Twenty three years ago, on this day, February 18, 2003,
This special coal fires edition of the International Journal of Coal Geology is a by-product of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) symposium entitled Coal Fires Burning Around the World: A Global Catastrophe, held on February 18, 2003 in Denver, CO. The purpose of the symposium, organized and convened by Glenn B. Stracher of East Georgia College, Robert B. Finkelman of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, VA, and Tammy P. Taylor of Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, was to disclose the severity of the coal fires problem to the scientific, engineering, and lay communities and to promote interest in the interdisciplinary study of this environmental catastrophe.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.manchester.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0166516204000096
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been measuring carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere accurately since 1958, and had been speculating about shitfuckery of monumental proportions, And from the late 70s that speculation had firmed up, there were various efforts to disprove or to test the idea significantly. For example, the Charney Report. But these had come to naught because of politicians’ ignorance and a lack of a social movement/civil society push.
It’s fairly elementary. 19th century physics, Greenhouse gases trap heat. Carbon dioxide is one, not the only greenhouse gas. If you put lots more of it into the atmosphere, you will get more heat. Take a look at Venus..
The specific context was that by 2003 it was clear that the United States, under George W Bush was not going to be any better, in fact, possibly even worse than his dad, and that there was going to be hell to pay.
Of course, that hell would be paid, in the first instance, by all the other species on the planet, and people, mostly not rich and white and people not yet born. But hell has a way of catching up with you. And here we are in 2026.
What I think we can learn from this is that the warnings have been endless, and there is a subset of humanity that just doesn’t give a fuck, and they are able to hire all sorts of goons, physical goons like ICE, intellectual goons like, well, frankly, most of academia, including humanities and well, it’s their planet. We just cling to the edges of it
What happened next: Bush kept being Bush. He was then, from sort of 2002-3 onwards, bigging up” technology”, which is always their answer, regardless of how implausible it is.
And the emissions and the concentrations and the impacts they kept making themselves felt.
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:
February 18, 2011 – Scientist quits advisor role (because ignored on climate?)
February 18, 2004 – “An Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science”