The journalist Nick Tomalin had words of advice for fellow hacks new to Vietnam.
“Never forget that they lie, they lie, they lie” (link)
It’s a phrase I love, that I’ve (over)used and that deserves to be known more broadly.
It also works for climate; we knew, we knew, we knew.
The short version is this – there had been arguments that carbon dioxide build-up would warm the world (Arrhenius 1896, Callendar 1938) but these had been dismissed. In 1953 Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass gave a warning. He had credibility and computers. By the late 1950s, this was relatively well-known, including by anyone buying a newspaper and reading it carefully.
Who is “we”
The oil companies knew. The political elites knew. Educated people knew.
What do I mean by “knew”
Until the mid-late 1970s there were doubts about whether carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere would a) happen quickly and b) be a Bad Thing. But by the late 1970s those doubts were surely so small as to invoke the precautionary principle. People like John Mason at the Met