Categories
United States of America

August 10, 1978 – Ford Pinto deaths spark class action lawsuit

Forty six years ago, on this day, August 10th, 1978 a car blows up, and corporate malfeasance was revealed…

On their way to a church volleyball practice, the three girls—sisters Lyn (16) and Judy Ulrich (18), and their cousin Donna Ulrich (18)—chugged along U.S. 33 in a dusty 1973 Ford Pinto….

CONTINUES

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Ford was one of the big three motor companies and had produced lemons in its time. People were dying because of a change that had been made to the Ford Pinto. This change meant that if it was hit from behind, while indicating left, then there was a reasonable chance that a spark would set off the gas tank explosion, and kaboom. Ford had been aware of the problem, but it calculated that recalling vehicles, fixing them and changing the production line would cost more than simply paying out to the families of those killed, injured. And therefore they did what any rational corporation would do. 

What we learn is that there is rationality and logic and there is also utter fucking madness. I would say immorality, but why would you expect a corporation to behave morally? Have you not been paying attention? 

What happened next, Ford got caught. There was a class action lawsuit even and for a little while, people understood that this sort of shit goes on all the time. But the corporate domination of the media means that this message no longer gets through so easily. In a sane world – one that we don’t live in – this would be taught in primary school, and again in secondary school. 

See also – the cargo doors on the plane…

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.

=

Also on this day: 

August 10, 1980 – “Energy, Climate and the Future” seminar in Melbourne

August 10, 2003 – a UK temperature record tumbles…

Categories
Science Scientists Sweden

August 10, 1974 – Stockholm conference on climate modelling ends

Fifty years ago, on this day, August 10th, 1974, the pivotal Stockholm conference on climate modelling, (29 July to 10 August) ended.

For more about this conference, see here.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that after the 1972 Stockholm Environmental Conference the United Nations Environment Program had been set up, and there was money and interest sloshing around for computer modelling of climate. It was fairly crude by today’s standards, but, you know, baby steps. There was Bolin, Flohn and the others. And presumably, Olof Palme was being kept informed. Flohn certainly briefed Palme at some point. I think that year 

What we learn is that the scientific understanding of the build up of the consequences of the buildup of CO2 came along in leaps and bounds in the 70s. They’re only a couple of years away from “yellow danger light” as per Thomas Malone in July of 1977. Of course, the old beasts – Landsberg Charney and John Mason, were pooh poohing it all together. And Reid Bryson was angry that his dust theory was going tits up. But it was real, the emerging carbon consensus. That’s what we learned. 

What happened next. A meeting in Norwich the following year put the death to the cooling idea. The Energy and Climate report of the National Academy of Sciences came out in 1977. And then, of course, the First World Climate conference in 1979. And that’s the end really, of there being serious debate about the CO2 problem.

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.

Also on this day: 

August 10, 1980 – “Energy, Climate and the Future” seminar in Melbourne

August 10, 2003 – a UK temperature record tumbles…

Categories
Academia Scientists

August 9, 1955 – Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass submits his paper

Sixty nine years ago, on this day, August 9th, 1955, Gilbert Plass submits a paper… You can read it here.

(Manuscript received August 9 1955

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Plass had been talking, researching, writing about CO2 buildup for a while. He made public statements in May of 1953 [see my Conversation article], at the American Geophysical Union that went viral. And here he was submitting an article to Tellus, a Swedish academic journal. (Tellus was the watering hole for atmospheric physics those people at that time.) 

What we learn is that smart people could see what was happening. 

What happened next. Plass wrote that paper. He wrote another paper, I think, in 1959. And he also had an article in Scientific American in 1959. That, btw, was advertised in the Observer.

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.

Also on this day: 

August 9, 2001 – OECD calls on Australia to introduce a carbon tax. Told to… go away…

August 9, 2013 – BP writes the rules (de facto)

Categories
Australia

August 8, 1990 – ANZEC says “adopt Toronto target” of sharp carbon cuts.

Thirty four years ago, on this day, August 8th, 1990, there’s another push for the Target to be adopted.

“One was launched by the Australian and New Zealand Environment Council on August 8, and supports the Toronto target as an interim goal for planning purposes. This has been accepted by the Governments of NSW, Victoria and the ACT.” (Begbe, 1990, 10 Sept)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the climate negotiations were coming. Australia’s government was committed to Ecologically Sustainable Development because the green groups had extracted that as a promise for their sort of support in the recent federal election. Various state governments and the ACT, for example, had committed to the Toronto target (and in May 1989 Hawke’s Environment Secretary had floated it in Cabinet, to be shot down by Paul Keating, then Treasurer.). The Toronto Target proposed that industrialised nations should cut their emissions by 20% by the year 2005. The denialists were getting up on their hind legs too. 

And here was the Australian New Zealand Environment Council suggesting that Australia and presumably New Zealand, both say yes to Toronto.

What we learn is that invocations to targets have been with us for a very long time. You get such pleasure of announcing/campaigning for a target, but actually getting the people who say yes to do anything about hitting that target, well, that is somewhat more difficult. 

What happened next, in October 1990 the Hawke government did indeed make a promise for an “Interim Planning Target,” hedged with all sorts with caveats about economic costs and other developed nations taking similar action. So it was a non-promise promise, but it allowed Kelly to go off to the Second World Climate Conference with Australia’s reputation in sort of good standing.

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.

Also on this day: 

August 8, 1975 – first academic paper to use term “global warming” published

August 8, 1990 – Ministers meet, argue for Toronto Target

Categories
United Kingdom

August 7, 1979 – Cabinet Office wonk hopes to pacify greenies

Forty five years ago, on this day, August 7th, 1979, a Cabinet Office wonk hopes that a vague research effort

“would provide an answer to the environmental and ecological lobby by showing that the Government was taking seriously the possibility of irreversible long-term changes in the climate, particularly those which might conceivably be brought about by man’s intervention,’’ as an internal letter explained;”

letter from N.B.W. Thompson to Mr. Mountfield, 7 Aug 1979, KEW, Ref. I.02375, CAB 184/56

Agar, 2015

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there was now an Ecology party. And there were groups like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Conservation Society. Other outfits campaigning about clean air and not building more airports and so forth. Green Alliance had started. There was an identifiable environment lobby, and the senior civil servants were thinking about how it could be placated perhaps with the release of this interdepartmental report on climatic change, which had been completed in early 1979. 

What we learn is that civil servants think about the politics of it all and how to please their so-called masters. And that by the late 70s, environment was an issue. 

What happened next, the “Climatic Change” report, was released in February 1980. received a small amount of desultory press because it was a desultory document by and large, partly because it just wasn’t taking on board what the Americans were saying. (I think you can pin it on the Met Office’s John Mason if you like.)

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.

Also on this day: 

August 7, 1995 – decent Australian journo reports on utter bullshit #climate economic “modelling”

August 7, 2003 – John Howard meets with business buddies to kill climate action

Categories
Japan

August 6, 1945 – Hiroshima

Seventy nine years ago, on this day, August 6th, 1945,

Hiroshima. Roughly 100,000 Japanese people killed.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 310ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Americans were wondering about what to do about Japan. Number one, physical invasion (“Operation Olympic”) was going to be “mildly costly” let’s say, in terms of casualties. And number two, Stalin said he was coming into the Pacific War, three months after Germany’s surrender, and that three months was almost up. So if you can do something, do it quick. And crucially, Truman was well up for it. Attlee, who was UK Prime Minister by this time, was too – he later said that no one told him about the radioactive implications. They just told him it was a bigger bomb. 

What we should learn is, I suppose you can make a “moral” case for using an atomic bomb to kill 100,000 human beings, civilians. in Hiroshima, which was not a military target. I mean, how they’d already firestormed Tokyo. If you want to make that “moral” argument, go ahead and fill your boots. I think the one that you really can’t do that for is Nagasaki two days later.

 Fun fact – Kyoto was on a short list of four places to get nuked.

What happened next? Well, first we got the bomb. And that was good because we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s okay, because the balance of powers maintained that way. And here we are. 

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.

Also on this day: 

August 6, 1990 – another climate documentary shown…

August 6, 1992 – Australian environmentalists and businesses united… in disgust at Federal bureaucrats #auspol #climate

Categories
South Paciific

August 5, 1971 – First “South Pacific Forum” happens

Fifty three years ago, on this day, August 5th,1971, leaders of small island states get together…

 The first Pacific Islands Forum (then known as the “South Pacific Forum”) is held in Wellington, New Zealand, with the aim of enhancing cooperation between the independent countries of the Pacific Ocean.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Vietnam War was still going on (the Americans were losing.) There were pacts of different nations, SEATO to ASEAN, all the rest of it. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had been doing “pactomania.” BUT not everything should be seen as the machinations of the metropole. Sometimes – gasp – the “colonials” have plans of their own…

The ‘no politics’ restriction on discussion in the [south Pacific Conference] was the source of great dissatisfaction for the nascent leadership from the islands. The most pressing issues for the islands were clearly political ones involving larger questions of decolonization, but the greatest concern was nuclear testing by France.7
Matters came to a head at the 1965 meeting in Lae, Papua New Guinea, when Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara of Fiji led a major push from the island representatives to give the Conference more relevance in the actions of the SPC beyond its existing ‘advisory’ capacity. The ‘Lae Rebellion’ was ‘the first concerted effort by Pacific Islanders to protest against the structures in the SPC which ensured dominance by the colonial powers’.8
Mara was also the driving force behind the creation in 1965 of the first indigenously motivated ‘islands-only’ regional organization, the Pacific Islands Producers Association (PIPA). Formed by Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa outside of the domain of the SPC, PIPA provided a unified front for negotiating the prices of common agricultural products for export.
Faced with increasing irrelevance, the SPC did evolve in an attempt to meet these new challenges and demands from the island states. From 1967 onward, meetings of the Conference and Commission were held together, and the difference between the two bodies essentially disappeared by 1974.9
Despite these reforms, it was clear the SPC’s charter made the organization too limited to deal with all of the issues confronting the region, and the South Pacific Forum was founded in 1971 as an attempt to address these rising challenges.

THE PROBLEMS AND POTENTIAL OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS FORUM by ERIC SHIBUYA

What we learn is that if you don’t know something these days, you can just Google it. Pretty much go to Google Scholar. Truth – or at least the facts – will out. 

What happened next? Well, by 1987, the Commonwealth was getting interested in global warming, there was the 1987 meeting at which Margaret Thatcher got schooled. And of course, in 1988, it burst on the public agenda. And then there was the Male Declaration in 1989. And since then, AOSIS, and since then the Pacific island nations have been begging and pleading with Australia to be less of a douche. And Australia’s been like, “yeah, nah” on it. We do have the fun of Albo’s 2006 Labor Party position paper on “Our Drowning Neighbours.” And then in 2023 there’s a deal where people from Tuvalu can swap their snorkels for visas.

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.

References

Xxx

Also on this day: 

August 5, 1997 – Australian politician calls for “official figures” on #climate to be suspended because they are rubbery af

August 5, 2010 – academics call for insurance industry to get involved in climate fight

Categories
Agriculture Australia

August 4, 2004 – Australian farmers nervous about climate change. Ignored

Twenty years ago, on this day, August 4th, 2004,

THE greatest risk facing farmers is climate change and global warming, National Farmers Federation president Peter Corish has warned.

Calling for a national blueprint on the long-term problems facing the bush, Mr Corish said the NFF had changed its position in the past 12 months and was now convinced of the threat of global warming.

“Twelve or 18 months ago, we would have said very strongly the jury is still out on climate change because we believed there had been a lack of research into assessment of how real climate change is and how far it is likely to go,” he told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.

Karvelas, P. 2004. Farmers chief warns on climate. The Australian, 5 August, p.5.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there was a drought going on. Australian farmers are always worrying about the weather, because the weather in the land is quite marginal a lot of the time. And of course, at this point, climate change had been an issue of public debate for 15 years. The broader context was that Australian Prime Minister John Howard was doing everything in his power to avoid taking any substantive action on climate change, either domestically or internationally. And he was banging on about coal. The other context is that the National Farmers Association or whatever it’s called, had basically been captured and silenced. And you can read about it in Guy Pearse’s wonderful PhD thesis that was published two years later 2006 where he talks about the different sectoral trade associations, whether it’s agriculture, insurance, banking, tourism, whatever, as the missing inactions. 

What happened next. The Millennium Drought broke in 2008/9. The farmers are still screwed by climate change because one-off events are temporary anomalies, like droughts, pulse disturbances in the system. The thing you really have to watch for are the press disturbances, like the CO2 build-up…

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.

Also on this day: 

August 4, 1988 – Hawke Cabinet asks for “what can we do?” report on climate.

August 4, 2008 – Police pepper spray #climate campers

Categories
Arctic

August 3,1958 – under the pole goes the Nautilus

Sixty six years ago, on this day, August 3rd, 1958, we boldly go…

On August 3, 1958, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) made history by becoming the first ship to pass underneath the North Pole. The 1,830-mile journey was launched from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on July 23, 1958, under the name “Operation Sunshine” and brought the sub and her crew to the shores of England in 19 days.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the bloody Ruskies had put a little ironmonger’s ball in orbit. And so therefore, the Americans needed to boldly go somewhere. In this case, it was under the North Pole in the Nautilus commanded by Captain Nemo or someone. 

What we learn is that phallic objects get everywhere if they give you a sense of power. 

What happened next. Residues of nuclear weapons are all around us. Operation Sunshine, etc. And the polar ice cap is… melting and melting and melting. 

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.

Also on this day: 

August 3, 1970 – Nixon warned about climate change and icecaps melting

August 3, 1988 – Exxon tries to downplay “the greenhouse effect.” Again.

Categories
Denial

August 2, 1992 – Canberra Times reporting that Jastrow idiot #RelevanceDeprivationSyndrome

Thirty two years ago, on this day, August 2nd, 1992, the newspaper for Australia’s political capital reports a very stupid physicist who couldn’t cope with having backed the wrong horse and being old and now irrelevant (scientifically, if, not – sadly – politically).

“Global warming caused by sun” Canberra Times 2 August, p.5, reporting Jastrow

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that although the denialists had one relatively famous victory at Rio, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough, because they wanted to drive a stake through what they perceive to be the vampire’s heart. And, of course, they quite liked travelling around the world, feeling important because they were addressing various audiences and getting polite applause. These are old white men suffering from Relevant Deprivation Syndrome. Their days as high powered physicists were well behind them. They had fought the Cold War, they had defended Reagan’s Space Defence Initiative, (aka Star Wars), and now they had found a new grift, saying that the greenhouse effect wasn’t real.

What we learn is that Relevance Deprivation Syndrome is a tragic chronic illness, with fatal consequences for everyone else. Robert Jastrow, in the late 70s, after all, had been saying there would be a new ice age. It’s fine to be wrong. It’s not so fine to compensate by being a total prick. 

What happened next, the Canberra Times kept publishing denialist screeds because journalistic “balance” as per Boykoff and Boykoff (2004). Funny how they didn’t balance pro-capitalist views with anti-capitalist and communist views, for example.

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.

Also on this day: 

August 2, 1970 – LA Times runs #climate change front page story

August 2, 1994 – Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating says greenies should ignore “amorphous issue of greenhouse”

August 2, 2007 – Russia plants a flag on the Arctic sea-bed.