Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 28th, 2007,
2007 Nine Facts about Climate Change Ray Evans [Originally published in November 2006 as a PDF (click here, 1.5 Mb). Launched in Canberra by Sir Arvi Parbo on 28 February 2007]
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/evans2007-4.php
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Lavoisier Group had been banging on since 2000 to the partial embarrassment of would-be allies. Now that climate was so steadily back on the agenda, the old war horses like Ray Evans were saddling up for another battle, possibly one last battle.
And the date, of course, is to coincide with a Labor Party summit in Parliament House where Kevin Rudd would talk about “the great moral challenge of our generation.”
What’s interesting about this one is that senior business figure Avi Parbo, by this time fairly ancient and a major figure in 15 years earlier in seducing Hawke’s Labor Party was lending his name to this tosh. RDS?
What I think we can learn from this is that for every action, there is an equal and spittle-flecked reaction, maybe not equal, but there’ll be one, because denialists want to provide sympathetic journalists with an opportunity to do a “yes, but” story.
What happened next
Evans kept pushing his nonsense faded and died in I think about 2014. But denialism did not die, and never will.
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 28, 1984 – Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect hearings
February 28, 2010 – Australian Prime Minister says won’t walk away from climate. (Then does, obvs.)