Global Warming: The Decade We Lost Earth
often a story is only as good as its villain Star Wars has Darth Vader jaws has its shark Chicken Run has Mrs Tweedy but climate change and are in action on it don't have a clear mustache twirling villain both the problem and our response to it are deeply embedded in modern society with Myriad individuals making small choices that all got us to where we are today but if you demanded a villain someone to point to when explaining why we are facing a perilously warming Planet then at least According to some people your man is John sunanu in a previous video we discussed the long history of climate science from the discovery of carbon dioxide in 1757 to the release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 something that was very clear in that video was that the science of climate and how it changes over time was really well understood by the 1970s academics such as the giant Roger Ravel and the dedicated experimentalist Charles Keeling published reports on the threat of a planet's rapidly warming due to a buildup of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere so did scientists working in the fossil fuel industry humble oil the predecessor to Exxon published work on carbon emissions changing the climate in 1957. but perhaps no one understood the science better than James Edward Hansen Hanson came from a humble background in Iowa and fell in love with maths and physics at an early age one night while observing a lunar eclipse his observations were ruined by the Moon being totally obscured by a dust cloud a dust cloud that Hansen later identified came from the eruption of Mount agung on the other side of the world Karen married by an atmospheric current from that point on Hansen under the tutelage of space scientist James Van Allen became interested in planetary atmospheres specifically Venus and why it was so incredibly hot he studied the physics of why planets are the temperatures they are and the greenhouse effect which we covered previously when NASA expanded their study at the Earth's atmosphere Hanson was brought on board to build computer models based on the physics he had studied he became particularly interested in how the earth's climate had changed over recent history and what was causing it he demonstrated that according to the equations while the majority of the warming Trend was from increasing CO2 this wasn't enough to explain observed changes on its own but if you took a simple computer model of the physics of the Earth's atmosphere and ocean and varied CO2 added volcanic eruptions and added small changes in the sun's output you've got a pretty good explanation of changing temperatures if you made the model a bit more complex a bit more realistic you got an even better results as shown in the bottom right figure science had a very good explanation for why the Earth was warming while volcanoes and the sun were factors Hanson had accounted for these and found that the warming was largely due to increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by humans burning fossil fuels Hansen would present this science to some of the most powerful men and women in the world but in the end this figure would be used as a weapon yielded in bad faith against Hansen and against science and in the end against the Earth in 1979 Hansen dialed into a meeting in Cape Cod to discuss the changing climate the meeting had been requested by President Carter in the aftermath of a government report that found atmospheric CO2 concentrations would double by 2035 and that the world would warm by between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius as a result Carter wanted to know if other top scientists agreed with this finding as such climatology Professor Jewel Charney gathered together top Minds including Hansen who over the course of several days concluded that depending on how sea ice responded to a planet with double the concentration of CO2 the Earth would warm on average by 3 degrees Celsius with an era of one and a half degrees either way the Charney report was a serious warning and it sparked discussions at the highest level so the following year another meeting was called this time in Florida and this time involving scientists but also economists policy experts and an expert from industry their goal was to provide the national Commission on air quality with policy recommendations to prevent this global warming from taking place what could the government do to fix this problem the conversation was pragmatic everyone was on the same page with the science and agreed that this was a political problem now but as politicians concern themselves with problems as long as their term length never more than a few years the scientists would have to take the lead in making recommendations for long-term policy they agreed some kind of international treaty would be necessary to limit the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere while the USA was the largest emitter of CO2 action in isolation wouldn't accomplish much but if the USA demonstrated leadership and took action first perhaps the rest of the world would follow and maybe an international agreement would too Henry Shaw the representative from Exxon canceled that a transition period would be necessary with the world gradually stopping the burning of fossil fuels and starting to use renewable energy instead Anne-Marie crocheti a public health scholar from the national Commission on air quality summarized the consensus opinion as we got ourselves a bunch of experts and by God they all endorsed this point of view and think it's very important they have disagreements about the details of this and that but they feel that it behooves us to intervene at this point and try to prevent it yet on the final day of the conference when all these experts sat down to agree on a statement to prevent it they ran into a problem in the first paragraph describing that climatic changes were likely to occur there were differences of opinion williker proposed John lauman the Stanford engineer what about the words highly likely to occur asked Anthony Scoville from the house science committee Almost sure said David Rose the nuclear engineer for nit almost surely said lauman perhaps you can use will occur said another and quantify the changes when they start to quantify the changes said lamb and I can't make such a statement changes as yet of a little understood or extremely likely almost surely to occur this went on for hours the group never made it to policy recommendations they never even made it to the second paragraph of their statement the political problem remained open and then four days after the meeting ended President Reagan was elected I mentioned in the previous video that the Reagan years were tumultuous for the study of climate change to say that the Reagan Administration was not a fan of environment mental research and regulation was putting it mildly when Reagan entered the White House the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA had its staff numbers cut in half when the Council on Environmental Quality published a report warning that fossil fuel use could permanently and disastrously alter the Earth's atmosphere Reagan declined to act on the advice instead he considered eliminating the council plans were floated to close the energy Department increased coal production and deregulate surface coal mining instead the Reagan White House was not interested in human impacts on the climate it simply didn't factor into their political calculations but the U.S Congress was getting an education on how humans were changing the planet courtesy of James Hansen and representative Al Gore we met Gore previously while he studied at Harvard under Roger Ravel after winning his third term as Congressman for Tennessee Gore was made chairman of an oversight committee within the science committee a position regarded as a Backwater within a Backwater but one he was determined to use to raise awareness of scientific and environmental issues as such he invited Roger Ravel to testify before Congress in 1980 on the seriousness of man-made climate change but he made little impact Congress just wasn't interested in what they considered a hypothetical so a Gore's invitation Hanson testified in 1982 describing his work identifying a warming signal in the temperature record Hansen and the other experts testifying that day including Melvin Calvin who had won a Nobel Prize for his work on the carbon cycle agreed there was more than enough evidence to Merit action on carbon emissions changing the national model of energy production away from fossil fuels some of the few congressmen present agreed when asked by a representative when such action would need to take Place Hanson simply said very soon Calvin said it was useless waiting for stronger evidence of warming quote it is already later than you think but while handsome was building momentum and changing the first few Minds in the US Congress the White House was unmoved in fact in 1980 three it doubled down on its position and it did so thanks to a new comprehensive report titled changing climate this new report was the result of the 1978 climate act signed by previous president Carter part of the ACT stipulated that a committee should be put together to comprehensively investigate how changing carbon dioxide levels would affect the climate the heads of this committee was to be bill nirenberg nirenberg was a nuclear physicist who had spent part of his PhD working on the Manhattan Project after that he'd become an esteemed professor of physics at UC Berkeley and expanded his interests to include research on National Defense and the natural environment in 1965 when Revel retired as the head of the Scripps oceanographic Institute he was asked to take on the role and threw himself into the science the even intervened personally when research funding for keeling's carbon dioxide monitoring project was threatened Nuremberg was dedicated to the science and a Natural Choice to chair such a report he pulled together a superstar team of scientists and economists including William Nord House of Yale and Thomas shelling of Harvard they spent five years investigating the issue and in 83 published their conclusions the scientific content of the report concurred with the Charlie report a few years earlier CO2 doubling was likely to happen in the mid 21st century and this would warm the planet by between one and a half and four and a half degrees Celsius but potentially three times that much over the polar regions this would affect whether agriculture and the ecosystems all over the world this was a problem the scientists said and we shouldn't simply wait and see what happens as such the synthesis of the report recommended the situation was one of concern a not of panic and no immediate action was necessary wait what you see the report contained five chapters written by scientists and two written by economists the five scientific chapters lined up with the Charney report and other academic papers the two economic chapters approached the problem from a different angle they assumed that any serious impacts of climate change were so far into the future as to be discountable that is to say a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow and a lot more than a dollar in a century so you could discount costs far into the future nordhaus wrote that while the obvious solution in the present was a carbon tax this would be hard to implement and thus not worth doing michelleing suggested that adapting to a change in climate and treating the symptoms Next Century would be cheaper and easier than addressing the root cause no regulatory policy could possibly succeed so climate change is what we should expect I'm sure I don't need to point out this is a self-fulfilling prophecy to quote Naomi rescues and Eric Conway writing much later in merchants of doubt this was like suggesting that researchers shouldn't try to cure cancer because that would be too expensive and in any case people in the future might decide that dying from cancer is not so bad in fact I just want to read a brief quote from shelling which I found particularly telling of his economic approach he wrote today little of our gross domestic product is produced outdoors and therefore little is susceptible to climate Agriculture and Forestry are less than three percent of total output and little else is much affected even if agricultural productivity declined by a third over the next half century the per capita GNP we might have achieved by 2050 would still achieve in 2051 considering that agricultural productivity in most parts of the world continues to improve and that many crops May benefit directly from enhanced photosynthesis due to increased carbon dioxide side note this is absolutely not true I made a whole video about it it is not at all certain that the net impact on agriculture will be negative or much noticed in the developed world this statement seems remarkable naive today if shelling had talked to pretty much any historian about past climatic changes and their impacts or considered anywhere other than America or given any value to biodiversity or geopolitical impacts of less food being available he would have known that this was hopelessly narrow-minded a warming climate doesn't just affect GMP it doesn't just affect the developed world and it certainly doesn't just affect humans and you'd think these points would be reflected in the summary or that nirenberg's background as a scientist would make him give more weight to the five scientific chapters in his conclusions yep his summary of the report the only part that was actually read and disseminated in the Press cited heavily with the economists it did not deny that the situation the facts existed but questioned the interpretation of those facts as a problem if it goes the way we think the summary read it'll be manageable in the next hundred or so years according to historians of science including oreskis and Conway much of that position came down to nirenberg we haven't seen the last of him in this story the report was criticized at the time reviewers including legendary physicist Alvin Weinberg wrote that the report was so seriously flawed in its underlying analysis and in its conclusions that he hardly knew where to begin physicist and later director of the Scripps oceanographic Institute Edward Freeman said of the scientific community in retrospect we knew the report was garbage so we just ignored it but the Reagan Administration did no such thing it grasped the changing climate report with both hands and used it to bat away any calls for government policy on climate it was used to counter two further reports from the EPA on cold use damaging the climate which were described as alarmist the White House was not budging but more and more scientists were making noise and recommending immediate action at gaul's invitation Hanson testified before Congress again in 1984 and made more of an impact more representatives were starting to take the science on board in 1985 a meeting of scientists of the United Nations environment program and the World Meteorological organization in vilak Austria issued a formal report stating that while some warming of the planet was now inevitable the extent of the disaster could be profoundly affected by aggressive coordinated government policy scientists who had previously been on the fence of advocating for immediate government intervention including Roger Revell declared that it was time to begin a radical shift in energy production away from fossil fuels it was a small but growing number of scientists and some politicians against the administration of the most powerful country on Earth which felt it had the science on its side the fight seemed woefully unbalanced but that year the scales of power were tipped and a path forward presented when a hole was discovered over Antarctica the Earth's atmosphere contains a lot of oxygen mostly in molecules made of two oxygen atoms but sometimes high energy light from the sun splits those molecules apart into individual oxygen atoms in the middle atmosphere these individual atoms rapidly latch onto whatever molecule is nearest often that's another oxygen molecule and the result is a new molecule made of three oxygen atoms ozone ozone is not too stable and so is eventually destroyed by natural processes that are approximately in balance with the forces that create it the result is a band of ozone approximately 15 to 35 kilometers above the surface that we call the ozone layer though it's not really a layer that concentration smoothly varies in altitude like this for lack of a better term though the ozone layer is extremely important to life on Earth because it has two different Atomic bonds ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the Sun in a way that normal oxygen molecules don't if this ultraviolet radiation were to reach the surface it would cause the breakdown of cell membranes in the living beings and have various Health impacts including cancer the ozone layer then is like our planetary defense Shield against ultraviolet radiation in the 1970s however it was discovered that chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs used in spray cans and in refrigerators were disrupting the processes that maintained the ozone layer the total amount of ozone in the atmosphere was decreasing but in 1985 something much Starker was revealed a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica an extreme decrease in the ozone concentration that formed in the southern hemisphere's winter during which the planet's surface was effectively blasted by UV radiation and this ozone hole was growing the world's government's mobilized rapidly in 1986 a senate hearing takes place where scientists convinced Senators that policy was needed to ban the use of CFCs and prevent them leaking to the ozone layer President Reagan was unsurprisingly against such policy but after Dupont by far the largest producer of CFCs realized that they could profit from the transition to replacement chemicals and so lobbied the president to enact policy as soon as possible Reagan in endorsed an international treaty to phase out use of CFCs in 1987 then just two years after the ozone hole was identified the Montreal protocol was agreed a binding International treaty that phased out the use of ozone destroying chemicals and describing into the future for a moment it was extremely effective at fixing the problem current projections suggest the ozone layer will return to 1980 Levels by the mid 21st century the campaign to protect the ozone layer demonstrated that the International Community could rapidly come together and agree on a course of action and a set of government policies to protect the environment climate scientists watching at the time saw this and were galvanized look they said it could be done there's a path forwards and there's still time what we need is a binding treaty like the Montreal protocol for carbon emissions in fact the 1986 Senate hearing on ozone was actually a joint hearing with Scientists speaking about both ozone depletion and climate change on the first day the ozone problem was discussed with a flickering animation of the growing hole over the Antarctic that gripped the room and dominated news coverage that guaranteed a packed out hearing room on the second day for the discussion of climate change which For Better or For Worse the public now associated with ozone depletion Hanson again spoke of the overwhelming scientific evidence but this time politicians were on board too now Senator Gore underlined the scientific consensus the need for more research was mocked by Senators on both sides of the aisle Republican senator John Chaffee requested that the state department begin negotiations on a global climate Accord with the Soviet Union immediately momentum was building specific National policies were gaining support including a carbon tax initially suggested back in 83 by nordhaus the next year there were eight days of climate-related hearings in both chambers of Congress a National Climate Change strategy was introduced the preparing for climate change conference in Washington DC was attended by top politicians representatives from the fossil fuel industry and scientists alike Mikhail bodico Soviet climatologist gave a lesson on climate change to the children of U.S senators present naturally Hanson was there too presenting his research and taking in the carnival-like atmosphere it felt like this was the start of a solution the start of a new partnership between government Science and Industry but that was exactly what some people were afraid of while this video is largely focused on America in the late 20th century it is impossible to ignore the global political context of these events America was locked in an ideological struggle throughout the 70s and 80s and indeed the 20th century with the Soviet Union on the one side you had the idea that free markets and capitalism were the best way to improve people's lives and on the other the decentralized planned socialist state was the best way to do this not everybody believed the world fell into this strict dichotomy but there were hardliners on both sides who certainly did within the United States there were individuals who saw socialism as evil this built on work such as capitalism and freedom which argued that economic freedom interpreted to mean free markets was a necessary precondition to political freedom in other words according to these hardliners any government meddling in society was the first step on the slippery slope to an authoritarian system such as practiced by the Soviet Union this is much too complex to do justice in this video but suffice to say there was a significant overlap between individuals with this economic opinion those with technological or scientific backgrounds and particularly those who worked on projects around National Defense in America in the second half of the 20th century such individuals included Robert jastrow and Fred's Seitz scientists who had some involvement in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and who both passionately believed that the Soviet system was to be avoided at all costs to that end sites and chastro founded the George C Marshall Institute in 1984 to defend the Reagan administration's planned Strategic Defense Initiative a high-tech system to intercept Soviet nuclear weapons before they could reach their targets it was so high-tech in fact that the necessary Technologies didn't exist yet they still don't but jastro and sites railed against scientists who pointed this out despite being scientists themselves their political beliefs took precedence over the scientific evidence the Soviet Union was a threat that must be must be haunted they place in 1987 they warned that the Soviet Union would become so powerful in five years that they could take over the world when the Soviet Union collapsed four years later then you might think that the Institute would be left without purpose but by that point they had already pivoted to a new threat on Liberty people trying to prevent climate change Anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote of the unfolding climate crisis in 1975 that never before have the governing bodies of the world been faced with decisions so far reaching it is inevitable that there will be a clash between those concerned with immediate problems and those who concern themselves with long-term consequences while to most of us this was a sensible declaration based on science and advocating for policy Beyond term limits to those hardliners who advocated for free markets and small government this sounded like the marching of Jack Boots the sound of authoritarianism and both sites and jastro had done this before despite clear scientific evidence around the dangers of smoking they had campaigned against government policy to restrict smoking indoors or in public spaces they had campaigned against policy to prevent acid rain by limiting sulfate emissions they'd even campaigned against the Banning of ozone depleting chemicals like CFCs after all any new government intervention was the start of the slippery slope towards communism in each case the Playbook was the same discredit the science disseminate false information spread confusion and above all promote doubt and they were funded handsomely to do so by whatever Industries stood to profit from a lack of government intervention this time it was fossil fuel-based companies such as Exxon who wanted to keep profiting from the continued use of oil gas and coal previously Exxon and other entities like the American petroleum Institute have actively funded research on climate change and had conceded that legislation limiting the use of their products was probably going to happen as such they wanted to be part of the solution which was why Henry Shaw was present at the meeting in Florida but at roughly the same time as the founding of the George C Marshall Institute the industry changed Tech they started funding misinformation campaigns muddying the waters citing uncertainties in the science as a reason to delay action and keep burning oil but some of that uncertainty was engineered because Seitz and jastro were not alone in founding the George C Marshall Institute and not alone in their attack on climate change policy there was a third founder who retired from the Scripps oceanographic Institute to join the board of directors and that was Bill nirenberg back in 1978 nirenberg heard about the National Climate act and lobbied to form a committee to produce a report on the state of climate research as part of the ACT he was elected to be the committee head and he elected members to the committee who shared his views such as nordhaus and shelling perhaps it's no surprise then that the report they released in 83 counseled for no changes in government policy or that the synthesis of the report cited so heavily with the wait and see economists but with the establishment of the George C Marshall Institute in 1984 this was a Prelude of what was to come The Institute and other well-connected organizations like it were influencing men and women at the highest level of government telling them to not listen to the scientists and not do anything about limiting emissions of carbon dioxide on the one hand you had a growing number of increasingly vocal scientists and bipartisan support for an international agreement on climate change on the other you had a very small but very well connected group of free market absolutists the fight see quite unbalanced and the stage was set for the late 80s to become the Battleground for the future of our climate 1988 was a scorching year in the United States on the hottest June 23rd in the history of Washington DC Hanson testified once more before the U.S
Senate this time the swelteringly hot room was packed and Hanson did not mince his words the warming signal of human-caused climate change was already here he said it could be detected with 99 confidence and while 88 was probably going to be the warmest year on record it was only going to get worse he presented three projections of future warming once again two gaze into the future the middle realistic one of these has been almost exactly borne out over the past three decades and senators in 1988 listened Senator Max baucus from Montana called for the UN environment program to begin preparing a global remedy to the problem Senator Dale bumpers from Arkansas emphasized that the Press should be covering this you in every newspaper in America which they did while called by Senator Tim worth the hearing became known as the Hanson hearing and together with the success of the Montreal protocol the previous year it gave even more hope to an international agreement on carbon emissions being achieved but should such an agreement the next Montreal protocol aim to achieve at a meeting in Toronto of scientists and politicians Senator Wirth suggested a 20 reduction in emissions by the year 2000 while 20 by 2000 was a nice catchphrase it was a little Rich for some politicians blood so the target was amended to be a 20 reduction by 2005. this became known as the Toronto goal by the end of the year 32 climate bills were introduced in Congress the biggest of which proposed by worth called for that Toronto goal and for the creation of a global agreement on emissions by 1992. even President Reagan seemed to have changed his stance when he signed an agreement with Soviet Premier Gorbachev that included a pledge to cooperate on climate change internationally West Germany's Parliament created a special Commission on climate change and recommended action beyond the Toronto girl calling for a 30 reduction in emissions Sweden's Parliament announced a strategy to freeze emissions at the 1988 level and introduce a carbon tax UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher spoke at the Royal Society in London of the need to combat label warming and the UN unanimously endorsed the establishment of the intergovernmental panel on climate change the ipcc the momentum seemed Unstoppable especially when George Bush Senior was elected as U.S president that year on the campaign Trail he described himself as an environmentalist those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect Bush said are forgetting about the White House Effect two weeks after the election he was visited by former presidents Carter and Ford who recommended making climate change policy a national priority and doubling the epa's research budget an emissions Target and even a carbon tax seemed inevitable in a year or two but in 1989 under the name of the George C Marshall Institute nirenberg sites and jastro circulated an unpublished white paper published the following year as a small book titled global warming what does the science tell us its contents followed the same Playbook as the author's previous activities around secondhand smoke acid rain and CFC emissions they were manufacturing doubt in particular they claimed that global warming wasn't taking place due to emissions of carbon dioxide but rather due to changes in the sun they argued using Sunspot and tree ring data that the sun had entered a period of slightly higher energy output in the 19th century and this was responsible for the warming to date seeing as the sun went through in approximately 200 year cycle they said the warming was almost over and things would soon cool down by contrast blaming changes in CO2 just didn't make sense and look they had proof this was a figure from none other than James Hansen showing that there was little correlation between CO2 and temperature and the scientists like Hansen would try to push an agenda by not considering the sun look the lines don't even match up of course this was only part of the figure Hanson produced the rest you've already seen the complete figure clearly demonstrated that in order to explain recent warming you need to account for changes in CO2 and volcanoes and changes in solar activity but you could not explain 20th century warming without changes in CO2 because there were no meaningful changes in solar output something that scientists like Hansen but also many others had already included in their models there is simply no way that a scientist of nirenberg's caliber did not know what he was doing by only including the top left part of this figure in isolation only the simpler model and only one factor it was blatant misrepresentation of the science but he wasn't content to stop there the George C Marshall Institute paper also claimed that there was doubt among the scientific Community as to the seriousness of global warming anyway citing studies in the early 80s that reached different conclusions of course Nuremberg was referencing differences in conclusions between the Charney reports and many other reports from scientists and the 1983 changing climate report that he wrote but this was just one as yet unpublished paper standing separate from the overwhelming number of Publications from scientists and policy experts how much of a difference could it really make well when the George C Marshall Institute contacts the White House and nirenberg gives a briefing to presidential staff himself it could make a big difference here is where we catch up to white house chief of staff John sunanu sunanu was a mechanical engineer by training getting his PhD from MIT and teaching at Tufts University for over a decade before moving into politics he became governor of New Hampshire before being selected as George Bush senior's Chief of Staff in 1989. he was present for the briefing by nirenberg and was particularly taken by his arguments in fact sununu had quite similar political beliefs to nirenberg conservative technocratic anti-tax he suspected that scientists working on climate change were part of some nefarious authoritarian cabal since the mid 70s and Margaret Mead's statement and in nirenberg's briefing his suspicions were confirmed a single document pushed him over the edge into outright hostility towards climate scientists the bush white house now had a breakaway anti-climate science faction led by sununu this first became apparent at the first meetings of the ipcc in 1989.
President Bush's new head of the EPA William K Riley argued that this was the perfect opportunity to show the world the Bush Administration was serious about climate change and proposed a global Accord to produce carbon emissions sunanu now disagreed in fact he forbade U.S delegates going to the meeting in Geneva from making any such commitments on a mission reduction at the meeting at this point the U.S was the only Western Country on record opposing such action that may have been it but just Days Later Hanson was due to give another briefing to the U.S Senate this time clarifying the science around climate change modifying extreme rainfall events Hanson forwarded his pre-prepared statement to NASA who forwarded it to the White House for approval this was standard procedure for these hearings on matters of science it was just a formality but this time the White House demanded changes an anonymous sensor wanted him to say that the causes of global warming were scientifically unknown and might be attributable to natural processes he was also asked to demand that Congress only consider climate legislation that would immediately benefit the economy independent of concerns about an increase in greenhouse effect Hanson was taken aback and unsure what to do with this he didn't want to make such obviously flawed statements but was no politician so asked Senator Gore for advice Gore with Hanson's permission broke the story to the press and caused an outrage politicians and newspapers alike proclaimed that the White House or a faction within it was censoring science Gore got a personal apology from the White House who then scrambled to save face the ipcc meeting was still happening in Eva so as part of damage control sununu sent a message to U.S negotiators reversing his previous stance now the U.S should work to
develop full International consensus on necessary steps to prepare for formal treaty negotiating process well the immediate public reaction was wanted relief policy experts saw through this as mere waffle and predictably nothing was agreed in Geneva hopes were pinned instead on the next meeting the big one where the world's environment ministers would come together in nordwick in the Netherlands to endorse the ipcc process and it was hoped hoped by world leaders including Margaret Thatcher that this was where a binding treaty was going to happen the U.S in theory was still on board but sunanu was still not happy about it with things moving so quickly he took it upon himself to study the physics of climate further and so asked for a very simple one-dimensional model of the Earth's atmosphere to be installed on his personal computer at the White House based on playing with this very simple model he decided that Hansen's models and indeed all the state-of-the-art's three-dimensional models built by actual climate scientists were technical poppycock there was no way you could use such models to claim the climate was changing or why when during a meeting a junior staffer mentioned in passing an initiative to reduce fossil fuel use soon interrupted her asking why would you want to do that because of climate change she replied sunanu went non-linear I don't want anyone in this Administration without a scientific background using climate change or global warming ever again if you don't have a technical basis for policy don't run around making decisions on the basis of newspaper headlines PA director Riley was in the room at the time and sensed this was really directed at him his relationship with sunanu was becoming increasingly strained as the latter thought the former wasn't scientific enough as such Riley was to be accompanied to the nordwick conference by Bush's science advisor and sununu appointee Alan Bromley the pair flew to the Netherlands the Dutch hosts had gathered senior diplomats from 68 Nations to agree to the Toronto goal reducing emissions by 20 by 2005. most delegates apparently turned up expecting everyone to Simply sign the agreement but the negotiations in nordwick ran long they ran until close to Dawn actually when the Swedish environment Minister ducked out of the conference room for a bathroom break in the middle of the night he was asked by American activists outside for an update why is it taking so long they asked your government he said angrily is this thing up The Binding International agreement on carbon emissions was torpedoed by Bromley who had convinced the UK the Soviet Union and Japan to abandon the Toronto goal along with the United States they wanted more wiggle room and no binding Target there was just too much uncertainty in the science they said a line that would have been fed to them by Bromley who was instructed to tell them by sunanu later analysis estimated that if the nordwick agreement had gone ahead with the Toronto goal it could have held global warming to less than one and a half degrees Celsius in his 2018 account of the events leading up to the conference losing Earth Nathaniel rich places the blame for this missed opportunity squarely at John sununu's feet he is the villain you're looking for but is that fair sununu was almost certainly the reason Bromley convinced the British Japanese and Soviets to not sign The Binding agreement but he only held such a Hardline position because of the George C Marshall Institute report and the briefing he was given by Bill nirenberg and besides there were plenty of further opportunities for climate action after sununu resigned in disgrace in 1991 after using government Jets to go skiing and golfing no seriously as Riley pointed out in an interview in losing Earth sununu's obstruction was critical at a time when public support for climate policy was at an all-time high and there was little coordinated opposition to such policy but the negotiation of the first ipcc Accord continued until 1992 in Rio and President Bush especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving America as the only superpower could have demanded and probably got a binding treaty at any point in the negotiations and this was with Bromley who had grown increasingly supportive of climate policy after nordwick acting as his chief scientist but Bush wasn't interested also had the Toronto goal been agreed on in a binding treaty at Nordic or elsewhere would it have been achieved the Technologies necessary to decarbonize the global economy were largely in their infancy in 1989. even if politicians were serious about sticking to the goal was it actually possible politically or technologically the fact is as sununu himself points out in an interview in losing Earth world leaders at that time wanted to look like they took the issue seriously but didn't want to actually do enough to fix the problem a situation you could argue continues to this day it is not accurate to say that John sununu is the reason we Face a world with 2 degrees Celsius of warming the history of climate change is much more complex than that but there was a brief window of a few years when the scientific understanding was strong there was Global political momentum and misinformation campaigns by the George C Marshall Institute and other organizations had not yet kicked into high well-financed gear and politicized the issue as they did in the 90s by the time of President Clinton the issue of climate policy was the darling of the political left and the enemy of the political rights in the most powerful country on Earth in the late 80s there was a hope for a binding International agreement that could have radically changed the trajectory of the 21st century and beyond limiting us to less than one and a half degrees of global warming but I hope so weak that in the end it took a single man to Snuff it out does that make him more or less of a villain thank you at its heart this story is about science science informing our knowledge of the climate emergency and influencing how we respond to it as we've seen a lack of specialist scientific knowledge can prevent you from acting appropriately when faced with a scientific problem and in fact lead you to be manipulated by people with an agenda having basic knowledge of the scientific process and Concepts like statistics and logic is incredibly valuable and can open new doors for you this is of course why we teach those subjects in school but that's not a process that everyone is receptive to perhaps you struggled or struggled in science classes and would appreciate a personal learning coach to help you in those subjects ideally this coach would make the process fast enjoyable and never leave you feeling like you don't understand well that's exactly what brilliant.org does and Brilliant have been kind enough to sponsor this video brilliant has 1000 thousands of lessons from foundational and advanced maths to physics data science neural networks and much more with new lessons added monthly of particular relevance to the story in this video they actually have a lesson on solar energy this lesson and the thousands of others on brilliant.org are interactive something shown in studies to be six times more effective than just watching lecture content and causing students to retain information and something that I personally really value I really wish that brilliant existed when I was in full-time education to try everything brilliant has to offer free for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org
Simon Clark or click the link in the description the first 200 of you to do so will get 20 off brilliant's annual premium subscription that's brilliant.org Simon Clark with thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video and for being well brilliant this video was almost entirely based on two books merchants of Doubt by Naomi oreski's and Eric Conway and losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich if you found the topic of this video interesting and in particular the role of men like jastrocytes and Nuremberg spreading doubt in science I implore you to read them they're both excellent and both Linked In the description the style of this video and the previous one were heavily influenced by Bobby broccoli and John Boyce so do check them and their amazing videos out I want to thank Bobby broccoli for his technical support in making these videos and thank the lovely people whose names are on screen right now they are my executive producers over on patreon.com forward slash Simon oxfiz and make videos like this one possible if you would like to see more videos like this one please consider pledging on my patreon also linked in the description please also let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed the video please do pop it a like and share it with other people who may be interested it this is a shocking story and one that I think everyone should know about that just leads me to say thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next
2023-03-19 20:32
