Tag: John Ashworth

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Ignored Warnings United Kingdom

February 23, 1977 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about carbon dioxide build-up. 

Forty six years ago, on this day, February 23, 1977, as per the wonderful article by Jon Agar, the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor wrote a prescient memo about carbon dioxide build up…

However, ‘one complicating factor, which will have to be taken seriously’ was carbon dioxide: …” as a result of the increasing use of fossil fuels the atmospheric carbondioxide [sic] content has increased by 10 per cent over the last century. Increased atmospheric carbondioxide leads, via the ‘greenhouse’ effect to an increase in temperature. However, carbondioxide production is usually associated with the production of dust (especially from coal) and particulate material in the atmosphere scatters light and thus leads to a decrease in temperature. It is possible that these two effects cancel, to a first approximation, but it is something that gives rise to a lot of debate; especially among those who wish to build nuclear power stations. Carbondioxide is, of course, soluble but it will take about 1,000 years for equilibrium to be reached between the atmosphere and the ocean; if the dust settles out faster than the carbondioxide dissolves there might be some interesting short-term effects”.

Rounding off a review of climate change, Ashworth gave a prediction:

‘Future forecast—changeable and probably getting worse’. The note is significant because it is the first, recorded instance of the UK’s senior government adviser passing up the chain of command a firm view about climate change, in this case that natural climatic change was an understood fact and anthropogenic climate change a distinct possibility’ TNA CAB 184/567. ‘The weather’, Ashworth to Berrill, 23 February 1977 

(Agar, 2015) See here.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The Germans, Swedes and most of all Americans were looking at carbon dioxide build-up and saying “we may have a serious problem”. So was the World Meteorological Organisation.  The idea of an ice age had been put to one side after a Norwich meeting in 1975.  Ashworth was trying to get Berrill and Mason to take it seriously.

What I think we can learn from this

Getting dinosaurs to tap dance, to spot problems on the horizon, is hard going.

What happened next

Ashworth’s efforts were ‘rewarded’, at last, with an interdepartmental committee in late 1978, which produced a “nothing to see here” report. Members of Thatcher’s government tried to keep it from seeing the light of day, but it finally limped out in February 1980. When Ashworth briefed Thatcher, her response was incredulity and “you want me to worry about the weather?”

Meanwhile, the opportunity to start doing something was, of course, lost.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Agar, J. (2015). “Future forecast – changeable and probably getting worse”: the UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change” Twentieth Century British History, Volume 26, Issue 4, Pages 602–628, https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwv008 See here.

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United Kingdom

April 22, 1975 – UK Civil Service scratches its head on #climate

Blah blah Earth Day 1970.

On this day 22nd of April 1975, a meeting of the World Trends Committee of the Cabinet Office had an (inconclusive) discussion about climate change. A very small number of people within the UK state (as distinct from the government) was beginning to pay attention to the build-up of carbon dioxide doing nothing particularly was happening in public.

“Warren, who was one of its two secretaries, suggested putting a position paper on climatological research to the World Trends committee.36 The Met Office provided a paper that covered climate change for discussion in 1975.37 The ‘conclusion of the paper was that it was all very difficult and that ‘‘fundamental understanding has not reached a stage which permits a reliable computation of future climate. Moreover, natural climate time-series can give no useful indication of future trends’’’.

38 NA CAB 134/3974.  Sawyer, ‘Problems of assessing the future climate’, WT(75)7, 4 April 1975. 

The paper was discussed at WT(75)2nd meeting, 22 April 1975.”

Source – see brilliant paper by Jon Agar here).


Why this matters. 

We have to remember that there was a significant but largely ignored history before Thatcher gave her speech at the Royal Society in September of 1988. And this has been excavated by Gabriel Henderson and Jon Agar, among others.

What happened next?

The Civil Service bureaucracy did produce a report,  that was finally released in 1980. And when the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK, John Ashworth, tried to brief Margaret Thatcher in 1980 she said apparently “incredulously” “you want me to worry about the weather?”

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Ignored Warnings United Kingdom

April 16, 1980 – “a risk averse society might prefer nuclear power generation to fossil fuel burning”

On April 16 1980, John Ashworth, then the Chief Scientific Adviser of the UK,, wrote to another senior figure, Robert Armstrong (Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary) on the question of preparing people to accept nuclear in order to drive down fossil fuel emissions. A few days later, Robert Armstrong wrote back saying this needed some further thinking. 

Where do I get this info? From a wonderful article by Jon Agar, from 2015 ‘Future Forecast—Changeable and Probably Getting Worse’: The UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change

As John Ashworth wrote, his personal view was” that the nuclear waste problem is manageable whilst the CO2 problem is not and therefore that a risk averse society might prefer nuclear power generation to fossil fuel burning if it were offered the choice. A rational risk averse society, of course, might prefer energy conservation to either….”

86  86 TNA CAB 184/567. Ashworth to Robert Armstrong, 16 April 1980. Armstrong replied that the idea of inducing the public to go along with nuclear energy by frightening it with global warming ‘would need much thought’. Armstrong to Ashworth, 21 April 1980 

Why this matters

We need to know that the UK Government was, well, portions of the bureaucracy of the UK Government, were well aware of the issue. It became impossible, however, for this policy discussion to proceed, because Thatcher wasn’t interested (when Ashworth briefed Thatcher on the issue in 1980, she replied incredulously “you want me to worry about the weather?”

What happened next?

Well, the nuclear lobby in 1988/89, would try to use climate change as a spur to more nukes. And failed. And tried again from 2006. And failed. And, as we have seen in the recent “Energy Security Strategy”, it continues to do so down unto this day.

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Science Uncategorized United Kingdom

April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-up

Okay, fourth of April 1978, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government Sir John Ashworth writes a letter in which he says – well, here is Janet Martin-Nielsen (2018) Computing the Climate: When Models Became Political  Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018) 48 (2): 223–245.

“The Meteorological Office’s ‘‘important and very helpful’’ work on Concorde, Ashworth wrote in a secret letter to Berrill, proved the value of climate modeling to U.K. interests—and since ‘‘the real worry is now the CO2 level in the atmosphere’’ he continued, the Meteorological Office needed to focus its energy in that direction   . J. M. Ashworth to K. Berrill, re: ‘‘Meteorological Research,’’ 4 Apr 1978, secret KEW, CAB 184/567W01211, 

The context for this is that the UK Government had started looking via its World Trends Study Group at the climate issue, also paying attention to what was happening in the United States. Also you have to factor in the the aftermath of the very hot summer of 1976, and the very cold winter in the US and Canada of 1977. 

And it’s clear that they were trying to get their head around the problem. But not everyone in the UK scientific establishment was at all sold on this. And it would require other entrepreneurs as well, like Solly Zuckerman and Herman Bondi to push further. Unfortunately, all of this culminated in 1980 with Ashworth trying to brief the new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and her response was an incredulous “you want me to worry about the weather?”

And it would be another eight years before that she would do one of her turns because it turns out the lady was frequently for turning 

Why this matters. 

We need to puncture the myth that Thatcher deserves any credit whatsoever. She was warned a decade earlier,did nowt.

What happened next?

The problem stream entrepreneurs tried to get the issue paid attention to, but everything was against them.  And it had to wait until 1988 for attention to be paid….