Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 24, 1994,
On February 24th, 1994, ABC’s Nightline aired a news segment titled, “Is Science for Sale?” Its host, Ted Koppel, explained the piece was prompted by a conversation with then Vice President Al Gore. The segment features many prominent climate change deniers including:
Roger Maduro of 21st Century Science and Technology Magazine.
The comments in this segment reflect some of the most common arguments used by climate deniers attempting to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change such as:
Current science is unable to tie increases in greenhouse gases to human activities;
We should rely on present observations rather than inaccurate climate models which are unable to predict future climate scenarios effectively;
Climate policies are unnecessary and would hurt the economy, endanger people, and harm our way of life.
On air, Koppel reported the financial ties of his guests, largely comprised of fossil fuel entities, including consulting fees to Fred Singer from Exxon, Shell, ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil (14:50); funding to Patrick Michaels and Sherwood Idso from the coal interest group Western Fuels Association (12:20; 13:30) ; and support of Ron Arnold’s Wise Use Movement from corporations like Exxon (5:30). The segment also included a clip of Rush Limbaugh, referred to as the “archdeacon of conservatism” boasting, “I can produce as many scientists that say there is not global warming as they can produce that say there is.” He referred to Pat Michaels as “one that I rely on” (12:15).
The segment featured environmental advocates Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund and Vice President Al Gore, however, Jerry Mahlman, previous director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was the only scientist interviewed who challenged the opinions of deniers like Fred Singer, of whom Koppel also referred to as a “scientist.”
Despite the segment’s lack of scientists representing the global consensus on anthropogenic climate change, Koppel comments:
“This is not, you understand, a close call. It’s not as though US scientists are evenly divided or even close to being evenly divided on issues like the greenhouse effect or depletion of the ozone layer. But environmentalists are concerned about even the appearance of a scientific dispute.” (6:09)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from 1988,eighty-nine onwards, the denialists in the United States had been pushing back as hard as they could against climate science using superannuated physicists like Nirenberg and the George Marshall Institute to muddy the waters. They had done this with significant success.
The specific context was that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had had their asses handed to them over the proposed BTU (i.e.petrol) tax and Gore was therefore probably in a bad mood about all this, and so got talking to Ted Koppel, who was one of the sort of famous news anchors and they did a full on expose of the denialist tropes/
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians have been trying to educate the public and Gore, bless him, has within the constraints of his particular ideology, done more than most. But telling people that they’ve been lied to and showing how they’ve been lied to, turns out it doesn’t work that well, because you’re asking people to admit that they fell for lies, and nobody wants to admit that they fell for lies.
What happened next: Lies kept coming. They were convenient to believe. The lying campaign stepped up a notch around 1997 as the Kyoto negotiations were underway, and alongside the lies came the emissions, came the increasing concentrations. And I’ve already said this about 10 times this month already, so I won’t repeat myself.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 370ppm. As of 2026 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that 8 years of Al Gore as Veep hadn’t ushered in the ecotopia. There was the “BTU tax,” foiled by fossil fuel interests in 1993 and then the pre-emptive strike against the Kyoto Protocol. So, not much to post about.
The specific context was that Gore had had the 2000 election stolen out from under his nose by the Supreme Court mates of his opponent’s dad – George HW Bush.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are no saviours. At absolute best politicians can be forced to nudge things into a slightly less rapidly suicidal direction. You want actual change, you need social movements. But they tend to flame out after a few years (repression is exhausting, after all)
What happened next is Gore dusted himself off and gave the world “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.
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, obv
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, December 8th, 1997,
Al Gore, then Vice-President of the United States, there at Kyoto. And on the same day
“Senator Hill’s entrance was a bit rockier, with a smaller Australian demonstration led by Greens’ Senator Dee Margetts jostling him on his entrance to the main summit hall. Two hours after Mr Gore, Senator Hill rushed through his speech – the 16th out of 67 – in front of a half-empty hall.”
Lunn, S. 1997. US juggernaut swamps small beer at Kyoto. The Australian, December 9, p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 364ppm. 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 the UNFCCC had been kneecapped at birth by the US refusing to allow targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries into the treaty’s text. George HW Bush said he’d boycott the Earth Summit if they weren’t removed from the draft text – and the French blinked. Everything since then has been an attempt to get some targets in. The Paris farce is the latest and the last (presumably).
The specific context was in the run up to Kyoto there were fierce public campaigns, funded by the oil companies etc, against Kyoto. Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard had been trying to get people to accept the ridiculous position that Australia deserved special treatment (he succeeded).
What I think we can learn from this – we were doomed a long time ago.
What happened next – The US pulled out of Kyoto negotiations at the beginning of 2001. Australia followed the next year, despite having extorted an insanely generous deal.
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.
Sixty years ago today the first official government report to make significant mention of carbon dioxide build-up was released. Dr Marc Hudson of All Our Yesterdays investigates where the report came from, what it said, and what the consequences were.
The easy assumption of American superiority in science and technology was shattered on 4th October 1957, when the Soviet Union announced it had launched a satellite – Sputnik. As The Onion’s Our Dumb Century reported “American metal-bauble superiority was cast into grave doubt Thursday when the Russians launched a two-foot ball of tin into orbit around the Earth.”
In response to Sputnik, and its sequel a month later, the Americans threw money at the problem and also created the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). It was an expansion of an existing body that President Truman had created in 1951.
“Recalling the role the Soviet accomplishment had played in a lecture he gave at the MIT in 1962, Isidor Rabi, a physicist, chairman of the SAC and then a member of the PSAC for many years, remembered that “it was a serious matter that we could be beaten so badly, that we could so misunderstand the circumstances of the great development, that we should have lost out so completely.”
Isidor I. Rabi, “Science and Public Policy: Compton Lecture n° 2, MIT,” 8 March 1962, I. I. Rabi Papers, LOC, Box 11, “American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1941-1965,” 12.
(Loetscher, 2022, p.39)
PSAC produced worthy reports, some more influential than others. One of its first was on the parlous state of the US education system (For more about it, see Wang, 2008). By 1962, carbon dioxide build-up was on its agenda. PSAC had an international science panel, and a September 1962 paper “The Problem with Large-Scale Experimentation with Possible Environmental Effects” was produced. It warned that “alteration of our environment has reached the point of requiring intensive study and understanding on an urgent basis.”
Penned in unusual gravitas, the report stated that “never before has man had the power he now has to bring about changes, some of them irreversible, on a scale that can affect people in all parts of the world and that can cause major but indeterminate environmental changes.” The panel distinguished between two types of problematic large-scale experiments. The first related to actions that were individually small but whose compounded effects could be serious, and the continuous release of CO2 was cited as an example. The second category comprised nuclear tests, which were comparatively fewer, but had much larger consequences (or so it was thought at the time).
Loetscher, 2022 p.60-61
The climate issue
Carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem was, by this time, hardly new. There’s a long pre-history, but for current purposes, we can begin 12 years before the PSAC report. In May 1953 Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass had warned that “The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.”
The lack of accurate measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was one barrier – it was not absolutely clear that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising. It was only by the late 1950s, with funding from the US and as part of the International Geophysical Year that accurate measurements were taken. By 1959 any doubt that carbon dioxide levels were increasing was removed (though the significance of this remained a source of legitimate scientific debate).
“Man’s ability to change the environment has increased greatly over the last sixty years and is likely to continue to increase for some time to come. Even now it is almost impossible to predict all of the consequences of man’s activities. It is possible, however, to predict that there will be problems…”
Present were Roger Revelle, a giant of US oceanography, who had already in 1956 warned US Senators of the possibility of dramatic changes to the climate due to carbon dioxide build-up, and Charles “Dave” Keeling, whom Revelle had hired to measure carbon dioxide levels. Both these men served on the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide subcommittee of PSAC in 1965 (1).
Revelle had already raised the carbon dioxide issue in 1964 in a separate committee within Lyndon Johnson’s Domestic Council. PSAC was another such chance to flag the problem. According to Hart and Victor (1993)
“Nor did Revelle’s chapter spring from new scientific evidence – although it did refer to the ongoing research programmes…. Revelle simply seems to have taken an otherwise unrelated opportunity presented to him as a member of a PSAC panel to try to bring the science and policy streams together.”
(Hart and Victor 1993, p.657).
By 1965, as concern about pollution in all its forms grew, various Senate and House of Representatives sub-committees held hearings, and a handful of witnesses made mention of CO2. This is not entirely surprising – after all, in his February 1965 message to Congress, President Johnson (in words surely penned by Revelle) had stated
“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.”
Meanwhile, PSAC was asked to create a report on “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment”.
“Restoring the Quality of the Environment”
The report, which you can read here begins, sensibly enough, with a definition.
“Environmental pollution is the unfavorable alteration of our surroundings, wholly or largely as a by-product of man’s actions, through direct or indirect effects of changes in energy patterns, radiation levels, chemical and physical constitution and abundances of organisms. These changes may affect man directly, or through his supplies of water and of agricultural and other biological products, his physical objects or possessions, or his opportunities for recreation and appreciation of nature.”
(PSAC 1965)
In a clear sentence that would not be published today without invocation of the magic properties of “technology,” the authors argue that “the production of pollutants and an increasing need for pollution management are an inevitable concomitant of a technological society with a high standard of living.”
The report covers – among other issues – soil contamination, sewage and agricultural waste.
On page 9 (and this is the complete quote) readers are told.
CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF POLLUTION
Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO2 in our atmosphere than at present. This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable though local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.
That is it for the body of the report as far as carbon dioxide build-up is concerned.
Among the key recommendations that the report made was that taxes should be imposed on polluting activities.
However, there were a series of annexes. In the carbon dioxide one, authored in the main by Revelle, the problem is succinctly outlined.
“The carbon in every barrel of oil and every lump of coal, as well as in every block of limestone, was once present in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide…. Within a few short centuries, we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years.”
The report flags two questions of particular import –
(1) What will the total quantity of CO2 injected into the atmosphere (but only partly retained there) be at different future times?
(2) What would be the total amount of CO2 injected into the air if all recoverable reserves of fossil fuels were consumed? At present rates of expansion in fossil fuel consumption this condition could be approached within the next 150 years.”
Revelle and colleagues admit that the first question is hard to answer, given that assumptions must be made about the amount of fossil fuels that will be used. They show their working to arrive at a figure of somewhere between 14 and 30 percent.
After flagging research being conducted about what the implications of carbon dioxide might be for the Earth’s temperature by Manabe and Weatherald (their pivotal paper would not appear until 1967) the report turns to possible impacts.
They flag
the “Melting of the Antarctic ice cap” (something well underway)
Rise of sea level.-”The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years, 40 feet per century. This is a hundred times greater than present worldwide rates of sea level change.”
Warming of sea water.
Increased acidity of fresh waters.
Increase in photosynthesis.
Revelle was not above echoing his earlier paper with Hans Seuss in 1957, in which they had suggested that mankind was engaged in an unwitting vast experiment.
“Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. The CO2 produced by this combustion is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it remains there. The estimated recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are sufficient to produce nearly a 200% increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.”
Perhaps the most startling element of the annex is an early proposal of solar radiation management. Revelle and his co-panellists noted that a
“change in the radiation balance in the opposite direction to that which might result from the increase of atmospheric CO2 could be produced by raising the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth. Such a change in albedo could be brought about, for example by spreading very small reflecting particles over large oceanic areas. The particles should be sufficiently buoyant so that they will remain close to the sea surface and they should have a high reflectivity, so that even a partial covering of the surface would be adequate to produce a marked change in the amount of reflected sunlight. Rough estimates indicate that enough particles partially to cover a square mile could be produced for perhaps one hundred dollars. Thus a 1 % change in reflectivity might be brought about for about 500 million dollars a year, particularly if the reflecting particles were spread in low latitudes, where the incoming radiation is concentrated. Considering the extraordinary economic and human importance of climate, costs of this magnitude do not seem excessive.”
How was it reported and what were its consequences
Short term
There are two immediate consequences, around newspaper coverage and also industry awareness.
Newspaper coverage was extensive. The Forum (of Fargo, North Dakota) ran a front page story on Sunday November 7, with the headline “LBJ Panel urges Tax on Pollution and Junked Autos”. The Washington Post editorialised in a similar fashion.
On November 12, The Press Tribune or Roseville California ran an editorial under the unambiguous title “Utter Disaster Near at Hand?” It began
“Very recently, we’ve driven on the freeway systems in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and we wonder if the day of utter disaster isn’t near at hand….”
Then, to nail home the sense of foreboding
“Meanwhile, it’s not just the city dwellers who need to worry about what’s happening to our air. Some scientists fear that nothing really effective about pollution control will be done until it’s too late and that the human race will be doomed to die of poisoning. Other scientists fear that the amount of carbon dioxide and other combustion products going into the air is enough to create a hot-house effect holding the sun’s heat next to the earth, raising the average temperature and causing the polar ice caps to melt. This could raise the level of the sea, flood our coastal cities….”
The following week, under the title “Air Pollution is Menacing Earth’s Climate” a journalist called Philip Meyer reported thus
“Man may be changing earth’s climate. If he doesn’t stop: Our children could choke in a world of stifling heat and violent storms.
Polar ice could melt and the oceans rise to swallow up our coastal cities. The cause? Our own acts of air pollution.
This is not idle speculation or science fiction. Warnings have been sounded by responsible scientists in and out of government.
It is a simple projection of two undisputed facts: We are adding fantastic amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; carbon dioxide acts as a heat trap.
(Meyer, P. 1965. Air Pollution is Menacing Earth’s Climate.” The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey), November 17, p.52).
Many other regional papers covered it, at the time, and it had an afterlife.
It served as a “hook” for prominent science writers such as Irving Bengelsdorf of the Los Angeles Times (“Carbon Dioxide Enrichment – A Lot of Contemporary Sun” July 28 1966). P33.
As late as September 1966 it was still being invoked (see for example the Arizona Republic, September 29, “Cars blamed mostly for smog” p1 and 14).
Meanwhile Frank N. Ikard, who had been a Democratic congressman for Texas for ten years, before becoming the President of the American Petroleum Institute, gave a speech at the API’s annual meeting, held just after the release of the PSAC report. The relevant portion of this speech “Meeting the Challenges of 1966” is below.
Longer-term
As Spencer Weart acidly noted in his excellent book “The Discovery of Global Warming” the PSAC report
“put the issue on the official agenda at the highest level – although only as one item on a long list of environmental problems, many of which seemed more pressing. The next step in such matters was typically to ask the National Academy of Sciences to form a committee and issue an authoritative report. In 1966, the Academy duly pronounced on how human activity could influence climate. The experts sedately said there was no cause for dire warnings, but they did believe the CO2 buildup should be watched closely.”
(Weart, 2003, page 44).
The 1966 NAS Weather Modification report also stated that ‘the atmosphere is not a dump of unlimited capacity.’
According to Hart and Victor the PSAC report “seems to have made little substantive impression on policymakers, although NSF Director Leland Haworth did mention the concern in Congressional testimony, and in the introduction to the 1966 NSF annual report.” (Hart and Victor 1993, p.657).
Longer term influence through 1960s
The PSAC report was regularly cited – the CO2 increase of “25 per cent by the year 2000” figure pops up in various newspaper and magazine articles and books. By 1967 there are editorials in journals such as science and when magazines such as Time and Newsweek ran articles about air pollution, carbon dioxide build-up got a mention.
Roger Revelle was teaching at Harvard, and one of the students whom he explained the carbon dioxide issue to was the young Al Gore.
Further scientific work took place, and by the early 1970s the PSAC report was supplanted by publications such as Man’s Impact on Climate.
PSAC was abolished by Richard Nixon in 1973 – he was unhappy that it wasn’t cheerleading his agenda, and upset that a PSAC member spoke publicly against supersonic transport research.
In 1988 the carbon dioxide issue finally “broke through”, and politicians were forced to acknowledge its existence. Smears and anti-science propaganda campaigns, funded by fossil fuel companies, began. In 1992 the US administration of George HW Bush was successful in stripping out targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries from the climate treaty about to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit. Since then there has been three decades of meetings, while billions upon billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are poured into the atmosphere (roughly 70% per annum more than in 1990).
Finally, the penny has dropped for many – that pledges and blandishments about the efficiency of markets are no match for physics.
The carbon dioxide levels in 1965 were approximately 320ppm. Today they stand at 425ppm, and are climbing at 2 to 3ppm each year.
We are in very very deep trouble. The FAFOcene has begun.
Footnotes
The other members of the subcommittee were Wally Broecker – who ten years later would publish the first academic paper to use the term ‘global warming’, Joseph Smagorinsky of the US Weather Bureau and Harmon Craig).
Further Reading
Hart, D. and Victor, D. 1993. Scientific Elites and the Making of US Policy for Climate Change Research, 1957-74. Social Studies of Science, Volume 23, Issue 4
Loetscher Audrey, 2022.0, A History of Unsustainability: The U.S. Government, the Fossil Fuel Industry, and Climate Change ( 1957 -1992)
Wang, Z. 2008. In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America.. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Pp. xix+454. $49.95.
Thirty-four years ago, on this day, November 11th, 1988,
At that [Nov 11, 1988] conference [organised by Time] French environmental official Brice Lalonde remarked, “Through the late 1970s, lots of things we learned about the environment came from the United States. And [in the] late seventies, it stops, and the lead [switched to] Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands.” To this, Tennessee Democrat Senator Albert Gore quickly responded “January of 1981, to be precise.”
(Schneider, 1989: 225)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Time magazine was holding a conference about the environment and climate change and so forth. Because that sold newspapers and they wanted to get another story out of it.
So convene a big bunch of big names. You can put it on your cover, get reflected/halo glory, future connections. It’s then easier for journalists to phone up and get quotes. Bish bosh.
And what Gore was doing was telling the truth about how the Reagan administration had been, at best indifferent, at worst, actively hostile to all environmental concerns.There had been in effect, a lost decade, longer by the time you took the incoming President Bush into account.
What we learn is that there was a lost decade,
What happened next, Gore went toe-to-toe with Bush Snr over the subject of global warming. revealing that NASA scientist James Hansen had been gagged, etc, etc. Gore was then Clinton’s running mate in 1992, at the same time “Earth in the Balance” came out.
And here we are, with the emissions still 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.
Eighteen years ago, on this day, September 11th, 2006 former Vice-President Al Gore was on a flying visit to Australia. Australian writer Murray Hogarth in his The Third Degree” book claims it as ‘the day’ everything changed (i.e. the climate issue broke through)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that concern/activism about Australia, and its potential vulnerability to permanent and escalating climate change had been building for a while. This was partly because of the Millennium Drought. Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth had come out. In April a bunch of businesses – Westpac et al – had had another go at saying that John Howard did not have a monopoly on what business wanted. And then in the summer, well, obviously there’d been the UK Climate Camp, which got some global coverage. There were serious moves afoot in the UNFCCC and it was clear that Bush’s and Howard’s technology focus spoiler organisations were inadequate. And along came Al Gore for a flying visit. And according to Murray Hogarth, in his short book, “The Third Degree” this was the straw that broke the camel’s back and gave Australia its big wave of climate concern.
What we learn is that there will be sort of straw that breaks the camel’s back or a spark that sets off the fire, but it’s usually a long time coming.
What happened next. Labor’s Kevin Rudd surfed the wave to topple Liberal John Howard, and then because Rudd screwed the pooch between 2008 and 2010, his deputy, Julia Gillard had to take over and clean up the mess (which she did, though it didn’t last).
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 12th,2009 there was a spat that Al Gore was expected to referee.
WHEN climate change guru Al Gore arrives in Melbourne today, he will find a conservation movement in vitriolic disagreement with itself.
A split has developed between the country’s preeminent environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), and a bloc of other green lobbyists over the foundation’s public support for the Rudd Government’s carbon trading scheme.
Bachelard, M. 2009. Feuding climate camps seek Gore blessing. Sunday Age, 12 July , p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been trying to get support for its ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And they’d found it at least with the so-called Southern Crust coalition, led by the ACTU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. But all the other green groups thought that this was an outrageous sell out. Ambition was too low. And that Rudd should be resisted. It was your fairly standard. NGO fight between people who are determined to keep their place in the room where the decisions are made, and are willing to carry water and get out and defend the indefensible versus those who weren’t in the inside of the room or didn’t want to be on the inside of the room, or were willing to be on the inside of the room as long as they weren’t being used as fig leaves. It’s a pattern you see over and over again. Anyway, apparently, Al Gore was being expected to resolve the dispute. I don’t know if he did.
What we learn from this is that the same patterns over and over again, for understandable reasons. It’s mildly entertaining that Gore should be regarded as a fair actor. I guess he had prestige. And he didn’t have skin in the game instantly. But to expect Gore to come on down on the side of people pushing for higher ambition or maybe. I mean, this was only three years after An Inconvenient Truth, after all.
What happened next? Rudd’s legislation was introduced for a second time in November 2009. It fell thanks to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and the Greens possibly in that order, and then had to be introduced again in 2011 by Julia Gillard, the far superior parliamentarian but everything was in pieces and it all went tits up. Not that it would have mattered, I guess, really? I mean, we’re doomed. We have been doomed for a long time. It’s just taking us a while to catch up with that fact.
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.
Forty two years ago, on this day, March 25th 1982, there was network news coverage of “The Greenhouse Effect”.
The CBS Evening News for March 25, 1982 included a two minute and 50 second story by David Culhane on the greenhouse effect. Chemist Melvin Calvin raised the threat of global warming, Representative Al Gore called for further research, and James Kane of the Energy Department said there was no need for haste.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that climate change was becoming a real cause of concern among scientists and a very small band of civil servants and elected politicians who were in close touch with these scientists. There had already been hearings in 1980, led by Senator Paul Tsongas, who was communicating with scientists like Wally Broecker. And here was another set of hearings, this time within Congress, with Al Gore in the mix too. It’s also happening just after the AAAS meeting in Washington, DC, with James Hansen and Herman Flohn expressing real concerns. It’s happening just as the Reagan administration, believe it or not, has got the “carbon dioxide science and consensus” meeting going. So the timing is good.
What we learn is that within the policy subsystems, people are building meetings, reports, seminars, networks, fighting to edge the issue closer and closer to being “on the agenda.” You can say what you like about Al Gore – I’m sure much of it is true. But he has persisted. It’d be interesting to know what Roger Revelle thought of Gore’s efforts in the 80s.
What happened next? There were more hearings in 84. And then in 85, the whole issue started to be turbo-charged, because of a meeting of scientists in Austria, in the city of Villach. And after that, they kept trying harder and harder. And yes, got it onto the agenda, in the summer of 1988.
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.
Forty years ago, on this day, February 28th, 1984, Al Gore and other politicians (Republicans too) held hearings, and not the first, about carbon dioxide build-up.
Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect, hearings of House Committee on Science and Technology, 98th Congress, Feb 28 1984.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 344.8ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that people like Gore, were interested in the climate issue and in close contact with Roger Revelle (who had taught Gore at Harvard), James Hansen, etc. There had been hearings in 1982. And in September 1983 the Environmental Protection Agency had put out a report on “Can we delay a greenhouse warming?” (the answer was “almost certainly not”.)
What we learn is that holding hearings is a relatively straightforward way of well, “hearing,” the latest science, showing your voters that you care, disseminating the message; you might even make it newsworthy (as had happened in 1982). So it’s a good tactic. Like any tactic, it can be overused.
What happened next, Gore and other senators kept plugging away. After the Villach conference in 1985 in October 1985, they had a bit more of a fire in their belly about it. And they managed to get Carl Sagan, who was a rock star, and others. And then they finally broke through in ‘88, with drought, heatwaves and James Hansen…
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.
Seventeen years ago, on this day, February 9th, 2007, Richard Branson waved his cheque book around for a bit of planet saving…
The Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth’s atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance.[1] The prize was conceived by Richard Branson, and was announced in London on 9 February 2007 by Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore.[2]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384.1ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth had come out. The first Climate Camp had happened. The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC had just come out. And everyone was wanting to say that they were going to save the world. Whether it was the “grassroots” activists, the billionaires or the States or the technology people. And so these sorts of competitions were announced.
What we learn is that everyone wants to feel like they’re the good guy, even if they own an airline.
What happened next? Oddly, the money never got dispersed. And CCS still hasn’t happened.
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.
