Fifty seven years ago, on this day, January 29th, 1968,
Far from deploring the possible damage to people and property, the President of the United States, on January 29, 1968, proposed the spending of $351 million for the development of a supersonic liner in fiscal 1969; this represented $223 million in new appropriation. l8 318 feet long, is designed to carry 300 passengers at 1800 miles per hour. It was estimated by Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey that the U. S. 19 supersonic transport fleet may eventually number from 200 to 1200 planes.
Concerned physicists have supplied us with information about the generation of a boom that is unavoidable for any object which travels in the air at a speed exceeding that of sound. The sonic boom produced by a supersonic transport plane accompanies the plane throughout its supersonic flight path; thus, a single flight across the U. S. would affect 10 to 40 million people.
The specific context was Lyndon Johnson was on his way out. It was an election year, and there had been a growing “Dump Johnson” movement in the Democrats. There was also the small matter of the war in Vietnam, which wasn’t going so well…
What I think we can learn from this is that there was huge opposition to supersonic travel (sonic booms etc etc) and concerns about ozone depletion and climatic impacts were a part of all that.
What happened next Johnson had to declare he wouldn’t contest the 1968 election. In 1970 Congress basically killed supersonic transport, de facto if not de jure. This led, amusingly, to the creation of the Heritage Foundation…
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 six years ago, on this day, January 28th, 1990.
Another reviewer of the Gribbin book, William Goulding (The Sunday Times, 28 January, 1990), quotes the late climate scientist and climate science communicator Stephen Schneider as saying: “scientific predictions are like ‘trying to gaze into a dirty crystal ball. By taking time to clean the glass you can get a better picture; but at some point it is necessary to decide that the picture is good enough to alert policy makers and the general public to the hazards ahead. That point has certainly been reached with studies of the greenhouse effect and the prospect of rising sea levels in particular.’” Unfortunately, that point seems to be forever receding into the future…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been measuring the impact of human activities, whether it was on air pollution, water pollution, ozone depletion, you name it, and had been trying to figure out how to raise the alarm without being called alarmist, and pondering where, when and how to speak out.
So you have the famous Shelly Rowland quote
“What’s 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?”
Stephen Schneider was among them. In 1971 famously, he had co-authored a paper that got taken up as a when’s the new ice age happening, kind of thing to the dismay of some of his colleagues. I think it’s fair to say that Schneider leaned in. In 1976 he published the Genesis Strategy, He’d been on Johnny Carson (TV show). See also his efforts around the First World Climate Conference (Science as a contact sport)
The specific context was that the IPCC’s first assessment report was due out. (The IPCC had had its first meeting in November 1988). Meanwhile negotiations were clearly at some point going to begin for an international climate treaty. So here is Schneider, who was a very smart man, very thoughtful, trying to figure out when you pull the big lever.
You can also see him tackling the same issues about 10 years prior, in a 1979 Panorama video. I would love to know when this video was; I haven’t been able to track it down.
The interest was gratifying but more than a little ironic. “They won’t admit it but this means some kind of ban has been lifted,” Rowland said.
For as Rowland and others recount it, ever since 1974, when he and UCI postdoctoral fellow Mario Molina first theorized that the Earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Rowland has paid a price for his ideas.
In part, that’s because Rowland didn’t just make his discovery, write up the results and quietly return to his lab.
Instead, shocked by the implications of his research, he took an unusual public stance–doggedly telling reporters, Congress, half a dozen state legislatures, and just about anyone who seemed interested that ozone loss could lead to skin cancer and catastrophic climatic change. And, again and again for more than a decade, he urged that CFCs be banned.
In doing so, Rowland took on a $28-billion-a-year industry whose products, ranging from home insulating materials to solvents for electronic equipment, have become an essential part of modern life.
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.
“The National Geographic Society began as a club for an elite group of academics and wealthy patrons interested in travel and exploration.[8] On January 13, 1888, 33 explorers and scientists gathered at the Cosmos Club, a private club then located on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., to organize “a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” After preparing a constitution and a plan of organization, the National Geographic Society was incorporated two weeks later on January 27. Gardiner Greene Hubbard (co-founder of AT&T) became its first president and his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell (also co-founder of AT&T), succeeded him in 1897.[9]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 294ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that through the 19th century, with advances in transport, communications, the ability to measure and detect the “Golden Age”, if you want to call it that, of colonialism and also industrial depredations. Outfits like the National Geographic Society sprang up to record what was out there so it could either be exploited or protected. The two are not mutually exclusive.
What I think we can learn from this is that institutions have histories. They are formed by real human beings in response to challenges/conditions which may no longer pertain.
What happened next
It kept going and did some nice magazines. Climate change has been “in the mix” in those magazines. Not enough, obviously, but eh, whaddyagonnado.?
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that for decades – centuries – civil society has ignored the most. vulnerable groups. It is only when those vulnerable groups can come together, form coalitions and make a “critical mass” that they will be paid any attention.
The specific context was that by 2006 it was clear that climate change would not be dealt with unless the state and corporations were forced into it. This was a noble but doomed effort by a minority, very endangered group to make that happen. Perhaps they should have tried seizing the means of production.
What I think we can learn from this is that you have to take a stand, even if you’re doomed.
What happened next
Well, the movement just kind of melted away
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 six years ago, on this day, January 22nd,1970
The Boeing 747, the world’s first “jumbo jet”, enters commercial service for launch customer Pan American Airways with its maiden voyage from John F. Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that by this time, humans have been flying since 1903 and in the post war era, commercial jet liners had become to be “a thing” thanks, in part, to Boeing using money they were given by the Department of Defence to create a cargo plane to prototype – aka the 707. There were also just a lot of surplus aeroplanes and pilots with the necessary skills. So commercial aviation in the 1950s is a good example of the Great Acceleration.
The specific context was that in the 1960s it was assumed that supersonic passenger travel would become a thing. Both JFK and Lyndon Johnson signed off on proposed jetliner funding for them, etc. But it turned out physics and economics had other opinions. There were also environmental issues around, for example, sonic boom and ozone depletion.
In the midst of this, the 747 was designed as a kind of stop gap. It would be big, not slow, but not fast, and would be rendered obsolete by the coming of not just, you know, Concorde, but the Boeing etc, equivalents.
What I think we can learn from this is that this is sometimes the standby technology that is supposed to be there for a little while. Sticks around because it is good enough. (Kind of a flying QWERTY keyboard – kind of.)
What happened next
And as we now know, for various reasons, that never happened. And the 747 stayed with us. It continued to be built with minor modifications, like those upturned wings. I think it’s still in use as cargo, but I’m not sure that anyone is still flying them for passengers because they’re heavy and out of date. Nope – there are still, as of Jan 2025, four airlines still using them! Which Airlines Still Fly The Boeing 747 On Its 55th Flight Anniversary?
I travelled on it a lot (never upstairs!) and it did the job. And in some ways, it was elegant. There’s all the airport films in the 70s. There’s this explosion, the bringing down of the Lockerbie plane, and of course, KAL-007
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.
“Kasherman quickly resumed publishing the Public Press, and set his sights on Mayor Marvin L. Kline, a Republican, whom he accused of allowing gangsters to run rampant. The December 1944 issue of the “Public Press” featured the headline “Kline Administration Most Corrupt Regime in the History of the City.” A month later, on the night of Jan. 22, 1945, Kasherman was ambushed after eating dinner with a friend and shot dead on a sidewalk at 15th and Chicago avenues in Minneapolis. His death made the front pages of newspapers across the Twin Cities, but few in the city were surprised when the police investigation quickly petered out…”
Journalists who don’t get the memo about afflicting the poor and comforting the rich sometimes need reminders of who is in charge….
(How) does it connect to climate change?
Most journalists are basically mostly-house-trained lapdogs. Occasionally they are allowed to nibble a finger to make themselves feel Independent. But pretty much a wing of the public relations industry…
What happened next
How does it help us understand the world?
Know that what you are seeing is, well, filtered.
How does it help us act in the world?
“All the adverts fit to print, all the news printed to fit” etc etc.
The source that it comes from, if necessary,
Xxx
The other things that you could read about this or watch
The carbon dioxide issue attracted more and more attention from scientists through the 1970s. They worried that plans to expand energy production using fossil fuels would lead to catastrophe. They (and some far-sighted politicians) began to lobby President Carter, and in July 1977 Carter’s Science Advisor Frank Press wrote a memo to Carter about it. But Carter as trying to boost the “synfuels” (synthetic fuels, basically turning coal into liquid fuel) as a way of reducing vulnerability to price shocks.
In early 1979 Press asked top scientists to look at whether the CO2 problem was indeed a real issue to worry about. An ad hoc panel, chaired by Jule Charney (a very big fish), met for a couple of weeks in July, and then released its report, under the title Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. In October 1979 William Barbat released the first issue of his CO2 Newsletter. The lead article on the second issue’s front page was about the Charney report.
Report to president’s adviser: CO2 buildup can change climate
The introduction of the CO2 issue into U.S. energy policy moved a step closer in November as a scientific advisory panel reported “If the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is indeed doubled… our best estimate is that changes in global average temperature of the order of 3 degrees C will occur and that this will be accompanied by significant changes in regional climatic patterns.”
At the request of Frank Press, science adviser to the President, the National Academy of Sciences had convened this group of experts who had little previous involvement in CO2 studies to make an impartial examination of the validity of CO2 forecasts.
The group stated in its report that the basic model relating CO2 to global warming is correct, so far as they can see. “We have tried but have been unable to find any overlooked or underestimated physical effects that could reduce the currently estimated global warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 to negligible proportions or reverse them altogether.”
Barbat, W. (1979) “Report to President’s adviser: CO2 buildup can change the climate.” CO2 Newsletter, Vol. 1, No 2, p. 1
Wade, N. 1979. CO2 in Climate: Gloomsday Predictions Have No Fault. Science, Nov 23.Vol 206, Issue 4421 pp. 912-913 DOI: 10.1126/science.206.4421.912.b
“It was an event billed as the smackdown between the baddest coal baron around and the environmental heir to the liberal Kennedy legacy, live on stage and in the heart of Appalachia mine country. Stage right, appropriately, was Don Blankenship, chairman of Massey Energy, a meaty impassive presence, his Kentucky drawl never picking up speed or volume. On the left, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spent his life defending waterways, making lawyerly argument out of staccato bursts of statistics.
The pairing at the University of Charleston was the perfect personification of America’s deep divides: Republican versus Democrat; old industry v new, global warming denier v impassioned advocate for climate change laws.”
The specific context was RFK wasn’t bonkers. Or he was, but hiding it better?
What we learn is that people can have some good ideas and then completely off the rails.
What happened next
Yeah, well, read a newspaper. He’s killing millions, helping diseases were were keeping in check stage a comeback.
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.
The world revolves around Washington. It was there, in May 1953, that Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass warned a scientific conference that the carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere when humans burnt ever more oil, coal and gas would heat the planet, with the impacts being obvious by the century.
It was there in November 1965 that President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee released a report saying Plass’s concerns might well be justified.
It was there in January 1982 at another scientific meeting that at American and German scientists warned “the signs are so ominous that we must expect (a large climatic impact) and take action to avoid it.”
And it was there, on Thursday, that The Trump administration announced its intention to pull out of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), alongside many other organisations.
By the late 1970s the build up of carbon dioxide was attracting serious attention by ever more alarmed scientists (see, for example, the 1979-1982 CO2 Newsletter I recently uncovered). President Carter’s science advisor asked skeptical scientists to “kick the tires” on these views. The “Charney Report,” produced to meet this request said they could find no reason to doubt that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled, then there would be a warning of anywhere between 1.5 to 3 degrees.
The incoming Reagan administration was uninterested (or, hostile) to these concerns. By 1985 two things had changed. The scientific consensus around carbon dioxide build-up as a problem had become even firmer, and thanks to the discovery of the Ozone Hole, the credibility of atmospheric scientists was sky-high (sorry about that, but it was there and I had to use it). After a pivotal meeting in Villach, Austria scientists grabbed every alarm lever they could, and pulled. In December, Carl Sagan gave his famous, gripping, testimony, In… Washington.
Speaking to reporters after giving testimony in Washington (where else?) in June 1988, scientist James Hansen famously said“it’s time to stop waffling and say that the greenhouse effect is here.”
Well, if there HAS to be a treaty…
1989 saw a flurry of international summits, both specifically on climate, and “sustainable development” more generally. Not coincidentally, the “Global Climate Coalition”, made up of mostly but not exclusively US oil companies, automobile makers and other usual suspects (on their attacks on the IPCC, which the Trump administration is also pulling out of, see here).
As I wrote when President George HW Bush died, the US could have got in on the ground floor. He didn’t. Once the push for a treaty became inevitable, the Americans decided to make the best of it, and prevent outcomes that would be too challenging (some within the US Department of State had felt bruised over the speed of a treaty to protect the Ozone Layer, a few years earlier.)
The main sticking point for the Americans – and there were competing factions within the Bush administration, which led to some whiplash statements and negotiating positions, at least until the “skeptics” won – was that targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich nations were not to be included in the any climate treaty. As Bush repeatedly and publicly said “American way of life is not negotiable.”
Only once the offending targets and timetables by rich countries were removed from the negotiating text did the Bush Administration agree that Bush would attend the Rio Earth Summit and sign the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Article 2 of that treaty makes for rueful reading now. It states that the goal is
“to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
Fine words butter no parsnips.
Thirty years of dummy spits
However, the idea that rich countries, which had caused the problem and were wealthy, should go first on emissions reductions could only be delayed, not defeated. The first “Conferences of the Parties”, in early 1995 ended with the Berlin Mandate, calling on rich countries to come to the 1997 COP with a plan, which ended up being held in Kyoto Protocol.. This sparked a huge pre-emptive effort against the “Kyoto Protocol” driven by the Global Climate Coalition, with other bad-faith actors adding their two cents (some will have seen the play Kyoto, about the Climate Council), leading the US Senate to vote, 95-0 in favour of a motion that said, in effect, “we’re not cutting until poor countries agree to”
The US – with help from Australia – pushed a “technology will fix it” line, but once Kyoto was ratified by enough nations to become law, in 2005 (a quid pro quo with Russia, which wanted World Trade Organisation membership), then the US had to re-engage.
Famously at the 2008 G8 meeting Bush said – revealingly – “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
The 2009 “last chance to save the world” meeting at Copenhagen ended in disarray and the next five years saw the pieces of the dropped vase were glued back together in time for the Paris Agreement, which managed not to mention the dread words “fossil fuels.”
Trump announced in 2017 that he would pull out of the Paris Agreement. That man Biden from 1986 re-entered in 2021, and Paris, and introduced huge incentives for “clean tech” (renewable energy and other more dubious ventures, such as direct air capture under the “Inflation Reduction Act and other pump-priming schemes. Although the IRA should have made big business happy, they decided not to try to defend it in the face of Trump’s obvious hostility.
And now this. A couple of random observations;
As the costs pile up, and reality becomes harder and harder to ignore
The Trump administration is not doing what is in the long-term interest of American capital, which could have made more money via Biden’s IRA. While there was a “logic” to anti-Kyoto activity, this anti-climate crusade seems far more ideological
What next?
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
IF the US goes ahead and pulls out (and there’s little reason to believe they won’t – their claims should be taken both literally and seriously) then several things happen.
There will be an audible sigh of relief from Australia – especially Adelaide – that they lost out on hosting the next COP.
The various academics who critique the whole UNFCCC process as not fit for purpose will try (and sometimes fail) to keep from saying “I told you so.”
There will be a blizzard of academic papers on “multilateralism” and bilateral deals between states, with the focus switching to what cities and technologies can do.
People invested in the COP process will insist it continues, and say the role is to keep the US seat warm for the glorious day in 2029 when a Democratic president restores “order” and “sanity.”
Regardless of what happens, we should remember the following
When Gilbert Plass made his warning, humans (mostly in the West) were pumping out about 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 314ppm
When the UNFCCC was agreed, emissions were about 23 billion tonnes and the CO2 level was 355ppm
Today, despite all the pledges, all the renewables and so forth, we are pumping out about 40 billion tonnes, and the CO2 in the atmosphere is 428ppm, and galloping upwards.
More emissions means more CO2 hanging around in the atmosphere. More CO2 means more heat in the Earth System, means more extreme weather events and – between them – a remorseless rise in temperatures, with all that that entails.
On this day, January 12, in 1946 Frankie Fay, a fascist asshole who had been the “first stand-up” held a rally of 10,000 fellow fascist asssholes.
And this AFTER the truth of what the Nazis had done was out there….
“… Actor’s Equity stood by Brooks, Darling, Malina and Osato. Rather than expel them from his union, Lytell censured Frank Fay for “conduct prejudicial to the association or its membership.”
…
In response to the censure, allies of Franco, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi party organized a rally at Madison Square Garden in January 1946 called “The Friends of Frank Fay.” Speakers included Klan ally Joseph Scott, Nazi Laura Ingalls, publisher of anti-Semitic pamphlets John Geis, and the prolific Joseph P. Kamp, who had used the KKK’s mailing list to distribute his work about “Jewish influence” and America’s “Communist President” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The context was that the truth of the extermination camps and the industrialised murder of millions of Jewish people, Roma, and other “undesirables” was kinda hard to ignore in 1946. But never underestimate the fash, I guess.
Why care?
This stuff matters! We need to remember that there is nothing that cannot be denied/ignored/minimised if it gets between you and your a) money and b) sense of yourself as a Good Person.
(How) does it connect to climate change?
See above.
What happened next
The white supremacists took a series of defeats through the 50s-70s, but have come roaring back.
Fay died, unlamented, in 1961.
How does it help us understand the world?
That evil never goes away. It can be contained, on a good day.
How does it help us act in the world?
Xx
The source that it comes from, if necessary,
Xxx
The other things that you could read about this or watch
There’s a Kurt Vonnegut novel I should read again, about 1930s White Supremacists…
What do you think?
If you have opinions or info about this, or other things that happened on this day that are worth knowing, let me know!
