Categories
Science Scientists

July 13, 1971 – Stephen Schneider “predicts” an ice age (so the myth goes)

On this day, 13 July 1971.

“ world-leading researchers gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, concluded their presentations about human influence on climate, and opened the meeting to questions from the press. But rather than asking about the most important climate meeting yet, the assembled reporters first looked to the meeting’s 26-year old secretary. “Where is Dr. Schneider? When is the ice age coming?” they asked.” [source]

Stephen Schneider (RIP)’s baptism of fire, because he had co-authored a paper with dodgy assumptions, that suggested that lots more pollution could trigger.. an Ice Age.

Steve Schneider (left), Jim Hansen (centre), and S. Ichtiaque Rasool (right) at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, circa 1971.

Why this matters. 

It gets hauled out by denialists as “evidence” that climate science is a grift. Maybe they still do this? I stopped paying attention to them quite a while back. Life is short.

What happened next?

Schneider did what scientists should do – listened to criticism, checked his numbers and assumptions and realised that the big long-term problem was carbon dioxide. And until his death in 2010, he performed his task with intelligence, wit and vigour.

Categories
Australia Denial

July 12, 2007 – #Australia gets swindled on #climate change…

On this day, 12th July 2007, the absurd documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” was shown in Australia. 

“On July 12 ABC TV in Australia aired “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. This followed saturation promotion in days leading up to the broadcast, including items in various current affairs and news programs. They followed the broadcast with an interview with the film maker, and then a panel discussion of “experts”. It was one of their highest-rating programs for the year, but altogether it was an uninspiring two hours of television.” [source]

(There’s a nice account of David Karoly versus Ray Evans in Mark Davis’ Land of Plenty page 190)

In 1990 there had been a similar imported schlockumentary, called “The Greenhouse Conspiracy.” – we will come back to that later. The ABC had not shown it, despite the IPA’s best efforts. Instead it ended up on SBS.

Why this matters. 

Pseudo controversy like this helps slow debate. That’s the point of it.  There’s even a recent (April 2022) academic article that shows this effect –

Time and skeptical opinion content erode the effects of science coverage on climate beliefs and attitudes

What happened next?

The Swindle served its purpose – creating demoralisation, confusion and, well “fear uncertainty and doubt.” Bravo! Pity about the planet and all its creatures, but hey, what can you do?

Categories
Australia UNFCCC

July 11, 1996 – Celebrity Death Match: Australian fossil fuels industry versus The World (Spoiler: world lost)

On this day, 11 July 1996, at the second “Conference of the Parties”, the fossil fuel lobby started to get up front about being perfectly happy for future generations to fry.

GENEVA, July 11 (Reuter) – Heavy industry groups from around the world Thursday pressed a major campaign to stop moves to cut the amount of carbon dioxide, widely blamed for global warming, pumped into the atmosphere by rich countries.

The focus of the drive, which is getting its major impetus from U.S. energy producers but was strongly backed by an Australian grouping, are warnings that economic disaster would hit developed and developing countries alike if cuts were mandated. The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network — which includes coal, aluminum and gas industry associations — is also lobbying hard among delegates, who at the end of next week will be joined by ministers at the key stage of the conference.

The AIGN is distributing a study arguing that cuts in “greenhouse gas” emissions would bring a trade slump to all the countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Its stand is backed by the Australian government, whose delegation is opposing agreement on any uniform carbon reduction targets for the developed world alone — the main purpose of the gathering.

Evans, R. 1996. Energy industry fights to block cuts in coal, oil use. Reuters, 11 July.

Why this matters. 

The Hague won’t be above water forever, and trials for crimes against humanity and the biosphere really ought to get going sooner rather than later….

What happened next?

Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost.

The fossil fuels kept getting burnt, in increasing quantities. The burning of them left a residue in the atmosphere. This was not an accident.

Categories
Australia South Paciific

July 11, 1989 – Australia says “sure, we’ll take #climate refugees.” Yeah, nah.

On this day, July 11, 1989, the 20th South Pacific Forum closed                    

“Both Australia and New Zealand indicated that they and the rest of the world would undoubtably be prepared to take humanitarian action in moving people driven out by rising waters” reported Steve Burrell in an article titled “ENVIRONMENT DOMINATES FORUM” from Tarawa, Kiribati, The Australian Financial Review, 12 July 1989.

And everything Australia has done since then I am sure gives confidence to people living in that part of the world that everything will be just fine…

Why this matters. 

Why should anyone trust Australian diplomats?

What happened next?

Australia expanded its domestic use of coal and – more importantly – its exports. So, for example, seven years later (see next post).


Oh, and folks made jokes about islands getting swamped.

See also –

2006, Jan 5: strategic hand-wringing about “Our Drowning Neighbours”
Categories
Activism Australia

July 10, 2008 – first Australian #Climate Camp begins, near Newcastle

On this day in 2008 the first Australian climate camp began near Newcastle.

Climate Camps were all the rage at the time, after the first one, in Yorkshire, England in August/September 2006.


Time travel cheat, a bit, here’s an account of what happened days later – 

July 13 & 14, 2008: Newcastle, NSW, Australia Climate Camp stops coal trains at worlds’ largest coal export port

On July 13, 2008 approximately 1000 activists stopped three trains bound for export at the Carrington Coal Terminal for almost six hours. Dozens of protesters were able to board and chain themselves to the trains while others lay across the tracks. Hundreds were held back by mounted police. Police arrested 57.[19]             

Sunday 13th July 2008: 1000 people gathered at Islington Park in Newcastle for a rally and march to the Carrington Coal Terminal. It was a colourful and eclectic crowd of local residents, parents and children, percussionists, clowns, students, and concerned citizens from every state in Australia. Their message was simple and clear: let’s see renewables instead of more new coal.             

Source: Greenpeace

See photos and account on peacebus.

Climate Camp Australia 2008

Why this matters. 

We have tried to resist. That resistance has been regularly exhausted, repressed, derided. But those who resisted were right, even though they lost.

Those who derided, smeared, laughed? They can go… well, this is a family website, so let’s just use the word “away” – they can go… away.

What happened next?

The coal kept being dug up, exported, burned. The carbon dioxide molecules kept warming the planet.

Categories
Ignored Warnings

July 9, 1965 – “Spaceship Earth” is launched, trying to get us to see our fragility (didn’t work)

On this day 9 July 1965, two time Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson gave what was to be the last speech of his life, to UNESCO. In it he used the imagery of “Spaceship Earth”, which he had cadged from Barabara Ward.

“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”

https://www.bartleby.com/73/477.html

Why this matters. 

The language of fragility, of danger? Yeah, we have been saying and hearing that for a long time. And for a lot of that time it has been about the comfort and convenience of a sliver of the population, amid worries that those on the pointy end of “development” might somehow rise up…

What happened next?

The economist Kenneth Boulding popularised the phrase “Spaceship Earth”. It became popular. The Earthrise photo happened.

Then Earth Day. And the world? It was not saved, as per Jeremiah 8:20.

Categories
International processes United Kingdom United States of America

July 8, 1991 – UK Prime Minister chides US on #climate change

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.”

The full text is here

Mr Major’s Speech at the Sunday Times Environmental Conference – 8 July 1991

“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.

Categories
Australia

July 7, 1970 – an Australian banker goes “Full Extinction Rebellion”, 50 years early…

On this day, July 7, 1970,Bede Callaghan, the Managing Director of the [Australian] Commonwealth Banking Corporation, said some really Roger Hallam-ite/Extinction Rebellionesque stuff

“On 7 July 1970, Mr Bede Callaghan, managing director of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation spoke on the ‘Perils and Pitfalls of the Seventies’ at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Adelaide.”

(Whitelock, 1971:29) 

According to another book, Callaghan said the following:

“And so the sprawling city, the maimed country, and even the air we breathe and the sea that gives us life, combine into what can only be described as a coming nightmare unless we as a people are prepared to become violently Australia-conscious and to replan, decentralise, preserve,prohibit and police. We won’t correct the situation unless first as individuals and secondly as a nation we are prepared to think, to take care and to spend money.” 

(Whittington, 1970:149) 

https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/55055

Why this matters. 

This kind of rhetoric was not that unusual at the time (1970). We should remember that when we put faith in information-deficit models, and the Power of Exhortation…

What happened next?

By 1973 all this stuff was ancient history. It has come back periodically since then. So it goes.

Categories
United Kingdom

July 6, 1972 – “Workers and the Environment” conference in London…

On this day, 6 July,  1972, the Trades Union Council [the peak body for UK unions) held a conference on “Workers and the Environment”

Why this matters. 

Without unions on board, you’re probably not going to be able to force state managers into major concessions that last any length of time. But unions and greenies, while they have some common interests (habitable planet, etc) ALSO have sticking points. These needed proper thrashing out, loose coalitions forming blah blah. Conferences like this coulda been a start.

Too late now.

What happened next?

The Unions had other stuff on their plate all through the 70s. And the 80s.And it’s not as if the stereotype of condescending middle-class busybodies who sneer at workers is ENTIRELY made up, now is it?
And the carbon dioxide, it accumulates.

Categories
United Kingdom

July 5, 1989 – Nuclear tries to regain some credibility, latching on to greenhouse

On this day, July 5, in  1989 

“More than 100 British scientists, including two Nobel laureates, have lent their names to an advertising campaign starting this week which says that focusing on nuclear power will worsen global warming by diverting attention from the real causes of the problem. 

“The academics, also including 15 Fellows of the Royal Society, reject claims that more nuclear power stations are the answer to the greenhouse effect, and say the Government should concentrate on “real solutions” to global warming…. 

“The two Nobel laureates taking part in the campaign are Professor Dorothy Hodgkin, emeritus Professor of chemistry at Oxford University, and Professor Maurice Wilkins, emeritus professor of biophysics at London University.”

Brown, P. 1989. Nuclear power is not the answer: scientists. Canberra Times, 5 July, p.1

Why this matters. 

Nuclear – a technology always in search of legitimacy, given its other problems (waste, security, meltdowns etc).. Its advocates had in fact been talking about coal’s nasty little CO2 problem for a long time.

What happened next?

Nuclear kept promising. Still is – see April 2022 Energy Security Strategy.