The Politics of Climate Change

Carbon Dioxide as a Greenhouse Gas: John Tyndall

• John Tyndall (1820-1893): Irish physicist who discovered that water vapor and other gases, including carbon dioxide, are greenhouse gases (1859).
• Tyndall stated, "This aqueous vapor is a blanket more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man."
• The Tyndall Centre, a prominent UK climate research organization, is named after him.

Eunice Newton Foote

• Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888) - 1856: Foote stated, "An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; and if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action as well as from increased weight must have necessarily resulted."

Svante Arrhenius and Guy Stewart Callendar

• Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927):
  • Inspired by Tyndall's work, Arrhenius realized in 1896 that the combustion of coal and petroleum for energy production could raise global temperatures.
  • He deduced this warming would be seen in a few centuries.
• Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964):
  • Observed that fossil fuel consumption increased beyond what Arrhenius imagined.
  • Callendar wrote that "Man" had become "able to speed up nature."
  • He demonstrated that the land temperature of Earth had risen over the previous 50 years.

Callendar (1938)

• Callendar (1938) noted, "[f]ew of those familiar with the natural heat exchanges of the atmosphere, which go into the making of our climates and weather, would be prepared to admit that the activities of man could have any influence upon phenomena of so vast a scale."
• Debate continues regarding the causes of early 20th-century warming.
• Callendar concluded that "the combustion of fossil fuel […] is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways", such as enabling cultivation at higher northern latitudes and delaying the return of deadly glaciers.

Revelle & Suess (1957)

• Revelle & Suess (1957) stated, "Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not happened in the past nor be repeated in the future".

Measurement of Atmospheric CO2

• Roger Revelle helped the weather bureau set up continuous measurement of atmospheric $CO_2$ near the summit of Mauna Loa, Hawaii.
• It was unknown whether the $CO_2$ released from burning fossil fuels would accumulate in the atmosphere or be absorbed by oceans and vegetated areas.

Charles ‘Dave’ Keeling

• Charles ‘Dave’ Keeling (1928 – 2005):
  • Focused on taking carbon measurements in the environment and soon focused on air after being unable to cope with the “ear-piercing, dust-belching rock crusher” while doing his PhD on extracting uranium from rocks.
  • Roger Revelle on Keeling “Keeling’s a peculiar guy” “He wants to measure the carbon dioxide in his belly. And he wants to measure it with the greatest precision and the accuracy be possibly can”
  • Since Dave Keeling’s death in 2005, the observatory has been run by his son.

Wally Broecker

• Wally Broecker (1931 – 2019):
  • 1975 paper: Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?
  • Abstract: If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.

The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change?

• 1979-1989: An excellent opportunity existed to solve the climate crisis.
• Major world powers were close to endorsing a binding global framework to reduce carbon emissions.
• Nearly everything about global warming was essentially figured out by 1979.
• This decade reveals much about the intersection of politics and science.

The Past is a Foreign Country

• 1979-1989:
  • The Republican Party: Only 42% of Republicans today believe that “most scientists believe global warming is occurring,” and that percentage is falling.
  • During the 1980s, many prominent Republicans joined Democrats in judging the climate problem to be a rare political winner: nonpartisan and of the highest possible stakes.
  • George H.W. Bush called for urgent, immediate, and far-reaching climate policy during his campaign for president and stated “There can be no more important or conservative concern than the protection of the globe itself.”
  • The fossil-fuel industry: Coordinated efforts to bewilder the public did not begin in earnest until the end of 1989.
  • During the preceding decade, some of the largest oil companies, including Exxon and Shell, made good-faith efforts to understand the scope of the crisis and grapple with possible solutions.

Rafe Pomerance

• Rafe Pomerance:
  • Friends of Earth Deputy Legislative Director.
  • Joined the organization in 1975 to lobby for clean air.
  • Well-connected with politicians and policymakers.
  • Self-effacing & rambunctious, voluble & obsessive personality.
  • Had a visceral talent for rousing soliloquy.

Gordon J.F. MacDonald

• Gordon J.F. MacDonald:
  • American geophysicist and a member of the JASON Group.
  • President Nixon once remarked "I have three members of the Harvard class of 1950 on my staff, all summa cum laude."
  • Had skepticism regarding the theory of continental drift.
  • One of the earliest scientists to call attention to carbon dioxide as a specific problem and to push forward the scientific understanding of the likely impacts of increased atmospheric $CO_2$.
  • Unlike most scientists of his time, was keen to bridge the science-policy divide.

How to Wreck the Environment (1968)

• Gordon J.F. MacDonald describes how a nation might alter the environment so as to covertly inflict harm on an enemy nation.
• “Nuclear weapons were effectively banned and the weapons of mass destruction were those of environmental catastrophe.”
• One of the most potentially devastating such weapons, he believed, was the gas that we exhaled with every breath: carbon dioxide.

Jasons meeting

• In the decade that followed, MacDonald had been alarmed to see humankind begin in earnest to weaponize weather — not out of malice, but unwittingly.
• During the spring of 1977 and the summer of 1978, the Jasons met to determine what would happen once the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre-Industrial Revolution levels. This threshold would most likely be breached by 2035.
• They produced a report >> It was written in an understated tone that only enhanced its nightmarish findings.

‘The Long-Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate’ (1978)

• The Findings>>:
  • Global temperatures would increase by an average of two to three degrees Celsius.
  • Dust Bowl conditions would “threaten large areas of North America, Asia, and Africa”.
  • Access to drinking water and agricultural production would fall, triggering mass migration on an unprecedented scale.
  • “Perhaps the most ominous feature,” however, was the effect of a changing climate on the poles. Even a minimal warming “could lead to rapid melting” of the West Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet contained enough water to raise the level of the oceans 5 metres.

Gordon and Rafe carbon-dioxide Briefings

• And so began the Gordon and Rafe carbon-dioxide roadshow
• Pomerance arranged informal briefings with the:
  • E.P.A.
  • the National Security Council,
  • The New York Times,
  • The Council on Environmental Quality and the Energy Department, which, Pomerance learned, had established an Office of Carbon Dioxide Effects two years earlier at MacDonald’s urging.
  • The men settled into a routine, with MacDonald explaining the science and Pomerance adding the exclamation points. They were surprised to learn how few senior officials were familiar with the Jasons’ findings let alone understood the ramifications of global warming.

Carter's top scientist, Frank Press

• Eventually both were invited to speak to see the president’s Carters top scientist, Frank Press.
• Press had summoned to their meeting what seemed to be the entire senior staff of the president’s Office of Science and Technology Policy — the officials consulted on every critical matter of energy and national security.
• What Pomerance had expected to be yet another casual briefing assumed the character of a high-level national-security meeting.
• He decided to let MacDonald do all the talking. There was no need to emphasize to Press and his lieutenants that this was an issue of profound national significance. The hushed mood in the office told him that this was already understood.
• On May 22, Press wrote a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue.
• Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology, would gather the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, and climate modelers to judge whether MacDonald’s alarm was justified — whether the world was, in fact, headed to cataclysm.
• Pomerance was amazed by how much momentum had built in such a short time. Scientists at the highest levels of government had known about the dangers of fossil-fuel combustion for decades. Yet they had produced little besides journal articles, academic symposiums, and technical reports. Nor had any politician, journalist, or activist championed the issue. That, Pomerance figured, was about to change.

Charney Report

• Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment
• Report of an Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate Woods Hole, Massachusetts July 23-27, 1979, Jule G. Charney, Chairman
• "We hope that the results of our study will contribute to a better understanding of the implications of this issue for future climate and human welfare" - Charney Report, preface

Venera 4 Soviet Space Probe

• Venera 4 was launched on 12 June 1967.
• The probe entered the nightside Venusian atmosphere on October 18, 1967, at a velocity of 1032 km/hr
• The scientific instruments had been turned on 5 minutes after separation at an altitude of about 55 km and remained on for 93 minutes, returning 23 sets of readings, until it reached an altitude of roughly 25 km, where it succumbed to the atmospheric pressure (22 bar) and temperature (277 C).
• The probe measured an atmospheric composition of 90 - 95% carbon dioxide.

James Hansen, climatologist

• James Hansen, climatologist Obsessed with Venus, why was its surface so hot?
• The Pioneer Venus project was launched in May 1978 and reached Venus late that same year.
• He thought once it may have had habitable temperatures but succumbed to a runaway greenhouse effect.
• Worked on the earliest GCMs

The Charney Report

• Its publication was not accompanied by a banquet, a parade, or even a news conference.
• Yet within the highest levels of the federal government, the scientific community, and the oil-and-gas industry — within the commonwealth of people who had begun to concern themselves with the future habitability of the planet — the Charney report would come to have the authority of settled fact.

Oil Industry Responses Exxon (1978-1980)

• After publication of the Charney Report Exxon wanted to know how much of the warming it could be blamed for.
• In 1978, an Exxon colleague circulated an internal memo warning that humankind had only five to 10 years before policy action would be necessary.
• But Congress in 1979 seemed ready to act a lot sooner than that. On April 3, 1980, Senator Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, held the first congressional hearing on carbon-dioxide build-up in the atmosphere.
• Gordon MacDonald testified that the United States should “take the initiative” and develop, through the United Nations, a way to coordinate every nation’s energy policies to address the problem.

1982 ExxonMobil document

• Prediction of future $CO<em>2$ rise and temperature increase from an internal 1982 ExxonMobil document. The current observed $CO</em>2$ level and global temperature increase are indicated by the thick horizontal and vertical lines.
• The actual values are 415 parts per million (ppm) $CO_2$ and a temperature increase of 0.8°C (1.44°F) since 1960, both within the range of the predictions.

Proposals for legislation The Don CeSar Hotel (1980)

• “A failure to recommend policy would be the same as endorsing the present policy — which is no policy.” Tom McPherson, a Florida Democrat.
• Two dozen experts invited to the ‘Pink Palace’ — policy gurus, deep thinkers, an industry scientist and an environmental activist
• “We might start out with an emotional question,” proposed an economist at the National Climate Program. “The question is fundamental to being a human being: Do we care?”
• “In caring or not caring,” said a Stanford engineer, “I would think the main thing is the timing.” It was not an emotional question, in other words, but an economic one: How much did we value the future?
• “We have less time than we realize” said an M.I.T. nuclear engineer, who studied how civilizations responded to large technological crises. “People leave their problems until the 11th hour, the 59th minute,” he said. “And then: ‘Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?’ ” — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
• A NOAA scientist, introduced some hard facts: If the United States stopped burning carbon that year, it would delay the arrival of the doubling threshold by only five years. If Western nations somehow managed to stabilize emissions, it would forestall the inevitable by only eight years. The only way to avoid the worst was to stop burning coal. Yet China, the Soviet Union, and the United States, by far the world’s three largest coal producers, were frantically accelerating extraction.
• “What if the problem was that they were thinking of it as a problem?” Said a congressional science consultant. “What I am saying,” “is that in a sense we are making a transition not only in energy but the economy as a whole.” Even if the coal and oil industries collapsed, renewable technologies like solar energy would take their place. Jimmy Carter was planning to invest $80 billion in synthetic fuel. “My God,” “with $80 billion, you could have a photovoltaics industry going that would obviate the need for synfuels forever!”
• Moderator from the E.P.A. Reading the indecision in the room, he wondered if it might be best to avoid proposing any specific policy. “Let’s not load ourselves down with that burden,” he said. “We’ll let others worry.” “There is no single action that is going to solve the problem,” Pomerance said. “You can’t keep saying, That isn’t going to do it, and This isn’t going to do it, because then we end up doing nothing.”
• The director of the Energy Department’s carbon-dioxide program suggested that if changes did not occur for a decade or more, he said, “those in the room couldn’t be blamed for failing to prevent them. So what was the problem?” “You’re the problem”
• The group immediately became stuck on a sentence in their prefatory paragraph declaring that climatic changes were “likely to occur.” “Will occur,” proposed the Stanford engineer. “What about the words: highly likely to occur?” congressional science consultant “Almost sure,” said the nuclear engineer from M.I.T. “Almost surely,” another said. “Changes of an undetermined — ” “Changes as yet of a little-understood nature?” “Highly or extremely likely to occur” Pomerance said “Almost surely to occur?”
• “I have noticed that very often when we as scientists are cautious in our statements, everybody else misses the point, because they don’t understand our qualifications.”
• “As a nonscientist,” said Tom McPherson, the Florida legislator, “I really concur.” The group never got to policy proposals. They never got to the second paragraph. The final statement was signed by only the moderator, who phrased it more weakly than the declaration calling for the workshop in the first place.

James Hansen Testimony (1988)

• June 23, 1988, marked the date on which climate change became a national issue.
• In landmark testimony before the U.S. Senate, Dr. James Hansen stated that “Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming… In my opinion, the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

1988 Presidential Campaign: George H.W. Bush

• “I am an environmentalist,”
• “Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House effect.”
• His running mate emphasized the ticket’s commitment to the issue at the vice- presidential debate. “The greenhouse effect is an important environmental issue”
• “We need to get on with it. And in a George Bush administration, you can bet that we will.”

Margaret Thatcher

• Margaret Thatcher (British Prime Minister (1979-1990) stated global warming could “greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope” and that “the health of the economy and the health of our environment are totally dependent upon each other.”
• Royal Society, 1988 "The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. Those countries who are industrialized must contribute more to help those who are not.”

1989 Noordwijk Ministerial Conference in the Netherlands

• Once president Bush’s was very indecisive on even the prospect of a climate treaty.
• The US persuaded the delegates from Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union to join him in resisting the idea of a binding agreement. * The final statement noted only that “many” nations supported stabilizing emissions — but did not indicate which nations or at what emissions level.
• And with that, a decade of excruciating, painful, exhilarating progress turned to air “The president made a commitment to the American people to deal with global warming and he hasn’t followed it up.”

Al Gore & George W. Bush

• Al Gore:
  • Kyoto Protocol, 1997
  • Lost Florida by 271 votes in 2000. Gore had learned about climate change a dozen years earlier as an undergraduate at Harvard when he took a class taught by Roger Revelle
• George W. Bush:
  • In March 2001, the Bush Administration announced that it would not implement the Kyoto Protocol
  • He said signing up to the treaty would create unacceptable economic setbacks in the U.S. and does not put enough pressure to limit emissions from developing nations…

U.S. President Jimmy Carter

• U.S. President Jimmy Carter stated "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."

James Lovelock

• James Lovelock (1919 – 2022) British Scientist
• “I was puzzled about this haze because I could not remember seeing it as a boy” After some thinking Lovelock decided to sample ‘clean’ air and the hazy air
• He discovered CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) were much higher in the hazy air. These chemicals were used in aerosol cans and refrigerators. By far the greatest source of these gases were built-up cities.
• More worryingly he also discovered CFCs in ‘clean’ air coming in from the Atlantic. Could these anthropogenic compounds be building up in the Earths atmosphere?

RV Shackleton Antarctic Voyage 1971-2

• Lovelock wanted to see if CFCs were spread across the Earths atmosphere
• Gas chromatograph, made by James Lovelock and used by him to analyze air samples. There is an electron capture detector held in the clamp to enable him to detect the presence of CFCs.

Molina & Rowland

• 1974: Molina & Rowland published a paper about Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes : chlorine atomc-atalysed destruction of ozone
• Chlorofluoromethanes are being added to the environment in steadily increasing amounts. These compounds are chemically inert and may remain in the atmosphere for 40-150 years, and concentrations can be expected to reach 10 to 30 times present levels. Photodissociation of the chlorofluoromethanes in the stratosphere produces significant amounts of chlorine atoms, and leads to the destruction of atmospheric ozone.

The Dobson Ozone Spectrophotometer

• The Dobson Ozone Spectrophotometer used to measure ozone from the ground at Halley VI Research Station (above) with the impressive Aurora Australis display in the background.

The discovery of an unexpected large depletion of the Antarctic ozone layer in the 1980s

• The first identification of a human impact on the ozone layer was possible as a result of the commitment to long-term monitoring of Antarctica that began in the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957–1958, when continuous, year-round observations of ozone were begun at multiple sites around the continent.
• Observations established that the ozone losses were driven primarily by human-made compounds, chlorofluorocarbons whose chemistry is particularly enhanced for ozone loss under the extreme cold conditions of the Artic and Antarctic.
• Chlorofluorocarbons not only deplete ozone, but they are also greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. ‘a hole in the ozone layer’

General Background on Ozone Layer

• This “layer” reduces the amount of ultraviolet radiation (UV-B) reaching the surface from sunlight
• As a result of ozone loss, the increased UV-B leads to increases in skin cancers (melanoma and non-melanoma), cataracts, impaired immunity
• Other deleterious effects on the environment also result, as do effects on man-made substances (like plastics)

Montreal Protocol (1987)

• Negotiation persisted through scientific skepticism and pressure from government and industry
• In 1985: US Chemical Manufacturers Association paid for ozone hole research whose funding had been cut by the British government
• Aided by availability of alternative compounds (HFC’S, DIFLUOROETHANE, ETC.)
• Treaty seems to be working! Ozone levels expected to return to pre-1980 levels by 2050
• The Most Successful Environmental Treaty Ever?

CFCs and Global warming

• It is not widely appreciated that the phaseout of the chlorofluorocarbons under the Montreal Protocol has probably contributed about five times more to mitigation of climate change than has occurred due to the Kyoto Protocol to date…

Why so many people are unable to accept a seemingly straight-forward pollution problem?

• There are many complex reasons why people decide not to accept the science of climate change:
  • Failure of the knowledge deficit model.
  • The widely held view that people do not accept the science because there is not enough evidence; therefore, more needs to be gathered.
  • Do most scientists assume (wrongly) that the rest of the world is as rational and logical as they are?

Studies into scientific agreement on human-caused global warming

• Show that 97% of scientists agree with human cause of global warming

Climate change denial

• President Trump:
  • “I’m not denying climate change, but it could very well go back.”
• Senator Marco Rubio:
  • “Well, first of all, the climate is always changing.”
• Scott Pruitt, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency:
  • “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s [CO₂] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,”
• Common arguments:
  • THE CLIMATE HAS CHANGED BEFORE. IT'S JUST A NATURAL CYCLE
  • CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING
  • CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ARE SPLIT ON WHETHER GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL.
  • WORRIES ABOUT ICE AGES IN THE 1970S SHOWS THAT CLIMATE SCIENCE IS CONFUSED
  • IT'S COLD OUTSIDE — GLOBAL WARMING CAN'T BE REAL!
  • IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY
  • NOTHING WE CAN DO ANYWAY..

Diversity of Nature

• Adams (1995)
  1. Nature benign
  2. Nature ephemeral
  3. Nature perverse/tolerant
  4. Nature capricious

A MAJORITY - 53 PERCENT — OF EUROPEANS IN THE 16–29 AGE-GROUP BELIEVE AUTHORITARIAN STATES HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE THAN DEMOCRACIES.

Curtis Moore, Republican staff member on the Committee on Environment and Public Work in 1986

• “it was an existential problem, the fate of the civilization depended on it, the oceans would boil, all of that. But it wasn’t a political problem. Know how you could tell?” Political problems had solutions. And the climate issue had none. Without a solution — an obvious, attainable one — any policy could only fail.

Complexity of Global Environmental Issues

• Managing the global commons (high seas, the deep seabed, atmosphere, space and Antarctica) challenging because there is no individual ownership.
• How effectively manage and avoid abuse, & police the commons when nobody owns them?
• Garrett Hardin’s (1968) “Tragedy of the Commons” thesis.

Difficulties and Dilemmas of Global Environmental Policy-Making

• Environmental management is not straightforward at any scale.
• Different groups/nations have different priorities: economic growth above all else, others quality of life.
• View nature differently – as a resource, or to be preserved at all costs.
• Different views on how resilient nature is.
• The story of the climate crisis is one that still has not found its conclusion.