Categories
Australia Science Scientists

January 19, 2016 – Australian Chief Scientific Advisor advises…

Nine years ago, on this day, January 19th, 2016,

Taylor, L. 2016.Outgoing chief scientist Ian Chubb says tougher greenhouse gas targets inevitable. The Guardian, 19 January. 

Chubb also says hostility towards climate science may be easing but scientists still have a duty to offer unflinching advice

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia had had chief scientific advisers since 1988 and they had all been saying, “you got to do more on climate,” Including, of course, the first female, and only female so far, Chief Scientific Adviser, Penny Sackett, who quit om 2011 once she realized that Julia Gillard was not going to try to do more than was legislatively on the table. 

What we learn is that scientists are definitely on tap, but they’re never on top, and that anyone who thinks they are is deluded. 

What happened next

Advice kept getting given. We’ve bucket loads of the stuff.

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: 

January 19, 1968 – Engineers are not ecologists…

January 19, 1976 – The carbon consequences of cement get an early discussion.

January 19, 1992 – they gambled, we lost

January 19, 2015 -Four utilities pull out of an EU CCS programme…

Categories
United States of America

January 18, 1972 – Plastic is in your blood..

Fifty three years ago, on this day, January 18th, 1972, the Washington Post runs a story, well

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Stockholm climate conference was coming. Eeryone was still therefore very aerated about  environmental issues, generally.

Plastics were on a kind of  similar trajectory as DDT. They’d gone from wondrous scientific, technological gift in the 1950s “Better Living Through Technology” to something regarded as potentially or actually dangerous. And the generational shift here is, of course, captured in the scene from the film The Graduate where Benjamin Braddock’s father’s friend, Mr McGuire,says “One Word. Plastics!”

 But here we are with plastic even being found in the blood. It turns out, as per Barry Commoner and his laws of ecology, “there is no ‘away.’” 

What I think we can learn from this is that these problems, these dangers, have been with us for two generations or awareness of them, but some of them are simply too hard to solve. DDT could be erased like the CFCs that were depleting the ozone. BUt carbon dioxide could not, and neither could plastics. 

What happened next

Plastics continued to be everywhere in every sense. Oceans are full of them. They’re in the clouds, and we have doomed ourselves. So it goes. 

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: 

January 18, 1964 – Nature mentions atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up

January 18, 1993 – Australian unions and greenies launch first “Green Jobs” campaign

January 18, 1993 – Job’s not a good un. “Green Jobs in Industry Plan” achieves … nothing. #auspol

Categories
Australia

January 17, 2015 – David Pope’s brilliant “You are now leaving the Holocene” cartoon is published

Ten years ago, on this day, January 17th, 2015,the brilliant cartoonist David Pope delivered another brilliant cartoon.  You are now leaving the Holocene… Below please find an interview with him, conducted via email a couple of weeks ago.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 401ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

1. Who are you and how did you get into cartooning?

I drew cartoons for the peace movement and other activist causes when I was younger. Then I started drawing them for the Labour Studies Briefing in Adelaide, while I was a student there. Pre-internet, the Briefing used to produce short summaries of the latest articles and academic research on labour relations and the economy, for trade unions. The unions started to reproduce the cartoons in their own publications, and eventually I decided to devote more time to it.

2. When and how did you get switched on to environmental concerns?

Again, in Adelaide, I started drawing some cartoons for the national magazine of Friends of the Earth. I think I drew my first cartoon on “the greenhouse effect” in 1990, but in the 80s, the possibility of a nuclear winter was more pressing on my young consciousness, and connected to that, the campaign against uranium mining.

3. On the cartoon, do you remember any of the thought processes or the inspiration behind it? Were there any particular responses to it?

No, I have no memory of what prompted that cartoon at the time. Perhaps there was a climate report or interview that was trying to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene to a wider audience. It was reprinted in a few scientific papers and presentations, so I presume it did the job in conveying some sense of epochal transition.

4. Anything else you’d like to say – Chance to plug any books, exhibitions or anything else that you’ve got going on…

I make posters available through RedBubble

https://www.redbubble.com/people/hinze/explore?page=1&sortOrder=recent

Many of those focus on the environments of the high country and the coast near where I live, and are a foil to the daily and more didactic political cartoons I draw for The Canberra Times and ACM. I don’t publish collections of my political cartoons, but some of them make it into Scribe’s excellent annuals, “Best Australian Political Cartoons”, available at most bookshops.

<END OF INTERVIEW>

See also this blog post on my personal website.

Cartoons, catastrophe and the “long” view (even a generation seems as much as we can cope with)

Cartoons, catastrophe and the “long” view (even a generation seems as much as we can cope with)

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

January 17, 1970 – The Bulletin reprints crucial environment/climate article

January 17th – A religious perspective on climate action

January 17, 2001 – Enron engineers energy “blackouts” to gouge consumers

Categories
Australia Uncategorized

January 16, 1992 – ACT draft Greenhouse Strategy released

Thirty four  years ago, on this day, January 16th, 1992 the draft greenhouse strategy of the Australian Capital Territory government was  launched. 

Lamberton, 1992 Canberra Times  

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.5ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that various state governments had promised that they would create and enact greenhouse strategies. The Australian Capital Territory, (not a state), was among them, It had  in fact, agreed to The Toronto target early on. And so this launch, is in the months leading up to the Rio Earth Summit in June,, the kind of thing that happens. 

What I think we can learn from this is that the wheels of bureaucracy necessarily grind slowly, but they do grind, if not scuppered by new political dispensations. 

What happened next

There has been fairly good progress (yes, yes, I know, not consumption based, no big industry blah blah).

Also on this day

January 16, 1919 – banning things that people like turns out not to work

January 16, 1995: There’s power in a (corporate) union #auspol

January 16, 2003 – Chicago Climate Exchange names founding members

Categories
United States of America

January 15, 1981 – US calls for efforts to combat global environmental problems

Forty four years ago, on this day, January 15th, 1981,

The Carter Administration called today for a major, sustained national and international effort to cope with what it said were ”increasingly critical global resource, environmental and population problems.”

A report prepared jointly for the President by the State Department and the Council on Environmental Quality warned that excessive world population growth, dwindling resources and environmental degradation represent serious threats to the political and economic security of the United States.

Shabecoff, Philip (1981). “U.S. Calls for Efforts To Combat Global Environmental Problems.” New York Times, January 15

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the people with a green tinge in Carter’s administration, mostly, but not entirely, huddled in the Council for Economic Quality, had tried to get environmental issues to the fore, despite being told by Carter’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Frank Press to ignore the carbon dioxide issue. 

Carter had lost the November, 1980 election comprehensively. Everyone knew that Reagan was not a fan of environmental issues. He wasn’t even aware of the Global 2000 report, and therefore this was a desperate last effort, perhaps to say to other nations “hold on. We’ll be back in hopefully four years.” It would, of course, be a bit longer than that. 

What I think we can learn from this is that policy entrepreneurs within these systems have to try to save the furniture, that you can never look at an individual news item without thinking about the broader context. 

What happened next

 Reagan’s goons went too hard too fast, and there was pushback against them, so people like James Watt and Gail and Gorsuch became hate figures and had to be removed, and as per McCright and Dunlap, what the right have largely learned is to keep the edifice and maybe even some of the rhetoric, if you like, but to gut everything from the inside in terms of funding. I. And powers and so forth and so it continues down unto this day you. 

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:

Categories
Australia Uncategorized

January 14, 2003 – WWF Australia raises the alarm

Twenty two years ago, on this day, January 14th, 2003,

Human-induced global warming was a key factor in the severity of the 2002 drought in Australia, the worst in the country’s history, according to a report issued Tuesday [14 January] by WWF Australia. The report is part of an effort by Australian environmental organizations to convince the Liberal Government of John Howard to reverse its policy and sign the Kyoto climate protocol.

Human Actions Blamed for Worst Australian Drought. Jan 15. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-15-02.html SYDNEY, Australia, January 15, 2003 (ENS) –

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that George Bush and then John Howard had both pulled out of negotiations around Kyoto Protocol, citing economic interests. (But it went deeper than that it was about culture and the way the world should be.) The Millennium drought was causing mayhem, and WWF was oh, sorry, trying to stitch together coalitions to put pressure on governments, especially the federal government.

What I think we can learn from this is that policy entrepreneurs even the centrists, (and you don’t get more centrist, or, in fact, neoliberal and elite etc, than WWF) will have to try multiple times to get any attention. This particular report gained no traction. WWF did further work with the Wentworth group and insurers. It wasn’t until another business friendly coalition back in 2006, that they began to get through. It’s a bit like trying to chop down a tree. You can’t do it in one blow, usually.

What happened next

The emissions kept climbing. The Age of consequences (for rich white people) has begun. 

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: 

Categories
United States of America

January 13, 1967 – crucial editorial in Science – “Man is changing the earth’s atmosphere…”

Fifty eight years ago, on this day, January 13th, 1967, the editor of the most prestigious American scientific journal, Science, writes about the carbon dioxide threat,

“Man is changing the earth’s atmosphere.  Most obvious is the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that almost exactly two years before Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, had made an address to Congress that included mention of CO2 build up. And in the intervening period, there had been a report in November 1965  by the President’s Scientific Advisory Panel Council and other reports. Abelson, who had trained as a nuclear physicist, clearly had his finger on the pulse (part of the job spec for editor of the premier scientific journal in the United States!) 

What we learn is that at the beginning of 1967, readers of the journal Science would have been aware of this as a potential issue. Now, it turns out that the estimates of temperature increase were vastly overblown, overstated. The word could is doing a lot of work. Nonetheless, it shows us that this was an issue that scientific political elites were aware of. 

What happened next  Ableson did keep talking about CO2. So for example, there’s him at a symposium later that year. 

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:

January 13, 1965 – President Lyndon Johnson gets a memo about carbon dioxide build-up and climate change

January 13, 2004 – Bob Carr rallies states for emissions trading

January 13, 2005- UN Secretary-General calls for “decisive measures” on climate change

January 13, 2021 – New Scientist reports on types of intelligence required to deal with #climate change  

ps – from Wikipeia-

Abelson was outspoken and well known for his opinions on science. In a 1964 editorial published in Science magazine, Abelson identified overspecialization in science as a form of bigotry. He outlined his view that the pressure towards specialization beginning in undergraduate study and intensifying in PhD programs leads students to believe that their area of specialization is the most important, even to the extreme view that other intellectual pursuits are worthless. He reasoned that such overspecialization led to obsolescence of one’s work, often through a focus on trivial aspects of a field, and that avoidance of such bigotry was essential to guiding the direction of one’s work.[7]

Categories
United States of America

January 13, 1965 – President Lyndon Johnson gets a memo about carbon dioxide build-up and climate change

Sixty years ago, on this day, January 13, 1965, Lyndon Johnson got a memo about environmental problems, including carbon dioxie buildup. We know this thanks to the sterling investigative work of Rebecca John, writing for DeSmog. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that US scientists, including Roger Revelle and Charles Dave Keeling had been measuring and pondering. A couple of years before this  memo, in March 1963 the Rockefeller-funded Conservation Foundation had held a meeting on carbon dioxide build-up.  The following year Revelle had chaired a group looking at environmental problems (the group included Margaret Mead!).  

What I think we can learn from this is that the information was getting to the very top quite quickly.

What happened next

A month after the memo, LBJ gave a special address to Congress on environmental problems included a mention of C02 build up

Two years to the day later an editorial appeared in Science pointing to … carbon dioxide as a 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: 

January 13, 2004 – Bob Carr rallies states for emissions trading

January 13, 2005- UN Secretary-General calls for “decisive measures” on climate change

January 13, 2021 – New Scientist reports on types of intelligence required to deal with #climate change   

Categories
Activism

Open letter from jailed UK #climate activists abt their upcoming appeal (Jan 29-30)

Thank you for signing the open letter last July in support of the Whole Truth Five, jailed for taking proportionate, evidence-based action to stop new oil and gas licences.

We now write to you as the ‘Lord Walney 16’* – the sixteen people imprisoned for a combined 41 years for refusing to be bystanders to the devastation of life on earth. We were all sentenced between July and September last year, after Lord Walney, lobbyist for the arms and oil industry, called for those resisting genocide–whether from carbon emissions or Israeli bombs–to face the harshest response that the government, the police and the judicial system could punish us with.

You so generously signed that open letter, which called out the injustice of these insane sentences in the context of an already broken prison system. Now we’re calling on your generosity again. A critical moment has arisen: our appeals against these sentences will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 29th and 30th January. This is a truly historic juncture, not just for the 16 of us, but for our movements and all those who place justice and democracy over corporate profit. The courts are sensitive to public pressure. And you are someone who can make the difference – the more visible support we have from cultural figures, the harder judges will find it to quietly deny us our rights, and thereby erode all of our rights.

Please join the solidarity rally outside court on either day and let us know you’re coming by emailing info@defendourjuries.org. There will be a podium in a safe place for a reading, a speech or a song across the two days – whatever you are moved to contribute – or simply come and show your solidarity.

If you can’t make it in person, please express your support for us on your social media channels by sharing the event link with the hashtag #FreeTheLordWalney16 and get in touch if you want to support remotely in other ways: info@defendourjuries.org

We gave up our freedom to resist the ultimate crimes against humanity and life on earth. Now we’re calling on your help – don’t let a slide into corporate authoritarianism come to pass unnoticed.

With love,

Anna Holland, 23, serving a 20 month sentence in HMP Send

Chris Bennett, 33, serving an 18 month sentence, released on tag

Cressida Gethin, 22, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send

Daniel Shaw, 38, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Wayland

Gaie Delap, 78, serving a 20 month sentence in HMP Eastwood Park

Dr Larch Maxey, 52, serving a 3 year sentence in HMP Fosse Way

Louise Lancaster, 58, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send

Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, serving a 4 year sentence in HMP Send

Paul Bell, 24, serving a 22 month sentence, released on tag

Paul Sousek, 73, serving a 20 month sentence, released on tag

Phoebe Plummer, 23, serving a 2 year sentence in HMP Bronzefield

Roger Hallam, 58, serving a 5 year sentence in HMP Wayland

Theresa Higginson, 26, serving a 2 year sentence, released on tag

*Note: three of the 16 have not added their names here due to the risk of being recalled to prison for associating with their fellow activists

Categories
Australia Nuclear Power

January 12, 2006 – the nuclear option, yet again

Nineteen years ago, on this day, January 12th, 2006,

 “NUCLEAR power will be examined as part of the solution to global warming when ministers from six countries meet this morning in Sydney for talks on climate change…”  

Peatling, S. 2006. Nuclear question looms large at climate change talks. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 January. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was  that everyone knows there’s going to have to be a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, even though (because) t was far too weak. And so the proponents of action are talking about a stronger emissions trading scheme with fewer loopholes. And the opponents are, of course, talking about “technology.” The Bush and Howard governments had been banging on and creating these entirely fake and stupid bodies that would allow world leaders to stand at a podium in front of a new logo and declare “hydrogen” or “nuclear” or “CCS” or some other nonsense instead of any actual emissions cuts, And this is further examples of that. 

What I think we can learn from this

Technology is always invoked as the get out of jail free card. Enough people find it convenient to believe, or easy enough to pretend to believe.  And the emissions keep climbing.

What happened next

And the emissions kept climbing. 

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: