Thirty years ago, on this day, March 6th, 1996,
“On March 6, 1996, Michael MacCracken submitted prepared testimony to the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives. One part of that testimony addressed recurring criticism by the skeptic scientists of IPCC findings that corroborate increased atmospheric warming and attribute that increase to human emissions of greenhouse gases”.
Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 198
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was with the coming of the climate issue in 1988, the denial campaigns had cranked into gear. Initially it was attacks on James Hansen, but by 1989 it had spread thanks to outfits like the George C Marshall Institute, which had been set up to shill for Star Wars, the Space Defence Initiative, and outfits like Western Coal Association and the “Information Clearinghouse on the Environment.” Things had really cranked into higher gear in 1994-95 because the IPCC second assessment report was being produced, and the denialists needed to attack it and cast doubt on it as much as they could.
The specific context was that the Second Assessment report had come out in November of ‘95 and had included the fateful phrase that humans were already exerting a “discernible” influence on the climate. I think the wording had been suggested by Bert Bolin.
Anyway, here’s one of the good guys, Mike McCracken trying to educate congresspeople about scepticism, science, climate, etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that the denialist campaigns are partly about rich white men wanting to stay rich. They also provide a platform for superannuated scientists like Nirenberg and Seitz and Singer to feel that they are somehow still relevant when frankly they’re not – or certainly not relevant scientifically, but somehow manage to have an enormously pernicious influence for the future of our species.
Though, to be fair, even without the denialist campaigns, we would have probably still fumbled the ball. We’ll never know.
What happened next. The denialist campaigns kept going. Within a year or two, they’d found what they thought was “soft target” in their ongoing “Serengeti Strategy” – Michael Mann, and the caravan went on.
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
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Also on this day:
March 6, 1992 – #survival emissions versus outright denial
March 6, 2002 – ABARE cheerleads Bush. Blecch
March 6, 2009 – first “Low Carbon Industrial Strategy” announced
March 6, 2009 – the UK gets its first “low carbon industrial strategy”
