Ten years ago, on this day, February 26, 2016,
Former Chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie recently argued that ‘Australia’s defence force is lagging significantly behind its US and UK counterparts in preparing to deal with the challenges created by a changing climate.’
Maclellan, N. 2016. Defence White Paper fails on climate change. Lowy Interpreter, 26 February.
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/02/26/Defence-White-Paper-fails-on-climate-change.aspx
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian Defence and intelligence forces had had some sort of an eye on climate change since at least 1981 when the Office of National Assessments had produced a report which you can now read because I paid for it to be scanned and declassified.
The specific context was that by 2016 climate change was horrendously politicised, an exhausting and exhausted topic of debate. It had been almost exactly 10 years, sort of September 2006, since the issue had (re)burst onto the public scene, and John Howard had been forced into a kind of U turn. What followed this was the carbon pricing wars of 2007 to 2011 and whatever you said about climate change, someone was gonna leap on you. So the best thing, the safest thing to do was make various anodyne, vague statements and kick the issue into the next poor bugger’s in-tray. And so it came to pass,
What I think we can learn from this is as per the 2004 Pentagon study, just because it’s the military doesn’t mean it’s intelligent, and in fact, the very concept of military intelligence might sometimes be considered a misnomer.
What happened next: The issue hasn’t gone away. It never will. Everyone who’s alive will have climate change as the background noise getting louder and louder for the rest of their lives, however long that might be.
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 26, 1981 – Science writer warns readers about the greenhouse in the Guardian….
February 26, 1988 – Australian climate scientist Graeme Pearman warns of “Dramatic Warming”
Feb 26, 1998 – Australian “clean coal” is on the way (again).