What I think we can learn from this is that rich people are not necessarily smarter than anyone else. May even become dumber by the time they’ve surrounded themselves with sycophants, if they weren’t at the start.
What happened next – the geo-engineering debate bubbles on, much like the methane in the clathrates.
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.
Forty seven years ago, on this day, September 17th, 1978,
17 Sept 1978 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the “National Climate Program Act”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 335ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been efforts, since about 1974 iirc, to beef up Federal support for/co-ordination of climate research (n.b. At this point carbon dioxide was only one of many different matters of concern).
The specific context was Various tenacious politicians kept on the case, despite repeated failures (George Brown etc).
What I think we can learn from this
Science requires funding and leadership. What happens when you have neither? Well, we’re finding out.
What happened next
By 1979 it was pretty clear to the smarter people in the room that the carbon dioxide build-up was the problem to watch. The politicians took a decade to convince.
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.
Thirty five years ago, on this day, September 15th, 1990,
The first episode of “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” was broadcast.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers, commonly referred to as simply Captain Planet, is an American animated environmentalist superhero television series created by Barbara Pyle and Ted Turner[1] and developed by Pyle, Nicholas Boxer, Thom Beers, Andy Heyward, Robby London, Bob Forward, and Cassandra Schafausen. The series was produced by Turner Program Services and DIC Enterprises and broadcast on TBS and in syndication from September 15, 1990, to December 5, 1992
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 354ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was we’ve got to propagandise the young about how The System cares and can be fixed to solve whatever the problem seems to be. There are vast indoctrination efforts going on, all the time.
The specific context was that Ted Turner was then married to Jane Fonda, who switched him on to environmental issues.
What I think we can learn from this is that the efforts at getting the kids riled up? Yeah, doesn’t last.
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.
References
King, D. L. (1994). Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Kids, environmental crisis, and competing narratives of the new world order. Sociological Quarterly, 35(1), 103-120.
One hundred and sixty nine years ago, on this day, September 13th, 1856,
Her article sparked interest and praise, notably in the 13 September issue of Scientific American magazine, in an article titled ‘Scientific ladies – experiments with condensed gases’: ‘Some have not only entertained, but expressed the mean idea, that women do not possess the strength of mind necessary for scientific investigation […] the experiments of Mrs Foote afford abundant evidence of the ability of woman to investigate any subject with originality and precision.’ https://www.chemistryworld.com/culture/eunice-foote-the-mother-of-climate-change/4011315.article#/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 285ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the 19th century was kinda exciting for “science” (new word, only just taking over from “natural philosophy”).
The specific context wasEunice Foote was a campaigner for women’s suffrage, and a scientist.
What I think we can learn from this – we could have done better as a species, but, well, here we are…
What happened next
Foote’s work specifically on climate was forgotten, but then rediscovered by retired petroleum geologist Ray Sorenson. In January 2011, in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists‘ on-line journal Search and Discovery he had this article.-: “Eunice Foote’s Pioneering Research On CO2 And Climate Warming“
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.
Fifty six years ago, on this day, September 11th, 1969, Californian Congressman George Brown introduced an “omnibus” environment bill.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 324ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it was 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that through the second half of the 1960s various Congressmen (mostly but by no means entirely Democrats) had introduced various bills about pollution (air, water etc). Most of this had been performative.
The specific context was that by mid-1969 the “environment”/ecology was competing with the assault on Vietnam for people’s attention (anti-war activists were understandably suspicious, obvs).
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians have antennae, and will try to amplify the things they want amplified. (Not ALL of them are corporate meat-puppets, at least, not all of the time).
What happened next – the times were propitious, and President Nixon signed the NEPA into law in January 1970. Various bodies were formed, reports written and released, speeches given. Guess what – the emissions kept climbing.
To be fair to George Brown, he was behind the successful push for a National Climate Act, that President Carter signed in 1978.
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.
Twenty nine years ago, on this day, September 10th, 1997 another pro-apocalypse propaganda outfit was launched, ahead of the UNFCCC negotiations to take place in Kyoto (COP-3).
“Global Climate Information Project” launched”
Launched on September 9, 1997, by some of the nation’s most powerful trade associations, the Global Climate Information Project (GCIP) has rolled out an ambitious campaign for combating possible emission regulations courtesy of the Kyoto conference.
Through an advertising campaign that, according to GCIP figures, has already spent more than $3 million in newspaper and television spots and could spend as much as $13 million, the GCIP aims to cast doubt upon the need for emissions controls by questioning the politics and the science behind a United Nations agreement.
Writing on the media campaign unveiled by the GCIP, Bruce Clark of the Financial Times remarked that it “could become one of the most expensive lobbying efforts since the ‘Harry and Louise’ commercials that helped doom” the Clinton administration’s health-care reform proposal”
“A Clear View, Vol 4, No 16, Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 364ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that business interests always mobilise and collaborate to face down challenges to their right to socialise the costs and privatise the profits. There’s lots of good research on this – Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway remains a good place to start.
The specific context was that Kyoto was coming and business had already done a great job in demonising it, in boxing in US Senators. But you can never be too sure, so thus the “Information” (sic) Project.
What I think we can learn from this. The war for the public mind goes on, and on.
What happened next – the war for the public mind went on.
New battalions were formed, new weapons tested. The strategic imperative remains unchanged – keep the peasants too busy to fight back. Buy off the smart one that you can, sideline or dephysicalise those you can’t.
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.
