On this day, 25 July, 1977 the New York Times ran a front page story, by its science reporter, Walter Sullivan. Its title – “Scientists Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate“
“Highly adverse consequences” may follow if the world, as now seems likely, depends increasingly on coal for energy over the next two centuries, according to a blue‐ribbon panel of scientists.
“In a report to the National Academy of Sciences on their two‐and‐a‐half‐year study, the scientists foresee serious climate changes beginning in the next century. By the latter part of the 22nd century a global warming of 10 degrees Fahrenheit is indicated, with triple that rise in high latitudes.”
Sullivan, W. (1977) Scientists Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate New York Times, July 25, p.1
On this day, July 24, American climate scientist Thomas F. Malone used the imagery of traffic lights while discussing the two and a half year study by the National Academy of Science into climate change.
“During a press conference convened in late July 1977, for instance, Malone cast the climate problem as a “flashing yellow light,” a clear indication of the academy’s desire to seriously consider the risks of climate change without investing too much in crafting policies that could inflame public anxieties and, in turn, sanction a red-light approach to fossil fuel emissions.” (Henderson 2019: 401)
See also – “Study Warns of Overreliance on Fossil Fuels,” Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, 25 Jul 1977.
See also Omang (1979).
Why this matters.
We knew.
What happened next?
You know.
And sorry, but tomorrow’s post is also about this NAS report.
On this day, 23 July 1979, the “Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate” begins at Woods Hole, giving us the “Charney Report.”
Short version – a scientist (Gordon MacDonald) and a Friends of the Earth activist (Rafe Pomerance) had managed to get President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor (Frank Press) to get Carter to request a study on whether this “greenhouse effect” thing was gonna actually be the problem some were saying.
So folks met, under the leadership of one of the big original beasts of atmospheric science, Jule Charney.
The scientists summoned by Jule Charney to judge the fate of civilization arrived on July 23, 1979, with their wives, children and weekend bags at a three-story mansion in Woods Hole, on the southwestern spur of Cape Cod. They would review all the available science and decide whether the White House should take seriously Gordon MacDonald’s prediction of a climate apocalypse. The Jasons had predicted a warming of two or three degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century, but like Roger Revelle before them, they emphasized their reasons for uncertainty. Charney’s scientists were asked to quantify that uncertainty. They had to get it right: Their conclusion would be delivered to the president. But first they would hold a clambake.
They gathered with their families on a bluff overlooking Quissett Harbor and took turns tossing mesh produce bags stuffed with lobster, clams and corn into a bubbling caldron. While the children scrambled across the rolling lawn, the scientists mingled with a claque of visiting dignitaries, whose status lay somewhere between chaperone and client — men from the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and Agriculture; the E.P.A.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They exchanged pleasantries and took in the sunset. It was a hot day, high 80s, but the harbor breeze was salty and cool. It didn’t look like the dawning of an apocalypse.
Why this matters.
“We” really knew enough by the late 70s. Everything since then has been footnotes.
What happened next?
Carter lost the 1980 election, handsomely. It would be another 8 years before the simulacrum of international action began.
On this day in 1968 Gordon Macdonald’s chapter on weather and climate modification, under the title “How to Wreck the Environment” (pdf here) appeared Nigel Calder’s book “Unless Peace Comes a Scientific Forecast of New Weapons” was published
A shortened version of the chapter had already appeared in New Scientist in April of the same year
“How to wreck the environment.” New Scientist. 25 April 1968):180- 82;
MacDonald noted
“There has been much controversy in recent years about conjectured overall effects on the world’s climate of emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from furnaces and engines burning fossil fuels, and some about possible influences of the exhaust from large rockets on the transparency of the upper atmosphere. Carbon dioxide placed in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has produced an increase in the average temperature of the lower atmosphere of a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. The water vapour that may be introduced into the stratosphere by the supersonic transport may also result in a similar temperature rise. In principle it would be feasible to introduce material into the upper atmosphere that would absorb either incoming light (thereby cooling the surface) or outgoing heat (thereby warming the surface). In practice, in the rarefied and windswept upper atmosphere, the material would disperse rather quickly, so that military use of such a technique would probably rely upon global rather than local effects”
Why this matters.
Anyone who had their eyes open knew there was probably trouble ahead. By the late 70s, that trouble was unmistakable.
What happened next?
Ten years later Macdonald, with Rafe Pomerance, would get the wheels rolling for the Charney report (see Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth”).
By then MacDonald was also appearing on the Macneil Lehrer hour (1978) and so on. There’s a nice oral history interview here–
Basically, Macdonald is one of the (forgotten) good guys.
On this day, July 19 in 1976, as drought grips the UK, US scientists are pondering.
“In any market, nervousness reflects uncertainty-and there are few things as uncertain as the weather. “We just can’t confidently predict long-range trends in climate,” says Murray Mitchell, a climatologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington. Mitchell and other specialists have advanced several theories to explain why droughts occur-and they range from speculation about sunspot cycles to a possible tilting of the earth’s axis. One notion holds that man himself is altering the climate with pollution. By burning fossil fuels, the theory runs, the industrialized world adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, creating a “greenhouse effect.” The carbon dioxide traps the sun’s heat, raising temperatures on the earth’s surface. “If we’re still rolling along on fossil fuels by the end of the century,” Mitchell warns, “then we’ve had it.”
Mayer, A. (1976) A World Praying for Rain. Newsweek, July 19, page 66.
Why this matters.
Again, by the late 1970s, we knew enough…
What happened next?
By the late 1970s, the scientific reports were piling up. Carter paid a little attention. Then along came Reagan. And Thatcher…
On this day, July 18, in 1979, Senator Abraham Ribicoff asked for some advice about “synfuels.”
The context was, the Carter Administration, desperate to reduce US dependency on problematic Middle Eastern Oil (not the dictatorships – that’s fine – it’s the interruptions to supply that’s the problem) was proposing an expensive crash program to develop synthetic fuels (synfuels). These would be incredibly energy intensive to produce… Not everyone was convinced this was a good idea…
“In 1979 [Gordon] MacDonald wrote an article for the Washington Post arguing that subsidizing synthetic fuels, as proposed by the Carter administration, would be a mistake. He pointed out that synthetic fuels would produce even more CO2 than the current U.S. mix of fossil fuels. The article drew the attention of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), who had recently been warned about the issue by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt” (Nierenberg et al. 2010: 324)
“Although many complex factors affect the climate, it is generally thought that the result of continued carbon dioxide production will be a warming of the atmosphere “that will probably be conspicuous within the next 20 years,” the report said. “If the trend is allowed to continue, climatic zones will shift and agriculture will be displaced.”
Gordon J. MacDonald, environmental studies professor ad Dartmouth College, who is one of the authors said in an interview that large-scale use of synthetic fuels — made from coal or oil shale — could cut the time involved by half.
“We should start seeing the effect in 1990 without synthetic fuels. . . . but if you use them, the effect would be much more pronounced by 1990,” he said.
Actually, unless I am missing something, Nierenberg et al. have got this wrong – and they don’t actually cite the “article in the Washington Post,” which is pretty poor form.
What Ribicoff appears to be responding to are articles in the Post and the Times about an actual report. This was to the Council on Environmental Quality. And it isn’t just Macdonald – “ the other authors of the report were George M. Woodwell, director of the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory; Roger Revelle, a member of the National Academy of Sciences; and Charles David Keeling, professor of Oceanography of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography” (Shabecoff, 1979).
ANYWAY, that was the 11th, and this blog post is about the 18th. And here we are –
“One incident provides a small example of the work that the Academy does outside the formal structure of reports and out of public view. On July 18, 1979, even as the Charney panel was gathering at Woods Hole, the Academy’s president, Philip Handler, got a call from Senator Abraham Ribicoff. The Senator was cosponsoring a bill on synfuels, and he wanted to know the implications of greenhouse warming. Handler went to the National Research Council’s Climate Research Board, and the very next day, it produced a statement on carbon dioxide and energy policy. The statement confirmed that global warming could be a problem. The statement told Senator Ribicoff that the massive expenditures required to create a national synthetic fuels capability should not commit the nation to large-scale dependence on coal for the indefinite future. This is the first time that an Academy group issued a specific policy recommendation, ambiguous although it may be, related to global warming. Olson 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077050/
Why this matters.
We. Knew. Never forget, we knew.
What happened next?
Synfuels got killed off by Reagan, along with a lot of good stuff. And we had to wait until 1988 to wake up. A decade lost (but then, we would have pissed it against the wall, I guess).
References:
Nierenberg, N. Tshinkel, W. and Tshinkel, V. (2010) Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 40, Number 3, pps. 318–349. [online here]
Olson, S. (2014) The National Academy of Sciences at 150. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jun 24; 111(Suppl 2): 9327–9364.
On this day, July 8, 1991 the United Kingdom Prime Minister John Major gave his first, brief speech about environment/global warming, at a Sunday Times.Environmental Conference.
He came about as close as any UK Prime Minister/Satrap of the 51st State can to saying “Hey, America, get your act together.”
All he could really bring himself to say was “The United States accounts for 23 percent, the world looks to them for decisive leadership on this issue as on others.”
“Personally, I have always thought it wrong to call it the greenhouse effect, I dislike the term, I dislike it because the image is too cosy, too domestic and far too complacent. Begonias and petunias it most certainly is not, the threat of global warming is real, the spread of deserts, changed weather patterns with potentially more storms and hurricanes, perhaps more flooding of low lying areas and possibly even the disappearance of some island states.”
The context was that the UK was about to host the G7 meeting, and the USA was digging its heels in during the negotiations for a climate treaty, slowing things down so that only the most minimal deal could be reached.
A recent trip to the US by UK Environment Minister Michael Heseltine had failed to break logjams, and Heseltine had publicly slapped down a senior US official who was trash-talking him.
Why this matters.
We always need to remember that the architecture of international law – the UNFCCC – was shaped by United States hostility to global action.
What happened next?
Major, at Rio the following year, offered to host the follow-up event, to show the UK “mattered”. And the winner was… Manchester. Ooops.
On this day, 1st July 1950, the US publication the Saturday Evening Post ran a story on the world … getting warmer. Nowt on carbon dioxide (at this stage, Guy Callendar’s data were largely ignored/in the doghouse).
Why it matters
People were attuned to some warming (even though at this stage it was relatively mild)
What happened next?
By the end of the decade the answer was “yes” and “carbon dioxide is in fact accumulating in the atmosphere.” It would be another decade before enough scientists started to say it to each other, and do more research, before the real fun started…
Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, a Fulton County (Georgia) Superior Court judge, on 30 June 2008, blocked construction of the first coal-burning power plant proposed in Georgia in more than 20 years, ruling that it must limit emissions of carbon dioxide. This was the first time that a court had applied an April 2007 ruling of the US Supreme Court recognizing that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act to an industrial source.
“The law” is an interesting construct, isn’t it? Sometimes the power of its words force those running the show onto the back foot, at least for a while.
“They make the laws, to chain us well [the clergy dazzle us with heaven, or they damn us into hell]”.
What happened next?
The plant, Longleaf, never got built – as part of a quid pro quo with the Sierra Club, something else did, in Texas. The atmosphere definitely noticed the difference, oh yes.
On this day, June 24 in 1986, A New York television channel showed a documentary with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title of “The Climate Crisis”-
“PICKING up where a high-school chemistry class might end, ”Nova,” the public-broadcasting science series, offers the nonmatriculating viewer an advanced course in worrying. The cause of the concern is all the carbon dioxide that’s being pumped into the industrialized and motorized air. The hour-long broadcast is called ”The Climate Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect,” at 9 tonight on Channel 13.
“The conclusion, conveyed with great authority by several big-league climatologists from government and private research organizations, is terrible: by the year 2000, the atmosphere and weather will grow warmer by several degrees and life – animal, plant, human – will be threatened. The experts say that melting ice caps, flooded cities, droughts in the corn belt and famine in the third world could result if the earth’s mean temperature rises by a mere two or three degrees.”
Mitgang, H. 1986. Earth’s Climatic Crisis Examined by ‘Nova’. New York Times, 24 June.
Why this matters.
Good to remember that serious efforts were being made. It’s too easy to tell stories about “then this politician did this, then this CEO did that”, and therefore public opinion changed to “x”.
It is an easy narrative device, and it is a career-helper AND it helps with this idea (comforting) that there is a bridge to storm to save the Titanic by grabbing the wheel and yanking.
Yeah, no.
What happened next?
Public education efforts continued. Two years later, eight years after she was first given credible warnings, Thatcher started saying the “right” words, as did George Bush. That went well, didn’t it?
