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Science Scientists

February 9, 1956 – Scientists puzzle over where the carbon dioxide is going….

Sixty seven years ago, on this day, February 9, 1956 scientist Hans Seuss  (cosmic rays) wrote to his colleague Roger Revelle (marine science, among other things)

“I am not too happy about the whole thing” – 

Weart, 1997, p 346, footnote 78

The thing he wasn’t happy about was being able to account for Gilbert Plass’s point about the build-up of atmospheric CO2…

Further context here, via an excellent 1990 book by Michael Oppenheimer and Robert Boyle, called “Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect” (a race we have clearly lost, btw).

“According to Gordon MacDonald of the Mitre Corporation, who spent some time at Scripps during the 1950s, the Revelle-Suess collaboration  on the CO2 question was fortuitous, for neither was studying climate. Suess was interested in the cosmic rays that produce the carbon-14 isotope in the atmosphere. Revelle was an expert in marine sediments, which were the presumed graveyard for carbon removed from the air by the ocean. Suess and others had noted a small decline in the carbon-14 content of new tree rings versus ones that were fifty years older,  indicating that the carbon dioxide taken in by plants in recent years was deficient in carbon14 compared to earlier times. Fossil fuels are lacking in carbon-14 because it disintegrates by radioactivity over the eons of burial. The two scientists proposed that fossil-fuel combustion had gradually diluted the carbon-14 that is produced continually by cosmic rays, by adding the dominant carbon-12 to the atmosphere. In other words, emissions had not been removed completely and immediately by the ocean. From this and other data they surmised that carbon-dioxide levels would grow significantly in the future and affect climate.”

Oppenheimer M. and Boyle, R . (1990)  Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect. London I.B. Tauris, page 224

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The scientists, Suess and Revelle were puzzling over what would become their seminal paper released in early 1957. That paper suggested that scientists had made an unsafe assumption, (based on Revelle’s 1930s work), that carbon dioxide would be absorbed by the ocean because the layers of the ocean mixed well. 

This kind of dissatisfaction and puzzling is what scientists are paid to do. If they didn’t, we’d still have “earth and air and fire and water” as per the Aristotlean version of The Elements song by Tom Lehrer.

What I think we can learn from this

Smart people have been puzzling on this for a long time, and came up with some good answers that should have had us sit up and take notice. But at a societal species level, that is too much to ask, because everyone has so much else going on at any given time. And if they don’t, it is “given” to them via pay cuts and reality television.

What happened next

Suess and Revelle published their paper. Revelle hired David Keeling to measure CO2 accurately. Other people paid attention. And here we are 70 years down the line with atmospheric concentrations 100 PPM higher than they were at the time.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Weart, S. 1997.  Global Warming, Cold War, and the Evolution of Research Plans. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences Vol. 27, No. 2 (1997), pp. 319-356

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Uncategorized

Of cops and gardens

“Put out that joint right now!”, yells the cop.

“Of course”, I reply, almost without thinking. I rub the joint against the grass and show it to him.

“Smoking weed in front of the police station! Unbelievable!”, he mutters begrudgingly, and goes back in.

I’m still processing what just happened. I had just arrived at the urban garden, and as a welcome gesture somebody had handed me that joint. Right beside the fence of the garden lies the police station. Two different worlds very close to each other.

It’s the first time I’m working on this garden. While uprooting grass near the spinach, I’m having a conversation with two women about feminism. One of them criticizes how indigenous men from her hometown make their wives carry all their heavy stuff, including their babies, while they themselves don’t carry a thing besides a machete.

In their culture, I tell her, the men need to protect the women from the many dangers of the jungle. She then tells me her mother is indigenous and she was bullied and shamed growing up because of it.

Later on, as we’re starting to light a fire, another cop arrives. He’s asking what we’re gonna cook. We’re just gonna make some aguapanela, we explain. “Only aguapanela?”, he asks. “Y’all should add some alcohol to it”. Which is a really weird thing for a cop to say.

He also gives advice on how to light a fire in such a way that’s suitable for cooking. He is very knowledgeable. He probably comes from the countryside. But he keeps giving us orders, which feels weird. Before he leaves I shake his hand, ask him his name (he gives me his surname), and promise to bring him some aguapanela later.

The water is boiling. We add panela to it, as well as lemongrass, mint, rhubarb and a few other herbs from the garden. A fellow gardener tells us she, as a victim, was feeling very uncomfortable with that cop. This is supposed to be a safe space, she says, free from guns and uniforms. She doesn’t say what she’s a victim of, but it was probably cops. Or soldiers.

Two cops arrive on a motorbike. “Put that fire out”, one of them shouts. We approach the fence to talk to them and explain we have a permit from the city’s Botanical Garden. “We’ll see about that”, he replies. These cops clearly don’t belong to the police station because they arrived from the other side of the park.

We realize we don’t have any cups, so I go to a nearby tienda to buy some. When I come back, a middle-aged woman and her son are talking to some gardeners. Apparently they’re upset that there is a community garden here.

“Where do you live?”, she asks me, defiantly, when I join the conversation. I tell her my address. As it turns out, I live nearby, as do most of the other gardeners. But I know she was assuming I lived in a faraway, poorer part of town, and she was getting ready to tell me to go back there and make a fire there. Now she’s feeling uneasy but still tells me to go make a fire in my home.

I still try to explain to her this is an initiative to create a more sustainable way of living in the city, and to strengthen community bonds in the neighborhood. But her son replies that this is not a good park to have a garden because it attracts junkies.

They seem unable to truly say why they dislike the garden, but I assume they’re frightened conservatives. When the mother leaves, however, the son changes his tone and seems eager to learn about the garden. Even though he doesn’t stay for the aguapanela, he still asks for our numbers.

We’re drinking the aguapanela and doing some planning. We want this year’s garden activities to follow the Muisca calendar. But we don’t get very far because all of a sudden twenty cops arrive.

They stand defiantly at the fence and tell us it is forbidden to light fires in Bogotá, unless we have a permit from the Mayor’s ffice. This is a tense moment. We tell the policemen about a decree from the Botanical Garden, but they don’t seem to buy it. We don’t have that decree handy. We need to look it up on our phones.

An authoritarian woman arrives. She’s a city official. She’s accompanied by other city officials and some cops. “Put that fire down immediately”, she screams. We don’t comply. Somebody scrambles to find the decree and shows it to her on a phone, but she wants none of it. She’s asking for a permit, not a decree. Some of the gardeners get angry. One of them is recording the scene with her phone.

The police chief, however, is trying to de-escalate. He takes the phone we’re handing them, reads the relevant paragraph, and explains the situation to us. Apparently some neighbor called them because they didn’t like the fire. “These are fake environmentalists. They say they wanna protect the Earth, yet they burn wood” is what the neighbor had said. To be fair, that’s not a bad argument.

We end up putting out the fire as an act of goodwill. After all, this is a community thing, and if a neighbor is bothered by the smoke, we respect that. But why do they have to call the cops on us? And why do cops behave like butlers of rich people?

We still end up bringing some aguapanela to the police station later on.

Learn more about our urban garden at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080354461241

Categories
Science United States of America

February 8, 1973 –  American ecologist explains carbon build-up to politicians

Fifty years ago, on this day, February 8 1973, American ecological thinker Barry Commoner talks greenhouse effect and fossil fuels to US politicians.

“This is a very complicated phenomenon, and a good deal of study is underway. But it seems to me that in the long run it would be best to get away from using fossil fuel.” https://climatebrad.medium.com/climate-hearings-af27a3886a43

February 8 — Dr. Barry Commoner, hearing on the Council on Energy Policy

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.

The context was

Barry Commoner by this stage was “Mr. Environment.” He’d appeared on the cover of Time in February of 1970. His book “The Closing Circle”, and the other one were very well received and known. Commoner had been writing about, in passing, the buildup of CO2 for several years. And his statement here is a reasonable summation I guess of what was going on.

What I think we can learn from this

US politicians, especially House members and senators, were well informed or aware of the carbon dioxide buildup issue a lot earlier than you might think. The hilarious “Grant Swinger” parody that we will come to in the middle of the year makes more sense once you know this…

What happened next

Commoner ran for president in 1980, as did one of the Koch brothers. Neither of them troubled the scorebook particularly. In the short term, the first oil shock made all of this moot because coal was on the comeback (making Carl “Mr Coal” Bagge happy – we will come to this).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
United Kingdom

February 7, 1979 – Met Office boss bullshits about his carbon dioxide stance

Forty four years ago, on this day, February 7 1979, the had of the Met Office John Mason, sent a deeply disingenuous letter to Kenneth Berrill, a senior civil servant who had been responsible for getting an interdepartmental committee formed to look at the possibility of climate change caused by carbon dioxide build-up, and what implications that would have for the UK.

 And early in 1979, [Mason] wrote directly to Berrill, describing the carbon dioxide problem as of ‘‘immediate importance’’ and assuring Berrill that he was pouring resources into the problem. This engagement with CO2 climate change represented an about-turn in Mason’s position.  (Martin-Nielsen, 2018)

CAB 164/1422 B. J. Mason to K. Berrill, re: ‘‘Economic Effects of Climatic Change,’’ 7 Feb 1979, KEW

This – February 1979 – was just as Mason was about to fly off to the First World Climate Conference in Geneva, where he would… make sure that carbon dioxide was not agreed as an immediate threat. Whether Berrill noticed, or cared, I don’t know….  You can read about Mason’s performance in Geneva in Stephen Schneider’s memoir “Science as a Contact Sport.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

John Mason, as head of the Meteorological Office had been dismissive of carbon dioxide build up as something to be concerned about for several years. The notion that this was a U-turn from Mason, is not necessarily accurate.. Another reading of the situation is that Mason was merely bending to reality because an Intergovernmental Committee on climate had already started meeting it in late 1978.

What I think we can learn from this

Behind any creation of a committee or a report, there is always politics that you don’t see usually at the time or even later – things that are either not leaked or kept secret or in fact, never actually written down, but said in passing and in corridors.

This creates problems for historians trying to recreate “what really happened.”  Secondly, we learn that people are capable of pretending they’ve changed their mind, if it is politically expedient for them to do so.

What happened next

The Climatic Change report was subjected to attempts to suppress it, and was finally released in February 1980 as a “nothing to see here” document. You can read about this in four days on this website.

References

Martin-Nielson, J. 2018. Computing the Climate: When Models Became Political. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018) 48 (2): 223–245. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2018.48.2.223

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing Uncategorized

February 6, 1995 – Australian business versus a carbon tax

Twenty seven years ago, on this day, February 6 1995, co-ordinated action to defeat a carbon tax was on display

 “As part of its media strategy, the network sent out a series of five news releases on 6 February 1995 under the banner Carbon Tax Threatens Regional Jobs. The releases focused on the regions that would be most affected by the introduction of carbon tax.”

(Worden, 1998: 87)

The Business Council of Australia press release is a corker. A carbon tax  “could jeopardise more than 47,000 jobs and $43 billion in production in the nation’s export energy industries” and have “a serious impact on Australia’s oil and gas, coal, metal products, petrochemicals, pulp and paper and cement industries” (Thomas 1995)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.

The context was

John Faulkner, the Federal Environment Minister, had a proposal for a carbon tax that would fund research and development of renewable energy. Business organisations hated this so they dusted off their 1990-2 playbook and improved it. Press releases from various actors were coordinated, to influence the minds of those people (especially ministers) who were attending two round tables on consecutive days.

What I think we can learn from this

When threatened (or merely feeling threatened), business is very good at putting aside their individual differences and presenting a united front. They have the resources, and Secretariat usually, to do that. Whereas those advocating for a better world tend to be running on the sniff of an oily rag.

What happened next

Faulkner’s plan was defeated. Australia didn’t get a price on carbon until 2012.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Thomas, C. 1995. Business Council Hits Plan For Carbon Tax. The Age, 7 February, p.50.

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IPCC United States of America

Feb 5 1990 – A president says what he is told…

On this day, 33 years ago, February 5 1990, President George H.W. Bush gave a welcoming address to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was then meeting in the US to push towards its first report (released May/August that year).

https://www.c-span.org/video/?11033-1/presidential-address

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bush had mouthed all the right words on the campaign trail in 1988 “those who worry about the Greenhouse Effect are forgetting about the Whitehouse Effect” blah blah.  Once in office, he’d allowed various attack dogs to slow down any progress.

The speech, we now know, had been the subject of bureaucratic fighting…

REINSTEIN: The President made a welcoming speech at the January 1990 meeting, but it was unusually warm. Every time we hosted an international meeting on climate change, it was exceptionally warm, record warmth for the day.…

As an indication of the White House approach, the leaders of the Energy Department and EPA had collaborated to produce a text for the President for this meeting, and they proudly brought it to the White House and gave it to [pictured, White House Chief of Staff] John Sununu saying, “We have got a statement here that both of us can agree on: Energy and environment.”

Sununu’s response was to tear up the document and throw it in the trash and say, “Thank you but no thank you. Don’t do this again unless I ask you to.” Sununu and I got along for whatever reason….

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change

What I think we can learn from this

Behind most speeches/statements there’s an untold tale of fighting….

What happened next

Bush and his dogs kept on keeping on. In 1992 the Europeans blinked in a staring contest, and targets and timetables were removed from the draft of the text of the climate treaty…

Categories
Australia

February 5, 2007 – Australian Prime Minister trolled by senior journalist

Sixteen years ago, on this day, February 5, 2007, Australian Prime Minister John Howard got ridiculed on an ABC television programme.

Howard’s problem was that he had changed his policy but not his political strategy. He refused to genuflect before the icons: Al Gore’s scare, the drought as proof of a climate transformation, and Kyoto sanctification. For the ABC, Howard was now a figure of undisguised ridicule. His Lateline interview of 5 February 2007 began with this mocking question from Tony Jones: ‘Can you recall exactly when it was that you ceased being a climate change sceptic and became, in effect, a true believer?’

(Kelly, 2014:131)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Australian Prime Minister John Howard had a track record of 10 years of successful opposition to any action on climate, using all means fair and foul. He had finally been pushed because of an impending election into appointing one of his mandarins, in this case, Peter Shergold to examine an emissions trading scheme. Therefore journalists were beginning to have fun with Howard’s U-turn. Howard had to do the U-turn beacuse climate concern was being expertly used as a wedge issue by new opposition leader, Kevin Rudd.

What I think we can learn from this

Journalists who don’t really “get it” can still land blows. But the real problem is that the landing of these blows has an emotional release effect on viewers who think “ah, the system is working, the system is correcting, this bad person who I don’t agree with  will be gone soon”. They don’t then think about what they need to do for the long-term. It’s a kind of court jester catharsis thing.

What happened next

Howard was defeated. In the November 2007 election, Kevin Rudd came in with lots of promises, but no real action and poisoned the well, creating cynicism, which is still present.

References

Kelly, P. 2014. Triumph and Demise: The broken promise of a Labor generation. Melbourne University Press.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
Australia

February 4, 1993 – Australian business versus the future (spoiler: business wins)

Thirty years ago, on this day, February 4 1993, Australian business interests continued their fight against the future of the human species.

The Federal Government’s ratification of an international climate change agreement last month is a chance for Australia to rewrite its greenhouse policies and perhaps even argue for a national increase in greenhouse gas emissions instead of a cut.

That’s according to Woodside Petroleum managing director Charles Allen, who told the Outlook conference yesterday it was time for a “reappraisal” of Australia’s greenhouse policies.

Mr Allen said “emotional media and political treatment” of the greenhouse issue had obscured the real problem. While it was clear greenhouse was happening, he said, there were many scientific uncertainties about its magnitude and speed.

He said Australia produced only about 1.5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, even though per head of population emissions were on a par with major greenhouse producing nations. 

Mussared, D. 1993. Increase Australia’s greenhouse emissions: Woodside. Canberra Times, 5 February, p.13.

AND 

THE Federal Government would have to consider unpopular measures such as a carbon tax if wanted to achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2000, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

A senior ABARE minerals economist, Mr Barry Jones, told the Outlook ’93 conference yesterday that the measures announced in the Government’s Greenhouse Response Strategy would not be enough to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 compared with 1988 levels, or to cut them a further 20 per cent by 2005

Garran, R. 1993. Rethink needed on greenhouse The Australian Financial Review, 5 February, p.7.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Australian business interests were trying to claw back ground that had been lost, sort of, in 1992 when the Australian government had signed and ratified the UNFCCC. This was also taking place ahead of an impending federal election. The context was that the Hawke government had, in October 1990, agreed to the Toronto target (a 20% decrease in emissions by 2005) with caveats. Now business wanted to emphasize the costs and to point to the fact that other nations were not doing very much.

What I think we can learn from this

No battle is ever won. Your opponents will, if they have capacity – and business often does – try to undermine you, to clawback territory. This will not be big news usually, but they never sleep, they keep fighting. Often, therefore, they win. An analogy would be the fight against women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in the United States. It took them decades, but they rolled back Roe v Wade…

What happened next

In Australia, there was a proposal for a carbon tax in 1994/95. It was defeated and then Australia switched to talking about an emissions trading scheme. There was prolonged debate about this finally in 2012. A scheme was introduced within a year, then abolished.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
United Nations

February 4, 1963 – A UN conference on technology for “less developed areas” starts

Sixty years ago, on this day, February 4 1963,  a UN conference on technology for less developed areas, starts in Geneva

“United Nations Conference on the Application of Science and Technology for the Benefit of the Less Developed Areas”

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1485045?ln=en

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The United Nations was still regarded as a serious player, and “development” for the newly decolonized countries was a hot topic, whereas climate change caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide was most explicitly not. This was due to relatively easy to understand reasons – the idea of heating the world because of industrial gases was new (if you don’t count Arrhenius and Callendar), we just didn’t have good enough measurements. Meanwhile, cold winters were still very much a thing (and the cooling effect of dust and sulphur very much in play.)

What I think we can learn from this

We endlessly talk about what the world needs to be doing, but it takes longer than you think. We end up doing something different, usually less than we originally wanted. 

What happened next

The attempt to “develop” has industrialised the world, but largely in the interests of the super-rich and the rich, (which probably includes you and definitely includes me, looking at things globally).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

Categories
United Kingdom

 February 3, 2015 – UK tries to puzzle out industrial decarbonisation

Eight years ago, on this day, February 3, 2015, a workshop brought together industry types with government types to talk through how to accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions during the making of steel and glass etc.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 401ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.

The context was

The UK Government had started paying a little bit of attention to the need for not just power sector decarbonisation, but also decarbonisation of the industrial processes. In 2013 the Department for Energy and Climate Change and Business Innovation and Skills had launched a process of consultation for eight sectors.

This workshop was the culmination of those efforts. 

What happened next

In November 2015, George Osborne pulled the plug on CCS and then there was a process of reconstruction of the CCS image. For more about this and what happened next, see my blog on the Sussex Energy Group website “how carbon capture was brought back from the dead, and what happens next”

What I think we can learn from this

Decarbonizing industrial processes is incredibly complicated, there are many moving parts. Energy efficiency and material substitution will take you so far but, beyond that we need some carbon capture and storage. Building that infrastructure without more customers, i.e. power sector and greenhouse gas removals, is “difficult.”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References