Tag: Council on Environmental Quality

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United States of America

 April 14, 1980 – Carter’s scientist, Frank Press, pushes back against CEQ report

Forty four years ago, on this day, April 14th, 1980, the US chief scientific advisor was not happy about people bigging up the carbon dioxide threat…

The following April, Frank Press, the head of the OSTP, reacted angrily to a draft of a Council on Environmental Quality report that he felt greatly overemphasized the dangers and underplayed the uncertainty. “At this moment of great national trauma with respect to energy, inflation, and foreign affairs, I believe it is a serious disservice to the public to raise widespread concern about an issue with hazards, that are, at the moment, so speculative and uncertain.”27

Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate Author(s): Nicolas Nierenberg, Walter R. Tschinkel, Victoria J. Tschinkel
IN: Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 40, No. 3
(Summer 2010), pp. 318-349

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that American scientists had been banging the drum for a while. And Frank Press had been on the receiving end of this, as Jimmy Carter‘s Chief Scientific Adviser. There’s a memo from 1977. There was the Global 2000 report underway. 

This, from the Council on Environmental Quality is a separate issue. The CEQ had been set up in 1970 under Nixon. I think Press was probably worried that too much attention was being paid to what was still possibly regardable as a speculative issue, despite the previous year’s Charney Report. 

It was an election year, and anything that could pin Carter as a nervous ninny was to be avoided. This was difficult since the man had already sat there dressed in the cardigan and given a “malaise speech.” But that’s the context. 

What we learn is that scientific advice is never just about the science, especially from a political appointee. 

What happened next? 

Well, I didn’t know how much influence Press had. The CEQ report did finally come out that maybe it was ready before January 1981 when it was released. Maybe it was held back until after the election?

The CEQ report was released in January 1981. But it was a dead duck because the Reagan administration was about to take office. 

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 14th, 1989 – 24 US senators call for immediate unilateral climate action

April 14, 1964 – RIP Rachel Carson

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United States of America

January 15, 1981 – US calls for effort to combat global environmental problems

Forty-three years ago, on this day, January 15th 1981, as the Reagan gang were about to take over, there was a plaintive plea…

Shabecoff, Philip. “U.S. Calls for Efforts To Combat Global Environmental Problems.” New York Times, January 15, 1981.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context 

This is the last throw of the dice for the Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter. It had done some good stuff. The CEQ staffer Gus Speth had spent the last four years trying to push climate up the agenda. There had also been the Global 2000 report, which was produced by a separate body. Carter had lost the November 1980 election to Reagan who literally does not give a damn about conserving anything but is keen for ever greater exploitation.

What we can learn from this is that we knew what needed to be done. And we kept electing people who didn’t want to do it because they appealed to our ego, or our greed or something. 

What happened next? Reagan came in and shat all over climate action, environment action. See James Watt, etc, etc. And the emissions kept climbing and it was 1988 before presidential candidates were forced to speak about it. (There’s a more interesting story of Republican senators like John Chafee and so forth, actually understanding what was at stake in the mid-80s.) And the journo who wrote this story, Shabecoff? He also wrote the June 24th 1988 story on 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.

Also on this day: 

Jan 15, 1971 – greenwash before it was called greenwash #propaganda

January 15, 1990 – A political lunch with enormous #climate consequences for Australia #PathDependency #Denial  

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Ignored Warnings Science Scientists United States of America

August 3, 1970 – Nixon warned about climate change and icecaps melting

On this day, 3 August 1970, the first report of the Council on Environmental Quality was delivered to Preside Nixon. It contained a chapter on inadvertent weather modification, carbon dioxide build-up and icecaps melting. 

The CEQ had been set up as part of the legislative process that had gathered momentum under Johnson and come to fruition by late 1969.  

On this day the PPM was 324.69ppm

Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

By early 1970s, folks were going “you know, this really might become a problem.”  By the mid-late 1970s the smarter ones dropped the “might”…

What happened next?

The CEQ didn’t return to the climate issue until Carter, best I can tell. And then Gus Speth, as its boss, got cracking with getting things moving, having been nudged by Gordon MacDonald and Rafe Pomerance of Friends of the Earth.

Gordon MacDonald had already been writing about this stuff (see his chapter in the Nigel Calder book). He would go on to be important in the fight against synfuels.

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Technophilia United States of America

 July 18, 1979 – US Senators ask for synthetic fuel implications for greenhouse warming. Told.

On this day, July 18, in 1979, Senator Abraham Ribicoff asked for some advice about “synfuels.”

The context was, the Carter Administration, desperate to reduce US dependency on problematic Middle Eastern Oil (not the dictatorships – that’s fine – it’s the interruptions to supply that’s the problem) was proposing an expensive crash program to develop synthetic fuels (synfuels).  These would be incredibly energy intensive to produce… Not everyone was convinced this was a good idea…

“In 1979  [Gordon] MacDonald wrote an article for the Washington Post arguing that subsidizing synthetic fuels, as proposed by the Carter administration, would be a mistake. He pointed out that synthetic fuels would produce even more CO2 than the current U.S. mix of fossil fuels. The article drew the attention of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), who had recently been warned about the issue by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt” (Nierenberg et al. 2010: 324)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/07/11/synthetic-fuels-danger-to-climate-scientists-say/bdbb20d2-a374-4b1c-bc82-10fb0feaf512/

MacDonald is quoted as saying

“Although many complex factors affect the climate, it is generally thought that the result of continued carbon dioxide production will be a warming of the atmosphere “that will probably be conspicuous within the next 20 years,” the report said. “If the trend is allowed to continue, climatic zones will shift and agriculture will be displaced.”

Gordon J. MacDonald, environmental studies professor ad Dartmouth College, who is one of the authors said in an interview that large-scale use of synthetic fuels — made from coal or oil shale — could cut the time involved by half.

“We should start seeing the effect in 1990 without synthetic fuels. . . . but if you use them, the effect would be much more pronounced by 1990,” he said.

[See also New York Times, also 11 July 1979]

Actually, unless I am missing something, Nierenberg et al. have got this wrong – and they don’t actually cite the “article in the Washington Post,” which is pretty poor form.

What Ribicoff appears to be responding to are articles in the Post and the Times about an actual report. This was to the Council on Environmental Quality. And it isn’t just Macdonald – “ the other authors of the report were George M. Woodwell, director of the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory; Roger Revelle, a member of the National Academy of Sciences; and Charles David Keeling, professor of Oceanography of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography” (Shabecoff, 1979).

ANYWAY, that was the 11th, and this blog post is about the 18th.  And here we are – 

“One incident provides a small example of the work that the Academy does outside the formal structure of reports and out of public view. On July 18, 1979, even as the Charney panel was gathering at Woods Hole, the Academy’s president, Philip Handler, got a call from Senator Abraham Ribicoff. The Senator was cosponsoring a bill on synfuels, and he wanted to know the implications of greenhouse warming. Handler went to the National Research Council’s Climate Research Board, and the very next day, it produced a statement on carbon dioxide and energy policy. The statement confirmed that global warming could be a problem. The statement told Senator Ribicoff that the massive expenditures required to create a national synthetic fuels capability should not commit the nation to large-scale dependence on coal for the indefinite future. This is the first time that an Academy group issued a specific policy recommendation, ambiguous although it may be, related to global warming. Olson 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077050/

Why this matters. 

We. Knew. Never forget, we knew.

What happened next?

Synfuels got killed off by Reagan, along with a lot of good stuff. And we had to wait until 1988 to wake up. A decade lost (but then, we would have pissed it against the wall, I guess).

References:

Nierenberg, N. Tshinkel, W. and Tshinkel, V. (2010)  Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 40, Number 3, pps. 318–349. [online here]

Olson, S. (2014) The National Academy of Sciences at 150. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jun 24; 111(Suppl 2): 9327–9364.
Published online 2014 Jun 23. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1406109111
Omang, J. (1979) Synthetic Fuels Danger To Climate, Scientists Say. Washington Post, 11 July.[online here]

Shabecoff, P. (1979) Scientists Warn U.S. Of Carbon Dioxide Peril. New York Times, 11 July