Fifty five years ago, on this day, September 26th, 1970, the Medical Journal of Australia runs an article on “Notes on Some Aspects of Pollution”.
“The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased by 14% since 1960. If it continues to build up at anything like that rate, it could, by the end of the century, form a blanket around the earth, raising the temperature appreciably, turning the tropics into hothouses, making the temperate zones tropical, and beginning to melt the polar ice caps. If the trend continued until the ice caps were completely melted, all maritime cities would be drowned, and the surf that now beats on Bondi beach would be beating on the lower slopes of the Blue Mountains.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. 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 there was a global ecological awareness/concern springing up.
The specific context was from late 1969 carbon dioxide build up was mentioned among all the other dangers facing us. It had been on ABC radio in September 1969, and was popping up in articles like these.
What I think we can learn from this is that we’ve had warnings about carbon dioxide build-up for a lot longer than most people realise.
What happened next: The warnings were, of course, ignored. From 1988 onwards, there have been various games of kayfabe.
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.
Thirty years ago, on this day, September 26th, 1995,
Senator Cook opens CRC that “will help maintain Australia’s export coal trade in an increasingly competitive and environmentally sensitive international market”
Cook, P. 1995 Black coal goes green at new Cooperative Research Centre.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 361ppm. 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 Australia had become the world’s biggest coal exporter in 1984, and Australian politicians had been trying to “square the circle” with environment concerns since the late 1980s. See for example Bob Hawke in January 1989.
The specific context was that there were various research institutions happy to relieve the taxpayer of cash – god forbid industry fund research and development in a meaningful way…
What I think we can learn from this is that the taxpayer is always on the hook.
What happened next “Clean Coal”? Yeah, like dry water.
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 five years ago, on this day, September 24th, 1970,
“The British Society for Social Responsibility in Science has formed an Art and Technology group…. the first demonstration sponsored by the group coincided with the opening of the Arts Council’s international KINETICS exhibition 24 Sept. The work MOBILE was presented to critics and spectators and driven around London. It consists of a box covered with PVC, and mounted on top of a car. The box contained meat, flowers and vegetables. A tube fed the exhaust of the car into the box, with stunning visual (and chemical) results. The group hopes that the idea will be taken up by people around the world.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. 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 from about 1969 British scientists and activists were starting to link local and global air pollution (and pollution more broadly).
The specific context was that London’s air seemed much cleaner thanks to the Clean Air Act of 1956 – and was, in some ways. In other ways, not so much…
What I think we can learn from this is that cars have been a catastrophic invention, on ecological, social, psychological levels. God help us all.
What happened next
By 1973 the eco-wave was basically gone, and wouldn’t be back until the late 1980s. These waves, they come and go…
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.
On this day in 2022 the the CEO of the ad agency (well, behemoth) IPG announced it was revising its policy on fossil fuels.
In what the company said is a first for the industry, Interpublic Group and its agencies are now proactively reviewing the climate impacts of prospective clients that operate in the oil, energy and utility sectors before accepting new work.
IPG said it was working with climate change consultant Planet + Purpose Solutions to develop a set of questions that the company expects prospective clients to affirm before agreeing to partner with them.
The questions include:
Have these potential clients set specific emission reduction goals that are aligned with 1.5°C ambition to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 or sooner with no greater than 10% off-setting?
Are these companies publishing clear climate reporting, including scope, baseline, timeline, and the tracking of Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions?
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 418ppm. 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 white colour people with educations and eyes were beginning to see the webs of complicity, and not liking it so much. And were trying to change the system from within (as per Leonard Cohen).
The specific context was that “creatives” etc within the agency were pressuring for a pledge.
What I think we can learn from this. You can – with effort and luck – get some promises of action from our Lords and Masters.
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 23rd, 2007,
After ten years of being a climate sceptic, John Howard begrudgingly pronounced himself a climate change realist. But while the rhetoric has changed, Government policy hasn’t. Australia’s greenhouse pollution continues to soar as the renewables industry slowly but surely packs its bags and heads overseas. Meanwhile the coal industry continues to expand with the help of massive public subsidies.
Anon, 2007. Govt climate ad campaign not so clever. Greenpeace 23 September.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. 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 Australian policymakers had been shitting on climate policy since the beginning.
The specific context was that Prime Minister John Howard, an enemy of sanity on climate, had been forced, in late 2006, to attempt a “reverse ferret” on climate policy. He’d appointed a panel to produce the “Shergold Report” on emissions trading. This convinced no-one, and with an election coming what could be more natural than to spend taxpayers’ money to propagandise them.
What I think we can learn from this. Stupid Evil is gonna Stupid Evil, and expect a subsidy to Stupid Evil from the public. And mostly, Stupid Evil gets what it wants.
What happened next – Howard lost the November 2007 election and, indeed, his own seat.
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.
Thirty one years ago, on this day, September 22nd, 1994,
The Federal Government’s response to the greenhouse gas problem will inevitably cut billions of dollars from Australia’s economic growth but a carbon tax would devastate the economy, according to a major new report.
The study, by the Melbourne-based National Institute of Economic and Industry Research, says that current government ambitions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are “unrealistic” and cannot be achieved without major economic costs.
It confirms there are no easy choices facing the Government in dealing with the greenhouse problem, particularly in the short term.
Commissioned by the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, the two-year, $400,000 research project, suggests that a longer-term greenhouse response would mitigate the impact on the national economy. The new analysis will be publicly released today. … coal industry closed down by 2000.
Gill, P. 1994. Carbon tax to ruin economy says new study. The Australian Financial Review, 22 September, p.6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 359ppm. 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 business had been running scare campaigns against any government action on any given issue for ages – that’s what they do. Starting in 1989 or so, they did the same for “the Greenhouse Effect.”
The specific context was that the Federal Environment Minister, John Faulkner, had spent the last few months trying to get people on board for a carbon tax. This was part of the pushback.
What I think we can learn from this is that they always do “sky will fall” economic reports. Why change a winning game?
What happened next: The carbon tax was defeated in early February 1995.
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 years ago, on this day, September 23rd, 2005,
IPCC report on Carbon Capture and Storage 22-24 September 2005
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 380ppm. 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 from the late 1990s CCS had come onto the radar of policymakers, since if the Kyoto Protocol were to come into force, then rich nations would have to reduce emissions. CCS might, they thought, be a convenient (if not cheap) way of meeting these obligations.
The specific context was that pro-CCS scientists and technologists had lobbied successfully for the IPCC to produce one of its “Special Reports.”
What I think we can learn from this – every new technology, even (especially the Unicorntech) needs big fat reports with hundreds of footnotes to make it seem real and safe.
What happened next – CCS has been through repeated hype cycles. God help us all.
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 five years ago, on this day, September 21st, 1990,
Later, once the UK had established its stabilisation target, but only for the year 2005 rather than 2000 as others had done, Trippier again produced high-quality rhetoric. ‘We could go for 2000, if we wanted to close down half the coal mines in Britain and go for no economic growth’,
he stated (quoted in the Independent 21 September 1990
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 355ppm. 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 in June 1888 at the Toronto conference on the changing atmosphere a target of a 20 per cent reduction in C02 emissions by 2005, on a 1988 baseline had been proposed.
The specific context was that 1990 was the year of all the conferences, and the UK had already said “nope” to Toronto, but were still trying to look like the good guys. – thus this wretched compromise.
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians will, obviously, always try to make a terrible compromise/retreat from reality look like a bold step in statesmanship. It’s perception management all the way…
What happened next – the wretched UNFCCC treaty contains an implicit expectation that rich nations will stabilise their emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. Most didn’t, obvs.
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.
