Tag: Cabinet Office

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December 22, 1978 – UK Energy Department chief scientist worries about CO2 levels and pressure to reduce them…

On this day, December 22, 1978, the chief scientist at the UK Department of Energy, Hermann Bondi, wrote to the civil servants in the Cabinet Office, as part of the general raised awareness about climate issues in the late 1970s…

Weighing the short- and long-term effects of climate predictions, Hermann Bondi, the Chief Scientist at the Department of Energy from 1977 to 1980, wrote to the Cabinet Office in late 1978:

“If it became the accepted scientific view that the CO2 level would continue to rise largely due to the combustion of fossil fuel and that this was likely to have undesirable climatic effects then the pressure for reducing fossil fuel combustion would be immediate and severe. … Whether the scientific predictions turned out to be right or wrong the effects of the change in fuel consumption pattern induced by the prediction could be far-reaching. I regard this possibility as of far greater importance for this country than the effect of an actual climatic change. And the impact would almost certainly come very much sooner.”

H. Bondi to R. G. Courtney, 22 Dec 1978, KEW, Ref. R 2959, CAB 164/1422. Also see ‘‘Interdepartmental Group on Climatology: Comments on CPRS Paper ‘Economic Effects of Climatic Change’ by the Department of Energy,’’ KEW, CAB 164/1422

Agar 2015

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 335ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Through the mid-70s awareness and concern grew. The UK government finally set up an inter-departmental committee (despite the resistance of theMeteorological Office top dog, John Mason ).

Why this matters. 

We knew. I know I keep saying it, but by the late 1970s, there was enough knowledge out there to be properly worried….

What happened next?

A report was finally produced. New Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was briefed on it in 1980 ,and responded with incredulity “you want me to worry about the weather?” And eight more lost years would  go by on her watch until she finally was properly persuaded on the threat of the “greenhouse effect”…

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United Kingdom

April 22, 1975 – UK Civil Service scratches its head on #climate

Blah blah Earth Day 1970.

On this day 22nd of April 1975, a meeting of the World Trends Committee of the Cabinet Office had an (inconclusive) discussion about climate change. A very small number of people within the UK state (as distinct from the government) was beginning to pay attention to the build-up of carbon dioxide doing nothing particularly was happening in public.

“Warren, who was one of its two secretaries, suggested putting a position paper on climatological research to the World Trends committee.36 The Met Office provided a paper that covered climate change for discussion in 1975.37 The ‘conclusion of the paper was that it was all very difficult and that ‘‘fundamental understanding has not reached a stage which permits a reliable computation of future climate. Moreover, natural climate time-series can give no useful indication of future trends’’’.

38 NA CAB 134/3974.  Sawyer, ‘Problems of assessing the future climate’, WT(75)7, 4 April 1975. 

The paper was discussed at WT(75)2nd meeting, 22 April 1975.”

Source – see brilliant paper by Jon Agar here).


Why this matters. 

We have to remember that there was a significant but largely ignored history before Thatcher gave her speech at the Royal Society in September of 1988. And this has been excavated by Gabriel Henderson and Jon Agar, among others.

What happened next?

The Civil Service bureaucracy did produce a report,  that was finally released in 1980. And when the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK, John Ashworth, tried to brief Margaret Thatcher in 1980 she said apparently “incredulously” “you want me to worry about the weather?”