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Podcasts

May 28, 2025 – signs of the times

You can listen to this here (NB Terrible Sound Quality – if/when I do actual podcasting I will have to get some proper kit!)

May 28, 2025, with the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at 430ppm, up from 315ppm in 1958.

Three pieces of news today tell you everything you need to know about the planet and the prospects for our species.  Taking them in turn – physical, government-capital and “resistance”.

The physical news first. 

As Madeline Cuff, writing for the New Scientist reports

The world could see its first year of warming above 2°C by the end of the decade, leading climate scientists have warned for the first time…. The chances of seeing a year above 2°C of warming are still very slim, with the WMO/Met Office team estimating the probability at 1 per cent. 

She quotes Leon Hermanson of the Met Office as saying “It’s exceptionally unlikely, but it could happen”

It was the WMO – the World Meteorological Organisation that coordinated the use of satellites and other forms of data collection. In the mid1970s it was a key node in international cooperation and discussion of carbon dioxide build-up. The WMO hosted the First World Climate Conference in February 1979. It  could and should have been a turning point in the way politicians thought about atmospheric pollution.  Almost ten years later it was – along with the United Nations Environment Program – co-founder of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

One of life’s mild coincidences is that 35 years ago today Working Group 1 of the IPCC released its first report on the science of climate change.

The government capital nexus

To the surprise of precisely no-one, in Australia, the Federal Labor government led by Anthony Albanese has said yes to climate chaos, by granting an extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf project. As per the Australia Institute, this is a disaster on five fronts.

The ALP was recently returned to office in Australia, with the overt climate denialists of the Coalition punished by voters. However, given decisions like these, one cannot but be reminded of the mournful closing lines of George Orwell’s Animal Farm – so spoilers – 

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Resistance

Thirteen years ago the UK commentator George Monbiot asked the right question.  In an article called “The Mendacity of Hope” he wrote

“So this is the great question of our age: where is everyone? The monster social movements of the 19th century and first 80 years of the 20th have gone, and nothing has replaced them. Those of us who still contest unwarranted power find our footsteps echoing through cavernous halls once thronged by multitudes“

In late 2018 a new group – “Extinction Rebellion” – made a splash with a declaration of rebellion in Parliament Square in London and then the occupation of five bridges across the Thames. A “rebellion “in London in April 2019 gained a lot of press attention, but a follow-up in October 2019 was less successful and the wheels were wobbling, if not yet actually coming off. 2020 saw COVID and also offshoots from XR – a “Pink Party”, Insulate Britain and then, in 2022, “Just Stop Oil.” High profile arrestable actions followed, as did media smears and police and security service activity.  Many JSO activists have gone to jail. JSO has recently announced it is ceasing its activity. However, the past is not even the past. 

As the BBC’s Laura O’Neill reports

“Four Just Stop Oil protesters who were planning to glue themselves to the taxiway at Manchester Airport have been jailed.

Officers arrested Indigo Rumbelow, Margaret Reid, Leanorah Ward and Daniel Knorr as they were making their way to the airport on 4 August 2024.

They were equipped with heavy-duty bolt-cutters, angle grinders, glue, sand, Just Stop Oil high-visibility vests and a leaflet containing instructions to follow when interacting with police.

All four were found guilty of conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance and jailed at Manchester Minshull Crown Court for between 18 and 30 months. Additionally, they were each fined £2,000.

So what can we expect?

We can expect more temperature records to fall. It would be no surprise to me at all to see us breach two degrees by 2030, though I suspect that won’t actually happen until, say 2035.  What does this mean? It means that the second half of the twenty-first century will make the first half of the twentieth look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding. 

We can expect more extractive capitalism projects to be given approval by supine/captured governments (though one should resist the illusions of a golden age -elected and unelected policymakers are almost always and everywhere mere meat puppets for whoever has the most money. It can be more complicated than that, but it usually isn’t.)

And given that the consequences of our species’ failure to act on scientists’ warnings are clear to all but those most determined to deny reality, we can expect more resistance.

The failure, over the last thirty five years of citizens in the West – with freedom of speech, assembly and information – to build strong, determined and resilient social movements and civil society organisations is a fascinating puzzle. Or perhaps a mundane puzzle, made fascinating by the consequences of the failure.  

In any case, despite the jailings, expect  more resistance at some point – which is not to say that that resistance will be any more effective than what has gone on these last thirty six years, as annual carbon dioxide emissions went up by almost 70 per cent and the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose from roughly 350 parts per million to the current level of 430ppm.

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United Kingdom

December 14, 1995 – Monbiot nails it with “it’s happening” article

Twenty nine years ago, on this day, December 14th, 1995, George Monbiot wrote in Guardian “It’s Happening”

As memories of the scorching summer are soothed away by snow, the 600 water tankers trundling around Yorkshire have been all but forgotten.Yorkshire Water regards the situation as exceptional – the Met Office has told them that the drought was a once in 500-year event. The possibility that it might reflect a long-term trend, the company confesses, hasn’t even been raised.

The findings of the world’s foremost climate scientists, officially revealed at this week’s conference in Rome, expose a strange disjunction. We’ve all heard about global warming. Most of us are aware that the world has basked in nine of its ten warmest recorded years since the early 1980s, and everyone knows that our own summers have been exceptional. But these considerations don’t seem to connect in our heads. When two Englishmen meet, they talk about the weather, but somehow they seem to have missed the point.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now agrees that the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate. While they are properly hedged with cautions and uncertainties, its members’ data should be enough – poor thermal insulation notwithstanding – to throw us all into a muck sweat.

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 taken place in Berlin in March/April of that year, and there had been an agreement that rich nations would turn up in a couple of years with proposed cuts to their own emissions, the so-called Berlin mandate. Meanwhile, and this was the hook for Monbiot’s piece, the IPCC had been launching its second Assessment Report and coming under fire from denialists like Jastrow and Singer and so on. They were targeting Ben Santer and so forth. And what Monbiot was doing was trying to say, “hey, we’re in trouble as a species.” 

What we learn is the dynamics of the problem were laid out 29 years ago and here we are having not succeeded in creating social movement organisations and social movements capable of staying in the game. And we’re doomed. So it goes. 

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: 

December 14, 1988 – Greenhouse Glasnost gets going…

December 14, 1992 – UK “releases “National programme on carbon dioxide emissions”

Categories
Australia Denial

December 15, 2009 – Monbiot versus Plimer on Lateline

Fourteen years ago, on this day, December 15, 2009, UK commentator George Monbiot took on and demolished Australian geologist Ian Plimer.

2009 Monbiot versus Pilmer on Lateline http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEsygjXunTs

http://www.monbiot.com/2009/12/17/showdown-with-plimer/

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that everyone was talking climate because of the recently concluded Copenhagen conference and the general upsurge in concern over the previous three years. Plimer had written a book called “Heaven and Earth” which has become a major denialist tract. Monbiot was always up for a ruck. Monbiot had already put paid to David Bellamy’s appearances by pointing out that Bellamy had completely misunderstood an aspect of glacier retreat.

What I think we can learn from this

That is rare for a single intellectual crushing and humiliation to particularly matter, but cumulatively they can, I guess.

What happened next

Plimer kept plimering. Monbiot kept publishing. Kevin Rudd did not announce the double dissolution election in response to the blockage of his wretched legislation. The Australia climate wars just got worse. And the emissions kept 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..

Categories
Ignored Warnings United States of America Weather modification

1958, Jan 8: “The masters of infinity… could control the world’s weather”, says LBJ

On this day in 1958 future President Lyndon Baines Johnson was speaking at the Democratic Caucus

“From space,” declared Johnson at the Democratic Caucus in January of 1958, warning of the technologically and scientifically superior Russians, “the masters of infinity could have the power to control the earth’s weather, to case drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the level of the sea, to divert the Gulf Stream, and change temperate climates to frigid” (Howe, 2014:27).

Why this matters – this sense of paranoia and fear, that matters might be beyond our control, and that we must redouble our efforts to be In Charge –  is, I fear, what is behind the coming push for geoengineering “solutions” as a kind of last throw of the dice. It’s good to remember that weather modification predates concerns about atmospheric build up of C02, and that the same types of people have been advocating both (this is not to say that there aren’t well-intentioned ‘progressive’ types who want a better world and don’t see a way out of the mess that doesn’t involve more god-technology japes).

What happened next?

As president, Lyndon Johnson gave a “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty“ which included the prescient lines

“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.”

This was in February 1965  though, while LBJ was tag-teaming the USA into the thousand year long invasion of Vietnam, so the sentences possibly didn’t get the attention future generations might have hoped they would.


See also

Jan 1st: blog post – Control the weather before the Commies do

Further reading

Monbiot,, G. (2006) No Quick Fix on Paul Cruzen

Wasser, A. (2005) LBJ’s space race: what we didn’t know then. The Space Review, June 20.