Fifty five years ago, on this day, October 20th, 1970,
Dr Edward David memo to Nixon about federal government funding for energy research being necessary because power industry too fragmented.
See Speth Ch 1 of They Knew
This isn’t the memo (I think), but gives the same flavour.
“On the other hand, in some cases projects are so large and the industry involved so fragmented that they are really unable to come to grips with big, expensive efforts where the risks are high and the payoff far in the future. Furthermore, many industries don’t have the R&D tradition. The tradition of R&D and the peculiar culture that surrounds it are necessary for its existence and its effectiveness. Some industries have not cultivated and have never had this tradition. It’s difficult and, indeed, almost impossible for them to begin R&D on a large scale successfully and without great waste of resources. In the next few years the nation is going to be faced with many problems concerning government action in certain R&D fields. The President decides whether a development is potentially so important that if industry doesn’t pick it up, then the Government must. He has made a number of those judgments, particularly in the environmental area. And we are doing a great deal of environmental research, for example, the unconventional automobile propulsion work at the National Air Pollution Control Administration. The question arises: Why should the Government be developing unconventional automobile engines why not the industry itself? Well, there is a delicate judgment there as to whether the Government ought to be doing such work. In this instance, we had judgments from many people both in and out of the industry that if the Government augmented the work, it would go forward a great deal more rapidly. I don’t see us taking over automotive R&D, however.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 326ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 there were (as always) fierce debates going on about the “energy mix” (coal, nuclear, oil etc etc) for the US. Each had its proponents and opponents, with their varying tactics. But doing any sort of co-ordination/planning or even research is problematic in fragmented/privately owned situations.
The specific context was Nixon’s government was aware of climate change (Moynihan memo and response) and had been warned about it in the August 1970 CEQ report. But it was not high on the agenda.
What I think we can learn from this – that fragmented is not good, but centralised isn’t perfect either. Look at the UK, which at this time had the Central Electricity Generating Board, an “opaque behemoth.”
Whatever system you have, you need an active/engaged/irrepressible civil society, of which social movements are a subset. Absent that, some brand of Bolshevik/Hayekian is going to pick your pocket and loot your future.
What happened next – the Bolsheviks and Hayekians continued to pick pockets and loot futures. And the emissions kept climbing, regardless of various “eco-awakenings.”
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 two years ago, on this day, October 19th, 1993,
“We simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology and to our economy. The problem frankly affects every sector of the economy.” Clinton, William J. 1993. Remarks at the White House Conference on Climate Change, October 19
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 357ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 gutted the UNFCCC (insisting that targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich nations be removed or else) and then ratified it quite swiftly in December 1992. Al Gore, Clinton’s veep had published “Earth in the Balance” the previous year. Ah, such sweet and innocent times.
What I think we can learn from this is that a lot of what comes out of politicians mouths is just PR blandishments designed to distract you while your pocket is picked and your future is looted.
What happened next – Clinton’s emissions got him into trouble a few years later (i.e. he abused his position of power, for the umpteenth time). Nothing meaningful was done about US emissions. And the future continued to be looted, and the present started to catch up with the future, until we entered the Fafocene.
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 four years ago, on this day, October 18th, 1991,
Fred Singer The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Tasman Institute Seminar
Not his first rodeo…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 355ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 carbon dioxide build-up had broken through as an issue in 1988. By 1989 the George C Marshall Institute (set up to shill for Reagan’s Star Wars bullshit) had entered the fray and was enabling denialist efforts, alongside the Global Climate Coalition etc. Australia was one market for its shite.
Singer – Singer had been a semi-respected scientist and bureaucrat from the 1950s onward. But at some point he had jumped the shark. Here, he was fresh from warping the words of a dying Roger Revelle, who had known that many people did not think Singer was much of a scientist…
The specific context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development process was coming to an end and the moment of maximum danger – where the government might actually take on some of its recommendations – was about now. If you were going to bring out some idiot not very good scientist (as per Roger Revelle) now would be a good time. And so it came to pass…
What I think we can learn from this – evil people aren’t necessarily stupid or incompetent. (And conversely, the “good” guys aren’t all smart and competent.)
What happened next – The ESD got thrown in the bin by Paul Keating, who toppled Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke a couple of months later. The Tasman Institute kept up with the tours, economic modelling etc.
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.
Sixty two years ago, on this day, October 17th, 1963,
17-18 Oct 1963 TRANSMITTAL The Honorable Leland J. Haworth Director National Science Foundation Washington, D. C. Dear Dr. Haworth: It is an honor to transmit herewith to the National Science Foundation the report of the Special Commission on Weather Modification, authorized by the National Science Board at its meeting on October 17-18, 1963, in accordance with Sections 3(a)(7) and 9 of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended, and appointed by you on June 16, 1964. The Commission was requested to examine the physical, biological, legal, social, and political aspects of the field and make recommendations concerning future policies and programs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 319ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 weather modification experiments had been going on since the late 1940s (mostly attempts to make rain). (There’s a long history – firing cannons at clouds etc.)
There had been a UN resolution on this in 1961 (Kennedy – link).
The specific context was that the US and the USSRwere deep into their scientific/military/technological dick-swinging contest, which had a year previously brought us all to the edge of armageddon.
What I think we can learn from this – that those who are banging on about the government controlling the weather are wrong, but they are in fact understandably wrong – HAARPING on about the weather.
What happened next – weather modification continued (Operation Popeye is an eyepopper) but by the late 1970s, thanks to – er, physics and international agreements – was on the backburner.
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 four years ago, on this day, October 16th, 2001
Washington, DC – With many areas of the country still facing tight electricity supplies in coming years, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today announced more than $110 million in new projects to apply leading edge clean coal technologies to improve the reliability and environmental performance of the Nation’s coal-burning power plants.
Abraham announced that the federal government will share the costs of outfitting eight power plants to become “showcases” of ways coal plants can continue generating low-cost electricity with better performance and in compliance with tight environmental standards.
October 16, 2001 Abraham Announces Projects to Bolster Electricity Supply from Coal Plants “Power Plant Improvement Initiative” is Precursor to President’s Clean Coal Technology Program
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 was in one of its periodic phases of announcing “energy independence” (see also Nixon in late 1973).
The specific context was Dubya Bush on the campaign trail had said that carbon dioxide would need regulating. After his daddy’s Supreme Court picks gifted him the White House, his boss (Dick Cheney) kibboshed that.
What I think we can learn from this – they lie, they lie, they lie.
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-nine years ago, on this day, October 14th, 1947 –
Captain Chuck Yeager of the U.S. Air Force flies a Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft, the Glamorous Glennis, faster than the speed of sound over the high desert of Southern California and becomes the first pilot and the first airplane to do so in level flight.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 second world war had been an astonishing accelerant of technological progress (states fund scientists to develop better ways of killing). All sorts of things become possible.
The specific context was – the new US Air Force wanted some nice publicity.
What I think we can learn from this – we are clever hairless murder apes.
What happened next – we kept getting faster (did you SEE Top Gun: Maniac?).
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 eight years ago, on this day, October 7th, 1967,
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson (April 25, 1942 – October 7, 1967)[1] worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from its earliest days in 1960 until her death in October 1967.[2] She served the organization as an activist in the field and as an administrator in the Atlanta central office. She eventually succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s executive secretary and was the only woman ever to serve in this capacity. She was well respected by her SNCC colleagues and others within the movement for her work ethic and dedication to those around her. SNCC Freedom SingerMatthew Jones recalled, “You could feel her power in SNCC on a daily basis”.[3]Jack Minnis, director of SNCC’s opposition research unit, insisted that people could not fool her. Over the course of her life, she served 100 days in prison for the movement.[1]
October 7 1967 Ruby Doris Smith Robinson dies – https://snccdigital.org/people/ruby-doris-smith-robinson/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 322ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 Black Civil Rights movement was in full swing. It gave wider society so much (was an initiator for second wave feminism, anti-war, ecology, gay rights etc etc). But has of course been pacified and diminished in the history books.
The specific context was that life was never particularly easy for women of colour in these movements.
What I think we can learn from this – we should remember, celebrate and learn from these people
What happened next – exhaustion, co-optation and repression did what they always do – by the early 1970s, things were very different… (See Debbie Louis’ And We Are Not Saved).
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.
