Tag: Gordon Macdonald

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United States of America

January 28, 1987 –  Scientists warn politicians #01: United States

Thirty eight years ago, on this day, January 28th, 1987.

1987 Scientific basis for the Greenhouse effect. 

Testimony by Gordon MacDonald given to a joint hearing before the Subcommittees on Environmental Protection and Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Substances of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senate, One-hundredth Congress, first session, 28 January 1987.

page 123 of Abrahamson 1989

(Wally Broecker also gave testimony)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was  that after the scientific meeting in Villach, Austria in October 1985 atmospheric scientists saw both an opportunity and a need to push hard on carbon dioxide build up. And so you had various bits of testimony, perhaps most famously, Carl Sagan in December 1985 . You’d had other greenhouse hearings all through the 80s, thanks in part to people like Al Gore. Some of these had been the subject of television news stories (for example Walter Cronkite in 1980). 

What’s perhaps interesting about this is you have Gordon MacDonald, who, by this time, had been writing about weather modification and carbon dioxide for 20 years, and also Wally Broecker, who had been trying to get politicians interested (see his 1980 letter toPaul Tsongas). 

What I think we can learn from this is that before the issue finally broke through in 1988 there was a steady increase, especially from the mid 80s, of scientists pushing to turn a problem into an issue. 

What happened next

The Long, Hot Summer and drought, the endless summer, as Andrew Revkin would have it, of 1988 provided the final impetus. That was the year that James Hansen gave his testimony and the Changing Atmosphere conference happened. Candidate for the presidency, George Herbert Walker Bush, talked about solving the greenhouse effect with the White House effect. And then Margaret Thatcher gave her speech at the Royal Society, and the issue had indeed arrived.

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: 

January 28, 1969 – Santa Barbara Oil spill

January 28, 1993 – Parliament protest – “Wake Up, the World is Dying” – Guest Post by Hugh Warwick

January 28, 2013 – Doomed “Green Deal” home insulation scheme launched in the UK

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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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Science Scientists United States of America

July 23, 1979 – Charney Report people meet – will conclude “yep, global warming is ‘A Thing’.”

On this day, 23 July 1979, the  “Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate” begins at Woods Hole, giving us the  “Charney Report.”

Short version – a scientist (Gordon MacDonald) and a Friends of the Earth activist (Rafe Pomerance) had managed to get President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor (Frank Press) to get Carter to request a study on whether this “greenhouse effect” thing was gonna actually be the problem some were saying.

So folks met, under the leadership of one of the big original beasts of atmospheric science, Jule Charney.

And they came up with the view, “yes”.

See this excellent summary, written by Neville Nicholls, an Australian scientist

Here’s a flowery (but good) bit from Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth”–

The scientists summoned by Jule Charney to judge the fate of civilization arrived on July 23, 1979, with their wives, children and weekend bags at a three-story mansion in Woods Hole, on the southwestern spur of Cape Cod. They would review all the available science and decide whether the White House should take seriously Gordon MacDonald’s prediction of a climate apocalypse. The Jasons had predicted a warming of two or three degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century, but like Roger Revelle before them, they emphasized their reasons for uncertainty. Charney’s scientists were asked to quantify that uncertainty. They had to get it right: Their conclusion would be delivered to the president. But first they would hold a clambake.

They gathered with their families on a bluff overlooking Quissett Harbor and took turns tossing mesh produce bags stuffed with lobster, clams and corn into a bubbling caldron. While the children scrambled across the rolling lawn, the scientists mingled with a claque of visiting dignitaries, whose status lay somewhere between chaperone and client — men from the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and Agriculture; the E.P.A.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They exchanged pleasantries and took in the sunset. It was a hot day, high 80s, but the harbor breeze was salty and cool. It didn’t look like the dawning of an apocalypse.

Why this matters. 

“We” really knew enough by the late 70s. Everything since then has been footnotes.

What happened next?

Carter lost the 1980 election, handsomely. It would be another 8 years before the simulacrum of international action began.

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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