During the first half
of the 20th century, it would have been hard to find any institution
that gave a penny specifically to support research on climate change.
The work was donated by individuals, mostly university professors
who were paid more for their teaching than for research, let alone
for any particular subject of research. The most important greenhouse
effect work in the entire half-century was done by a complete amateur,
the engineer G.S. Callendar, in his spare time. National meteorological
services like the United States Weather Bureau, driven especially
by the needs of military and civilian aviation, did spend large and
increasing sums to observe the atmosphere.(1) But this treasury of data was compiled
for daily forecasts and was seldom used for basic research. The few
climatologists that national agencies supported were hired only to
compile dull statistics of average weather conditions. |
- LINKS -
Full discussion in
<=CO2 greenhouse
<=Climatologists |
Around midcentury some meteorologists began
to call for a more vigorous research effort. In 1953, a government
advisory committee reported that the entire Weather Bureau needed
new, young blood. Modest research that a few outstanding individuals
had undertaken before the war had suffered a "slow, almost lingering
death." The committee warned that climatology, starved for funds,
was scientifically moribund.(2) Their report led to the appointment of
a new climatology chief, Helmut Landsberg, who brought an improved
"esprit de corps" and an important expansion. His group's main job,
however, was still routine processing of data on past climates. Another
report presented in 1957 complained that climate research remained
a stepchild at the Bureau, inadequate in scope, with climatologists
mostly "relegated to a mere housekeeping function."(3)
While climate studies languished at the Weather Bureau, however, a
flood of new Federal money began to push the field forward in other
institutions, even though their missions were remote from weather
research. |
<=>Climatologists |
Cold War Organizations and Climate
Research (1950s)
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
From the late 1940s into the 1960s, many
of the papers cited in these essays carried a thought-provoking footnote:
"This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research." The ONR's
work is a well-known chapter in the history of American science. In
1945, as the war effort wound down and scientists worried about where
they would find support, the United States Navy decided to fund basic
research. The other military services soon followed. Their support
reflected a recognition among some officers that they would need scientists
for many purposes. The war had been shortened, if not decided, by
radar, the atomic bomb, and dozens of other scientific devices barely
imagined a decade earlier. Who could guess what basic research might
turn up next? |
= Milestone
|
Besides, scientists who made famous discoveries
would bring prestige to the nation in its global competition with
Communism in the Cold War, winning opinion came before winning
territory. Scientists' glory would also reflect on the officers who
were on good terms with them. More important, ready access to a stockpile
of skilled brains might be vital in some future emergency. So there
was reason to support good scientists regardless of what questions
they chose to pursue.(4) Still,
some fields of science were more equal than others in the long-term
advantages they might provide to the United States. Nuclear physics
in particular (think of bombs and submarine reactors), and solid-state
physics (think of electronics and metallurgy) could count on especially
generous support. |

ONR:
princely patron
|
Physical geoscience
was one of the privileged fields. As historian Ron Doel has pointed
out, military officers recognized that they needed to understand almost
everything about the environments in which they operated, from the
ocean depths to the top of the atmosphere. In some fields such as
oceanography, another historian noted, "operational data and basic
research results were often the same thing." Considering the complex
interconnectedness of all things geophysical, the military services
were ready to sponsor every kind of study. For good practical reasons,
then, the U.S. government supported geophysical work in the broadest
fashion. If purely scientific discoveries happened along the way,
that would be a welcome bonus.(5)
|
=>The oceans
=>Revelle's
result |
Meteorology was especially
favored. Weather has been crucial in warfare since antiquity. During
the Second World, the armed forces had seen meteorologists provide
life-or-death information for everything from bombing missions to
the Normandy Invasion. After the war, military agencies joined civilian
ones in fostering research that might eventually improve weather prediction.
The work ranged from better data-collecting networks to laboratory
studies of radiation to attempts to model weather on digital computers.
|
=>Models (GCMs)
=>CO2 greenhouse
|
Beyond the daily forecast,
some experts had visions of deliberately altering the weather. New
schemes to help farmers by "seeding" clouds with silver iodide smoke,
in hope of making rain, caught the public's attention. Government
officials and politicians also took heed.(6) From the late 1950s forward, the U.S. government was pressed
to fund meteorological studies in hopes that the nation might improve
its agriculture with timely rains. A nation that understood weather
might also obliterate an enemy with droughts or endless snows. By
the mid 1950s a few scientists, particularly the brilliant mathematician
and nuclear bomb expert John von Neumann, were warning that "climatological
warfare" could become more potent than nuclear war itself.(7)
|
=>Climatologists
<=Rain-making |
Von Neumann spoke from inside knowledge. He was hard at work applying
electronic computers to meteorology. His group was initially located
at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and the Air Force too
supported computer weather research. Von Neumann told yet another
sponsor, the ubiquitous ONR, that his efforts had a dual goal: not
only to predict daily weather changes, but to calculate the general
circulation of the entire atmosphere, which might someday show how
to deliberately change a region's climate. |
|
Questions about long-term climate change over
the planet as a whole were not a favored field of inquiry.
To be sure, evidence that the Arctic was getting warmer caught the
eye of officers in the Pentagon. Among other strategic considerations,
the thickness of the ice mattered for the missile-bearing nuclear
submarines that lurked beneath. The officers saw this as a question
of monitoring natural changes. Why pay for research about, say, the
global effects of increased carbon dioxide gas (CO2),
when that was expected to bring a shift of climate only with the passing
of centuries, or more likely never? So it was only by chance that
certain research projects funded by government agencies turned out
to be useful for the study of greenhouse effect warming.(8) |
|
An example was the development
of radiocarbon dating, which later became a key to working out the
history of past climates. The pioneers in the delicate study of radioactive
materials were a group of Manhattan Project veterans at the University
of Chicago. They drew on parallel work underway at Chicago on the
detection of fallout from atomic bomb tests. In this as in almost
all American non-military research, something like half the support
was indirectly related to Cold War military demands. Of course that
left half the support to come from other sources. A good part of the
funding for radiocarbon dating was simply the basic salaries and lab
space that universities gave their professors. Other support came
from philanthropic foundations interested in archeology, and from
corporations that worked to improve radiation instruments as a commercial
enterprise. |
<=Revelle's result
=>Carbon
dates
|
In many other areas of apparently pure science, without Cold War
funding the research would have advanced far more sluggishly or not
at all. For example, military agencies supported theoretical and experimental
studies of the way infrared rays passed through the atmosphere, because
the problem was important for heat-seeking missiles and other weaponry.
One physicist doing such work was Gilbert N. Plass. He carried out theoretical
calculations in association with an experimental group at Johns Hopkins
University, funded by the ONR, that was gathering data on how pressure
and temperature affected infrared spectral lines. According to his later recollection,
Plass learned about climate change only because he read broadly about
topics in pure science. He happened upon the discredited theory that
changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
could explain the ice ages, and took to studying the infrared absorption
of CO2 as a sideline, not far from his regular
work. |
|
Leaving Hopkins, Plass continued his research using a computer at the University
of Michigan, also on ONR funds. Before he could finish his analysis,
he moved on to join a group of scientists at the Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation in southern California. In his new job he was calculating
the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere to answer questions
directly related to weapons. Meanwhile he wrote up his results on
greenhouse warming "in the evening," as he later recalled,
entirely separate from the military research for which he was now
employed. The results turned out to be crucial for reviving the moribund
greenhouse effect theory.(9)
|
=>Keeling's funds
=>Radiation math
=>CO2 greenhouse
|
There were many similar cases. Studies of deep ocean circulation interested
the ONR, because naval officers worried about disposing radioactive
bomb debris and nuclear reactor wastes in the ocean depths. The information
also happened to be crucial for understanding how much CO2
the oceans could absorb, and thus the prospects for greenhouse effect
warming. The Navy and other services lent logistical support for stations
in Antarctica, mainly to gain experience in case they ever had to
fight there. The logistics happened to be invaluable for studies that
required a pristine environment, such as monitoring CO2
levels in the atmosphere. The Air Force Cambridge Research Center
in Massachusetts had an entire Geophysics Research Directorate which
funded, among many other projects, laboratory and field studies of
weather patterns that surprised everyone with crucial hints about
how rapidly climate could change. In short, the military scattered
so much money about that there was enough for studies that nobody
connected with any practical issue. When scientists put together some
of the results, they began to suspect that there was a genuine risk
that burning fossil fuels could bring on global greenhouse warming.
The U.S. military had bought an answer to a question it had never
thought to ask. |
<=>Revelle's result
<=>The oceans
=>Keeling's funds
=>Simple
models
=>Rapid change
<=CO2 greenhouse
|
A more complete story of Cold War support for one key development
is told in a supplementary essay on Roger Revelle's
Discovery. |
|
By the end of the 1950s,
the U.S. government or rather, the few and scattered people
in Congress and the bureaucracy who took any interest in weather science
had become vaguely aware that there was a risk of unwanted
climate change. This awareness was largely the doing of a highly respected
oceanographer, Roger Revelle. As soon as his studies of CO2
convinced Revelle that the oceans probably would not absorb all the
gas that human industry was producing, even before publishing the
results he took the matter to both government officials and journalists.
When a committee of the National Academy of Sciences produced a "First
general report on climatology to the Chief of the Weather Bureau"
in 1957, it picked up a metaphor that Revelle had begun to use: "In
consuming our fossil fuels at a prodigious rate, our civilization
is conducting a grandiose scientific experiment."(10) Meanwhile Revelle came before a Congressional
committee to testify that the rise of CO2 might
bring severe climate shocks within the next century. |
<=CO2 greenhouse
<=Public
opinion
|
New Research Organizations (1957-1970)
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
Revelle had come to
Washington to promote a general boost in funds for all of geophysical
science. It was his part in a world-wide campaign that geophysicists
had mounted to win a really big pot of money for their research, a
campaign that reached fruition in the International Geophysical Year
of 1957-1958. The U.S. National Committee responsible for IGY plans
had called groups of experts together in early 1956. As one minor
part of their work, the experts devised a modest program of climate
research. Among other things, the committee set aside some IGY money
to temporarily support a program of measurements of the concentration
of CO2 in the air.(11) Other climate studies got similar important benefits. |
=>Keeling's funds
=>International
|
Although the IGY officially ended in 1958, its success gave research
a lasting impetus. Above all (literally above all) were the Soviet
Sputnik and other satellites. Nominally built for geophysical
research and launched under IGY auspices, in reality the satellites
were meant chiefly to gather military intelligence. To the American
public, Sputnik was a frightening demonstration of vulnerability
to nuclear-armed missiles, and seemed to show a Russian lead in science
and technology. The "crisis," as some called it, drove the government
to boost funding for all areas of science. |
|
The Sputnik anxieties brought a particularly big raise
to the National Science Foundation, which Congress had established
back in 1950 with a modest budget to support fundamental scientific
research. By 1959, the NSF's funding had jumped more than tenfold.
Meanwhile military officers' interest in supporting basic science
waned, and during the 1960s, Congress decided that the armed forces
should stick closer to their immediate needs. The NSF with its fattened
wallet took over much of the support of basic climate research from
the military agencies. |
|
Still, military funding
remained important for many activities. For example, the bases that
the U.S. Navy had set up in Antarctica during the IGY remained indispensable
during later decades for research on the potentially fateful interactions
between ice sheets and global warming. Other nations funded similar
if smaller programs. For example, the Soviet Union likewise established
a half-military, half-scientific presence in Antarctica. Without this
logistical base, the Russians and their French partners could never
have drilled through the ice cap to get crucial data on past glacial
periods. |
=>Sea rise & ice
=>Climate
cycles
|
During the 1960s, scientific technology proved its importance not
only in Cold War activities but in all areas of economic life. Coupled
with rising prosperity, the promise of benefits prompted nearly all
nations to expand their funding of science. Atmospheric science got
its share of the new budgets. Meanwhile university departments of
meteorology proliferated, driven by a demand for trained staff. The
rapidly spreading air transport industry needed meteorologists, and
so did the still more rapidly spreading television weather shows,
not to mention the military weather services. Private meteorological
services also began to burgeon, as the cash value of forecasting increased
in step with its precision. Still, the rise of meteorology was no
faster than other areas of university science, driven by their own
mushrooming practical demands.(12) Equally rapid expansion benefitted other fields of geophysics
where research relevant to global warming might be found. |
|
In the early 1960s, Federal officials decided to target the atmospheric
and ocean sciences for a special boost. Scientists and bureaucrats
who were dedicated to ocean research, and who had never gotten much
National Science Foundation money, had already begun a lobbying effort
in the late 1950s. Their warnings that the nation was lagging behind
its rivals evoked all the Sputnik worries, and Congress at
last gave NSF substantial funds for oceanography research.(13) Meanwhile others sought to brush away
the Weather Bureau cobwebs. The key idea came from the physics community.
To build and run their gigantic particle accelerators, physicists
had put each instrument in the hands of a consortium of research universities.
Imitating this model, in 1960 Congress established a National Center
for Atmospheric Research with 14 universities as initial NCAR members
(dozens more joined over the following decades). The funding came
through the National Science Foundation. The NSF got a good boost
in its meteorology research budget not only to support NCAR but also
to build up university groups. |

NCAR
labs
|
In 1965, the government enacted a still grander
reorganization, bringing the Weather Bureau together with several
other science agencies in a new agency named the Environmental Science
Services Administration (ESSA). Federal funding for meteorological
research jumped sixfold (in constant dollars) in the decade 1958-1967.
Then it leveled off, and for the next two decades support barely kept
ahead of inflation. But the gain was permanent for people like the
computer modelers who had helped to set up NCAR. Their work was a
line item in NCAR's budget from the beginning, so the costly computer
studies of climate went forward as a matter of course.(14)
|
=>Models (GCMs)
|
Ocean scientists had
an initiative of their own. Support for their field was even more
divided than support for the atmospheric sciences, scattered among
small and disorganized programs that dealt with everything from offshore
oil to fisheries. A group of leaders, noting the ample funds given
to the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), lobbied for a
"wet NASA." A presidential commission was organized in 1968 to address
the issue, and it surprised everyone by recommending that ocean programs
be integrated with atmospheric ones. The commission was in tune with
recent thinking, seeing the seas and air in a unified way. They were
concerned about "modification of weather and ocean conditions by interference
with natural environmental processes," and called for monitoring of
the entire "global air-sea envelope."(15) Prodded by marine interests in Congress,
President Richard Nixon’s administration supported the idea.
In 1970, the various marine research, technology, and administrative
programs were folded together with ESSA into a new organization, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The hopes
for a top-ranked independent agency like NASA were not entirely fulfilled,
however, for NOAA was created as only one of the many agencies within
the Department of Commerce.(16)
|
=>The oceans
= Milestone
|
From the beginning,
NOAA was one of the world's chief sources of funding for basic climate
studies. For example, one of its units constructed what were arguably
the most important of all computer models of climate. But the agency
was created by rearranging programs without adding new money. Insofar
as NOAA had any central focus, it followed the original impetus to
develop economically important marine resources such as fisheries.
The atmospheric sciences were left mired in ambiguity. As one observer
reported, through the next decades there were "serious programmatic
gaps... stemming from the agency's complex history and resulting confusion
as to its central mission." An example was the important Landsat satellite
program, NOAA's best bet for monitoring overall global change. This
program was designed to study land surfaces rather than clouds, and
it was "treated as an orphan" through its first three decades. As
for observational systems aimed directly at meteorology, they were
designed mainly to aid daily weather prediction rather than to gather
and retain the data needed for monitoring long-term climate change.(17) |
=>Models (GCMs)
=>Climatologists
|
The Nixon administration created another
significant agency related to atmospheric science in 1970, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). This was the year of the first Earth Day,
marking the point when the public in the United States (and soon after,
many other nations) began urgently pressing their governments to pay
attention to environmental harms. Congress funded NOAA and EPA largely
in obedience to this growing public concern, which was directed less
at possible future global troubles than at visible nearby evils like
filthy rivers and choking city air. The EPA was created to deal with
human health risks such as smog, not climate issues, and had only
minor funds to give to global warming research.(18) Practical near-term thinking also motivated
pollution-control laws such as the Clean Air Act (passed in 1970 and
strengthened in 1977). This viewpoint made sense to scientists, who
mostly put "environmental" questions in the category of immediate
practical problems, separate from abstract speculations about
climate change.(19) |
<=Public opinion
|
Rising Concern about Climate Change
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
It was no wonder if nobody was devoting much
effort to mobilizing funds for climate change studies who would
feel responsible for the task? The planet's climate is not organized
along the lines of government agencies. Nor does it fit with the standard
academic scientific disciplines ("Nature is ignorant of the ways our
universities are organized," as one scientist remarked). Key problems
in the field, such as the study of how carbon moves among the atmosphere,
the oceans, and the biosphere, fell between stools. No institution
had a budget line devoted to these problems.(20) There was no institutionalized field of "climate change
science." There was only a variety of individual scientists in a medley
of fields, studying everything from computer models of weather to
glaciers to sunspots specialists who may never have heard of
one another. So there was no community to lobby for funds, organization
or policies. |
<=Climatologists
|
Scientists who wanted funds for global warming research had adopted
a strategy so traditional that they probably did not think of it as
a strategy at all. They had worked hard to build up individual scientific
institutions, academic and international as well as Federal, in their
respective fields. In each institution, elite scientists would be
in charge, directing research funds as they thought best. The result
was that climate change studies, fragmented among many organizations,
received a fairly reliable but modest fraction of various research
budgets. Nobody made a special effort to create a unified climate
studies program, the kind of strong and independent institution that
could fight for a big lump of funds.(21) After all, scientists in the 1950s and 1960s saw global
warming as only one of a thousand interesting questions, something
that would not be a problem for many decades if ever, nothing at all
to do with current government policies. |
|
A few people did notice implications for their present concerns.
When Edward Teller told an assembly of scientists in 1957 that rising
CO2 levels might eventually melt back the polar
ice caps and inundate the world's lowlands, he had a personal stake
as a nuclear expert. These were years when many people in government
and industry, including Teller, were enthusiastically promoting the
building of nuclear reactors. Some of them noticed that the risks
of greenhouse warming could give minor reinforcement to their arguments
for weaning humanity from dependence on coal and oil. Recognizing
an attack on fossil fuels, a scientist working for Shell International
Chemical Company publicly denied that "our furnaces and motor car
engines will have any large effect on the CO2
balance."(22) From time to time on through the 1960s, nuclear power advocates
would mention greenhouse warming in passing as a future drawback of
fossil fuels. That may have helped maintain awareness of the greenhouse
issue in policy circles.(23) |
|
Foreseeing weightier issues was not impossible. Two reporters who
spoke with scientists in 1957 sketched out some striking implications
of the greenhouse effect. If it ever became certain that CO2
was warming the planet, they wrote, we would see "a type of control
regulation, law, interstate compact, and international agreement which
could scarcely help clashing with some of our cherished notions of
free enterprise. Industry, which might blossom in some directions...would
be hamstrung in others.... Further, in view of the global nature of
the problem, ordinary international agreements might prove inadequate
for effective regulation." But an international regime that imposed
actual penalties would be "sure to foster great heat and controversy."(24)
The reporters were far ahead of their time. For decades, hardly anyone
else would raise these grave questions. After all, as the New
York Times's science writer remarked in a 1956 article on the
prospects for global warming (Oct. 26), “coal and oil are still
plentiful and cheap... and there is every reason to believe that both
will be consumed by industry so long as it pays to do so.” |
|
Through the 1960s, a
modest level of official interest was sustained by new scientific
findings. Most telling was C.D. Keeling's measurements of the level
of CO2 in the atmosphere, a curve that dramatically
rose year after year. The idea that the government should actually
do something about this if only to sponsor climate research
more systematically first arose in 1963, when Keeling and a
few other experts met in a conference sponsored by the private Conservation
Foundation. Their report warned that the doubling of CO2
projected for the next century could raise the world's temperature
some 4°C (more than 6°F), bringing serious coastal flooding
and other damage. The government should give the subject more consistent
attention, they believed, and more money. Decrying the lack of continuity
in greenhouse gas research, the group recommended that Keeling’s
program for monitoring CO2 levels (whose funding
was threatened) be continued. Above all, they called on the National
Academy of Sciences to create a committee to look into the whole question
of atmospheric change.(25) |
<=CO2 greenhouse
<=>Keeling's funds
|
A more complete story of the vicissitudes of support for one
key development is told in a supplementary essay on Funding
Keeling and CO2 Monitoring. |
|
Gradually the
government reacted. In 1965, when the President's Science Advisory
Committee formed a panel to address environmental issues, it included
a subpanel of leading climate experts. They reported that greenhouse
warming was a matter of real concern. There could be "marked changes
in climate," they reported, "not controllable through local or even
national efforts." That put the issue on the official agenda at the
highest level of government although only as one item on a
long list of environmental concerns, many of which seemed more pressing.(26)
|
=>Public opinion
|
The following year, 1966, the Academy answered
a government request to report on how human activity could influence
climate. The experts sedately said they saw no cause for dire warnings,
but they did believe the CO2 buildup should be
watched closely. "We are just now beginning to realize that the atmosphere
is not a dump of unlimited capacity," the report said, "but we do
not yet know what the atmosphere's capacity is." The panel's primary
conclusion was typical of such reports a maxim that came from
the heart of scientists' belief in their calling More Money
Should Be Spent on Research.(27) |
<=>Impacts
=>Models (GCMs)
|
These efforts were only minor byways in the
government's atmospheric science work. Short-term weather prediction
came first. For longer-term problems, the titles of the panels show
what was on people's minds. The President's advisory group was named
the "Environmental Pollution Panel," and the Academy's was the "Panel
on Weather and Climate Modification." Asked about human influence
on the atmosphere, the public would think first about smog. Next they
would think about deliberate attempts to make rain (by the early 1970s,
the NSF was spending almost as much on "weather modification" as on
all the rest of the atmospheric sciences combined).(28)
That included climatological warfare indeed the U.S. armed
forces had already begun secret attempts to bog down the North Vietnamese
army with artificial rainmaking. |
<=Rain-making
|
Research on climate change was not the particular responsibility
of any government official. As the 1965 panel remarked, "no agency
or program is concerned with the average condition of our environment."(29)
The 1966 Academy panel added that for climate as for most environmental
fields, support was "diffused among many agencies." Thus "there exists
no single natural advocate in the Federal structure, nor is there
a clear mechanism for making budgetary decisions." In the mid-1960s,
a variety of government agencies together spent roughly $50 million
a year for all aspects of meteorological research. That was not much,
and climate change caught only a few percent of that.(30) Studies of the topic had to fit in
as minor components of programs that had been set up to work on more
immediate problems. |
|
Perhaps the best hope
of climate scientists was that a bit of the money devoted to climate
modification (which mainly meant rainmaking) could be diverted toward
research on... well, call it "inadvertent climate modification." The
phrase was often used during this period by people concerned about
greenhouse warming.(31) But
defining the greenhouse effect as "inadvertent climate modification"
made it sound like just one of the countless byproducts of economic
progress, a sort of smog that could be handled easily by more technology.
Leading experts suggested that if global warming ever became annoying,
there were technical schemes, not excessively costly, that could counteract
it. In short, climate change was of far less interest to the government
(and the public) than chemical pollution, dying lakes, and countless
other environmental problems. |
<=Rain-making
=>Keeling's funds
|
A Federal Program for Climate Change
Research? (1970s) TOP
OF PAGE |
|
When a group of citizens (in this case, scientists) decides that
their government should do more to address some particular concern,
they face a hard task. The citizens have only a limited amount of
effort to spare, and officials are set in their bureaucratic ways.
To accomplish anything to bring about a new government program,
in particular people must mount a concerted push. For a few
years concerned citizens must hammer at the issue, informing the public
and finding allies among like-minded officials. These inside allies
must form committees, draft reports, and shepherd legislation through
the administration and Congress. Interests that feel threatened by
change will put up roadblocks, and the whole process is liable to
fail from exhaustion. Typically such an effort succeeds only when
it can seize a special opportunity, usually news events that distress
the public and therefore catch the eye of politicians. |
|
In the early 1970s,
a few climate scientists sought such an opportunity to mount such
a concerted push. A month-long workshop at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 1970, and an international conference in Stockholm
in 1971, put global climate change on the table as a significant policy
concern. The scientists were spurred to the task by new data and calculations,
which convinced them that the world's climate might change far sooner
and more drastically than had seemed possible only a decade earlier.
There was now evidence from ancient ice sheets and the seabed of abrupt
climate changes in the past. A fresh look at mechanisms driving the
climate system found such changes entirely plausible. The next ice
age might start within their own lifetimes! When scientists in a 1972
workshop found themselves in agreement that such things could happen,
several of them wrote a letter to President Nixon to recommend that
the government support intensified studies.(32) A high-level panel convened by the
administration reported in 1974 that a sudden freeze was indeed possible
within the next century, although the panelists did not find it very
likely.(33) Meanwhile other scientists, probably the majority, suspected that the most likely future was not cooler but seriously warmer. All realized that the uncertainties could be resolved only by a large research program. |
<=International
<=Rapid
change
|
The drive to strengthen climate studies fitted with a broader movement,
in which scientifically trained people were making contact with more
traditional policy elites to address the planet's environmental future.
As historian Paul Edwards described it, a "hybrid science/policy community"
was taking shape. Policy makers as much as scientists were taking
advantage of new tools, including the aggressive gathering of all sorts
of global information.(34)
|
<=Public opinion |
That was the traditional "insider" approach
to policy. Other scientists thought government action would follow
only if they could reshape public attitudes. A reshaping had in fact
begun, in the mass environmental movement that burst into full flower
in the early 1970s. Some climate scientists adopted the mood and rhetoric
of the movement, describing climate change in dramatic terms as a
threat to the well-being of the living planet. |
<=Public opinion |
One focus of environmentalists was atmospheric pollution, meaning
the toxic smog that people felt in their eyes and lungs. Since factories
and automobiles emitted not only smog but greenhouse gases, environmentalists
might mention global climate change as one more argument against polluting
industries. Thus when some groups fought to prevent the government
from building a fleet of supersonic transport airplanes in the early
1970s, their warnings included an occasional mention of the long-term
harm that airplane exhaust might do to global climate. The worries
were strong enough to push Congress to fund a "Climatic Impact Assessment
Program" (CIAP). It was one of the biggest of all scientific research
projects undertaken to that time, involving numerous agencies of the
U.S. and foreign governments and more than a thousand scientists.
In three years of studies, ranging from data-collecting with balloons
to mathematical modeling of stratospheric chemistry, they tried to
define the threat from aircraft emissions. |
<=Other gases
|
The result was inconclusive,
which meant the scientists could provide no reassurances that a fleet
of supersonic airplanes would not change the weather. Meanwhile an
even greater scientific concern had come up. Among the studies were
some that pointed out a more definite and immediate risk: emissions
from the airplanes could damage the high ozone layer that blocked
solar rays. This might well bring a rise in skin cancers and other
harm to people and biological systems. The main thing that offended
the public, however, was a likelihood of noise pollution and the waste
of their tax money. Congress closed the issue in 1971 by refusing
to subsidize the airplanes.(35)
For climate scientists, the CIAP program produced a trove of useful
data. But it had been only a short-lived effort on a narrow topic,
far short of the sustained coordination and funding they desired.
|
<=>Public opinion
=>Ae rosols |
Their opportunity came in the early 1970s,
as news media reported an extraordinary series of weather disasters.
Around the world droughts were bringing horrific famines and (what
more deeply affected the U.S. government) distress to American farmers.
For the first time ever, climate change mounted high in public awareness,
catching the attention of some politicians and government officials.
In 1974, Alvin Weinberg, a leading energy expert from the nuclear
establishment, put the issue succinctly. The danger of climate change,
he explained, placed some kind of limit on the world's energy systems.
The nation needed proper organization for climate research "so that,
say 20 years from now, we can base our energy policy on a much sounder
understanding of this limit... The problem of global effects of energy
production... is everyone's problem, and therefore no one's problem.
I propose, therefore, that an institute (or even institutes) of climatology
be set up with a long-term commitment..."(36) |
<=Public opinion |
Weinberg was only one of many scientists who were now urging the government
to organize climate research. Another example was a group at the University
of Wisconsin. In 1973 they presented a plan for a climate program
to the National Security Council, and the plan was duly reviewed by
the NOAA and NSF bureaucracies. Meanwhile the National Academy of
Sciences established a Committee on Climatic Variation, which in 1974
presented its own recommendations for a national climate research
plan. Alongside the recent weather troubles, policy-makers from Senators
to Air Force generals continued to worry about deliberate climate
modification. That meant everything from the recently revealed American
rain-making in Vietnam to problematic Russian schemes for altering
the Arctic. Such schemes now looked more likely to bring environmental
damage and ignominy than useful results. Meanwhile, improved computer
models were suggesting that greenhouse gas emissions really would
cause a global warming within the foreseeable future. The entire human
interaction with climate was looking increasingly problematic. |
<=Public opinion
<=Rain-making
<=Models (GCMs) |
The President's Domestic Council worked to pull all the strands
together in a proposal for a National Climate Program. Staff members
drafted a National Climate Program Act, centered on an increase of
funding for research and monitoring. With the recent droughts much
in mind, in May 1976 a Congressional committee began hearings, the
first ever to address climate change as their main subject. Leading
climate scientists and publicizers of climate change explained at
length their call for expanded work.(37)
|
|
The talk dragged on with little public attention and little result.
Without the backing of some unified community or organization, the
movement for reorganization was impeded by the very fragmentation
it sought to remedy. The proposals were various, but all of them threatened
to usurp the activities of existing research bureaucracies. And the
effort had come in cramped economic times, as Congress sought ways
to cut the budget. But the worst weakness was what one participant
called "a failure to demonstrate to funders of such research the practical
benefits that can result within a time frame of relevance to their
mandate." Lawmakers cared far more about the few years until the next
election than about the following century. (One scientist recalled
briefing an official about a 1979 report on global warming; when the
official was told that problems might develop in fifty years, he replied,
"Get back to me in forty-nine.") In the end, the sole useful
consequence was that the Nixon administration set up an interagency
group to coordinate climate research. Only in a limited sense could
that be called an official U.S. climate program, and for practical
purposes it counted for little.(38) |
|
Attempts at Coordination
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
The efforts continued. Ominous warnings in
National Academy of Sciences reports and sensational journalism repeatedly
brought climate change to the attention of the public and politicians.
Scientists and officials tried again from time to time to create some
kind of centrally organized national program or institution. For example,
in 1978 a proposal was floated to establish a national CO2
directorate at the MITRE Corporation, a Cold War think tank. The idea
went nowhere. Meanwhile, prompted by scientists and bureaucrats, legislators
in the U.S. Congress were proposing a small flurry of bills related
to climate, starting in 1975 and reaching six introductions in 1977
and another six in 1978.(39) Scientists testified before Congress that the rise of CO2
could bring world disaster. Agency officials wrote and rewrote plans
and negotiated tenaciously over who should get control of what research
budget. |
<=Public opinion |
Adding to this agitation was a public controversy
that erupted in the mid 1970s when scientists discovered that certain
chemicals, widely used as propellants in spray cans, could damage
the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere. Counter-arguments
publicized by the chemical industry failed to quell the protests.
Congress responded in 1977 by restricting the spray can chemicals.
The issue had no visible connection with climate. But it showed that
technical scientific findings about a future atmospheric risk could
arouse the public enough to sway legislation and strike at major industries.
|
<=Public opinion |
Scientists who hoped to stimulate action on
climate, stymied in Washington, found better opportunities in working
through the international science community. Efforts by a group of
nations not just their combined money but the consensus of
their prestigious scientists might help convince American politicians
to act. Besides, internationalization might offer some of the organization
that was lacking in the United States. Since 1963 the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO), an association of national weather services under
the auspices of the United Nations, had administered a World Weather
Watch that usefully coordinated the gathering of data around the world.
In 1968 the WMO combined forces with the International Council of
Scientific Unions, a non-governmental congress of scientific organizations,
to create a "Global Atmospheric Research Program" (GARP). This provided
essential coordination for research projects everywhere. |
<=International |
To manage American participation
in GARP, the National Academy of Sciences set up a "U.S. Committee
for the Global Atmospheric Research Program" which included many top
scientists. They kept up the pressure for organizational action. In
1975, the committee published an influential report, referring to
the recent deadly droughts and declaring that "We simply cannot afford
to be unprepared for either a natural or man-made climatic catastrophe."
The scientists insisted that a rapid deterioration of climate was
possible, although they could not agree on how likely that was to
happen anytime soon. Emphasizing the lack of knowledge, the panel
called on the government to build up a National Climate Research Program
as the nation's share of an international effort. They said the Federal
climate research budget should be doubled (from expenditures of less
than $20 million in 1974), and doubled again by 1980.(40)This report was followed up in 1977 by a still more widely
publicized Academy report on "Energy and Climate." The panel of experts,
chaired by Revelle, announced that average temperatures might climb
a dangerous 6°C by the middle of the next century, possibly with
a catastrophic rise of sea level. They recommended "a lively sense
of urgency" for studying the problem. There had never been so much
reason to insist on the old principle, More Money Should Be Spent
on Research.(41) |
=>Rapid change
=>Public
opinion
|
The Academy's experts were by no means prepared to stretch so far
as to recommend actual changes in the nation's energy policies. They
did suggest (not very prominently) that it might turn out that the
world would need to reduce its use of fossil fuels. But they knew
climate predictions were too unreliable to support such a move in
the visible future. If the panel avoided concrete advice, they did
drive home a general truth the threat of climate change was
intimately connected with energy production. As a page one headline
in the New York Times (July 15, 1977) summed it up, "Scientists
Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate." Officials
were starting to grasp the fact that CO2 emissions
had economic implications, and therefore, political ones. The oil,
coal, and electrical power industries began to pay close attention.
After all, as a leading government energy official put it, "If CO2
proves to be the problem people think it is, we'll have to restructure
our entire fossil fuel program."(42) |
|
The nation's fossil
fuel policies were already under intense scrutiny. In the 1973 "energy
crisis," inconvenience and anxiety beset millions of people as Persian
Gulf states withheld their oil. When President Jimmy Carter's administration
proposed to shift the nation from oil to coal, politics began to overlap
with climate studies like the Academy's. It became particularly noticeable
that some of the people most concerned about CO2,
Alvin Weinberg in particular, were advocates of nuclear power
an industry vigorously promoted as an alternative to foreign oil,
but coming under vehement attack as a danger to the environment. One
environmental argument often made in favor of nuclear reactors was
that they emitted scarcely any greenhouse gases. The greenhouse effect
also came up when some proposed the government should subsidize synthetic
fuels as a substitute for oil: opponents pointed out that synthetics
produced more CO2 than comparable fossil fuels.(43) Meanwhile, the energy crisis was empowering advocates of
renewable energy sources, ranging from Federal solar-energy bureaucrats
to anti-government environmentalists, and they too found the greenhouse
effect useful in arguing for their cause the more of our power
we generated from windmills, the lower our CO2
emissions. Policy discussions grew increasingly sophisticated, exploring
such issues as strategies to mitigate the effects of global warming,
international legal mechanisms for restricting emissions, and ethical
considerations in assigning costs and risks.(44) In all these debates, however, climate
change was only one more weight thrown into the balance, and far from
the heaviest one in most people's minds. |
= Milestone
<=>Public opinion
|
Nobody of consequence
proposed to regulate CO2 emissions or make any
other significant policy changes to deal directly with greenhouse
gases. Academy reports and other scientific pronouncements advised
that any such action would be premature. They pointed out that predictions
of future warming were based mainly on computer models, which were
grossly oversimplified and relied on poorly measured numbers. Some
scientists held that if the world was
currently warming (which they doubted), that was just part of
a natural cycle. Or the climate system might fluctuate in a purely
random way, regardless of what humanity did. |
<=Models (GCMs)
<=Chaos
theory |
Policy debate about the nation's energy systems revolved around
more obvious economic, environmental, and national security problems.
It was to address these issues that the Carter administration created
a cabinet-level Department of Energy (DOE). With a mandate to lead
in energy policy, a few DOE administrators proposed in 1977 to take
responsibility for research on greenhouse gases. Their expansive plans
ranged from monitoring the level of CO2 in the
atmosphere to predicting the economic and social consequences of future
greenhouse warming. One administrator said that they needed data in
less than a decade so the government could decide whether to promote
coal as an alternative to oil.(45)
To pay for the research, they requested a big budget expansion, from
the $1.5 million that DOE was spending in 1977 to as much as $30 million
a year. |
|
Other agencies disliked the DOE plan, however, and their complaints
went beyond the normal bureaucratic defense of turf. Prestigious scientists
on a Climate Research Board, newly created by the Academy, criticized
the plan as poorly designed and over ambitious. Meanwhile an Interdepartmental
Committee on Atmospheric Science, as well as NASA, NOAA, and the Department
of Defense, were each developing their own research plans.(46) The meteorological community and its
friends in the bureaucracy were determined to push for a better-designed
consolidation of climate research. |
|
The Academy's Climate
Research Board took the lead under its full-time chair, Robert M.
White. A widely admired scientist-administrator, "Bob" White had already
served as head of the Weather Bureau and then of NOAA, as official
representative in international meetings one on whaling, for
example, another on desertification and in countless other
capacities. In particular, he had recently chaired the President's
Committee on Climate Change as well as a committee on weather modification.
Bob White deserves notice as one of the most outstanding examples
of many people whose names are not mentioned here (see also Harry
Wexler). It was their long years of negotiating and hard
thinking, mostly out of public view, that gave climate research its
funding and organization.(47) |

Bob
White
<=>International |
Congress at last passed
a National Climate Act in late 1978. This established a National Climate
Program Office with NOAA, not DOE, named as the lead Federal agency.
It was a step forward, but the new Office had only a feeble mandate
and a budget of only a few million dollars. It was the hard-driving
DOE officials who won large budget increases for CO2
work. However, some of the expansion in the formal budget was not
new money, but only a transfer of funds that had already been available
through other programs. It was a pattern that administrations would
often follow when they wanted to boast of their support for environmental
causes.(48) |
= Milestone
=>Keeling's funds
|
With the passage of the National Climate
Act, the minor flurry of legislative attention ended. No climate-related
bills were introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1979, and not more than
one a year thereafter until the late 1980s.(49) The program to study climate change was underfunded from
the start, and the large increases of the 1970s came to a dead halt
in 1980 as Congress tried to balance the budget. Such money as was
available seemed to go as much into paperwork and meetings as into
actual research. |
<=Keeling's funds
|
In 1980, the prominent geophysicist Wallace Broecker, who had spoken
out repeatedly about the dangers of climate change, vented his frustration
in a letter to a Senator. Declaring that "the CO2
problem is the single most important and the single most complex environmental
issue facing the world," and that "the clock is ticking away," Broecker
insisted that a better research program was needed. "Otherwise, another
decade will slip by, and we will find that we can do little better
than repeat the rather wishy washy image we now have as to what our
planet will be like..."(50)
|
|
NASA and Other Funders
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
While research funding and organization remained
well below the level climate scientists felt they needed to paint
a correct picture of the future, the 1970s had not slipped by entirely
without progress. Military agencies had continued to fund some research,
such as secret computer-modeling studies of proposals to deliberately
alter a region's climate. Meanwhile the NSF, DOE, and NOAA had supported
a broad array of studies. Still more money had come from the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. |
<=Rain-making
|
Founded in 1958, NASA was responsible
for developing the satellites that were the primary source of accurate
world-wide data on the atmosphere. There would have been no science
satellites at all, of course, but for the billions of dollars lavished
upon the exploration of space, thanks partly to popular enthusiasm
and partly to the many military applications of rocketry. Military
agencies had proposed the use of satellites for weather "reconnaissance"
in a secret report as early as 1950. The first public "weather satellite,"
TIROS-1, launched in 1960, had originated in Department of Defense
surveillance programs. It was transferred to NASA in 1959 as a civilian
program, with the sensors degraded so they could see clouds but
not small things like aircraft carriers. Through the following decades,
military agencies secretly put up their own meteorological satellites
that used the exquisite and highly classified technologies developed
for spy satellites. |
=>International |
These technologies gradually made their way into the open civilian
program of weather satellites. NASA built and launched the devices,
but once they were in orbit they were operated by the Weather Bureau
which got its budget doubled for the purpose. The responsibility
was taken over along with the Weather Bureau by ESSA, followed by
NOAA. The arrangement worked well for a few years. But in the late
1970s, public interest in space exploration flagged, and NASA's
budget was cut. NASA stopped developing and testing new spacecraft
for NOAA, and the weather satellite program deteriorated.(51)
|
|
TIROS and its successors were
designed to help with daily weather forecasts, but some of the NASA
satellites also did fine work for climate studies. Computer modelers
had reached a point where their progress would come to a halt unless
they got much better data on the actual atmosphere. The answer was
Nimbus-3, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1969. The satellite's
infrared spectrometers measured the temperature of the atmosphere
comprehensively at various levels, night and day, over oceans,
deserts and tundra. It was a wealth of systematic data inconceivable
a generation earlier, and invaluable for climate research. Combining
this with data from TIROS and other weather satellites, analysts
quickly found that earlier ground-based estimates of the planet's
radiation budget had been seriously in error. In particular, the
tropics were much "darker" than expected, absorbing heat
from sunlight that was transported somehow, by air or ocean currents,
toward the poles.Nimbus-3's data eventually provided an important
direct check for a key computer model of 1975.(52) The satellite was followed in the mid 1980s by a series
of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) satellites which likewise
provided data essential for accurate computer modeling.(53)
|
<=Models (GCMs)
=>Models
(GCMs) =>Solar variation
= Milestone
=>Models (GCMs) |
NASA's budget for atmospheric research had meanwhile been growing,
stimulated by the fear that human emissions were destroying the ozone
layer. Through the 1980s, NASA funded a variety of laboratory studies,
field experiments, and theoretical studies and workshops related to
atmospheric research, and vigorously advocated research on every kind
of global change.(54) |
|
NOAA, between operating
the satellites and its other programs, was the world's most generous
contributor to the international Global Atmospheric Research Program.
Meanwhile, on the world's oceans NOAA almost fulfilled its ambition
to be a "wet NASA." Its extensive oceanographic programs, mostly
based in universities, produced many findings on ocean circulation
and the like which were crucial for understanding climate change.
No less important were NSF-funded projects. A survey of several
oceans (GEOSECS, 1972-1978) took advantage of the one-time historical
opportunity to track the fallout from the atomic bomb tests of the
late 1950s, using the radioactive isotopes as markers of ocean circulation.
Even more useful was NSF's Deep Sea Drilling Project, an ongoing
series of cruises that extracted countless cores from the seabed
(DSDP, 1968-1983, followed by an Ocean Drilling Program). Among
much else, cores pulled from many locations helped map out the world's
climate in the depths of the last ice age, posing an important test
for computer climate models.(55)
|
=>The oceans
=>Climatologists
|
Global Warming Becomes a Political Issue
(1980-1983) TOP
OF PAGE |
|
By 1980, many climate
scientists thought it likely that harmful global warming was on the
way, but Federal budgets for their research were not rising. In 1981,
Ronald Reagan took the presidency with an administration that openly
scorned their concerns. He brought with him a backlash that had been
building against the environmental movement. Many
conservatives denied nearly every environmental worry, global warming
included. They lumped all such concerns together as the rants of business-hating
liberals, a Trojan Horse for government regulation. The National Climate
Program Office found itself serving, as an observer put it, as "an
outpost in enemy territory."(56)
The new administration laid plans to cut funding for CO2
studies in particular, deeming such research unnecessary. Everything
connected with the subject became politically sensitive. Thus when
NASA scientist James Hansen published a study showing that the world
had been getting warmer, and the New York Times made it a
front-page story, the DOE reneged on funding they had promised Hansen.
He had to lay off five people from his institute.(57) (link from below) Such cutbacks
were not enough for the DOE program's enemies. "The question of concern,"
one staff scientist remarked, "will be whether we have jobs rather
than how we spend money."(58)
This was only one example of a politicization of science that extended into areas as diverse as smog pollution and embryonic research. |
= Milestone
<=Modern temp's
<=>Keeling's funds
|
A total gutting of greenhouse effect research was narrowly averted
when scientists rallied behind Representative Albert Gore, Jr. As
a student at Harvard a quarter-century back, Gore had been impressed
by lectures Revelle gave there. Revelle had displayed Keeling's curve
of relentlessly rising CO2. "We were looking
at only eight years of information," Gore recalled, "but if this trend
continued, human civilization would be forcing a profound and disruptive
change in the global climate." It came as a shock to him, exploding
his childhood assumption that "the Earth is so vast and nature so
powerful that nothing we do can have any major or lasting effect on
the normal functioning of its natural systems."(59) Over the years Gore had kept abreast
of the technical issues as they developed, and he shared the concern
about global warming as it grew among scientists. No doubt he also
saw a political opening. As a champion of environmental issues he
could display leadership in one of the few areas where the Reagan
administration's policies disturbed a large majority of voters. |
|
Gore joined a few other Congressmen to embarrass
the administration with hearings on the proposed cuts. The hearings
won a smattering of attention in the press, including an editorial
in the Washington Post saying that global warming had moved
outside the "sandals and granola crowd" to mainstream science. The
hearings themselves counted less than the echo in the press. As an
aide close to the process put it, "the popular media is the most potent
way of convincing a member of Congress that he should pay attention
to scientific issues." Politicians did not read scientific journals,
nor much care what they said. Rather, they relied on the press as
the "prime detector of the public's fears."(60) Sporadic press attention to greenhouse
warming through the rest of the year embarrassed the administration
enough to avert the worst of the threatened budget cuts. |
<=>Keeling's funds
|
The small band of climate
scientists who were not only alarmed about global warming, but determined
to do something about it, worked harder than ever to attract attention,
even at risk of sounding alarmist. They had some success at getting
stories into newspapers and magazines. The politicians who supported
them were still more oriented toward getting press coverage. For example,
for a 1984 hearing Gore called in Carl Sagan, a respectable atmospheric
scientist but far more famous as an astronomy popularizer. Sagan would
attract television cameras to the hearings better than the specialists
who devoted all their time to research. |
<=Public opinion
<=>International |
The biggest concern of Sagan and some other
atmospheric scientists pointed in another direction. In 1983, they
announced calculations that a nuclear war could bring on a "nuclear
winter," a profound cooling that might last for years. While this
warning had little connection with the greenhouse effect, it did thrust
forward the troublesome idea that human technology could bring on
a climate disaster. The "nuclear winter" discussion grew into a harsh
political controversy, for it was a deliberate attack on the Reagan
administration's refusal to reduce the nation's nuclear arsenal. This
reinforced the tendency for debate about possible climate changes
to polarize along traditional political lines. |
<=World winter |
As the public forum became a stage for strident combat, the only
progress came from the scientists who worked quietly behind the scenes.
One of the best tools they created was an Earth System Sciences Committee,
set up by NASA in 1983. The space agency was planning a "Global Habitability"
program, which would eventually launch satellites to observe global
change, and needed to fit this in with the plans of other agencies.
The new advisory committee organized the government's first truly
large-scale, interdisciplinary initiative to study global change with
full interagency and international cooperation. On the committee,
members struck bargains among agency officials and leaders of science
disciplines, forging a common front. Eventually they issued a report
that represented a consensus of the leading players. |
|
This method for consensual lobbying drew on practices that physicists
and astronomers had devised in the 1960s in their search for increased
funding. Rather than competing in the distorting hurly-burly of press releases, leading scientists fought
out their differences first among themselves. Once they agreed on
a short list of top-priority programs, they put the weight of their
joint prestige behind it. The administration's budget officials and
Congress, pleased to see a coordinated effort endorsed by scientific
authorities, opened their pockets, and there was more money for everyone.(61) |
|
Quiet negotiation among scientists of a consensus
program also worked well on the international level. A landmark World
Climate Conference, held in Geneva in 1979, gave rise to a "World
Climate Research Programme" that organized a variety of large-scale
cooperative projects. American scientists played a major role in designing
the projects, then went back to government agencies with a strong
case for funding their share. |
<=International |
There were more traditional tools for bringing science to bear
on policy, ranging from secretive groups advising the armed forces
up to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. In the former
category were the JASONs, recruited from the nation’s most
brilliant physicists to conduct wide-ranging studies on military
topics. Their work had come under fire from fellow academics when
they aided the Vietnam War effort, and for a 1979 study they decided
to step away from national security affairs by studying climate
change. They even constructed a simplified (one-dimensional) computer model all their own as
a check on the meteorologists. The JASONs concluded, like earlier
panels, that global warming might bring serious consequences. The
world's food supply could shrink, the sea level might rise with
harmful speed, and either of these might drive large-scale displacement
of populations. The climate was not so remote from national security
after all. |
|
The report worried the President's Science
Adviser (a geophysicist) enough to prompt him to ask the Academy
to give a second opinion on what the JASONs had identified as the
most crucial issue, the validity of computer models. In 1979 a panel
of experts chaired by veteran computer meteorologist Jule Charney
endorsed the models,announcing they had grown good enough to rely
on. The panel was quite confident that doubling of CO2
would bring substantial warming (1.5-4.5°C) by the middle of
the coming century. Heat was already building up in the atmosphere-ocean
system, they concluded, so that "A wait-and-see policy may mean
waiting until it is too late."(62*)
|
=>Models (GCMs)
<=Models (GCMs)
|
In 1980, Congress passed an Energy Security
Act which included a section directing the administration to hire
the Academy to carry out a comprehensive study on the impacts of rising
CO2. Using the JASON and Charney reports as a
starting-point, in 1983 the Academy issued the fruit of a sustained
effort to work out a consensus in a panel of leading experts. The
scientists agreed that they were "deeply concerned" about the environmental
changes that they expected a temperature rise would bring. Worse,
they pointed out that "we may get into trouble in ways that we have
barely imagined" for example, if global warming released methane
(a potent greenhouse gas) from seabed sediments. These cautions, however,
were only passing remarks within a summary that was on balance reassuring.
Hansen remarked that the report "seemed to be aimed at damping concern."
|
<=Other gases
|
Indeed the report, following the Academy's
traditions, avoided alarming claims. Its summary concluded that
warming would probably come on the lower side of the range the Charney
report had calculated, and certainly not soon. There would be time
enough to take action if necessary. After all, if scientists did
eventually demonstrate that global warming was a grave problem,
governments would immediately take strong action... wouldn’t
they? The panelists failed to take note of the Charney report's
concern that clear signs of warming would be delayed simply because
the oceans were absorbing heat. Projecting a mere degree or two
of temperature change in the foreseeable future, the Academy's report noted
that "climate change is far from novel; large numbers of people
live in all climatic zones and move easily between them." That
reflected a benign view of an automatic self-regulating balance
between natural forces and human society, a view still common among
the conservative scientists who dominated the Academy. "Overall,"
the report concluded, "we find in the CO2
issue reason for concern, but not panic." Heading off what some saw as a threat of intrusive government policy-making, the panel's chief recommendation was that the only thing to do at present was to fund vigilant monitoring and other studies. It was true, after all, that more money needed to be spent on research.(63*)
|
<=The oceans
|
Americans might have received and
ignored this as just another dull Academy document, but three days
later the Environmental Protection Agency released a report of its
own about the greenhouse effect. The science was mostly the same,
but the tone of the EPA's conclusions was more anxious. "Substantial
increases in global warming may occur sooner than most of us would
like to believe," the EPA authors warned. Noting that an outright
ban on fossil fuels seemed out of the question on both economic and
political grounds, they saw no practicable way to avoid a rise of
temperature, perhaps a big rise. There could be "a change in habitability
in many geographic regions" within a few decades, with potentially
"catastrophic" consequences. The clear implication was that work on
new energy policies should get underway without delay.(64) |
=>Impacts
|
The Reagan administration
saw the EPA report as a political attack and attacked it in return,
opening a caustic public debate between people who were alarmed by
global warming and people who felt it could be ignored. The controversy,
piled on top of Congressional hearings and the efforts of outspoken
scientists, alerted a sizable fraction of citizens and politicians
to the prediction that stood at the center of both reports. It was
official global warming might be coming. Climate scientists
found themselves in demand to give tutorials to journalists, government
agency officials, and even groups of senators, who would sit obediently
for hours of lecturing on greenhouse gases and computer models. |
<=>Public
opinion
= Milestone
|
For the time being the
issue was resolved: yes, global warming could be a threat, and the
practical response for the moment was to study it. Weary of the topic
and distracted by more urgent matters, the media and public turned
their main attention elsewhere. But while the issue was no longer
at a boil it continued to simmer. |
<=Public opinion
|
Through the 1980s, Gore and others
in Congress repeatedly called upon Revelle and like-minded colleagues
to testify about global warming. The hearings won modest coverage
on inside pages of leading newspapers and occasionally a minute or
two on television. As one government scientist remarked, many in Congress
had "for the most part accepted the potential Doomsday scenarios..."(67) An example of the tone was Broecker's 1987 testimony to the U.S. Senate's
Subcommittee on Environmental Protection, reporting that his studies
revealed the possibility of "very sharp jumps" of climate within the
near future. "I come here as sort of the prophet," he said. "There
are going to be harsh changes." Like a good prophet, Broecker remonstrated
with the Senators. Money had been wasted in the bureaucracy, he complained,
rather than given to scientists for research. "We botched it
partly it is your fault because you want answers to questions
on a very short time scale."(68) |
<=The
oceans |
Research Organization in the1980s
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
The Reagan administration meanwhile backed
off from its dogmatic stand, as it did on many issues after its first
couple of years in office. The most opinionated anti-environmentalist staff members
had departed, and the DOE, EPA, and other agencies, responding to
requests from Congress, began working to predict the likely social
and economic impacts of global warming.(69)
A broadly multi-disciplinary approach was taking shape, in which climate
scientists began to interact with experts in many other fields. Most
of their studies found that global warming could have severe consequences
for agriculture, the economy, and so forth. They all became increasingly
involved in discussing the issue with policy-makers. |
<=Simple models
|
The concern did not translate into increased
funding for scientific research. Repeated Congressional attempts to
restrain Federal spending kept NSF's total budget, among other research
budgets, no higher in 1985 than in 1965. Leaders of the Reagan administration
particularly distrusted any activity, even research, that they connected
with a threat of government interference with business. Overall, the
Federal government spent less money for the environmental sciences
during the 1980s than during the 1970s. NASA and NOAA suffered cuts
severe enough to force the entire meteorological program into stagnation,
so that weather satellites launched in the 2000s would be flying with
1970s technology. As for global warming, by one discouraged estimate
the Reagan administration spent less than $50 million per year for
research directly focused on the topic — a trivial sum compared
with many other research programs.(70)
|
=>International
|
Organization of the work remained scattered. Up through the mid
1980s, the Academy had taken the lead in providing some general guidance
on priorities, but with the increased prominence of the issue, both
Congress and various executive departments insisted on playing a role.
The National Climate Program Office, with scant funds of its own
to spend, held little sway. That left the job mainly in the hands
of individual agencies, which, as an official complained, "pursued
individual tracks, vying for primacy." In 1989, Rep. George Brown
of California long a mainstay of Congressional support for
science in general and climate research in particular called
the climate change research program "a bureaucratic nightmare," a
"failure" in addressing its vital goals.(71)
|
|
Yet the
agencies had enough money and enough organization to push atmospheric
research ahead, with results that aroused the public. The discovery
of a "hole" in the atmosphere's protective ozone layer, although it
was only indirectly connected with greenhouse warming, showed how
industrial emissions could swiftly damage the planet's atmosphere.
The 1977 law banning "spray can" chemicals was plainly insufficient.
By 1987, scientific and public concern had grown so strong that the
U.S. and other governments signed an international treaty, the Montreal
Protocol, further restricting the production of chemicals that destroyed
the ozone. Some hoped that governments would follow the example in
addressing greenhouse gases. In December 1987, Gore (now a Senator)
introduced the ozone problem into presidential politics during a television
debate with other Democratic candidates.(72) Sensitized to atmospheric risks, the public turned its
attention back to global warming in the summer of 1988. |
<=Public opinion
<=International
|
The Summer of 1988
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
It was a season
of record heat waves, and drought so severe that barges could barely
navigate the Mississippi River. An international conference of scientists in Toronto concluded that greenhouse warming was a grave threat and called on the world's governments to start taking action to avert it. The message to policy-makers and the public was summed up by a leader of the group: "If we choose to take on this challenge, it appears that we can slow the rate of change substantially, giving us time to develop mechanisms so that the cost to society and the damage to ecosystems can be minimized. We could alternatively close our eyes, hope for the best, and pay the cost when the bill comes due."(73) The media reported the Toronto conference's findings far more widely than earlier statements, followed by extensive coverage of disquieting Congressional testimony by Hansen and other scientists and many additional warnings. The public began to feel that climate change was
a serious issue, something their government should no longer ignore. |
<=Public opinion
<=Public opinion |
The U.S. Congress, where few bills on the subject had been introduced
since 1978, returned to the issue. Several bills related to climate
were introduced in 1987, four of which specifically mentioned "global
warming." By early 1988, even before the hot summer, practical steps
were under serious study, such as a "carbon tax" levied on emissions
of CO2. New climate bills reached an unprecedented
peak later in 1988, and they continued to be introduced fairly frequently
for the next few years. Along with the bills a large number of hearings
and other congressional actions addressed climate change, peaking
in 1989.(74) |
|
Most problems that a government addresses are thrust upon it by
pressures of the day foreign aggression, unemployment, and
so forth. Global warming was harder to notice. It was only an issue
because scientists predicted a future problem, and the scientists
themselves shaded their predictions with qualifications and uncertainties.
To get advice on what should be done, through the 1970s and 1980s
the federal government had drawn on panels of experts, mostly convened
by the National Academy of Sciences. These had recommended no big
policy changes, but only the usual call to spend More Money on Research,
and even that advice had not always been followed. |
|
Around 1988, however, many people both in the scientific community
and among the public began to feel that governments ought to do something
to retard the emission of greenhouse gases. By the nature of the atmosphere,
such steps needed international scope. The scientific advice likewise
should be international. Foreign scientists would not only engage
their own nations in the process, but would offer the most prestigious
and convincing consensus. |
|
In the negotiations that crafted the Montreal Protocol to restrict
ozone-destroying gases, the U.S. Department of State, working in alliance
with the EPA, had become committed to international environmental
cooperation. Officials hoped to repeat the success with greenhouse
gases. Here as with ozone, the key would be to get an international
consensus on the science. For global warming, however, that could
take a long time. The administration's greenhouse skeptics, loathing
the idea of another Montreal-style agreement with mandatory targets,
welcomed any delay which would stave off demands for concrete action.
Greenhouse worriers, on their side, expected that thorough studies
and discussions would eventually result in scientific recommendations
that would exert irresistible political pressure. Thus both sides
agreed on a lengthy process. |
|
What kind of process? The administration's
skeptics entirely distrusted the independent, international committees
of scientists that had been driving the issue. If the process continued
in the same fashion, the skeptics warned, future prestigious groups
might make radical environmentalist pronouncements. Greenhouse worriers
were ready to agree to government supervision of the process, recognizing
that nothing practical could be done unless officials and bureaucrats
were drawn into the work. The U.S. government therefore recommended
to international agencies the creation of some kind of new "intergovernmental
mechanism." Other governments fell in line, and an Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988.(75)
|
=>International
|
Resistance and Stasis (1989-2001) TOP
OF PAGE |
|
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) joined the
National Academy as official climate adviser to the U.S. government.
Representing virtually all the world's governments and their climate
experts, the IPCC issued a series of reports that called with increasing
conviction for action. Meanwhile other groups, ranging from government
agencies to environmentalist organizations, devised lists of practical
steps to retard global warming. In the first place, governments could
set targets for reducing greenhouse gases. To meet the targets they
could increase taxes on fossil fuels, impose efficiency standards,
and so forth. There was no lack of advice on what should be done.
|
|
President George H.W. Bush
was more receptive to environmental concerns than his predecessor.
In a passing remark during the 1988 presidential campaign, he had
pledged to take real action on the greenhouse effect.(76)
But the new administration would do nothing that might annoy its
industrial allies, and the only actual measures it took were some
mild improvements in the organization and funding of scientific
research on climate (see below). Many in
the new administration, as in the earlier Reagan administration,
only wished the issue would somehow disappear. In particular, the
powerful White House Chief of Staff, John H. Sununu, vigorously
opposed any measure that environmentalists proposed. By the end
of Bush's first year in office, when he spoke of global warming
(or "global climate change" as he now called it), he concentrated
on the scientific doubts and economic risks that argued against
any action. A White House memorandum, inadvertently released, proposed
that the best way to deal with concern about global warming would
be "to raise the many uncertainties." As a cynical observer remarked,
emphasizing uncertainties "had the dual effect of justifying
increased research funding while delaying policy decisons—a
win for both the scientists and the politicians!"(77)
|
|
Uncertainty was easy to raise, with an energetic
minority of reputable scientists steadfastly denying all evidence
and arguments for global warming. These scientists' skepticism was
widely circulated in publications sponsored by conservative groups
and by industrial interests that opposed regulation. In the forefront
was the Global Climate Coalition, generously funded by dozens of major
corporations. Advertising to the public and sending persuasive materials
to journalists was the most visible part of the group's work, but
perhaps not the most important part. With professionally crafted presentations,
plus extensive face-to-face lobbying in Washington and at international
meetings, the Coalition did much to persuade officials and members
of Congress who were ignorant of science that there was no sound reason
to worry about climate change. |
<=Public opinion
|
In 1990 the IPCC, issued
its first report. The international scientific consensus
flatly contradicted the skeptical scientists' arguments. Nevertheless
the minority viewpoint continued to find favor with top administration
officials. Their stubborn rejection of the IPCC report became an embarrassment
in 1992. World leaders were preparing their grandest meeting ever,
an "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro (officially, the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development). "Unless the Bush Administration
quickly adopts a more reasonable course," the New York Times
editorialized (Feb. 18, 1992), "it will cast the U.S. as an environmental
pariah more concerned with its own comfort than with the well-being
of the Earth." Sununu's departure from the administration permitted
a less rigid position. The Rio meeting adopted targets which included
rolling back emissions in the United States to the 1990 level by the
year 2000. The Bush administration responded by adopting several inexpensive,
"no regrets" policies to promote energy efficiency. These were far
too modest to meet the targets, and in fact emissions continued to
climb. The U.S. government remained more resistant to serious action
against greenhouse warming than almost any other major industrial
power. |
<=International
=>International
|
One thing that did move forward was studies,
extending into complex economic and engineering issues. A 1991 Academy
report listed no less than 58 policies proposed for mitigating greenhouse
warming. Some were "no-regrets" policies, so practical that they would
be beneficial to the economy whether or not there was a global warming
problem. Governments might, for example, promote improvements in the
efficiency of commercial lighting, home heating, and trucks. Or they
could reduce the costly subsidies that encouraged wasteful use of
fossil fuels. Some policies would carry a modest cost that would be
compensated by valuable social benefits. Why not devise ways to reduce
car commuting time, for example, and reforest overgrazed wastelands?
Some ideas were too expensive at present, but might become practical
if technology was driven forward by the regulation or taxation of
greenhouse gas emissions, or by plain desperation. It might someday
make sense, for example, to extract CO2 as a
power plant burned fuel, and sequester the gas in the depths of the
oceans or underground. And some proposals were visionary. Couldn't
we replace fossil fuels by growing crops that stored energy from sunlight,
or launch flotillas of mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight away
from the Earth?(78) |
<=>Rain-making
|
After Bill Clinton took office as President in 1993, his new Vice
President, Gore, and others persuaded him to endorse a U.S. "Climate
Change Action Plan." This formally committed the nation to the Rio
target for reducing greenhouse gases. More conservative forces still
dominated Congress, however. Many powerful conservatives not only
scoffed at any research that pointed to environmental problems, but
held deep suspicions about the United Nations and all its cooperative
international programs. Some turned away from science itself
preferring folk cures to research-based medicine, or denying the evidence
for biological evolution. Faced with these ardent opponents, Clinton
was unwilling to spend his limited political capital on an issue that
would not become acute during his term in office. His greenhouse policy
came down to only a few inexpensive steps such as improvements in
energy efficiency, which would never meet the Rio target. Congress
likewise gave little attention to climate, and during the mid-1990s
almost no bills relating to climate were introduced.(79)
|
|
In international negotiations,
which culminated in 1997 with a huge conference in Kyoto, the United
States remained the most powerful holdout against mandatory greenhouse
gas reductions. The American public was interested in the issue, but
confused. Pressure on Congress came mainly from anti-government conservatives
and industries that depended on fossil fuels. Right-leaning think
tanks redoubled their efforts to deny that global warming posed a
threat; they published more documents on the topic in 1996 than in
all previous years combined, and a far greater number still in 1997
as the Kyoto Conference approached. Corporate groups joined with
their own well-funded publicity. A typical argument in the pamphlets,
op-ed essays, and press conferences was to point with horror at the
specter of a tax on emissions. They claimed it would impose a dreadful
rise in gasoline prices, supposedly intolerable to Americans (or anyway
those in the United States—Canadians, like the citizens of almost
every other advanced nation, accepted high gasoline taxes as beneficial).
The opponents also appealed to nationalism by warning that other countries
would seize an economic advantage over the United States unless all
reduced their emissions together. Even before the Kyoto delegates
assembled, the U.S. Senate declared by a vote of 95-0 that it would
reject any treaty that did not set limits for developing countries.
|
<=Public opinion
<=>Other gases |
The Kyoto conference nevertheless ended with
an agreement that pledged to restrict greenhouse gases but allowed
exemptions for developing countries — the Kyoto Protocol, a
compromise brokered by Gore in an eleventh-hour intervention that
saved the meeting from collapse. Back in the United States, the Global
Climate Coalition mounted a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign,
insisting yet again that greenhouse gas restrictions were needless
and would bring economic disaster. The administration never submitted
the treaty to the Senate for ratification. With little debate, Congress
declined to make any policy changes that might help move toward meeting
the Kyoto targets.(80) |
=>International |
With the American public
mostly confused or indifferent, politicians gave little time to the
matter among the many demands for their attention. Global warming
did not look like a winning issue for either party. During the election
campaign of 2000, the issue came up only briefly in passing, even
though it had long been identified with the Democratic candidate,
Gore. He later said that he and his his advisers had not thought
they would get favorable press attention, or much attention at all,
by bringing up global warming. The media were full of doubts that
there was actually a problem, and anyway his opponent had pledged
to take action against greenhouse gases if elected. |
<=Public opinion
|
When George W.
Bush became President, some hoped that as a proven conservative he
could get restrictions on CO2 through Congress
more easily than his opponent, Gore, could have done. A few members
of Bush's cabinet, and many foreign leaders, pressed the new President
to take steps against climate change. But a furious lobbying campaign
by Bush's friends in the energy industries and other conservatives
drove the administration to renounce any restriction. The United Statesgovernment repudiated the Kyoto Protocol. As for domestic initiatives
that might reduce greenhouse gases, the administration considered
them only so far as they might serve as public window-dressing for
programs whose main aim was to strengthen corporations in the fossil
fuel or other industries.(81*) |
=>International |
Research Organization in the 1990s
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
During these decades, heightened
concern about climate change brought only one solid result —
a stronger Federal research effort. That came partly as a simple share
of a general increase in funding for all scientific research (in particular,
the NSF's budget doubled between 1985 and 2000). Equally important
was the public anxiety and media outcry that had broken out in 1988,
forcing politicians to take some kind of visible action. Although
most policy-makers were loath to regulate fuels, they could promise
more research. Plans to improve climate research organization and
funding had been working their way up through the bureaucracy with
support from the usual sources — the Department of State (under
increasing pressure from European governments concerned about global
warming), DOE, NOAA, and EPA. In 1989, the interagency Committee on
Earth Sciences formulated a Global Change Research Plan for the United
States, and the first Bush administration put the Presidential seal
of approval on the initiative. The following year Congress codified
and funded the program in a Global Change Research Act that created
a “United States Global Change Research Program” (USGCRP),
which would attempt with minor success to coordinate the work going
on under various agencies. The program’s annual budget exceeded
$1 billion in 1991 and climbed to $1.8 billion by 1995. (link
from above) |
|
As often in environmental budgeting, a good part of this was not
new money, but a reshuffling of existing appropriations under new
labels. More than half of the Global Change program's funds were committed
to NASA's 1992 "Mission to Planet Earth." This was an ambitious program
of observation satellites that had many purposes besides studying
global change, and in the end it proved too ambitious. A conservative
Congress cut NASA's overall budget sharply year by year through the
1990s, and the shortage of money, along with inconsistent administration,
resulted in an observing program far inferior to what its planners
in the 1980s had anticipated. But NASA did end up gathering data on
everything from atmospheric ozone to tropical deforestation, much
of it helpful to climate studies. Funding directly for climate research
increased significantly in NSF and (at a somewhat lower level) in
the DOE. Moreover, NOAA’s support for research at universities
took a big step.(82) |
|
Climate scientists were not satisfied, for the budgets were not
rising as fast as their suspicion that global warming would wreak
serious damage. Meanwhile, in a related and even more important area
— basic research on alternatives to fossil fuels such as solar
energy and conservation — U.S. government support had peaked
back in 1980 in the wake of the oil crisis and then fell back sharply.
Private investment in energy research continued to decline into the
21st century, while government funding stagnated at a level too low
to accomplish much. |
|
Some climate research program continued to complain
they were starved for funds. "Why is this so?" one scientist asked.
"I suspect the answer lies mainly in the unwillingness of top officials
to make firm commitments to a problem that requires sustained focus
for many decades.... 'What? No immediate payoff?'"(83) A panel reviewing U.S. climate studies
reported in 1998 that the work suffered from concentrating on costly
satellites at the expense of other approaches. There were also persistent
problems with management, especially (no surprise) a failure to coordinate
efforts across agency borders. "If you say everything is connected
to everything else, then it's hard to make progress," the panel's
leader observed.(84) |
|
That was exactly the difficulty
in climate science that had long hindered everyone, from scientists
doing research to politicians making laws. With research dispersed
among a variety of independent-minded scientific disciplines and
agencies, the data and ideas that some understood very well remained
obscure to others. Important new topics of study fell between funding
stools. And policy-makers stumbled amid a clamor of different voices.
In 2001 yet another Academy panel declared yet again that the federal
government needed much better coordination of research.(85)
Somehow a hundred threads, all the varieties of scientific and societal
thinking, had to be woven into practical policies. If nobody did
that, and so if nothing was done in the end well, inaction
would itself be a policy, if maybe not the wisest.
|
<=>Climatologists
See general comments on postwar US
science funding in the Keeling essay. |
In its 1990 climate legislation,
Congress had called for a "National Assessment" of the
impacts of global warming. Vice President Gore saw this as an opportunity
to build grassroots support for his plans to address the problem,
and the Assessment became a large exercise. An innovative democratic
process drew in over three hundred scientists and thousands of "stakeholders"
— ranchers, farmers, local officials and other concerned citizens,
in meetings where education mingled with debate. The resulting report
was checked by a distinguished commitee (including the ubiquitous
Bob White), and finally appeared in 2000. The experts reported that
global warming could produce some benefits, but most of the impacts
would be harmful from the outset. (This essay does not cover the
many "impact studies" and debates that attended such conclusions.
See the brief summary of the history of impact
studies.) The report was meant to guide the work of the incoming
administration.(86) |
<=>Impacts
|
The George W. Bush Administration
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
The new White House staff deliberately buried
Gore's climate assessment, and persistently ignored the Congressional mandate to publicly
assess impacts. Government scientists and officials were forbidden
from using the Assessment or referring to it in any way.(86a) It was only the beginning
of efforts by Bush administration appointees to suppress scientific
reports, if they threatened opinions popular among conservatives. |
|
Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, almost the only American
science reporter to give global warming the sustained attention
it merited, heard about this in 2005. Scientists were appalled by
Revkin’s report that a NASA administrator had threatened Hansen
with severe consequences if he made public his belief that global
warming required immediate action. Hansen knew such administrative
threats were not idle (see above). Other
NASA scientists and some at NOAA and EPA told similar stories —
mostly in private.The political imbroglio left Hansen more exposed
than ever to the political limelight. Relying on the respect he
had earned for his outstanding scientific work, Hansen increasingly
addressed every audience that would listen to his soft-spoken warnings
of approaching disaster. He testified before Congress, sought interviews
with political leaders from state governors to foreign presidents,
responded to journalists and spoke to audiences of ordinary citizens.
As one reporter noted, "Here’s a guy who really just
wanted to get back to the hobbit hole of his research, but who was
forced by the political situation in which he found himself... to
march off and confront the dragon."(87)
|

Official
climate statement edited by industrial
adviser. |
The Bush administration, under pressure to do something about
global warming, in 2002-2004 developed a "Climate Change Research
Initiative" managed under a "Climate Change Science Program."
Scientists initially criticized the plans, but after a series of
revisions they agreed that the program would modestly improve coordination
among the 13 semi-autonomous federal agencies involved in climate
change research. The budgets for this research remained flat at
best, in keeping with the administration’s overall weakening
of programs relating to the environment. Meanwhile political appointees
cast doubt on the emerging scientific consensus about global warming
(or "climate change," a phrase that a Republican Party
strategist suggested sounded less
frightening.)(88)
|
|
Yet ultimately the science was undeniable. In August 2004, the administration
sent Congress an analysis (developed at NCAR) explaining that greenhouse
gases were the only likely explanation for the warming seen in recent
decades. Unlike earlier reports, this came with endorsement letters
signed by the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Commerce, and
the President’s science adviser. The administration thus at
last officially agreed that humans were bringing on global warming.
But it proposed no new practical actions to address the problem. In
2005, Bush appointees struck from NASA's budget important satellite
missions that would have improved observations of climate change and
its causes. They even reduced funding for analyzing data already in
hand. |
|
The Global Climate Coalition had collapsed in 2000 as key corporations
withdrew under pressure from public advocacy groups. Such a lobbying
organization hardly seemed to be needed, since the energy business
felt its interests were well represented by the Bush Administration.
Nevertheless a "Cooler Heads Coalition" (created in 1997)
carried on, funded by corporations such as ExxonMobil and wealthy
individuals. The new Coalition and other groups continued to lobby
legislators, the press and the public.(89)
For example, in February 2005 the Coalition held a "Congressional
and media briefing on the Kyoto Protocol" with "light
refreshments" in the Senate Dirksen Office Building. The aim
was to decry the Protocol, which was about to go into effect after
ratification by nearly every significant country in the world except
the United States.
|
|
Climate change was scarcely mentioned by
the presidential candidates during the 2004 election. During this
period it stood in a political spotlight for only a few days in
October 2003, when the Senate debated a bill sponsored by two sometime
presidential hopefuls, maverick Republican John McCain and Democrat
Joseph Lieberman. They hoped to create a weak carbon emissions trading
system. The bid met opposition from the Bush administration, and
was denounced by Senators who exclaimed that restrictions would
devastate the American economy. When the bill was defeated by a
not overwhelming margin of 55-43, environmentalists were encouraged
that opinion was moving in their favor, although slowly. |
<=>Public
opinion
|
The Obama Administration
TOP
OF PAGE |
|
After the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the
2006 elections, most political observers predicted that some sort
of meaningful legislation on climate change would be enacted within
the next few years. Hopes redoubled when the Obama administration
took office in 2008, declaring that it fully accepted the necessity of curbing
greenhouse gas emissions. However, Congress remained sharply divided
along partisan lines on the issue, as on many issues more obviously
political. The Republican Senator James Inhofe had repeatedly held
hearings that he imagined would expose global warming as "the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people;" only
Democrats openly opposed his arguments. When former Senator Al Gore visited his old colleagues to urge
them to impose a tax on carbon emissions (using the revenues to
reduce payroll taxes), few politicians of either party were willing
to move in that direction. The Democrats themselves were divided,
with powerful Senators representing the viewpoints of the utilities
and corporations that depended on fossil fuels. Attempts to initiate legislation were immediately warped by demands, from a variety of powerful constituencies,
for exemptions or outright subsidies.(90)
(These essays do not address the complex history of debate over the economics of climate change and policies to ameliorate it.) |
|
In 2009 the House of Representatives managed to pass by a slight majority a bill to institute a European-style "cap-and-trade" scheme to restrict emissions (the Waxman-Markey bill, named after its sponsors, both Democrats). The bill died in the Senate, where the Republican minority exercised a veto through threats of filibuster. Any hopes for action were squashed by the 2010 elections, which returned many Republicans. Most of the new representatives openly repudiated any concern about global warming. Under pressure from corporate donors and a populist movement with anti-intellectual undertones, the Republican politicians who did worry about climate change refused to address the issue.(91) |
<=>Public
opinion |
Action proceeded more
effectively at other levels of society. Centrist Republicans like
the Governors of California and Florida joined with more traditionally
"green" politicians to address an issue that a large majority
of citizens now considered important. Eight states and New York City filed
a lawsuit against five power companies, citing damages for their contributions
to climate change. The state of California similarly sued the largest
automakers for damages. In 2007 separate coalitions of Northeastern,
Midwestern, Southwestern and West Coast states laid plans for mandatory
regional systems to track and cut back their citizens' emissions.
Other states as well as hundreds of cities and thousands of smaller
governmental entities also looked into a variety of practical
steps.(92) In fact, overall the United States
was doing as much as most European nations. Meanwhile numerous corporations large and small, worried
about adverse public opinion and legal liability, and noticing that
the governments of nearly every other industrial nation were beginning
to regulate greenhouse gases, prepared themselves by launching programs
to reduce their own emissions. |
<=>Public
opinion
<=>International
|
The job of conserving energy
and reducing pollution was also taken up by agencies of the federal
government from the Department of Energy to the National Park Service.
Well-informed military officers, who had noticed global warming
ever since suggestions in the 1950s that the Arctic Ocean might
some day become navigable, realized that they might be called upon
to handle everything from hordes of environmental refugees to outright
conflict over dwindling resources. Seeing global warming as a "national
security" problem on a level with war or terrorism, military
units began working to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Churches,
universities, and countless other nonprofit organizations joined
in, along with a rapidly increasing number of individual citizens. They understood that even the smallest step was a step to delay the impending dangers. To actually solve the problem, however, would require comprehensive laws and regulations with powerful effects on established interests. Neither lawmakers, Federal officials, nor the public had yet mobilized the will to enact these. |
<=Impacts
|
"Innocently pursuing their research, climate scientists were unwittingly destabilizing the political and social order," as one observer remarked. The scientific findings threatened industries basic to the world's economy, undercut optimistic assumptions about the future, aroused hostility between people with differing fundamental beliefs about the role of government in society, and forced politicians to choose between scientific advice and the comfort of their constituents. The scientists' research "has brought us to one of those rare historical fracture points when knowledge diverges from power, portending a long period of struggle before the two are once more aligned."(93) |
|
What can governments do about
global warming, and what should they do? See my Personal
Note and links. |
|
|
RELATED:
Home
International Cooperation
The Public and Climate
General Circulation Models
Supplements:
Money for Keeling: Monitoring CO2
Levels
Climate Modification Schemes
1. For rise of weather services: Nebeker (1995), p. 87. BACK
2. United States (1953),
pp. 4-7, 24, 36. BACK
3. National Academy of Sciences
(1957), "housekeeping" p. 4, "inadequate" p. 14, "esprit" p. 15.
BACK
4. Sapolsky (1990); Mukerji (1989), pp. 52 ff., see passim for government
funding in general; Weir (2001).
BACK
5. I thank Ron Doel for his draft, "Military constitution
of the environmental sciences in America, 1945-1965," 1996. Also Doel
(1997); Hamblin (2002), quote p. 26. BACK
6. Lambright and Changnon (1989).
BACK
7. von Neumann (1955).
BACK
8. On a secret Pentagon briefing by Ahlmann, see
Doel (2002), p. 545. Note Revelle's
prediction of Russian expansion in an ice-free Arctic in "Impacts"
essay footnote here. Probably there was
classified climatological warfare work that has not come to light, and
which contributed to the openly published developments. See Institute
for Advanced Study, Proposal to establish Meteorology Project, May 8,
1946, published as Appendix A to Thompson
(1983), p. 766; for further references, see Weart
(1997). BACK
9. The Lockheed group split off soon after Plass
joined it to found an independent Systems Research Corporation. Interview
of Plass by Weart, 14 March 1996, AIP. BACK
10. National Academy of Sciences
(1957), p. 8. BACK
11. Keeling (1960); see
Weart (1997). BACK
12. Houghton (1996). BACK
13. van Keuren (2000).
BACK
14. Hart and Victor (1993),
p. 650; Fleagle (1992a), p. 307; Fleagle
(1994), p. 124. BACK
15. Commission on Marine
Science (1969) (chaired by Julius Stratton), quotes pp. 197, 182.
BACK
16. Wenk (1972), ch. 8.
BACK
17. Fleagle (1994), pp.
114, 116 (data), 118. Landsat was reorganized in a 1992 Act of Congress.
BACK
18. Fleagle (1994), pp.
128-131. BACK
19. Hart (1992), pp.
29-32. BACK
20. "Ignorant": Weyl (1968),
p. 60; Hart and Victor (1993), p. 650.
BACK
21. Hart (1992), pp.
17-22; Hart and Victor (1993).
BACK
22. Teller was addressing the American Chemical
Society in December 1957. Matthews (1959),
p. 646; on promotion of nuclear reactors, see Weart
(1988). BACK
23. The issue was brought up in hearings of the
U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. See Clinton Anderson,
interview by Ron Doel, August 1995, transcript, AIP.
BACK
24. Phil Yeager and John Stark, "Mystery of the
Warming World," Washington Sunday Star, 26 Jan. 1958, p. A26,
copy seen in clippings file, Roger Revelle Papers, SIO.
BACK
25. Other participants included Erik Eriksson and
G.N. Plass. Conservation Foundation (1963); see
also the Conservation Foundation's Annual Report for 1963 and Keeling
(1998). BACK
26. The panel, chaired by statistics expert John
W. Tukey, had a CO2 sub-panel chaired by Revelle
and including Broecker, Craig, Keeling, and Smagorinsky. President's
Science Advisory Committee (1965), quote p. 9, see pp. 111-31.
BACK
27. National Academy of Sciences
(1966), "not a dump" vol. 1 p. 10. BACK
28. Budget: Kwa (2001),
p. 140. BACK
29. President's Science Advisory
Committee (1965), p. 26. BACK
30. National Academy of Sciences
(1966), vol. 1, quote p. 20, budget p. 16. BACK
31. Hart (1992). BACK
32. Hecht and Tirpak (1995),
p. 376. BACK
33. Federal Council for Science
and Technology (1974); included as appendix in United
States Congress (95:1) (1977). BACK
34. Edwards (2000a), p.
245. BACK
35. Dotto and Schiff (1978),
esp. pp. 67-89; Conway (2008).
BACK
36. Weinberg (1974). BACK
37. Domestic Council (1974);
United States Congress (95:1) (1977), led by
Rep. George Brown and featuring i.a. Bolin, Bryson and Schneider; United
States Congress (94:2) (1976). BACK
38. I have not done enough research to sort out
all the details of this complicated movement. Sources include Impact
Team (1977), pp. 190-91; Hammond
(1976); Domestic Council (1974); Hecht
and Tirpak (1995), pp. 375-76, 378; quote: Laurmann
(1976). Briefing official: Oreskes & Conway (2010), pp.173-74 (citing Henry Abarbanel, personal communication), regarding the
report JASON (1979). BACK
39. Balco (1999). BACK
40. GARP (1975), quote
p. 2, budget p. 99. BACK
41. National Academy of Sciences
(1977). BACK
42. Philip White, head of ERDA's fossil fuel division,
quoted Business Week (1977).
BACK
43. Pomerance
(1989), pp. 260-61. Global warming is mentioned briefly in passing,
for example, in the landmark essay on "soft" vs. "hard"
energy paths, Lovins (1976).
BACK
44. Kellogg and Schware (1981)
is an example of policy discussions (1980 Aspen Institute workshops).
BACK
45. Acting Asst. Secretary on the Environment James
Liverman, cited by Science News (1977).
BACK
46. Perry and O'Neill (1979),
p. 1757 gives references. BACK
47. Fleagle (1994), p.
95. President's committee: the Domestic Council's Environmental Resources
Committee, Subcommittee on Climate Change, 1975. BACK
48. Fleagle (1994), p.
126. BACK
49. Balco (1999). BACK
50. Broecker to Sen. Paul Tsongas, 7 April 1980,
"CO2 history" file, office files of Wallace Broecker,
LDEO. BACK
51. Fleagle (1994), p.
120; Purdom and Menzel (1996), pp. 106-111; Johnson (1994). See Conway (2008). BACK
52. Vonder Haar and Suomi
(1971). BACK
53. Vonder Haar
et al. (1981); Raschke et al. (1973);
Manabe and Wetherald (1975). I also
used Jennifer Green (NASA History Office), "Nimbus Series," seen online
at a site now gone.Satellite radiation budget measurement history is reviewed
by House et al. (1986); for ERBE,
see this NASA site. BACK
54. Fleagle (1994), p.
121. On all this see Conway (2008). BACK
55. For this and other NSF programs: National Research Council (2000). BACK
56. Fleagle (1992b), p.
72. BACK
57. Stevens (1999), p.
150. BACK
58. Elliott (1977-89),
6 Oct. 1981. BACK
59. "Eight years" would make this ca. 1966. Gore
was a freshman at Harvard in 1965, where Revelle delivered freshman lectures
starting that year. Gore (1992), pp. 4-6. BACK
60. United States Congress
(1977); JJensen (1990). BACK
61. NASA (1988). BACK
62. JASON (1979); see
Finkbeiner (2006) and Oreskes
(2008b), p. 116. National Academy
of Sciences (1979), quote p. viii (in the Foreword by Climate Research
Board chair V.E. Suomi); in 1982 another Academy panel, chaired by Joseph
Smagorinsky, reviewed computer studies and confirmed the first group's
findings. National Research Council (1982).
BACK
63. Hansen et
al. (2000), p. 139; Oreskes & Conway (2010), pp. 174-183. N.b. the conclusions of Oreskes
et al. (2008b) have been challenged by Nierenberg et al. (2010).
Formally this Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee was under the Board
of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Commission on Physical Sciences,
Mathematics, and Resources of the National Research Council. The study
was commissioned by the President's Office of Science and Technology.
The summary may be read online here.
National Academy of Sciences (1983),
quotes pp. 3, 61. BACK
64. Seidel and
Keyes (1983), quotes pp. ix, 7-7. BACK
65, 66 omitted.
67. E.g., New York Times, Dec. 11, 1985,
p. 18. Quote: Elliott (1977-89), 13 June 1986 entry.
BACK
68. U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Environmental Protection,
Hearings, Jan. 26-28 1987, pp. 21-23. BACK
69. Schneider (1989),
pp. 130-32. BACK
70. Conway (2008);
Threat: D. Slade to E. Bierly and 8 others, 1/28/86, in "Trivelpiece"
file, office files of Wallace Broecker, LDEO. BACK
71. Brown, address to EOGC conference, 18 Sept.
1989. Fleagle (1992), "vying" p. 69, see 70-74 for U.S. global
change programs in general. BACK
72. Roan (1989), pp. 206,
208, 224. BACK
73. Michael McElroy, quoted by Revkin (1988), p. 61. BACK
74. Bills: Balco (1999);
hearings: Jensen (1990).
BACK
75. Agrawala (1998a);
Agrawala (1998b); Hecht and Tirpak
(1995), pp. 380-81. I thank John Perry for comments.
BACK
76. Reported in an editorial in the New York
Times, April 21, 1990, p. 22, but scarcely noted at the time, New
York Times, Sept. 1, 1988, p. B9. BACK
77. New York Times, Feb. 3, 1990, p. 12,
Feb. 5, p. 15, Feb. 6, p. 1, memorandum: April 19, p. B4. Dual effect:
Ryan M. Meyer, Letter, Science 314 (2006): 1681-82,
referencing Meyer (2006).
BACK
78. National Academy of Sciences
(1991). BACK
79. On the Bush and Clinton policies, see Stevens (1999), pp. 290-95, 298; bills: Balco (1999). BACK
80. Christianson
(1999), pp. 254-58, 263-68; for politics in the 1990s, see also Leggett
(1999).On conservative think tanks see McCright
and Dunlap (2000), p. 509. BACK
81. Gore's remarks e.g., on "Fresh Air," National
Public Radio, May 30, 2006. Kyoto: New York Times, March
15, 2001, p. A23. An outstanding case of window-dressing was an administration
initiative (Feb. 2003) to study hydrogen as a fuel. This could only reduce
greenhouse gases in a distant future provided that nuclear or renewable
sources were developed to generate the hydrogen. BACK
82. Conway (2008),
ch. 8. Fleagle (1994), pp. 119, 122, 125, 127.
BACK
83. Mahlman (1998), p.
96. BACK
84. Berrien Moore, quoted Lawler
(1998). BACK
85. National Academy of Sciences
(2001). BACK
86. National
Assessment Synthesis Team (2000). BACK
86a.Piltz,
(2005); Mooney (2007b); Morgan
et al. (2005). BACK
87. Revkin, "Climate Expert says
NASA Tried to Silence Him," New York Times, January 29,
2006, p. 1. The NASA Inspector General later reported that political appointees
had "reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science
made available to the general public," Revkin, “NASA Office
Is Criticized on Climate Reports,” New York Times, June
3, 2008. Also Kennedy (2006); Antonio
Regalado and Jim Carlton, "Agency [NOAA] Retreats from Discounting
Global Warming," Wall Street Journal, Feb. 16, 2006, p.
A4, and personal communications. See Mooney
(2005) pp. 232-35 and ch. 7 passim; Bowen
(2007). "Here’s a guy:" my personal observations agree
with Chris Mooney, “A Reluctant Hero of Climate Politics,”
New Scientist, Jan. 5, 2008, p. 44. BACK
88. These developments can be followed,
for example, in the New York Times and news articles in Science
magazine. Memo by Frank Luntz, 2002, leaked in 2004, online here.
BACK
89. For the Bush administration and global
warming see Gelbspan (2004), esp.
ch. 33, Mooney (2005) passim,
and Goodell (2006), ch. 9. The Coalition holds
the valuable URL http://www.globalwarming.org/.
BACK
90. The oft-repeated "hoax" statement
first appeared at the end of Inhofe, "The Science of Climate Change," Senate
Floor Statement, July 28, 2003, press release here.
See news reports, for example, Monastersky
(2006); and Eugene Bierly, Eos 87:35
(2006), p. 354. BACK
91. Coral Davenport, "Heads in the Sand," National Journal, Dec. 1-2, 2011, online here. BACK
92. For the start of this movement see
Rabe (2004); current developments are covered
mainly in the business press. BACK
93. Clive Hamilton, "Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change" (2010), online here. BACK
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