On this day, June 6th, 1957, Charles Keeling submits a paper.
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta Volume 13, Issue 4, 1958, Pages 322-334 Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
The concentration and isotopic abundances of atmospheric carbon dioxide in rural areas
Charles D Keeling ∗ Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California U.S.A. Received 6 June 1957, https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-7037(58)90033-4
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 313ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that after World War Two, it became possible to study the world with more precision and broader scope, thanks to radar, sonar, jet engines etc.
The specific context was that in 1950 the idea of an International Geophysical Year was proposed. And also by the mid 50s, people like Gilbert place, Charles Keeling, Roger Revelle and the Swedes, Ericsson and Rossby and so forth, were talking about carbon dioxide build up as a possible influence on the atmosphere, and this submission of this paper is part of that context.
What I think we can learn is this: by the mid-late 50s, it was obvious that CO2 was indeed building up and that some people could foresee that there might be serious trouble ahead.
What happened next:
Four months after this, Sputnik was launched…
Roger Revelle was able to shake the money tree and get funding for measurement of carbon dioxide build-up, with stations in Hawaii and Antarctica (it was not necessarily expected that global levels would be increasing).
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Nineteen years ago, on this day, June 5th, 2006, 70 brave people put their bodies on the line…
June 5, 2006, and Nov. 3, 2007: Rising Tide boat blockades of Newcastle port
On June 5, 2006, in a Rising Tide Australia action, 70 people used small boats to blockade the port of Newcastle, Australia, which exports 80 million tons of coal each year. The protest aimed to call attention to a planned expansion that would allow the port to export twice that amount.[1] The action was repeated by 100 people on Nov. 3, 2007: at this second action, participants attempted to block ships from entering the port for four hours, but police boats managed to escort three ships into the port. At one point, a police jetski rammed one woman’s kayak, resulting in her hospitalization.[2][3]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that all the petitions, marches and begging of politicians had not worked. Emissions climbed, fossil intensive infrastructure projects kept getting approved (and still get approved).
The specific context was that the Howard government (like the Keating and Hawke governments before it) had mouthed occasional platitudes about “the environment” but were hell-bent on saying yes to whatever fossil extraction and export was proposed.
What I think we can learn from this is that brave people have had the foresight and clarity – it hasn’t been enough. What was needed was broad-based movements. Oh well…
What happened next was that the exports and burning went on, the emissions and concentrations went up and up. The mainstream politicians have mostly given up pretending to give a shit.
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.
Australian signs the UNFCCC R Kelly (Minister for the Arts, Sport, the Environment and Territories), Australia signs UNCED climate change convention,
media release, 4 June 1992.
and
The opposition’s delegate to UNCED in 1992, for example, had criticized the Labor Government’s willingness to give away Australia’s sovereign rights and had emphasized the debilitative economic costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.48 CPD, Senate, 4 June 1992, p. 3350.
Matt McDonald, 2005 Fair Weather Friend
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 356ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that Australian political elites had been warned about climate change from the 1970s onwards, but it had only taken action when forced to and initially, for example, at The Hague in 1989 had made the right noises.
The specific context was that by the time Ros Kelly went to Rio, there had been fierce battles against doing anything substantive on climate change, and most of those battles, frankly, had already been won before December 1991, when Keating toppled Hawke. But the coup de grace was Paul Keating becoming Prime Minister and setting fire to any remaining proposals or hopes that Australia would respond adequately as part of the international effort. Keating just thought it was a load of green crap.
Keating should have been at Rio; e was the only OECD leader not to go, and he sent Kelly instead.
What I think we can learn is this: that other futures were possible, but they didn’t happen, and Paul Keating is as responsible for, frankly, the destruction of Australia, thanks to carbon dioxide build up as the more public villain, John Howard.
What happened next: Kelly continued in post for a couple more years, but was brought down by the so-called sports rorts scandal. She was married to, perhaps is married to, some guy who was at the head of Westpac and Westpac did that ridiculous case for early business action on climate change in April of 2006 the emissions climbed. The concentrations climbed, the impacts began to arrive.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 373ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that Japan had suggested something called “pledge and review” in mid-1991 as a way of breaking the logjam around American intransigence on a climate treaty, and then Japan must have stuck its hand up at some point in 95 to say, “hey, we will host the third COP,” knowing that the third COP would be the consequential one where the Berlin mandate was supposed to reach its apotheosis. So the Japanese had been heavily involved, as you’d expect a middle power to be. I don’t know why it took the Japanese Diet five years from the end or four and a half years from the end of December 97 through to June of 2002 to ratify. So I will look that up. It’s a little bit interesting, because you’d assume they’d want to force the pace, but there will have been, of course, fierce fights within the Japanese government, within Japanese elites over the costs of doing this.
Remember, the Japanese economy was already quite energy efficient thanks to the aftermath of the first Oil Shock,, and therefore there wasn’t lots of “low hanging fruit” and therefore actual emission reductions were going to be perhaps a bit more expensive. There was also the question of, did you try and do more nuclear? Was there much scope for renewables, etc, etc.
The specific context was that by this point, the Americans under Dick Cheney and his mascot, George W Bush, had very publicly pulled out of Kyoto. They had done that in March of 2001, and the Japanese must have known that Australia was not going to ratify. So maybe they held off in order to try and re inject some momentum. I don’t know that is speculation…
What I think we can learn is this: Your ignorance is the volume of a sphere, your knowledge the surface area.
What happened next: The Kyoto Protocol languished for a couple of years, but then, because the Russians wanted membership of the World Trade Organisation, the Europeans were able to persuade them to ratify Kyoto, which had no real costs for Russia. And so in early 2005 the Kyoto Protocol became international law, which meant that there would be a negotiation process for a sequel to Kyoto, which meant the Americans and the Australians especially had a problem.
This paper discusses Japan’s quantitative Kyoto target in the context of the country’s socio-economic and political background and its desire to express international leadership. Japan’s initial negotiating target was developed as a compromise between domestic industrial considerations and its international ambitions, and was strengthened further under the pressures to achieve success at Kyoto.
The original projections relied heavily upon nuclear expansion that will not be realized. Though economic stagnation has helped emissions to decline from their mid-1990s peak, it has also reduced the attention devoted to climate change and the willingness to bear costs, and Japan’s commitment remains daunting. Japanese bureaucrats and diplomats are called to work closer together and in an integrated manner in order to develop a new, more realistic policy package for achieving their target. This report analyses various scenarios for additional policies for Japan, including fuel switching, carbon taxation and emissions trading, and concludes that the introduction of gas in the context of energy market liberalization is a key possibility. It also considers the sink and the nuclear energy issues both of high importance for the country.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Greene had done some of the early economic modelling (1990) about how Australia could cut emissions and better off. The work was ignored, and then swamped by corporate bullshit…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 394ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that Deni Greene had come to Australia at some point in the 70s or 80s as an economist and in the battles over the economic responses to the greenhouse effect, as it was then called, in 1989-91 did a lot of economic modelling, especially around energy efficiency, to show that it would be possible and in fact beneficial, to take strong action. The pro-coal ministries were not impressed, partly, I think, because of the argument, probably also because she was, in fact, only a woman.
And by 91 PricewaterhouseCoopers had been commissioned to release or to produce a whole bunch of other reports, and the modelling wars were underway.
What I think we can learn is this: it’s now almost 40 years of failure on climate change, and we seem to have learned nothing, and we seem to be incapable of learning anything, if at the micro, meso or macro level. But pretty soon, we will be learning – and the lesson today is how to die.
What happened next: I don’t know what Greene did with the rest of her life, after the early 90s, but it must have been pretty painful to watch all the shit unfold, but that is what happens to people, isn’t it,
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
FLINDERS MP Greg Hunt joined Australia’s oldest parachutist, Jim Brierley, in a parachute jump over Tooradin at the weekend to highlight the freefall of Australia’s solar industry.
83-year-old Mr Brierley lives at Phillip Island in the Flinders electorate and wrote to Mr Hunt earlier this year, inviting him to skydive with the Tooradin-based Commando Skydivers.
Mr Hunt accepted the invitation immediately.
“I leapt at the chance. I had done a static-line parachute jump – where the parachute opens automatically – when I was about 17 but had always wanted to experience a skydive,” he said.
Mr Hunt, who made the jump with tandem master Dave Boulter, described the experience as “sheer exhilaration”.
“We were lucky in that the day was pretty overcast but we managed to find a break in the clouds that lasted just long enough for me to make the jump.
“We jumped from 7000 feet, which was above the cloud level, and dived through the clouds for about 20 seconds before we activated the parachute. Twenty seconds doesn’t sound like a long time but it’s an eternity when you are hurtling towards the ground at something like 120 miles an hour. It is sheer exhilaration. I loved every second of it.
“Jim jumped out of the plane just before me and made an effortless landing, He is an amazing gentleman and an inspiration to us all.”
Mr Hunt used the jump to highlight the plight of the solar panel industry which he said has been sent into freefall since the Rudd Government imposed a means test on the popular solar panel rebate scheme.
BERNARD KEANE ON “PERPETUAL PRESENT” AND PETER GARRETT
Oddly, this is the Greg Hunt who throughout 2008 opportunistically joined the Greens in bagging Garrett for not rolling the solar panels program out quickly enough, after Garrett introduced a means test on the solar panel rebate to slow the remarkable demand for the program. In June 2008, Hunt went skydiving — anyone remember that? — to demonstrate that the solar industry was in “freefall — but unlike me it doesn’t have a soft landing ahead of it”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 385ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that Australian political elites had been aware of the carbon dioxide problem since the 1970s but had not really done anything until forced to by a combination of scientific lobbying and especially public pressure, which exploded in 1988. And in 1990 a student, I think, at University of Melbourne, did his honours thesis on carbon pricing, and 18 years later, that student was the shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt,
The specific context was that there had been fierce battles over Emissions Trading/ putting a price on carbon dioxide. And from the end of 2006 onwards, there had been running open battles. By mid 2008 the conservative Party, the Liberal party’s fragile consensus on the need to respond to carbon dioxide build up was beginning to fracture. They were still under the leadership, such as it was of Brendan Nelson, but Malcolm Turnbull was waiting in the wings as leader of the opposition.
What I think we can learn is this: these stupid stunts, they are not cupid stunts, but something else we learned that politicians will do pretty much anything for a headline.
Malcolm Turnbull became leader of the opposition and tried to forge some sort of deal with Kevin Rudd, the Labor Prime Minister. But Rudd was too much enjoying watching Turnbull twist in the wind, and so carbon pricing did not get passed, and Tony Abbott became leader of the opposition, and then, God help us, Prime Minister. And was a complete failure, but he can point to having abolished the carbon price as his signal achievement. Hunt was Minister for the Environment in this and brought about a shadow Emissions Trading Scheme. (See Leonore Taylor in the Guardian for more on this).
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 31st, 2007 the Australian ‘Shergold Report’ was released:
The Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading releases the ‘Shergold Report’ which recommends Australia develop an emissions trading scheme.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian political elites had been warned repeatedly about climate change from the late 1970s onwards. The Howard government from 1996 had chosen to resist any and all domestic and international action on climate that would either inconvenience rich people and fossil fuel companies or even potentially lead to their inconvenience at some point in the future. So, for example, Howard resisted all calls to ratify the Kyoto Protocol even though it would mean nothing substantive, because the next deal might and once you’ve given in on one thing, you have to give in on the next, or it’s easier for you to be forced not to give.
The specific context was that in September, October of 2006 public awareness of concern about climate change spiked because of the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, (he visited Australia) and a bunch of other factors. Howard’s resistance to climate change action or even the investigation of it became untenable, and so Howard did what any politician will do. He appointed a band, a panel led by a reliable civil servant, Peter Shergold. The panel was, of course, stacked with the usual suspects, fossil fuel hacks and CEOs and so forth, and didn’t have scientists or civil society people who would ask awkward questions. And Howard’s plan, I think, was for the Shergold report to be a fig leaf behind which he could hide ahead of the upcoming Federal election. He wanted to be able to use to wave the Shergold report around to show that he was willing to do something on climate change, or to countenance doing something on climate change, and so neutralise one of the rhetorical weapons that the Labour opposition leader Kevin Rudd had in his armoury,
What I think we can learn from this. that you can’t really understand the provenance and purpose of so-called “fact-finding” reports without understanding the politics and the motivations behind it.
What happened next. The Shergold report did not function as Howard hoped it would, and Howard was on a hiding to nothing, because people wanted actual action on climate change, and they thought that Kevin Rudd would deliver, or they hoped he would – poor deluded fools. See also. Chris Rootes, “first climate election” published in the journal Environmental Politics…
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, May 30th, 1980, a subgroup of civil servants is looking at climate impacts (nb this is more broad than carbon dioxide build-up, which was not, in the eyes of many, the only show in town).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the mid-1970s the Met Office had found it had to work harder to monopolise (or control) the debates on climate impacts for the UK.
The specific context was that by this time it was clear that the Thatcher government was supremely uninterested in questions of preparations for increased climate extremes.
What I think we can learn from this is that after you lose a battle (as the pro-action forces had in 1979-80) there is a refractory period…
What happened next.
The issue was there in the undergrowth, growing, but did not ‘break through’ until 1988.
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.
May 29 2025 case filed against Exxon etc by daughter of woman who died of hyperthermia in 2021 heat dome – https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/case-documents/2025/20250529_docket-25-2-15986-8-SEA_complaint.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 427ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the late 70s, Exxon was well aware of the carbon dioxide threat, and had even helped oceanographers take samples of CO2 on their oil tankers, and had made many predictions and presentations for the C suite. But Exxon decided in the mid 1980s that it would change its stance on the reality of carbon dioxide build up, and it became one of the chief proponents and funders of outfits like the Global Climate Coalition, established in 1989 to resist both domestic US and international climate policy. And Exxon also funded various denialist groups, so much so that in 2006 the UK Royal Society had published an open letter asking them to knock it off.
Exxon was also instrumental in the Dubya Bush White House 2001 to 2008 especially with their apparatchik in the CEQ writing climate policy and spreading denial.
The specific context was that we’re now getting the long predicted weather anomalies, disasters sometimes happening much sooner than the scientists had thought, because, well, that’s nonlinear patterns for you. And what do you do when you’ve been hit by one of these well, you sue, if you can. You use court to try and do what the politics hasn’t been able to do.
What I think we can learn from this is that most court cases fail, but that doesn’t mean you don’t use it as one of your venues for seeking justice, I guess.
A trial court in Washington State denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ motion to stay proceedings pending the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The Washington trial court found that the outcome of the Boulder proceedings was “far from certain,” including whether the Court would issue a substantive ruling and whether the Court would resolve the issues in this case. The court also found that a potentially 14-month stay could prejudice the plaintiff’s ability to conduct discovery, that the public interest weighed against the stay, and that potential prejudice to the defendants was mitigated by the fact that some documents had already been preserved and some discovery had already been conducted in other similar cases.
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.
Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 29th, 2007, Australian Prime Minister John Howard plays the “he’s an Englishman” card versus economist Nick Stern…
However, in a Parliamentary debate in May 2007, the Prime Minister suggested the [Stern] review was Eurocentric propaganda. He stated that the report of the Government’s Task Group on Emissions Trading:
… will not be a grab bag of proposals taken holus-bolus from a report written by an Englishman for European conditions and designed to promote the political objectives of the British government. That is what the Stern report is all about. Stern is not the biblical scholar of climate change that is posited by those who sit opposite. Stern has written from the perspective of an Englishman, from the European circumstance and from the European point of view. 73
Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 29 May 2007, 48 (John Howard, Prime Minister).
Macintosh, 2008 page 66-7
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that John Howard, as prime minister, had spent the 10 years from 1996 to 2006 amplifying and extending the previous Keating Labor government’s hostility to climate change action. Howard had painted himself into a corner, and it was understood that he wasn’t going to be able to paint himself out, or leap over the wet paint, or whatever the metaphor might be.
The specific context was that the UK Labour Tony Blair government had asked a World Bank economist called Nick Stern to produce a report on the “economics of climate change.” This was largely to overcome Treasury intransigence on the question of climate policy. The report, the Stern review, was released in late 2006.
It was at this point, not entirely unrelated, that John Howard had had to perform a U-turn and announce the creation of the ‘Shergold Taskforce’, which would look into the economics of emissions trading.
What I think we can learn from this is that even the best politicians – and Howard was a good politician. I do not mean that as a compliment – run out of steam and run out of road, and by this time, Howard had. Now, very rarely does a politician know when to leave the stage. If Howard had announced his retirement in 2006 his legacy, his “reputation”, would have been assured. But they all come to believe their own propaganda. They all come to believe that they are somehow indispensable. So… no one is indispensable.
What happened next.
Here we are 20 years later, at the beginning of the Fafocene. Economics has not saved us. What we needed was more, but we didn’t know how to get it. And the opposition to ‘it’ was extremely deep-seated and almost insurmountable.
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.
