Tag: 1995

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Germany IPCC UNFCCC

April 8, 1995 – Journo points out the gamble on climate

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, April 8th, 1995, Fred Pearce of the New Scientist points out that there is a gamble going on (as did Australian climate scientist Graeme Pearman three years earlier).

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619720-300-world-lays-odds-on-global-catastrophe/

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the first COP had just finished. Rich nations had been resisting emissions cuts using scientific uncertainty as their final excuse. But Swedish scientist Bert Bolin, who had been banging on about climate change, and carbon dioxide build up since 1958, at the latest, was telling them that the IPCC Second Assessment Report would be out later this year and that they shouldn’t expect to be able to use the uncertainty card for very much longer, more or less.

What I think we can learn from this is that the really sharp battles at the end of 1995, were all about that. I hadn’t quite grokked that before.

What happened next

Well, there were really sharp battles at the end of ‘95. From the middle of ‘95 efforts by denialists to smear individual scientists (the “Serengeti Strategy”) and the process in order to slow progress towards a serious protocol.

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: 

April 8, 1970 – Australian National University students told about C02 build-up…

April 8, 1980 – UK civil servant Crispin Tickell warns Times readers…

April 8, 1995 – Australian environment minister says happy with “Berlin Mandate”

April 8, 2013 – Margaret Thatcher died

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Australia

April 3, 1995 and 2001 – Australia’s international trajectory – from bullshit to batshit delusion (but honest)

Twenty nine and twenty three years ago, on this day, April 3rd, 1995 and 2001, the Australian position on international negotiations went from mildly hypocritical to unashamedly evil.

Australian environment minister John Faulkner meets with German Environment Minister Angela Merkel at COP1 and says “Australia is not obstructionist”

McCathie, 1995, 5 April. Australia’s change of heart hits the spot.

AND THEN 

The Australian government is being applauded by corporate polluters and corporate front groups at home and abroad. The Global Climate Coalition, the major front group for US corporate polluters, features on its web site an article by Alan Wood in the April 3 Australian (<http://www.globalclimate.org>). Wood’s article, titled “Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests”, urges Australia to back the US in pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Wood comments favourably on a paper written by climate sceptic Alan Oxley for the Lavoisier Group, an Australian “think tank” which argues that the Kyoto Protocol poses “the most serious challenge to our sovereignty since the Japanese fleet entered the Coral Sea on 3 May, 1942”.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/canberra-covers-bush-greenhouse

and

The US has called Europe’s bluff.

LISTEN to the Europeans and you could be forgiven for thinking George W. Bush has just sent the world to the gas chamber – the greenhouse gas chamber, that is. What Bush has really done by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol is shatter a European dream of running the international energy market, or at least a substantial bit of it.

This dream arose from a mix of Europe’s quasi-religious green fundamentalism and cynical calculation of commercial advantage. Jacques Chirac gave the game away at the failed COP6 talks at The Hague last November, when he described the protocol as “a genuine instrument of global governance”.

Wood, A. 2001. Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests. The Australian, 3 April, p13.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361 to 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that this six year period is really where the “failing to deal with climate change” accelerates. Before April 1995 two serious battles had already been lost. The Ecologically Sustainable Development process, which came up with some workable if not transformative in-and-of-themselves ideas, had been watered down and then killed off by Keating and federal bureaucrats. 

A second bite at the “carbon tax” cherry had just been defeated by early February 1995. John Faulkner had had to run up the white flag. The COP1 meeting was underway when this first bullshit was being spouted. 

But then if you look at the next six years, it’s an astonishing period of abject policy failure on climate, if, of course, by failure you mean protecting current and future generations. If your metric is “keeping rich people rich and the fossil fuel interests happy” that it was a stunning success. You have Australia’s adoption of ABARE modelling for international purposes by late 1995 under Keating.

You have the hostility to international negotiations breaking out in public in Geneva in July 1996. 

You have the year long campaign in 1997 for Australia to have some sort of special exemption, which sadly was successful.

You have the play acting of the Australian Greenhouse Office.

You have the defeat of the first Emissions Trading Scheme in 2000.

You have the introduction of an incredibly watered down Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. 

And you have the protection of state sanctioned credibility for a fantasy technology known as “carbon capture and storage.” 

By here we are on  April 3 2001, just after Bush had pulled out of Kyoto. That Bush decision meant that Australia was going to do the same, as per the leak in 1998. The batshit denialists could have just rested on their laurels. But theirs is a fire that continues to burn, regardless of whether they’re winning big or winning medium; and they were winning big. 

What we learn – the failure was public. There were no secrets, really.

What happened next. The failure has continued. And unless people behave differently, will continue to do so.

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: 

April 3, 1980 – US news anchorman Walter Cronkite on the greenhouse effect

April 3, 1991- Does coal have a future?

April 3, 2000 – Australian diplomats spread bullshit about climate. Again

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 10, 1995 – Faulkner folds on carbon tax – doesn’t have the numbers in Cabinet

Twenty nine years ago, on this day, February 10th, 1995, the Australian Environment Minister John Faulkner conceded that he didn’t have the numbers to get a carbon tax proposal through cabinet.

THE Minister for the Environment, Senator Faulkner, has abandoned proposals for the introduction of a carbon tax …. His decision was made on Friday [10th February] after two days of talks with environmental and business groups

Ellis, S. and Gill, P. 1995. Faulkner calls off plans to impose carbon tax. The Australian Financial Review, 14 February, p.3.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there had been an entirely sensible idea put forward by the greenies at the Australian Conservation Foundation, among others, to have a small carbon tax that would fund energy efficiency and solar. This had finally been put forward by the environment minister, John Faulkner in 1994. It had led to a vehement coordinated attack on the proposal. The opponents had played their cards very well. The proponents not always so well. And on Friday 10th of February Faulkner had realised he didn’t have the numbers because the crucial role in politics is “learn to count.” 

What we learn is that everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost and this is one of the times that the good guys lost. What we also learn is that proposals for sanity get made all the time and usually get defeated. 

What happened next?  Faulkner went to COP1 in Berlin and announced himself happy. There was the announcement of the entirely voluntary greenhouse challenge, bullshit that achieved nothing other than to confuse people. Its purpose was to make BHP and its chums look like ”responsible” corporate citizens. 

Also on this day: 

Feb 10, 2010 – Dutch scientists try to plug denialists’ holes in the dike

February 10, 2011 – Australia gets a “Climate Commission”

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 7, 1995 – Business Council of Australia vs a carbon tax. Of course

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, February 7th, 1995, the lobby group for big business successfully fought off a carbon tax.

Canberra — The Business Council of Australia yesterday attacked the Federal Government’s proposed carbon tax, saying that it could jeopardise more than 47,000 jobs and $43 billion in production in the nation’s export energy industries.

Drawing on a report released by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics yesterday, the council said a carbon tax, at any level, would result in lost jobs, production and exports.

The executive director of the council, Mr Paul Barratt, said any carbon tax would have a serious impact on Australia’s oil and gas, coal, metal products, petrochemicals, pulp and paper and cement industries.

Thomas, C. 1995. Business Council Hits Plan For Carbon Tax. The Age, 7 February, p.50.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there was a fierce battle going on over a proposal for a carbon tax at federal level in Australia, and the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Mining Industry Council, (who made the tie-in official as the AIGN later) were at the forefront of a campaign to stop it. And one of the ways – not the only one,  but one of the ways – was to say that the “sky would fall” economically speaking.  

And what you do is you get some economic modelling by so-called independent experts who set their parameters in such a way that the sky will fall, you then turn that into a report, write a press release. You give it to some tame journalists, who then get it put up on the front page of a newspaper. Then get questions asked in Parliament. It gets picked up on television and the “common sense” that action on climate change will cost a fortune is just that little bit further embedded. 

And they have been playing this game for a very long time. They’re very good at it and the reason they keep playing it is it’s usually a winning tactic for them. 

What happened next. The carbon tax was defeated in February of 1995 before the BCA and its chums had to pull up the really big guns. Policy advocate interest shifted to emissions trading schemes. One was finally introduced in 2012, only to be abolished two years later. Australia deserves everything it gets.

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: 

 Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

February 7, 1979 – Met Office boss bullshits about his carbon dioxide stance

Categories
Australia

January 25, 1995 – Australian electricity reforms mean more greenhouse gases…

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, January 25, 1995 the tension between making lots of money in the near-future and doing something about climate change became obvious.

AUSTRALIA’S electricity reforms and greenhouse policy appear to be headed in contradictory directions. While senior Federal ministers concede that a carbon tax would not be a single solution to meeting greenhouse targets, demand management reforms that would have a substantial impact on greenhouse emissions have been proposed by a working party of the National Grid Management Council. Yet the latest drafts of that report suggest that the NGMC will step back from critical recommendations. On December 7, the NGMC’s working party on demand management in the emerging competitive power market, produced a third draft that listed three specific options – Budget allocations, an energy efficiency levy or tax incentives – to promote energy efficiency. But when the “final draft” was produced on January 25 by the NGMC itself – in preparation for its ultimate submission to the Council of Australian Governments – each of these recommendations was substantially different…

1995 Gill. M. 1995. The meek take the running on electricity reform. Australian Financial Review, 13 February, p.12.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that state owned electricity systems in the states of Australia, were busy being privatised. The idea was also to have a national grid excluding Tasmania, but still excluding Western Australia, because there was money to be made. And of course, if you had to have greenhouse, and environment considerations included, that would interfere with rich white people getting even richer. And we can’t have that now, can we? Because that would be communism. 

What we learn – failure was systematically baked in.

What happened next? Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Greenhouse was kept out of the documents that set up the Australian energy market and all of that who had the national grid. And this is a good part – by no means the only part but a good part – of why Australia has had until recently astonishingly high carbon intensity in its electricity generation. I mean, brown coal, I ask 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: 

January 25, 1994: UK government releases “Sustainable Development Strategy”

January 25, 2013 – Lord Stern admits #climate “worse than I thought”

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

January 12, 1995 – Australian carbon tax coming??

Twenty nine years ago, on this day, January 12th 1995 the game of chicken and dare around a carbon price in Australia was coming to a head. A front page story in the Canberra Times began as follows,

“A greenhouse gas levy remains firmly on the Government’s agenda, with the bureaucratic working group responsible for developing the levy meeting for the first time yesterday.”

 Henderson, I. 1995. Greenhouse gas levy remains to the fore. The Canberra Times, 12 January, p.1.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 360ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Australian Conservation Foundation (a big green NGO) and others had been pushing for a carbon tax for years initially as part of the Ecologically Sustainable Development policymaking process. And although they had suffered defeats, they didn’t let it go. New Environment Minister John Faulkner had taken that on board and he had also taken on board Phlilip Toyne who had been a major force in the Australian green movement as head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. 

What we can learn is that there is a great deal of believing when you’re top of the web or “dissent ecosystem”, (not that you can be at the ‘top’ of such a thing) in that when you’re a big player it’s tempting to believe that you can join the system and change the system from within. Then there’s a logic to doing so, or wanting to do so: beyond easy claims and smears of careerism, and parlaying radicalism to take one of the jobs for the boys. Toyne tried. He failed to get the tax up – but that was because the opposition to it was clear and clever and the support for it did not have its shit together.

What happened next a month and two days after this was in the newspapers, Environment Minister John Faulkner pulled the plug on a carbon tax. Instead, there was a meaningless voluntary scheme, the Greenhouse Challenge, which was reheated a couple of times, but frankly, never amounted to a bucket of warm spit. 

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: 

Jan 12, 1983 – RIP to the “master organizer in the world of science”, Carroll Wilson

January 12, 2008 – Australian mining lobby group ups its “sustainability” rhetoric #PerceptionManagement #Propaganda   

Categories
Denial United States of America

November 16, 1995 – another skirmish in the IPCC war

Twenty eight years ago, on this day, November 16, 1995, a denialist douche-bag testilies…

On November 16, 1995, Patrick J. Michaels, an associate professor in the department of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, U.S. House of Representatives, on issues related to human-induced (or anthropogenic) climate change.

Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 202

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Michaels and a small band of others had for reasons of their own and (in Michaels case, money and attention), decided to attack and smear climate science and climate scientists. And in 1995 the big effort was to attack the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to anyone who would listen. And they had enough Republican friends, especially in the House of Reps and Senate, to be able to do what the proper scientists were doing, which was create venues for discourse. 

What I think we can learn from this is that “ideal speech communities” can get hijacked and perverted by lying liars. The lying liars could never admit that they were wrong. Too demanding, emotionally.

What happened next

The attacks on the IPCC and in this case, especially Ben Santer continued, but they reached such a high vicious pitch that members of the Global Climate Coalition started to worry about their reputations and started to leave. But it didn’t matter. The denialists had won.

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.

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Uncategorized

November 10, 1995 – Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni executed

Twenty eight years ago, on this day, November 10, 1995, nine men, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa were executed.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Nigeria was a brutal dictatorship with local warlords making loads a money. Ogoni were getting screwed.

The military dictatorship in Nigeria had decided to execute a bunch of Ogoni leaders who were protesting against the despoilation and the extractivism that had been going on for decades as funded by what has perpetrated by outfits like our friends at Shell who were having a rough time of it in the second half of the 1990s. 

What I think we can learn from this

That the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

What happened next

Nigeria stopped being an official actual military dictatorship. The shituation for the Ogoni is not hugely better.

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

  • Canadian author J. Timothy Hunt‘s The Politics of Bones (September 2005), published shortly before the 10th anniversary of Saro-Wiwa’s execution, documented the flight of Saro-Wiwa’s brother Owens Wiwa, after his brother’s execution and his own imminent arrest, to London and then on to Canada, where he is now a citizen and continues his brother’s fight on behalf of the Ogoni people. Moreover, it is also the story of Owens’ personal battle against the Nigerian government to locate his brother’s remains after they were buried in an unmarked mass-grave.[93]
  • Ogoni’s Agonies: Ken Saro Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (1998), edited by Abdul Rasheed Naʾallah, provides more information on the struggles of the Ogoni people[94]
  • Onookome Okome’s book, Before I Am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa—Literature, Politics, and Dissent (1999)[95] is a collection of essays about Wiwa
  • In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understanding His Father’s Legacy (2000), was written by his son Ken Wiwa.
  • Saro-Wiwa’s own diary, A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary, was published in January 1995, two months after his execution.
  • In Looking for Transwonderland – Travels in Nigeria, his daughter Noo Saro-Wiwa tells the story of her return to Nigeria years after her father’s murder.
Categories
Denial Germany

November 10, 1995 – moronic “Leipzig Declaration” by moronic denialists

Twenty eight years ago, on this day, November 10, 1995, idiot denialists do idiocy in Leipzig

1995 Nov. 9-10, 1995

Leipzig Declaration International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy, held in Leipzig, Germany and follow up on on Nov. 10-11, 1997.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_Declaration

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.phptitle=Leipzig_Declaration_on_Global_Climate_Change

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the denialists had been in full throat since 1989. In Leipzig, a bunch of denialists were making one of their periodic idiotic declarations that they don’t believe in 19th century physics.

And because it contains doctors and professors and maybe even a couple of Nobel Prize winners in different fields, it’s gonna get some media attention. It’s gonna get quoted in various Parliaments and so it came to pass. It’s a tactic that they use to try and puff themselves up, to pretend that they have some credibility. It sounds scientific, it sounds responsible and adult. But it’s actually just the petulant musings of a bunch of damaged boys (and it is mostly boys) who don’t like the fact that there are consequences at a physical level for their dreams of avarice and domination. Yeah, I’m all out of sympathy today. 

On the same day, the Leipzig twunts were being rewarded for their cowardice, a bunch of brave black people were being murdered for their courage. 

What I think we can learn from this

you can rely on rich old white privilege men to have a higher fuck Todd potential, quote quotient. You can rely on military dictatorships to murder Earth defenders.

What happened next

The denialists kept denying; the Leipzig Declaration was joined by the Oregon petition. All part of the larger asshole manoeuvres. And future generations continued to get screwed. 

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.

Categories
United States of America

May 12, 1995 – Another bet between cornucopians and realists

Twenty eight years ago, on this day May 12, 1995, the bet between those who think Technology Will Save Us and those who think that, you know, there are limits, kept going.

The Simon APS News article offers to bet environmentalists “…that any trend in material human welfare will improve rather than get worse.” This article echoes an editorial essay entitled “Earth’s Doomsayers Are Wrong” that appeared in the 12 May 1995 San Francisco Chronicle open forum. Simon then said that “Every measure of material and environmental welfare in the U.S. and the world has improved…” and that “All long run trends point in exactly the opposite direction of the doomsayers” Thus he implied that few, if any people would likely accept his bet since for the past 25 years the pessimists have been “proven entirely wrong.” When my Stanford colleague, Paul Ehrlich, and I took up his challenge1 and named 15 environment-related trends we were willing to bet would deteriorate, Simon refused claiming to the Chronicle (18 May 1995) that “I do not offer to bet on the progress of particular physical conditions such as the ozone layer” (as if its decline were not a negative measure of environmental welfare!).   

Schneider – https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199608/environmental.cfm 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in March 1995 the first meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change “conference of the parties” (COP) was about to happen in Berlin. So, everyone was thinking about the future of climate action. Julian Simon, a cornucopian, had been taking bets with Paul Ehrlich and others and winning them. Simon’s bets were useful just-so stories for “owning the libs,” as we now call it, for generations of what’s the polite word … idiots.

What I think we can learn from this

You can be really smart and dumb as a rock at the same time especially if you you have an inability, for psychological reasons, to accept the basic fact that there are indeed limits on human ingenuity and the capacity of ecosystems to absorb damage.

What happened next

Julian Simon died without ever seeing his bets for what they were. And sadly Steven Schneider died when we needed him most.

The atmospheric CO2 kept accumulating and the damage has kept accumulating. 

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.