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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disambig see timeline</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/20 update:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div>history of climate is a bit like an arms race, with modest green gains generating a massive well-financed counter-attack.&nbsp; Moreover, there's an ideolgicval compoenent 9aside from fossil fuel companies despite making the highest profit in the history of the world thanks to massive subsidies (9 billion/ year?!) an the ability to dump pollutants in the atmosphere for free.</div><div>
</div><div>1970 Earth Day (in part prompts 1971 Powell Memo;</div><div>
</div><div>1977 Exxon Knew</div><div>
</div><div>1987 Montreal Protocol ban CFC's, signed by Reagan: solved problem twice as fast as expected at half the cost?&nbsp; Success was model for later international treaties, cap and trade carbon market?</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>1988 Hansen Testimony, June&nbsp; (AC disabled)</div><div>
</div><div>1988 IPCC established;&nbsp; first report 1990</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>1992 Rio Summit Bush 41 sets up Kyoto; Clinton Gore elected</div><div>
</div><div>1993 Clinton BTU fiasco: Koch defeats congressmen; Lee Raymond Exxon CEO [pivot? had been world class tech innovator, Prius?!]</div><div>
</div><div>1995 Second IPCC report, human caused,&nbsp; elicits aggressive&nbsp; industry pushback</div><div>
</div><div>1995 GCC knew (indep from NAM) ~ Rio and Kyoto</div><div>
</div><div>1997 Kyoto (Gore saves? binding targets?)</div><div>
</div><div>1998 Smoking Gun Memo:&nbsp; Global Climate Science Communication Action Plan designed to derail Kyoto (API)</div><div>
</div><div>1998 Oregon Petition (Fred Seitz cover ltr)</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>Chronology:</div><div>
</div><div>1957 Edward Teller at API</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;from 1957 onward Humble Oil, one of predecessors of nowadays ExxonMobil, was aware of rising CO2 in the atmosphere and the prospect that it was likely to cause global warming. ExxonMobil responded to this claim that "to suggest that we had definitive knowledge about hu99 19989man-induced climate change before the world's scientists is not a credible thesis."[19] wiki</div><div>
</div><div>1965 LBJ Science Advisory Commission said CO2 would affect climate (even acidification) and Keeling Curve helps us track.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>1970 first Earth Day (Powell Memo reaction), droughts</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;1971 Powell Memo</div><div>
</div><div>1973 oil embargo, 1977 consensus on global warming, ozone concerns</div><div>
</div><div>In 1973 three UC Irvine scientists began study,&nbsp; Chairman of the board at Du Pont calls science fiction, inventor/ CEO of aerosol can complains to Irvine.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;1974 Congressional testimony led to funding, 1976 NAS confirms.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;July 1977, EXXON KNEW: a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to company's executives that&nbsp; there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change.[6][7][8] In 1979–1982, Exxon conducted a research program of climate change and climate modeling, including a research project of equipping their largest supertanker Esso Atlantic with a laboratory and sensors to measure the absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans.[9][10] In 1980, Exxon analyzed in one of their documents that if instead of synthetic fuels such as coal liquefaction, oil shale, and oil sands the demand for fuels to be met by petroleum, it delays the atmospheric CO2 doubling time by about five years to 2065.[11][12] Exxon also studied ways of avoiding CO2 emissions if the East Natuna gas field (Natuna D-Alpha block) off Indonesia was to be developed.[13]</div><div>
</div><div>In 1981, Exxon shifted its research focus to climate modelling.[14] In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."[15]</div><div>
</div><div>In 1992, the senior ice researcher, leading a research team in Exxon's Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil, assessed how global warming could affect Exxon's Arctic operations, and reported that exploration and development costs in the Beaufort Sea might be lower, while higher sea levels and rougher seas could threaten the company's coastal and offshore infrastructure... from 1957 onward Humble Oil, one of predecessors of nowadays ExxonMobil, was aware of rising CO2 in the atmosphere and the prospect that it was likely to cause global warming. ExxonMobil responded to this claim that "to suggest that we had definitive knowledge about human-induced climate change before the world's scientists is not a credible thesis."[19]]] wiki</div><div>
</div><div>In autumn 1979, Toyota and Exxon signed a joint technology agreement. p-type to Japan 1981.</div><div>
</div><div>1979&nbsp;</div><div>Second oil "energy crisis." Strengthened environmental movement encourages renewable energy sources, inhibits nuclear energy growth. =>Public opinion&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>US National Academy of Sciences report finds it highly credible that doubling CO2 will bring 1.5-4.5°C global warming. =>Models (GCMs)&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>1980 asteroid killed dinosaurs understood; 1983 Sagan nuclear winter</div><div>
</div><div>1981, President Ronald Reagan claimed that trees produce more air pollution than automobiles, fueling a spate of jokes about “killer trees. Star Wars defense announced, 2 Freds boosters [heh] Sagebrush rebel, Wise Use (--> eco-terror).</div><div>
</div><div>1983&nbsp;</div><div>Reports from US National Academy of Sciences and Environmental Protection Agency spark conflict, as greenhouse warming becomes prominent in mainstream politics. =>Government</div><div>
</div><div>1984 Heartland founded</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;1985 Vienna Convention, twenty countries voluntary; after discovery of ozone hole, only eighteen months to binding agreements in Montreal. First international agreement to take on regulations, based on science and precautionary principle, allowed for economic differences, equal representation.&nbsp; South Sudan the newest signer.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>1987 Montreal Protocol ban CFC's, signed by Reagan: solved problem twice as fast as expected at half the cost?&nbsp; Success was model for later international treaties, cap and trade carbon market?</div><div>
</div><div>1987 end Fairness Doctrine</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>1988 Hansen Testimony, June&nbsp; (AC disabled)</div><div>
</div><div>1988 IPCC&nbsp; first report 1990</div><div>
</div><div>1988 Smoking Gun Memo:&nbsp; Global Climate Science Communication Action Plan:&nbsp; GCSCT members who contributed to the development of the plan are A. John Adams, John Adams Associates; Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project; David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow; Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute; Lee Garrigan, environmental issues Council; Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom; Peter Cleary, Americans for Tax Reform; Randy Randol, Exxon Corp.; Robert Gehri, The Southern Company; Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp; Steve Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition; and Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>1989&nbsp;</div><div>Fossil-fuel and other U.S. industries form Global Climate Coalition to tell politicians and the public that climate science is too uncertain to justify action. =>Public opinion</div><div>?</div><div>
</div><div>1990 IPCC&nbsp; first report , Clean Air Act had cap and trade to reduce sulfur, Senate 89-10, House 401-25, including McConnell, Thurmond, Gingrich, Barton, Upton and Inhofe.&nbsp; Signed by Bush 41; reduced sulfur 40% at a quarter of EPA predicted cost, utility rates declined 5 percent and the US economy added 16 million jobs in the decade following passage. Singer SEPP</div><div>
</div><div>1990 California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>1992 Rio Summit Bush 41, (see EO p 260-) catalyzed counter-movement. 41 relectant to go till press pointed out it could help reelection;&nbsp; &nbsp;Systematic and precautionary approach, climate&nbsp; convention paved way for Kyoto, Convention on biological diversity, Agenda 21.&nbsp; Maurice Strong now seen as evil mastermind by wacko conservatives, but then head of Ontario hydro, a B-M client (Roundtable included Dow DuPont Royal Dutch-Shell. Dalai Lama spoke; Bush said American way of life is not negotiable.&nbsp; Singer (at UVA?) et al put out preemtive attack book ~IPCC [The energy industry also lobbied the IPCC directly. The Climate Council, the Edison Electric Institute and the National Coal Association wrote a letter to Bolin and submitted its own report.]; GMI, MIT Lindzen letter to B41also Heidelberg Appeal ;&nbsp; BM's&nbsp; Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), lobbied hard; "both Convention on Biological Diversity and Framework Convention on Climate Change were set as legally binding agreements."?!</div><div>
</div><div>1992</div><div>Conference in Rio de Janeiro produces UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but US blocks calls for serious action. =>International&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>1992 Arnold gets his Hummer</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>1993 Clinton BTU fiasco: Koch's CSE took out 18 year veteran Dan Glickman. Sen. David Boren pounded by negative ads, rolled and voted against, killing bill, within days got&nbsp; more than twenty thousand from Kochs. (Sierra mag). BM ran pioneering sophisticated (Lloyd Bentsen) nearly two million dollars, 45 staff in twenty-three states, letter writing and phone calls, planted news/letters to the editor, media proxies.&nbsp; NAM/GCC API First legislative casualties.&nbsp; Recall Gore is VP.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Monbiot: May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a ... such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology".</div><div>
</div><div>1993 Lee Raymond, Exxon and ExxonMobil chief executive officer from 1993 to 2006, was one of the most outspoken executives in the United States against regulation to curtail global warming,[68]</div><div>
</div><div>1995 Second IPCC report&nbsp; Second Assessment Report (SAR), human caused,&nbsp; elicits aggressive&nbsp; industry pushback</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;1995 Global Climate Coalition "including British Petroleum (now BP), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Mobil, and Shell—warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. Regardless, the GCC continued to conduct a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming.</div><div>
</div><div>One of the GCC’s [[“backgrounders” for legislators and journalists, for example, claimed “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood” and emphasized that “scientists differ” on the issue. But the 17-page, internal 1995 GCC primer written by the companies’ own scientists states: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied"]]</div><div>
</div><div>1997 Kyoto, Prius: Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement signed by 192 countries—but not the United States—to meet binding carbon emissions reduction targets.</div><div>
</div><div>The norm for summits is that all the negotiations are done by staffers beforehand, and the meeting itself is merely a nice backdrop for handshake photo op; so it is remarkable that Al Gore actually jumped on a plane when Kyoto was failing.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;1998 Oregon Petition (Fred Seitz cover ltr)</div><div>
</div><div>1998 API game plan, doubt, Super El Nino: Three years later, the API set up what it called the Global Climate Science Communications Team to try to derail the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement signed by 192 countries—but not the United States—to meet binding carbon emissions reduction targets. A leaked 1998 campaign memo from this team, cowritten by representatives of the API and API members Chevron and Exxon, laid out a road map for climate deception largely based on the tobacco industry’s strategy to stave off government regulation by deceiving the public about smoking hazards.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2000 Bush 43 runs on pledge of climate action, Barbour Memo Cheney 180 (CTW);"elected"&nbsp; Brooks bros</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;2000</div><div>Global Climate Coalition dissolves as many corporations grapple with threat of warming, but oil lobby convinces US administration to deny problem. =>Public opinion&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2001 IPCC Third ends debate.&nbsp; Luntz memo, US bails of Kyoto</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;2001 Luntz memo</div><div>
</div><div>2002 Clear Skies actually rolls back progress; died in 9-9 committee vote; two end-runs shut down by DC District court.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2003 McCain-Lieberman bill; European heat wave deaths diverge public opinion with US</div><div>
</div><div>2003&nbsp; Gray Davis Recall,(done in by Enron deregulation, Cheney let twist in wind, Luntz and other GOP political operative preemptive strike] replaced by Guvernator (who did uphold AB 32, tho OK'd offshore drilling]</div><div>
</div><div>2003, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), headed by Democrat Alan Lloyd, finally caved to industry pressure and drastically scaled back the ZEV mandate. CARB had previously defended the regulation for more than 12 years.</div><div>
</div><div>2003</div><div>Numerous observations raise concern that collapse of ice sheets (West Antarctica, Greenland) can raise sea levels faster than most had believed. =>Sea rise & ice</div><div>
</div><div>Deadly summer heat wave in Europe accelerates divergence between European and US public opinion. =>Public opinion&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2004 Movies, books DiCaprio&nbsp; on Oprah.&nbsp; Hummers burned in LA?</div><div>
</div><div>2005 Katrina; Sectret WEnenrgy Task Force (cheney, Iran)&nbsp; energy bill haliburton loophole</div><div>
</div><div>2006 An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American concert/documentary film.&nbsp; Arnold sells his Hummer fleet for nearly a million dollars; sales peak at 54K</div><div>
</div><div>CA 2006 AB 32 under Arnold?&nbsp; (prop 23 tried to reverse)</div><div>
</div><div>2007 IPCC Fourth report, evidence for global warming is "unequivocal" and forecasts warming of 1.8-4.0 degrees C (3.2-7.2 degrees F) by 2100 and an unquantifiable rise in sea levels. Nobel Prize w/ Gore (Gore saves Kyoto and tries to save Bali) Waxman-Lieberman</div><div>
</div><div>2009 Climategate, Kerry-Lieberman Graham fail undermines Copenhagen COP15; Inhofe "truth squad?</div><div>
</div><div>2009&nbsp; Waxman-Markey passed by the House on June 26, 2009. However, in July 2010 it was reported that the Senate would not consider climate change legislation before the end of the legislative term.</div><div>
</div><div>[[The best bill money could stop</div><div>
</div><div>The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, 2009. This bill was supported by some major companies and trade associations, including the Edison Electric Institute and the Nuclear Energy Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>Fear of a consensus energy bill that had some industry support galvanized most big oil and coal companies to invest heavily in their efforts to oppose a Senate bill. Companies in these and other industries thus spent records amounts of money on lobbying, campaign donations, and other pressure tactics to defeat clean energy legislation in the Senate. And this spending does not include millions of dollars spent on message advertising, “astro turf” rallies (fake grass roots), and other pressure tactics that do not require public spending reports.</div><div>
</div><div>Opensecrets.org found that electric utilities and oil and gas companies spent more than $500 million in lobbying from January 2009 to June 2010, primarily to weaken or defeat energy legislation. A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis found that oil companies were six of the top seven spenders on lobbying and campaign contributions during this period, with ExxonMobil number one.</div><div>
</div><div>Big Oil’s campaign contributions are heavily tilted toward Republicans, who received 70 percent of the contributions that went to the two parties. Opensecrets.org reports that as</div><div>… debate raged in Congress about offshore drilling, energy independence, ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation and a shift away from fossil-fuel energy sources … congressional candidates and federal political committees nationwide have raked in more than $17 million from the oil and gas industry so far during the 2010 election cycle—a number on pace to easily exceed that of the most recent midterm election four years ago.</div><div>
</div><div>The recipients of the funds have remained relatively consistent over the years, with Republicans accumulating a majority of the industry’s campaign contributions.</div><div>
</div><div>The coal industry, too, gave nearly 70 percent of its campaign cash to Republicans.]]</div><div>
</div><div>API, NORA, USCoC huge lobbying $, ads, needs 60 vote supermajority; Lindsey Graham dropped out, but GOP senators who had previouslt backed 9or ecen sponsored) climate bills bailled eg Mccain and Snowe (recall McConn 209 pledge to oppose all BO?]</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>2010 Am Power Act</div><div>
</div><div>2010: Climate change retreats as a political priority after the trauma of Copenhagen, economic problems in rich countries and attacks on the IPCC over flaws in the 4th Assessment Report</div><div>
</div><div>2016&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>2017 Exxon, Chevron and BP each donate at least $500,000 for the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chronology:</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LBJ Science Advisory Commission said CO2 would affect climate (even acidification) and Keeling Curve helps us track.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1970 first Earth Day (Powell Memo reaction), droughts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1973 oil embargo, 1977 consensus on global warming, ozone concerns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1973 three UC Irvine scientists began study,&nbsp; Chairman of the board at Du Pont calls science fiction, inventor/ CEO of aerosol can complains to Irvine.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;1974 Congressional testimony led to funding, 1976 NAS confirms.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1980 asteroid killed dinosaurs understood; 1983 Sagan nuclear winter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;1985 Vienna Convention, twenty countries voluntary; after discovery of ozone hole, only eighteen months to binding agreements in Montreal. First international agreement to take on regulations, based on science and precautionary principle, allowed for economic differences, equal representation.&nbsp; South Sudan the newest signer.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1987 Montreal Protocol ban CFC's, signed by Reagan:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1988 IPCC&nbsp; first report 1990</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1990 IPCC&nbsp; first report , Clean Air Act had cap and trade to reduce sulfur, Senate 89-10, House 401-25, including McConnell, Thurmond, Gingrich, Barton, Upton and Inhofe.&nbsp; Signed by Bush 41; reduced sulfur 40% at a quarter of EPA predicted cost, utility rates declined 5 percent and the US economy added 16 million jobs in the decade following passage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1992 Rio Summit Bush 41, (see EO p 260-) catalyzed counter-movement.&nbsp; Systematic and precautionary approach, climate&nbsp; convention paved way for Kyoto, Convention on biological diversity, Agenda 21.&nbsp; Maurice Strong now seen as evil mastermind by wacko conservatives, but then head of Ontario hydro, a B-M client (Roundtable included Dow DuPont Royal Dutch-Shell. Dalai Lama spoke; Bush said American way of life is not negotiable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1993 Clinton BTU fiasco: Koch's CSE took out 18 year veteran Dan Glickman. Sen. David Boren pounded by negative ads, rolled and voted against, killing bill, within days got&nbsp; more than twenty thousand from Kochs. (Sierra mag). BM ran pioneering sophisticated (Lloyd Bentsen) nearly two million dollars, 45 staff in twenty-three states, letter writing and phone calls, planted news/letters to the editor, media proxies.&nbsp; NAM/GCC API First legislative casualties.&nbsp; Recall Gore is VP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1995 Second IPCC report, human caused,&nbsp; elicits aggressive&nbsp; industry pushback</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1997 Kyoto, Prius</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The norm for summits is that all the negotiations are done by staffers beforehand, and the meeting itself is merely a nice backdrop for handshake photo op; so it is remarkable that Al Gore actually jumped on a plane when Kyoto was failing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1998 API game plan, doubt, Super El Nino</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2000 Bush 43 runs on pledge of climate action, Barbour Memo Cheney 180 (CTW)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001 IPCC Third ends debate.&nbsp; Luntz memo, US bails of Kyoto</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002 Clear Skies actually rolls back progress; died in 9-9 committee vote; two end-runs shut down by DC District court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003 McCain-Lieberman bill; European heat wave deaths diverge public opinion with US</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004 Movies, books DiCaprio&nbsp; on Oprah</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 Katrina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2007 IPCC Fourth report,&nbsp; Nobel Prize w/ Gore (Gore saves Kyoto and tries to save Bali) Waxman-Lieberman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climategate, Kerry-Lieberman Graham fail undermines Copenhagen COP15</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CONFS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IPCC background: established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 1995: COP 1, The Berlin Mandate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 1996: COP 2, Geneva, Switzerland</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 1997: COP 3, The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">VP Gore flew in though failing (opposite of normal summit strategy); US pressured world to take ___approach, then Senate killed with Hagel-Byrd.Accidentally hit targets because of Great Recession? Canada reneged on Kyoto because of tar sands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RIO EARTH SUMMIT bUSH 41</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">15 2008: COP 14/CMP 4, Poznan, Poland&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16 2009: COP 15/CMP 5, Copenhagen, Denmark</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Do or die; Obama attended, crashed meeting with Chinese who had been ducking him (Bi-lateral 2014?); US? Danish Text,&nbsp; strategy memo leaked, killed talks on Rich-Poor responsibility? NSA spied</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">17 2010: COP 16/CMP 6, Cancún, Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">18 2011: COP 17/CMP 7, Durban, South Africa (Monckton parachutes in)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19 2012: COP 18/CMP 8, Doha, Qatar</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20 2013: COP 19/CMP 9, Warsaw, Poland (fake coal shadow conf?)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20 2013: COP 19/CMP 9, Warsaw, Poland</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At COP 19, the Corporate Europe Observatory reported [4] that the conference was sponsored by “major car manufacturers, oil companies, steel manufacturers and coal firms.” In addition “the Polish Ministry of Economy has teamed up with the World Coal Association to put on a parallel ‘International Coal & Climate Summit,’ also in Warsaw... Chris Williams, long-time environmental activist and eco-socialist reports [8] they were stopped at the border, even though the EU has open borders, met by SWAT teams at the train station and quickly saw the corporate-insignia dominated COP 19 as unwelcoming to activists.&nbsp; ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">; 132 countries walked out [10], orchestrated by the G77 and the China bloc of 132 countries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amy Goodman reported [11] that this walkout was followed by hundreds of environmental activists also leaving over the absence of a binding agreement. In an interview with Goodman, Kumi Naidoo, the head of Greenpeace International said the “COP is a complete betrayal to the sense of urgency that is needed . . .</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">21 2014: COP 20/CMP 10, Lima, Peru working on finances for Paris?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">22 2015: COP 21/CMP 11, Paris, France</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WOW: 200 pp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://umaine.edu/soe/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/2020/03/Climate-Chronology-January-2020.pdf">https://umaine.edu/soe/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/2020/03/Climate-Chronology-January-2020.pdf</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">chronoclimate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Climate Chronology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Sharon S. Tisher, J.D.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;School of Economics and Honors College</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;University of Maine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;http://umaine.edu/soe/faculty-and-staff/tisher/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved Sharon S. Tisher</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NASA satellite photo, Hurricane Sandy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Climate Chronology: International Policy, U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Policy, and Science</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most challenging of all endeavors in human history will likely be that of understanding the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">impact of our industrial and technological enterprises on the planet’s climate and ecosystems,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and responding effectively to the threats posed by that impact. I began writing this chronology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">while developing a climate policy course at the University of Maine. It has grown substantially</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">during the ensuing nine years, and continues to grow. By juxtaposing developments in climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">science, U.S. policy, and international policy over the previous two centuries, I hope to give the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reader new insights into where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be headed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in this formidable endeavor. I welcome comments, and suggested additions to this evolving work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It will be updated every January.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I owe thanks to George Criner, for asking me to develop the climate policy course; to my</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Maine students, game to explore these turbulent waters and mindful of their import</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for their lives; to my daughter Annya Tisher, who joined me at the Boston Women’s March with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the sign, “Climate Change Matters.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19th Century overview</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans begin to replace wood and other biomass fuels with a readily available fossil fuel:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">coal; coal fuels the Industrial Revolution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans in parts of Europe and the United States replace the biomass fuels such as wood and peat</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that had served them for hundreds of thousands of years with coal, a highly energy-intensive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fossil fuel. Machine technology and the corporate form of business organization—punctuated by</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">passage of the British Limited Liability Act of 1855—facilitate both the extraction of coal and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the deployment of energy to reshape civilization’s infrastructure and ways of life. U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">consumption of fossil fuels surpasses that of wood in the early 1880’s. During the second half of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the 19th century, the average U.S. per capita supply of all energy increases by 25%; utilization of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">coal increases by a factor of ten.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Vaclav Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 1.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20th Century overview</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil and gas join the arsenal of high-energy fossil fuels, spurring rapid global land, sea, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">air transport; total energy consumption worldwide experiences unprecedented growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">most dramatically in the United States</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil and gas make new modes of rapid global land, sea, and air transportation possible. Coal is</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the predominant fuel in the production of electricity. Total energy consumption worldwide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">experiences unprecedented growth. Between 1900 and 2000, consumption of fossil fuels rises</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">almost fifteenfold. As scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil notes,“[I]n spite of the near</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">quadrupling of global population—from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000—average</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">annual per capita supply of commercial energy more than quadrupled from just 14 GJ [gigajoules]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to roughly 60 GJ…” United States residents are far and away the largest consumers of energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between 1900 and 2000, annual per capita energy supply in the United States more than triples</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to about 340 GJ per capita, or more than five times the global average.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Vaclav Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 2.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1824</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">French mathematician and physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier first hypothesizes that</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the atmosphere plays a significant role in mediating temperature on Earth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fourier, in the article “General Remarks on the Temperature of the Earth and Outer Space," likens</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere in regulating global temperature to a glass covered box: “The</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature [of the Earth] can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">converted into non-luminous heat.” This analogy would ultimately inspire the term “greenhouse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">effect.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joseph Fourier, "Remarques Générales sur les Températures Du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Planétaires." Annales de Chemie et de</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Physique 27: 136-67 (1824), translation by Ebeneser Burgess, "General Remarks on the Temperature of the Earth and Outer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Space," American Journal of Science 32: 1-20 (1837). Cited in: Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change,” January, 2017,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_M085 ; Dr. Weart’s website is a valuable resource for those who would like to delve deeper</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">into climate science. He also offers a rich collection of photographs of key players, graphs, and other illustrations at</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://history.aip.org/climate/illus.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1856</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American scientist Eunice Foote predicts the warming impact of “carbonic acid” (carbon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dioxide) on the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Foote describes an experiment where she filled separate glass jars with water vapor, carbon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dioxide, and air and then measured how they heated up in the sun: “The highest effect of the sun’s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rays I have found to be in the carbonic acid glass… The receiver containing the gas became itself</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">much heated — very sensibly more so than the other — and on being removed, it was many times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as long in cooling.” Foote goes on to consider what this might mean for our atmosphere: “An</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature,” she wrote, “and if as some</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present,&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an increased temperature from its own action as well as from increased weight must have</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">necessarily resulted.” These findings are presented in a paper titled “Circumstances affecting the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">heat of the sun’s rays” on August 23, 1856 at the annual meeting of the American Association for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Foote was able to have her paper presented because her</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">husband, Elisha Foote, was a member of the organization. As reported in ThinkProgress, “She</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">did not present her own work, however. Instead, Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Institute, spoke on her behalf. In acknowledging that it was Foote’s work, Henry introduced the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">findings by stating, ‘Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true.’” As Texas Tech climate scientist Katherine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hayhoe told ThinkProgress, due to the rudimentary set-up of the experiment, Foote “wasn’t</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">measuring what she thought she was measuring, but she actually serendipitously ended up with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an understanding that is correct today… She very presciently speculated that the temperature of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the planet would be higher if CO2 were higher and as far as I know she was the first person to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">speculate that.” Hayhoe noted that she didn’t have enough information to be able to say whether</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Tyndall [see 1861] was aware of Foote’s work when he published his better known work</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">five years later.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyla Mandel, “This woman fundamentally changed climate science — and you’ve probably never heard of her,” ThinkProgress,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">May 18, 2018, https://thinkprogress.org/female-climate-scientist-eunice-foote-finally-honored-for-her-contributions-162-years-later21b3cf08c70b/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1861</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Irish physicist John Tyndall demonstrates experimentally that water vapor and other gases</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">warm the atmosphere</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Tyndall, in the article “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction,” reports on an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">experimental apparatus to demonstrate and measure the heat trapping impact of atmospheric</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gases. His later comment underscores his surprise at this discovery: "Those who, like myself,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">have been taught to regard transparent gases as almost perfectly diathermanous (transparent to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">heat), will probably share the astonishment with which I witnessed the foregoing effects….I was</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">indeed slow to believe it possible that a body so constituted, and so transparent to light as olefiant</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gas, could be so densely opake to any kind of calorific (infrared) rays; and to secure myself against</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">error, I made several hundred experiments with this single substance."* In 1862, Tyndall provides</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the following analogy: “As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial rays, produces a local heightening of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature at the Earth’s surface.” In his 1863 book Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tyndall notes the importance of this finding for conditions amenable to life on earth: “Aqueous</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vapour [water vapor] is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">is to man. Remove for a single summer night the aqueous vapour from the air which overspreads</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Richard Black, “Tyndall’s climate message, 150 years on,” BBC News, September 28, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/scienceenvironment-15093234</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> John Tyndall, "On Radiation through the Earth's Atmosphere." Philosophical Magazine ser. 4, 25 (1863):200-206; Cited in: Spencer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Feb. 2016), http://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_M085</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Tyndall, Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion (1863), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hs17sj&view=1up&seq=5</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1896</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius concludes that the Earth’s temperature might increase</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by 5 to 6 degrees Celsius with a doubling of atmospheric CO2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius follows 19th century scientists Jean-Baptiste Fourier, Eunice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Foote and John Tyndall to investigate the role of greenhouse gases in warming Earth’s surface.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tens of thousands of hand calculations lead Arrhenius to the conclusion that the Earth’s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature might increase by 5 to 6 degrees Celsius with a doubling of atmospheric CO2. He</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">suggests that this increase could make the Earth’s climate “more equable,” stimulating plant</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">growth and food production. He also errs in his timescale, believing it would take humans 3,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">years to double atmospheric CO2. A 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics will bring the work of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arrhenius to the attention of the general public: “a theory has been elaborated, primarily by the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">great Swedish scientist Arrhenius, that the earth has had a warm climate when the carbon dioxide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the atmosphere was abundant, and a cold climate when it was scarce. It is believed that if the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">atmosphere contained two to three times its present amount, the climate would be considerably</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">warmer.” Under a photo of massive plumes of smoke coming from factory smokestacks, the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">article elaborates, “The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the atmosphere a more effective blanket</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arrhenius’ distant 21st century relation will be youth climate activist Greta Thunberg [see 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(September)].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Svante Arrhenius, “On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground,” Philosophical Magazine Series</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 41, no. 251 (1896), 1, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786449608620846; Richard Wolfson, Energy, Environment,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and Climate (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), 336.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Page of 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics, circulated in a Tweet by climate scientist Peter Gleick, June 9, 2017. Writes Gleick, a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur Fellow, “Climate science isn’t rocket science. It’s much harder. But</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">we’ve been working at it for more than a century. And we’re damn good at it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/873181910427549697/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclimatecrock</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">s.com%2F</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brenda Ekwurzel, “I’m a Scientist and Greta Thunberg’s Speech to Congress Inspires Me,” Union of Concerned Scientists Blog,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">September 20 2019, https://blog.ucsusa.org/brenda-ekwurzel/im-a-scientist-greta-thunbergs-speech-to-congress-inspires-me</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1938</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">English engineer and amateur meteorologist Guy Callendar concludes that humans have</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">added about 150,000 million tonnes of CO2 to the air over the previous 50 years</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature,” a paper by Guy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Callendar appearing in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, concludes that</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“by fuel combustion man has added about 150,000 million tons [tonnes] of carbon dioxide to the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">air over the past 50 years,” and estimates that approximately three quarters of that has remained</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the atmosphere. Callendar concludes that this increase in carbon dioxide has caused an increase</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in mean global temperatures during the previous half century: “From this the increase in mean&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature, due to the artificial production of carbon dioxide, is estimated to be at the rate of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0.003oC. per year at the present time.” As physicist and historian of science Spencer Weart</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">notes: “As for the future, Callendar estimated, on flimsy grounds, that a doubling of CO2 could</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gradually bring a 2oC rise in future centuries. Aware that industrial emissions were already far</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">greater than in Arrhenius’s day, Callendar saw this warming as a matter of present</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">interest….Callendar’s publications attracted some attention, and climatology textbooks of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1940’s and 1950’s routinely included a brief reference to his studies. But most meteorologists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gave Callendar’s idea scant credence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">* G.S. Callendar, “The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meteorological Society 64, no. 275 (April 1938): 223,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.49706427503</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (January 2017), https://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_M085</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1951</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rachel Carson publishes the New York Times bestseller The Sea Around Us, including</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">observations about pronounced warming in the Arctic regions of the Earth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a chapter in The Sea Around Us entitled “The Global Thermostat,” American marine biologist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and writer Rachel Carson observes, “Now in our lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of climate… It is now established beyond question that a definite change in the arctic climate set</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in about 1900, that it became astonishingly marked about 1930, and that it is now spreading into</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sub-arctic and temperate regions. The frigid top of the world is very clearly warming up.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carson discusses several theories for this, but none related to human industrial activity. The Sea</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Around Us remains on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks, and sells a quarter of a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">million copies by the end of 1952. The chapter “The Global Thermostat” is republished in Vogue</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">magazine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us. (New York: Oxford, 1951), 183.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arlene Rodd Quarantiello, Rachel Carson: A Biography (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 54-55.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1956</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gilbert Plass publishes a lucid explanation of the “carbon dioxide theory”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Physicist Gilbert Plass of Johns Hopkins and colleagues publish “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climatic Change” to account for “the general warming of the climate that has taken place in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">last sixty years” in the journal American Scientist. The article questions: “What is the reason for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the recent temperature rise that is found throughout the world? Will this trend toward warmer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climates continue for some time? The carbon dioxide theory may provide the answer.” After</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">citing various other theories for warming, Plass notes: “Although the carbon dioxide theory of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climatic change was one of the most widely held fifty years ago, in recent years it has had</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">relatively few adherents. However, recent research work suggests that the usual reasons for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rejecting this theory are not valid.” Evidence demonstrates that “[t]he infrared absorption</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">properties of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone determine our climate to a large extent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their action has often been compared to that of a greenhouse… [A]s the amount of carbon dioxide&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">increases… the outgoing radiation is trapped more effectively near the earth’s surface and the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature rises. The latest calculations show that if the carbon dioxide content of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">atmosphere should double, the surface temperature would rise 3.6 Celsius...” The article goes on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to discuss the impact of fossil fuel combustion: “Recently… man has added an important new</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">factor to the carbon dioxide balance… [C]ombustion of fossil fuels is adding 6.0 x 109</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tons</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[tonnes] per year of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at the present time and the rate is increasing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">every year. Today this factor is larger than any contribution from the inorganic world. Thus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">today man by his own activities is increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the rate of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">30 per cent a century…. Even if there may be some question as to whether or not the general</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">amelioration of the climate in the last fifty years has really been caused by increased industrial</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">activity, there can be no doubt that this will become an increasingly serious problem as the level</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of industrial activity increases. In a few centuries the amount of carbon dioxide released into the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">atmosphere will have become so large that it will have a profound influence on our climate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Gilbert N. Plass, James Rodger Fleming, Gavin Schmidt, “Carbon Dioxide and the Climate,” American Scientist 44, no. 3 (July</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1956): 302-316; reprinted in American Scientist 98, no.1 (January-February 2010): 58,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.americanscientist.org/article/carbon-dioxide-and-the-climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1956</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times publishes a summary of the Gilbert Plass paper headlined “Warmer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate on the earth may be due to more carbon dioxide in the air”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times summary of the Gilbert Plass paper concludes: “Even if our coal and oil</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reserves will be used up in 1,000 years, seventeen times the present amount of carbon dioxide in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the atmosphere must be reckoned with. The introduction of nuclear energy will not make much</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">difference. Coal and oil are still plentiful and cheap in many parts of the world, and there’s every</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reason to believe that both will be consumed by industry as long as it pays to do so.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Waldemar Kaempffert, “SCIENCE IN REVIEW; Warmer climate on the earth may be due to more carbon dioxide in the air,” New</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">York Times, October 28, 1956, https://www.nytimes.com/1956/10/28/archives/science-in-review-warmer-climate-on-the-earth-may-bedue-to-more.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1957</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American oceanographers Roger Revelle and Hans Suess demonstrate that CO2 levels in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the air have increased as a result of the use of fossil fuels</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roger Revelle and Hans Suess of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography publish “Carbon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades.” From measuring carbon content in wood and marine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">material, the authors conclude that “most of the CO2 released by artificial fuel combustion since</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the beginning of the industrial revolution must have been absorbed by the oceans. The increase</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in atmospheric CO2 from this cause is at present small but may become significant during future</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">decades if industrial fuel combustion continues to rise exponentially.” The authors observe that</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">previous estimates about the amount of warming that would be attributable to increased CO2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">releases have not taken into account feedback mechanisms that can enhance warming:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“amplifying or feed-back processes may exist such that a slight change in the character of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">back radiation might have a more pronounced effect. Possible examples are a decrease in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">albedo [reflection of solar energy] of the earth due to melting of ice caps…” * The authors note</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that this emerging human impact on the planet is unprecedented: “Thus human beings are now</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">past…Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years. This</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">experiment… may yield a far-reaching insight into the process determining weather and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Revelle, Roger, and Hans E. Suess. “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Oceans and the Question of an Increase of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades,” Tellus 9, no. 1 (1957): 19-20.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.uscentrist.org/platform/positions/environment/context-environment/docs/Revelle-Suess1957.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1965</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roger Revelle contributes to the first mention of global warming in a government report,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">comparing it to glass in a greenhouse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Serving on the President’s Science Advisory Committee Panel on Environmental Pollution,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">oceanographer Roger Revelle contributes to an appendix to the government report Restoring the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quality of our Environment, entitled “Carbon Dioxide from Fossil Fuels: the Invisible</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pollutant.” Citing measurements by the U.S. Weather Bureau on Mauna Loa Mountain in Hawaii,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the report notes that “the data show, clearly and conclusively, that from 1958 through 1962 the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere increased by 1.36 percent. The increase from year to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">year was quite regular, close to the average annual value of 0.23%. By comparing the measured</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">increase with the known quantity of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel combustion…we see</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that almost exactly half of the fossil fuel CO2 apparently remained in the atmosphere.” The report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">concludes that “Within a few short centuries, we are contributing to the air a significant portion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">years….[A]n increase in atmospheric carbon could act, much like the glass in a greenhouse, to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">raise the temperature of the lower air.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee, Restoring the Quality of Our Environment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Washington, DC: GPO,1965), App. Y4, 116,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira%20downloads/PSAC,%201965,%20Restoring%20the%20Quality%20of%20Our%2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0Environment.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1965</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Lyndon Johnson raises an alarm about the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">atmosphere, and other “darker sides” of technology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Johnson’s “Special Message on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty” states</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” His speech begins with the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">observation that “modern technology, which has added much to our lives can also have a darker</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">side. Its uncontrolled waste products are menacing the world we live in, our enjoyment and our&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">health. The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. The skeletons of discarded cars</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">litter the countryside. The same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare but</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the dignity of man's spirit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty” (Speech, Washington,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">D.C., February 8, 1965), The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, http://acsc.lib.udel.edu/items/show/292</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1967</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald are the first to use a computer model to explore</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide on the Earth’s climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald publish “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They conclude that “a doubling of the CO2 content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2C.”* The analysis is</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“the first to represent the fundamental elements of the Earth’s climate in a computer model, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to explore what doubling carbon dioxide (CO2) would do to global temperature.” A 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CarbonBrief poll of leading scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(IPCC) will find this paper most often chosen as the “most influential climate change paper of all</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">time.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">* Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald, “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humidity,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 24, no. 3 (May, 1967), https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0469(1967)024%3C0241:TEOTAW%3E2.0.CO;2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Roz Pidcock, “The Most Influential Climate Change Papers of All Time,” CarbonBrief, June 7, 2015,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.carbonbrief.org/the-most-influential-climate-change-papers-of-all-time; My acknowledgment to the CarbonBrief survey</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">report for identifying a number of other research articles included in this chronology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1970</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Richard Nixon establishes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 takes effect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Richard Nixon’s Special Message to Congress in establishing the U.S. Environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protection Agency (EPA) opens by noting that “[a]s concern with the condition of our physical</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the total environment--land, water, and air. It also has become increasingly clear that only by</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reorganizing our Federal efforts can we develop that knowledge, and effectively ensure the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">protection, development and enhancement of the total environment itself.” The President</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">proposes a “far more effective approach to pollution control [which] would: Identify pollutants.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trace them through the entire ecological chain, observing and recording changes in form as they</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">occur. Determine the total exposure of man and his environment. Examine interactions among</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">forms of pollution. Identify where in the ecological chain interdiction would be most</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">appropriate.” “In organizational terms,” the President concludes, “this requires pulling together</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">now scattered through several departments and agencies. It also requires that the new agency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">include sufficient support elements--in research and in aids to State and local anti-pollution</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">programs, for example--to give it the needed strength and potential for carrying out its mission.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coincident with the establishment of the EPA, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mandates, for the first time, that federal agencies “include in every recommendation or report on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on… the environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">impact of the proposed action…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> President Richard Nixon, “Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970” (Speech, Washington, D.C., July 9, 1970), EPA Web Archive,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/reorganization-plan-no-3-1970.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Sec. 102, 42 USC 4332,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.fws.gov/r9esnepa/RelatedLegislativeAuthorities/nepa1969.PDF</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1970</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Congress enacts the Clean Air Act,...</b></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1970</b></font></font></font></font></div><div>President Richard Nixon establishes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the</div><div>National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 takes effect.</div><div>President Richard Nixon’s Special Message to Congress in establishing the U.S. Environmental</div><div>Protection Agency (EPA) opens by noting that “[a]s concern with the condition of our physical</div><div>environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about</div><div>the total environment--land, water, and air. It also has become increasingly clear that only by</div><div>reorganizing our Federal efforts can we develop that knowledge, and effectively ensure the</div><div>protection, development and enhancement of the total environment itself.” The President</div><div>proposes a “far more effective approach to pollution control [which] would: Identify pollutants.</div><div>Trace them through the entire ecological chain, observing and recording changes in form as they</div><div>occur. Determine the total exposure of man and his environment. Examine interactions among</div><div>forms of pollution. Identify where in the ecological chain interdiction would be most</div><div>appropriate.” “In organizational terms,” the President concludes, “this requires pulling together</div><div>into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities</div><div>now scattered through several departments and agencies. It also requires that the new agency</div><div>include sufficient support elements--in research and in aids to State and local anti-pollution</div><div>programs, for example--to give it the needed strength and potential for carrying out its mission.”</div><div>Coincident with the establishment of the EPA, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</div><div>mandates, for the first time, that federal agencies “include in every recommendation or report on</div><div>proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the</div><div>human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on… the environmental</div><div>impact of the proposed action…”</div><div> President Richard Nixon, “Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970” (Speech, Washington, D.C., July 9, 1970), EPA Web Archive,</div><div>https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/reorganization-plan-no-3-1970.html</div><div> National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Sec. 102, 42 USC 4332,</div><div>https://www.fws.gov/r9esnepa/RelatedLegislativeAuthorities/nepa1969.PDF</div><div>1970</div><div>Congress enacts the Clean Air Act, in a near-unanimous endorsement of strong</div><div>environmental protections</div><div>In a remarkable show of bipartisanship, the Senate vote for the Clean Air Act is unanimous, the</div><div>House vote 374 to 1. The New York Times describes the legislation as “far broader in its reach,</div><div>far tougher in its deadlines and penalties, than any of its three predecessors.”* The principal</div><div>architect of this law is Maine’s Senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat, chair of the Senate</div><div>Subcommittee on the Environment; he partners with Tennessee Senator James Baker, a</div><div>Republican, to develop and promote the legislation. The law gives broad powers to the new</div><div>Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set national “ambient air quality standards,” for</div><div>specific pollutants, and charges the states with writing “implementation plans” to achieve those</div><div>standards. It provides for regulation of both “mobile sources” – cars, trucks, aircraft – and</div><div>“stationary sources” – factories, refineries, power plants. Greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and</div><div>methane are not among the “criteria pollutants” listed in the law for immediate regulatory</div><div>attention, but the law provides for periodic reassessment of and additions to the list of regulated</div><div>pollutants. If the EPA determines that new pollutants “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which</div><div>may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," it must regulate them. The</div><div>law’s definition of effects on “welfare” “includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water,</div><div>crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate.”</div><div>During the signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room, President Richard Nixon observes, "I would</div><div>only hope that as we go now from the year of the beginning, the year of proposing, the year 1970,</div><div>to the year of action, 1971, that all of us, Democrats, Republicans, the House, the Senate, the</div><div>executive branch, that all of us can look back upon this year as that time when we began to make</div><div>a movement toward a goal that we all want, a goal that Theodore Roosevelt deeply believed in&nbsp;</div><div>and a goal that he lived in his whole life. He loved the environment. He loved the clean air and</div><div>the open spaces, and he loved the western part of the United States particularly, which will be</div><div>greatly affected by this kind of action."* The American Chemical Society Journal comments:</div><div>“The new year 1971, the second in the seventies – the environmental decade – came in with a</div><div>new air pollution control law. Without question, the new law is tough. It is also</div><div>complicated…With more deadlines per square inch than any other piece of legislation, [it] is the</div><div>best blueprint for clean air the nation has ever had.”</div><div>E.W. Kenworthy, “Tough New Clean-Air Bill Passed by Senate, 73-0,” New York Times, September 23, 1970,</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/23/archives/tough-new-cleanair-bill-passed-by-senate-73-to-0-a-tough-cleanair.html</div><div>Clean Air Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-604, 84 Stat 1676, December 31, 1970, 42 U.S.C.7401 et seq., 7409, 7521(a)(1), 7602(h),</div><div>https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-84/pdf/STATUTE-84-Pg1676.pdf</div><div>President Richard Nixon, “Remarks on Signing the Clean Air Amendments of 1970,” December 31, 1970, Cited in; “40th</div><div>Anniversary of the Clean Air Act,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, last updated November 1, 2017,</div><div>https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/40th-anniversary-clean-air-act</div><div>American Chemical Society Journal, Environmental Science & Technology 5, no. 2 (1971): 106</div><div>1971</div><div>Development of supersonic transport raises concerns about impacts on climate, and the</div><div>Climate Impact Assessment Program is created under the Department of Transportation</div><div>Described as the “the first major project in integrated assessment of an environmental issue,” the</div><div>mission statement of the Climate Impact Assessment Program (CIAP) states that "in order to</div><div>determine regulatory constraints on flight in the stratosphere such that no adverse environmental</div><div>effects result, CIAP will assess ... the impact on man, plants, and animals of climatic changes</div><div>which may occur from the operation of a worldwide stratospheric fleet as projected to 1990." The</div><div>project has a $20 million budget and a three year deadline, and involves hundreds of researchers.</div><div>The impact on climate is part of their charge, but concerns focused on the effect of supersonic</div><div>transport on depletion of the ozone layer. The final report of the project clearly endorses</div><div>international regulation of supersonic transport, but refrains from specific recommendations on</div><div>the form of regulation.</div><div>“Thematic Guide to Integrated Assessment Modeling,” NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, last updated 1995,</div><div>http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mva/iamcc.tg/TGsec2-1.html; Karen Fisher-Vanden, “International Policy Instrument Prominence in</div><div>the Climate Change Debate: A Case Study of the United States,” ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-06, Kennedy School of Government,</div><div>Harvard University, August 1997, 2, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/51e2/55ee1e32368df19d41ab1ac5d34a04e7a6e5.pdf</div><div>1972</div><div>The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment is the first global meeting of</div><div>nations to consider environmental concerns.</div><div>The conference, held in Stockholm, is attended by 113 nations. The Conference Declaration opens</div><div>with the finding that “The protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue</div><div>which affects the well-being of peoples and economic development throughout the world; it is</div><div>the urgent desire of the peoples of the whole world and the duty of all Governments….In our&nbsp;</div><div>time, man's capability to transform his surroundings, if used wisely, can bring to all peoples the</div><div>benefits of development and the opportunity to enhance the quality of life. Wrongly or heedlessly</div><div>applied, the same power can do incalculable harm to human beings and the human environment.</div><div>We see around us growing evidence of man-made harm in many regions of the earth: dangerous</div><div>levels of pollution in water, air, earth and living beings; major and undesirable disturbances to</div><div>the ecological balance of the biosphere; destruction and depletion of irreplaceable resources; and</div><div>gross deficiencies, harmful to the physical, mental and social health of man, in the man-made</div><div>environment, particularly in the living and working environment.” Participant nations agree to</div><div>26 general principles, including Principle 6: “The discharge of toxic substances or of other</div><div>substances and the release of heat, in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity</div><div>of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted in order to ensure that serious or</div><div>irreversible damage is not inflicted upon ecosystems,” and Principle 12: “Resources should be</div><div>made available to preserve and improve the environment, taking into account the circumstances</div><div>and particular requirements of developing countries and any costs which may emanate from their</div><div>incorporating environmental safeguards into their development planning and the need for making</div><div>available to them, upon their request, additional international technical and financial assistance</div><div>for this purpose.” The very first recommendation under the Conference’s “Action Plan,” under</div><div>“Identification and Control of Pollutants of Broad International Significance,” is</div><div>Recommendation 70, targeting climate change: “It is recommended that Governments be mindful</div><div>of activities in which there is an appreciable risk of effects on climate, and to this end: (a)</div><div>Carefully evaluate the likelihood and magnitude of climatic effects and disseminate their findings</div><div>to the maximum extent feasible before embarking on such activities; (b) Consult fully other</div><div>interested States when activities carrying a risk of such effects are being contemplated or</div><div>implemented.”</div><div>United Nations, Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, (Stockholm: United Nations, 5-16 June, 1972),</div><div>1, http://www.un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf</div><div>1972</div><div>The report Limits to Growth predicts that if current growth trends continue unchanged, the</div><div>limits to growth on the planet will be reached within the next 100 years</div><div>The Club of Rome report Limits to Growth, making unprecedented use of computer modeling,</div><div>summarizes its findings as follows: “1. If the present growth trends in world population,</div><div>industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the</div><div>limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The</div><div>most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and</div><div>industrial capacity. 2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of</div><div>ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global</div><div>equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied</div><div>and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential. 3. If the</div><div>world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin&nbsp;</div><div>working to attain it, the greater will be there chances of success.”* The study is translated into</div><div>thirty languages and sells 30 million copies, more than any other environmental book.</div><div>Donella Meadows et al., Limits to Growth (New York: Signet, 1972), 1,</div><div>http://collections.dartmouth.edu/teitexts/meadows/diplomatic/meadows_ltg-diplomatic.html#pg-17</div><div>Bill McKibben, Eaarth (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 90-92.</div><div>1975</div><div>In the first peer-reviewed reference to “global warming,” Wallace Broecker publishes the</div><div>paper “Climatic Change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”</div><div>Columbia University professor of Geological Sciences Wallace Broecker’s paper concludes:</div><div>“If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be</div><div>made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming</div><div>induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling</div><div>which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom</div><div>out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend</div><div>to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary</div><div>temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.”</div><div>Wallace Broecker, “Climatic Change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”, Science 189, no. 4201 (August 8,</div><div>1975): 460-463, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1740491</div><div>1975</div><div>California nuclear physicist Howard Wilcox predicts melting polar ice caps and flooded</div><div>populous areas of the earth in 80 to 180 years</div><div>Wilcox’s theory, detailed in his book Hothouse Earth, focuses on the heat generated by</div><div>combustion of fossil fuels, not the atmospheric impact of greenhouse gases, and is characterized</div><div>by the New York Times as the “most provocative theory to attract attention of weather experts.”</div><div>Wilcox’s time frame is far shorter than the centuries or millennia of previous warming estimates.</div><div>He anticipates not only the impact of polar melting on sea level rise but other positive feedback</div><div>mechanisms. As summarized in the Times, “a one-degree temperature change would mean that</div><div>a greater portion of the ice cap would melt. There would then be less ice to reflect heat back into</div><div>the atmosphere (known as the albedo effect) and more water to absorb the sun's warming rays.</div><div>This, in turn, would lead to an accelerating temperature rise for the whole region, causing an ever-</div><div>faster melting rate, according to the Wilcox theory.” The Times quotes NOAA senior research</div><div>climatologist Murray Mitchell’s comment “that the more immediate danger will come from the</div><div>increasing amounts of carbon dioxide that are thrown off into the atmosphere along with the heat</div><div>that Dr. Wilcox talks about,” and quotes William Kellogg, senior scientist at the National Center</div><div>for Atmospheric Research, as offering a comforting perspective: “I don't agree that we will</div><div>continue to have an exponential energy growth rate. I think the world will begin to be aware of&nbsp;</div><div>the problem and start to conserve energy and slow down growth before it gets to the point Dr.</div><div>Wilcox proposes.”</div><div>Baynard Webster, “Scientist Warns of Great Floods if Earth's Heat Rises,” New York Times, December 22, 1975,</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/22/archives/scientist-warns-of-great-floods-if-earths-heat-rises.html</div><div>1976</div><div>Charles D. Keeling creates the “Keeling Curve,” a simple visualization of the longest</div><div>continuous record of CO2 concentration in the world</div><div>A paper published by Charles D. Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and</div><div>coauthors in the journal Tellus, “Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa</div><div>Observatory, Hawaii,” tracks increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at the Mauna</div><div>Loa Observatory, finding that “the annual average CO2 concentration rose 3.4% between 1959</div><div>and 1971…Similar changes in rate have been observed at the South Pole and are evidently a</div><div>global phenomenon.” The Keeling Curve shows measurements dating back to 1958 at Mauna</div><div>Loa and as it later develops incorporates ice core records to show CO2 measurements dating back</div><div>to 1700. As CarbonBrief comments: “With the Mauna Loa measurements continuing today, the</div><div>so-called ‘Keeling curve’ is the longest continuous record of carbon dioxide concentration in the</div><div>world. Its historical significance and striking simplicity has made it one of the most iconic</div><div>visualizations of climate change.”</div><div>Charles D. Keeling et al., “Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii,” Tellus 28, no. 6, December,</div><div>1976, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1976.tb00701.x ; Rob Monroe, “How are ice-core data and Mauna Loa atmospheric data</div><div>made comparable?” Scripps Institution of Oceanography, March 20, 2014,</div><div>https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2014/03/20/how-are-ice-core-data-and-mauna-loa-atmospheric-data-made-comparable</div><div> Roz Pidcock, “The Most Influential Climate Change Papers of All Time,” CarbonBrief, June 7, 2015,</div><div>http://www.carbonbrief.org/the-most-influential-climate-change-papers-of-all-time</div><div>1977</div><div>The U.S. National Academy of Sciences releases a report that identifies a global warming</div><div>trend caused by increased use of fossil fuels</div><div>The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, “Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics,”</div><div>predicts that global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2150 due to fossil fuel</div><div>emissions, and observes, “Examination of the possible long-term effects of energy use is</div><div>particularly timely. With the end of the oil age in sight, we must make long-term decisions as to</div><div>future energy policies. One lesson we have been learning is that the time required for transition</div><div>from one major source to another is several decades.” The findings, the NAS notes, “should lead</div><div>neither to panic nor to complacency.”</div><div>National Research Council, Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics, (Washington, DC: GPO, 1977), vii-viii,</div><div>http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12024&page=1</div><div>1977</div><div>President Jimmy Carter sends Congress a comprehensive National Energy Plan</div><div>The plan has 113 legislative proposals, including new taxes on automobiles, on utilities that burn</div><div>oil or natural gas instead of coal, and a gasoline tax intended to create a floor on gasoline prices.</div><div>It is described as “as ambitious and complex as any legislative proposal a president has ever sent</div><div>to Congress.” Plan architect James Schlesinger describes the Carter Administration’s goals: to</div><div>transition away from “cheap and abundant energy used wastefully without regard to national and</div><div>international imperatives to an era of more expansive energy with concomitant regard for</div><div>efficiency, conservation, international and environmental concerns.” The proposal includes</div><div>dramatically expanding federal regulatory power over energy producers, suppliers, and</div><div>consumers. President Carter describes his energy initiative as “the moral equivalent of war.” The</div><div>American people, however, continue to regard cheap gasoline, inexpensive electricity, and low</div><div>heating prices as an entitlement. The legislation finally enacted includes virtually none of</div><div>President Carter’s proposed taxes to stimulate conservation and the production of alternative</div><div>fuels. Schlesinger: “The basic constituency for this problem is in the future.” President Carter:</div><div>“We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no shortterm solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.”</div><div>* Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America's Environment, Security, and Independence (Cambridge: MIT Press,</div><div>2011), 106, 110, 141.</div><div>1977</div><div>Senior Exxon Corporation scientist advises that CO2 from the world’s use of fossil fuels</div><div>would warm the planet</div><div>At a meeting at Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, senior Exxon scientist James F. Black</div><div>advises Exxon’s Management Committee that “…there is general scientific agreement that the</div><div>most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon</div><div>dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” In an updated report to a broader range of</div><div>Exxon executives and scientists in 1978, Black states that “Present thinking holds that man has</div><div>a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in</div><div>energy strategies might become critical.”</div><div>Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken”, InsideClimate News, Sept. 15, 2015,</div><div>http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming</div><div>1978</div><div>The National Climate Program Act increases federal funding for climate research</div><div>Funds are directed to the National Climate Program Office of the National Oceanic and</div><div>Atmospheric Administration. The law includes a Congressional finding that: “(1)Weather and&nbsp;</div><div>climate change affect food production, energy use, land use, water resources and other factors</div><div>vital to national security and human welfare. (2) An ability to anticipate natural and man-induced</div><div>changes in climate would contribute to the soundness of policy decisions in the public and private</div><div>sectors. (3) Significant improvements in the ability to forecast climate on an intermediate and</div><div>long-term basis are possible. (4) Information regarding climate is not being fully disseminated or</div><div>used, and Federal efforts have given insufficient attention to assessing and applying this</div><div>information.” It directs the President to develop a five-year plan for, among other actions, “basic</div><div>and applied research to improve the understanding of climate processes, natural and man induced,</div><div>and the social, economic, and political implications of climate change;” “global data collection,</div><div>and monitoring and analysis activities to provide reliable, useful and readily available information</div><div>on a continuing basis;” and “measures for increasing international cooperation in climate</div><div>research, monitoring, analysis and data dissemination.” </div><div> National Climate Program Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-367, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE92/pdf/STATUTE-92-Pg601.pdf</div><div>1979 (February)</div><div>The first World Climate Conference is organized by the United Nations and the World</div><div>Health Organization</div><div>The conference held in Geneva includes 350 specialists from 53 countries and 24 international</div><div>organizations and from a wide range of disciplines including agriculture, water resources,</div><div>fisheries, energy, environment, ecology, biology, medicine, sociology and economics. After two</div><div>weeks of deliberations, the organizers issue a World Climate Conference Declaration: “Having</div><div>regard to the all-pervading influence of climate on human society and on many fields of human</div><div>activities and endeavour, the Conference finds that it is now urgently necessary for the nations of</div><div>the world: (a) To take full advantage of man’s present knowledge of climate; (b) To take steps</div><div>to improve significantly that knowledge; (c) To foresee and prevent potential man-made changes</div><div>in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity.”* </div><div>John W. Zillman, “A History of Climate Activities,” World Meteorological Association Bulletin 58, no. 3, 2009, 1,</div><div>https://public.wmo.int/en/bulletin/history-climate-activities</div><div>For an excellent narrative and graphic review of the decade following this conference, “the decisive decade when humankind first</div><div>came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change,” see Nathaniel Rich and George Steinmetz, “Losing Earth:</div><div>The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” New York Times, August 1, 2018. As noted by the editor, “It will come as a</div><div>revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they</div><div>came to solving it.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html</div><div>1979 (April)</div><div>A technical report for the Department of Energy predicts a doubling of CO 2 concentration</div><div>in the atmosphere by 2035 and an increase of surface temperatures by 2.4 degrees Celsius</div><div>Written by geophysicist Gordon MacDonald and other members of an elite group of scientists</div><div>called the “Jasons,” the “Jason report,” titled Long term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on</div><div>climate, is based on analytic modeling, and concludes its abstract with the statement that “The&nbsp;</div><div>warming of climate will not necessarily lead to improved living conditions everywhere. Changes</div><div>in sea level, in agricultural productivity, and in water availability can be anticipated, but the</div><div>dimensions of their economic, political, or social consequences can not.”</div><div>Gordon MacDonald et al., Long term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate. Technical report JSR-78-07, [Calculations</div><div>using JASON Climate Model], (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information 1979), 1,</div><div>https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5851500-long-term-impact-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-climate-technical-report-jsr-calculations-usingjason-climate-model</div><div>1979</div><div>Rafe Pomerance joins forces with Gordon Macdonald to engage with policymakers on the</div><div>understated but startling conclusions of the “Jason report”</div><div>Pomerance, a historian by training working as the deputy legislative director of the Friends of the</div><div>Earth, joins with MacDonald to conduct informal briefings with the E.P.A., the National Security</div><div>Council, The New York Times, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Energy</div><div>Department, and the senior staff of the president’s Office of Science and Technology Policy</div><div>(OSTP). As a result of the meeting with the OSTP, President Jimmy Carter’s chief science advisor</div><div>Frank Press requests the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to</div><div>prepare a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue.</div><div>* Nathaniel Rich and George Steinmetz, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” New York Times, August</div><div>1, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html</div><div>1979 (June)</div><div>President Jimmy Carter climbs to the roof of the White House to mark the installation of</div><div>32 solar panels to heat water for the White House</div><div>At the dedication ceremony for the White House solar panels on June 20, 1979, President Carter</div><div>announces a “new solar strategy,” to reach a goal to obtain 20% of the nation’s energy from</div><div>renewables by 2000. He observes, “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is</div><div>being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from</div><div>now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken</div><div>or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken</div><div>by the American people.”* [see 1986]</div><div>* Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America's Environment, Security, and Independence (Cambridge: MIT</div><div>Press, 2011), 118; David Biello, “Where Did Carter’s White House’s Solar Panels Go?” Scientific American, August 6, 2010,</div><div>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/</div><div>1979 (July)</div><div>A National Research Council report estimates “the most probable global warming for a</div><div>doubling of CO2 to be near 3°C with a probable error of ± 1.5°C.”</div><div>The Ad Hoc Study Group on carbon dioxide and climate is chaired by MIT meteorologist Jule</div><div>Charney. The 22 page “Charney report” estimates that based on then current trends in fossil fuel</div><div>combustion, these temperatures will be reached some time in the first half of the 21st century. The</div><div>forward to the report by Verner Suomi, Chairman of the Climate Research Board of the National</div><div>Research Council, notes that “For more than a century, we have been aware that changes in the</div><div>composition of the atmosphere could affect its ability to trap the sun's energy for our benefit. We</div><div>now have incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed changing and that we ourselves</div><div>contribute to that change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are steadily increasing,</div><div>and these changes are linked with man's use of fossil fuels and exploitation of the land. Since</div><div>carbon dioxide plays a significant role in the heat budget of the atmosphere, it is reasonable to</div><div>suppose that continued increases would affect climate.” Suomi directs a cautionary warning to</div><div>policymakers: “The conclusions of this brief but intense investigation may be comforting to</div><div>scientists but disturbing to policymakers. If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group</div><div>finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these</div><div>changes will be negligible. The conclusions of prior studies have been generally reaffirmed.</div><div>However, the study group points out that the ocean, the great and ponderous flywheel of the</div><div>global climate system, may be expected to slow the course of observable climatic change. A waitand-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.” In addition to characterizing the impact of</div><div>the oceans in delaying observable atmospheric warming, the study explores the impact of both</div><div>positive and negative feedback mechanisms: “A strong positive feedback mechanism is the</div><div>accompanying increase of moisture, which is an even more powerful absorber of terrestrial</div><div>radiation. We have examined with care all known negative feedback mechanisms, such as</div><div>increase in low or middle cloud amount, and have concluded that the oversimplifications and</div><div>inaccuracies in the models are not likely to have vitiated the principal conclusion that there will</div><div>be appreciable warming. The known negative feedback mechanisms can reduce the warming, but</div><div>they do not appear to be so strong as the positive moisture feedback.”* Forty years later, Marcia</div><div>McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences, will write in an editorial in the journal</div><div>Science that the Charney report’s calculations “have proven to be remarkably on target:” “The</div><div>Charney report demonstrates the power of scientific prediction. Since its release, scientists have</div><div>built a formidable evidence base on climate change. At no time since 1979 has the science backed</div><div>down from its dire predictions for the prospects of human civilization to prosper in a world</div><div>warming well beyond limits encountered in all of human history.”</div><div>Jule G. Charney et al., Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment (Washington: The National Academic Press, 1979),</div><div>https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12181/carbon-dioxide-and-climate-a-scientific-assessment</div><div>Marcia McNutt, “Time’s Up, CO2,” Science 365, no. 6452 (August 2, 2019): 411, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6452/411</div><div>1980</div><div>Three years after its first climate report, a second National Academy of Sciences report on</div><div>anthropogenic warming stresses uncertainty about the extent and timing of climate changes</div><div>In response to the Charney Report in 1979, the White House Office of Science and Technology</div><div>asks the National Academy of Sciences to opine on the likely timing of increases in global</div><div>temperature. The study is chaired by economist Thomas Schelling. According to the report (a&nbsp;</div><div>letter, not a full assessment), “In view of the uncertainties, controversies, and complex linkages</div><div>surrounding the carbon dioxide issue, and the possibility that some of the greatest uncertainties</div><div>will be reduced within the decade, it seems to most of us that the near-term emphasis should be</div><div>on research, with as low a political profile as possible [emphasis in original document]…We do</div><div>not know enough to address most of these questions right now. We believe that we can learn</div><div>faster than the problem can develop.”* John Perry, a meteorologist and chief staff officer for the</div><div>Academy’s Climate Research Board, will criticize this assessment in a guest editorial in the</div><div>Journal Climatic Change entitled “Energy and Climate: Today’s Problem, not Tomorrow’s,” by</div><div>arguing: “If we have good reason to believe that a 100 percent increase in carbon dioxide will</div><div>produce significant impacts on climate, then we must have equally good reason to suspect that</div><div>even the small increase we have already produced may have subtly altered our climate…. Climate</div><div>change is not a matter for the next century; we are most probably doing it right now.”</div><div>* Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from</div><div>Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010) ,175-6.</div><div>John Perry, “Energy and Climate: Today’s Problem, not Tomorrow’s,” Climatic Change, September 1981 3, no. 3 (1981): 223-</div><div>225, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02423215</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>1980’s</b></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>eg 80's</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1979 (July)

A National Research Council report estimates “the most probable global warming for a

doubling of CO2 to be near 3°C with a probable error of ± 1.5°C.”

The Ad Hoc Study Group on carbon dioxide and climate is chaired by MIT meteorologist Jule

Charney. The 22 page “Charney report” estimates that based on then current trends in fossil fuel

combustion, these temperatures will be reached some time in the first half of the 21st century. The

forward to the report by Verner Suomi, Chairman of the Climate Research Board of the National

Research Council, notes that “For more than a century, we have been aware that changes in the

composition of the atmosphere could affect its ability to trap the sun's energy for our benefit. We

now have incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed changing and that we ourselves

contribute to that change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are steadily increasing,

and these changes are linked with man's use of fossil fuels and exploitation of the land. Since

carbon dioxide plays a significant role in the heat budget of the atmosphere, it is reasonable to

suppose that continued increases would affect climate.” Suomi directs a cautionary warning to

policymakers: “The conclusions of this brief but intense investigation may be comforting to

scientists but disturbing to policymakers. If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group

finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these

changes will be negligible. The conclusions of prior studies have been generally reaffirmed.

However, the study group points out that the ocean, the great and ponderous flywheel of the

global climate system, may be expected to slow the course of observable climatic change. A waitand-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.” In addition to characterizing the impact of

the oceans in delaying observable atmospheric warming, the study explores the impact of both

positive and negative feedback mechanisms: “A strong positive feedback mechanism is the

accompanying increase of moisture, which is an even more powerful absorber of terrestrial

radiation. We have examined with care all known negative feedback mechanisms, such as

increase in low or middle cloud amount, and have concluded that the oversimplifications and

inaccuracies in the models are not likely to have vitiated the principal conclusion that there will

be appreciable warming. The known negative feedback mechanisms can reduce the warming, but

they do not appear to be so strong as the positive moisture feedback.”* Forty years later, Marcia

McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences, will write in an editorial in the journal

Science that the Charney report’s calculations “have proven to be remarkably on target:” “The

Charney report demonstrates the power of scientific prediction. Since its release, scientists have

built a formidable evidence base on climate change. At no time since 1979 has the science backed

down from its dire predictions for the prospects of human civilization to prosper in a world

warming well beyond limits encountered in all of human history.”

*Jule G. Charney et al., Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment (Washington: The National Academic Press, 1979),

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12181/carbon-dioxide-and-climate-a-scientific-assessment

*Marcia McNutt, “Time’s Up, CO2,” Science 365, no. 6452 (August 2, 2019): 411, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6452/411

1980

Three years after its first climate report, a second National Academy of Sciences report on

anthropogenic warming stresses uncertainty about the extent and timing of climate changes

In response to the Charney Report in 1979, the White House Office of Science and Technology

asks the National Academy of Sciences to opine on the likely timing of increases in global

temperature. The study is chaired by economist Thomas Schelling. According to the report (a

letter, not a full assessment), “In view of the uncertainties, controversies, and complex linkages

surrounding the carbon dioxide issue, and the possibility that some of the greatest uncertainties

will be reduced within the decade, it seems to most of us that the near-term emphasis should be

on research, with as low a political profile as possible [emphasis in original document]…We do

not know enough to address most of these questions right now. We believe that we can learn

faster than the problem can develop.”* John Perry, a meteorologist and chief staff officer for the

Academy’s Climate Research Board, will criticize this assessment in a guest editorial in the

Journal Climatic Change entitled “Energy and Climate: Today’s Problem, not Tomorrow’s,” by

arguing: “If we have good reason to believe that a 100 percent increase in carbon dioxide will

produce significant impacts on climate, then we must have equally good reason to suspect that

even the small increase we have already produced may have subtly altered our climate…. Climate

change is not a matter for the next century; we are most probably doing it right now.”

Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010) ,175-6.

John Perry, “Energy and Climate: Today’s Problem, not Tomorrow’s,” Climatic Change, September 1981 3, no. 3 (1981): 223-

225, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02423215

1980’s

The Reagan Administration cuts energy R&D funding by more than half and reduces

funding for climate research

Numerous battles erupt in Congress over the Department of Energy’s attempts to reduce its

climate research budget and the content of climate research programs. As Karen Fischer-Vanden

comments, public dissatisfaction with some of the Carter Administration’s R&D funding

decisions “fed an already existing national trend toward more conservative views—including the

desire for less government and industry deregulation where preferred actions of private businesses

are induced through market mechanisms.”* “Carter had earlier asked us to lower our thermostats

and wear sweaters,” writes Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, “He wore one himself.

Reagan, who succeeded Carter in the White House, wore only a smile. For him, there was no

energy crisis. Whereas Carter had insisted that only the government could manage the energy

crisis, Reagan, in his first inaugural, demanded that government get out of the way. Speaking of

general economic conditions at the time, he said, ‘Government is not the solution to our problem.’

He went on to call for America to return to greatness, to ‘reawaken this industrial giant,’ and all

sorts of swell things would happen.” The Reagan administration is instrumental, however, in

supporting the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer [see 1985] and the

creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international organization to

assess scientific and socio-economic information related to global climate change [see 1988].

States.” ENRP Discussion Paper E-97-06, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, August 1997, 3.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/51e2/55ee1e32368df19d41ab1ac5d34a04e7a6e5.pdf

Richard Cohen, “Wish Upon A Pump,” Washington Post, July 8, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/07/07/AR2008070702215.html

1

1981-2

The Reagan Administration urges the National Academy of Sciences to restrain its concern

on the climate issue

In meetings leading up to a 1983 National Academy of Science (NAS) report, Department of

Energy officials advise NAS that they “[do] not approve of …speculative, alarmist, ‘wolf–crying’

scenarios….” A White House Office of Science and Technology official advises NAS staff that

there is no need for alarm, because “technology will ultimately be the answer to the problems of

providing energy and protecting the environment.”*

Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010) ,182.

1982

Reagan appointee Frederick Koomanoff speaks in support of “serious, sustained and

systematic investigation” of the CO2 issue

At a Reagan Administration–sponsored conference entitled Carbon Dioxide, Science, and

Consensus, the Reagan appointee to the Carbon Dioxide Research Division, Frederick

Koomanoff, opens the proceedings with the observation that “[the] Executive Branch and the

Congress clearly regard the CO2 issue as one deserving serious, sustained and systematic

investigation. The credit for this lies in the good science and solid research that has and is being

performed.” James C. Greene, science consultant to the House Committee on Science and

Technology, warns, “A veil hangs ominously over the earth, from pole to pole, over all the

continents, and over the oceans… To a significant degree, man has put it there. It is called simply

enough, carbon dioxide pollution. If today’s worst case scenario becomes tomorrow’s reality, it

will be too late to reverse the atmospheric buildup or to ameliorate the severe adverse human and

environmental impacts of this pollutant.”*

*John Perlin, “You Won’t Believe What I Found in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Regarding Climate Change,”

CleanTechnica, Dec. 8, 2015, http://cleantechnica.com/2015/12/08/you-wont-believe-what-i-found-in-the-ronald-reaganpresidential-library-regarding-climate-change-i-sure-was-surprised-cleantechnica-exclusive/

1982

Exxon Corporation management receives “wide circulation” of a primer on CO2 and

climate change

As reported in a 2015 InsideClimate News investigative report, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,”

the primer given to Exxon management is based on extensive research performed by the company

since 1977. The primer states that heading off global warming “would require major reductions

in fossil fuel combustion.” Unless that happens, “there are some potentially catastrophic events

that must be considered. …Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.” The

primer is marked “not to be distributed externally.” In a September, 1982 report summarizing

Exxon’s own climate research, Roger Cohen, head of theoretical sciences at Exxon Corporate

Research Laboratories, states that "Over the past several years a clear scientific consensus has

emerged," which concludes that a doubling of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would

produce average global warming of 3 degrees Celsius, plus or minus 1.5 degrees C. “There is

unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude

would bring about significant changes in the earth's climate, including rainfall distribution and

alterations in the biosphere." Cohen urges publication of these findings because it is our "ethical

responsibility is to permit the publication of our research in the scientific literature," while he

acknowledges the "connection between Exxon's major business and the role of fossil fuel

combustion in contributing to the increase of atmospheric CO2." Exxon will follow his advice:

“Between 1983 and 1984, its researchers published their results in at least three peer-reviewed

papers in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences and an American Geophysical Union

monograph.”*

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming

1983

The views of climate scientists and economists diverge markedly in a new National Academy

of Sciences report on climate change

The National Academy of Sciences report, “Changing Climate: Report of the Carbon Dioxide

Assessment Committee,” includes five chapters detailing the likelihood of climate change written

by climate scientists, including Roger Revelle [see 1957, 1965], and two chapters by economists,

including Thomas Schelling [see 1980]. The views diverge markedly. Schelling argues that it is

a mistake to assume a “preference for… dealing with causes rather than symptoms… It would be

wrong to commit ourselves to the principle that if fossil fuels and carbon dioxide are where the

problem arises, that must also be where the solution lies.” The economist William Nierenberg,

who chairs the Committee, stresses human migration and adaptation as the likely most

economical approach to the problem. Physicist Alvin Weinberg writes a scathing critique of the

report, as “so seriously flawed in its underlying analysis and in its conclusions… Does the

Committee really believe that the United States or Western Europe or Canada would accept the

huge influx of refugees from poor countries that have suffered a drastic shift in rainfall

pattern?”*[see 1989]

Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 177 - 181.

1985

The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer becomes the first global

treaty with enforceable provisions addressing atmospheric pollution

U.S. leadership plays a pivotal role in achieving the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the

Ozone Layer, an international agreement on a clear timetable for reducing the production of

chlorofluorocarbons and halons that degrade the atmospheric ozone layer.* The Environmental

Protection Agency and the State Department meet with considerable opposition to the treaty in

the Reagan cabinet, but President Reagan ultimately supports the treaty provisions. As Cass

Sunstein later observes in The New York Times, “There is a real irony here. Republicans and

conservatives had ridiculed scientists who expressed concern about the destruction of the ozone

layer. How did Ronald Reagan, of all people, come to favor aggressive regulatory steps and lead

the world toward a strong and historic international agreement? A large part of the answer lies in

a tool disliked by many progressives but embraced by Reagan (and Mr. Obama): cost-benefit

analysis. Reagan’s economists found that the costs of phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals

were a lot lower than the costs of not doing so — largely measured in terms of avoiding cancers

that would otherwise occur. Presented with that analysis, Reagan decided that the issue was pretty

clear.”*

22, 1985), https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-2&chapter=27&clang=_en

Robert A. Wampler, “US Climate Change Policy in the 1980’s,” George Washington University National Security Archive, Dec. 2,

2015, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in1980s/

*Cass Sunstein, “Climate Change: Lessons from Ronald Reagan,” New York Times, November 10, 2012,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/climate-change-lessons-from-ronald-reagan.html

1986

President Ronald Reagan removes the 32 solar panels that President Jimmy Carter

installed on the White House roof in 1979

As David Biello reports in a 2010 article in Scientific American: “ ‘Hey! That system is working.

Why don't you keep it?’ recalls mechanical engineer Fred Morse, now of Abengoa Solar, who

helped install the original solar panels as director of the solar energy program during the

Carter years and then watched as they were dismantled during his tenure in the same job

under Reagan. ‘Hey! This whole [renewable] R&D program is working, why don't you keep

it?’” The development director of Unity College in Maine, Peter Marbach, asks for the

panels, and former President Jimmy Carter and Maine Senator William Cohen support the

effort to move them to Maine. For a fee of $500 to the General Services Administration,

Unity College takes possession of 16 of the panels, and drives them to Maine in a battered

blue school bus to Maine, for installation on the Unity College cafeteria. “The rest went back

into storage, too big to fit in an area that is much smaller than the White House roof. Once

Marbach arrived back at the college, donations flooded in to help refurbish and install them,

including a gift of $150,000 worth of pre–Mobil merger Exxon stock, money from actress

Glenn Close and a mention by Al Gore during a campaign stop in Maine that year.” Some

of the remaining panels are now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American

History, the Carter Library, and the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou,

China. Observes Biello: “China now produce[s] some 80 percent of the solar water heaters

used in the world today.”* [see 1979]

*David Biello, “Where Did Carter’s White House’s Solar Panels Go?” Scientific American, August 6, 2010,

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/

1987

The Global Climate Protection Act mandates the development of a coordinated national

policy on global climate change

The Act articulates a substantially higher level of Congressional concern than did the 1978

National Climate Program Act, which it amends. Congressional findings are that “(1) There

exists evidence that manmade pollution—the release of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons,

methane, and other trace gases into the atmosphere—may be producing a long-term and

substantial increase in the average temperature on Earth, a phenomenon known as global warming

through the greenhouse effect. (2) By early in the next century, an increase in Earth temperature

could (A) so alter global weather patterns as to have an effect on existing agricultural production

and on the habitability of large portions of the Earth; and (B) cause thermal expansion of the

oceans and partial melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, resulting in rising sea levels… (4)

While the consequences of the greenhouse effect may not be fully manifest until the next century,

ongoing pollution and deforestation may be contributing now to an irreversible process.

Necessary actions must be identified and implemented in time to protect the climate. (5) The

global nature of this problem will require vigorous efforts to achieve international cooperation

aimed at minimizing and responding to adverse climate change; such international cooperation

will be greatly enhanced by United States leadership.” Congress accordingly mandates the

following goals for national climate action: “United States policy should seek to— (1) increase

worldwide understanding of the greenhouse effect and its environmental and health

consequences; (2) foster cooperation among nations to develop more extensive and coordinated

scientific research efforts with respect to the greenhouse effect; (3) identify technologies and

activities to limit mankind's adverse effect on the global climate by— (A) slowing the rate of

increase of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the near term; and (B)

stabilizing or reducing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases over the long term.” *

*Global Climate Protection Act of 1987, Pub. L. 100–204, title XI, Dec. 22, 1987, 101 Stat. 1407,

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title15/html/USCODE-2011-title15-chap56.htm

1988 (June)

NASA scientist James Hansen testifies in Congress on the reality of global warming, and its

impact on current experiences of extreme weather

During an unusually hot summer, NASA scientist James Hansen testifies in Congress on the

reality of global warming: “Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the

history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough

that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the

greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the

greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such

as summer heat waves.”* Also testifying in this hearing are Syukuro Manabe of NASA’s

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory [see 1967], Dr. George Woodwell, director of the

Woods Hole Research Center, and Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric physicist with the

Environmental Defense Fund. As The New York Times reports, “Until now, scientists have been

cautious about attributing rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global

warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the ‘greenhouse effect.’ But today Dr.

James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional

committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but

was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.”

*Dr. James Hansen, “Statement from Dr. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies” (Speech, New York,

June 23, 1988) http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/06/23/ClimateChangeHearing1988.pdf

Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Experts tell Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988,

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?pagewanted=all

1988 (June)

Politicians from 46 nations and more than 300 scientists convene in Toronto at the

World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere

Dubbed “Woodstock for climate change” by The New York Times, the final unanimous

recommendation of the participants endorses a call for a 20 percent reduction in global carbon

emissions by 2005.*

1, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

1988

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is created by the World

Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme

The idea of an international organization under the United Nations focused on climate science

and policy was originally proposed by UN officials in 1985, but rejected by the Reagan

Administration, the Soviet Union and others, which preferred that this work be directed by

domestic institutions and agencies. In 1987, according to an analysis by Tana Johnson,

“Suddenly, the situation changed. By 1987, the Ronald Reagan administration in the United States

hammered out a proposal for a new institution called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC). Other states were excluded from the deliberations but swiftly rubber-stamped

the plan. Thus, in a brief period, the institutions addressing climate change shifted markedly.

From being under the sole purview of domestic agencies, the issue was taken up by a new

international body.”* The IPCC’s stated mission is “to provide the world with a clear scientific

view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and

socio-economic impacts.” The IPCC “reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical

and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate

change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”

All members of the United Nations are entitled to membership in the IPCC. As stated on the

IPCC’s web page: “Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a

unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers.

By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific

content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never

policy-prescriptive.”

*Tana Johnson, Organizational Progeny: Why Governments are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global

Governance (Oxford University Press, 2014), 1,

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/535bc5d5e4b0264746466c9f/t/54333741e4b075883baa9ad1/1412642625536/Chapter1_Organiz

ational_Progeny_Tana_Johnson.pdf

United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, accessed January 14, 2020,

https://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml

1988

The United Nations General Assembly starts the process of creating a treaty on climate

change

Declaring that “climate change is a common concern of mankind,” the General Assembly

establishes an international committee to negotiate a climate change treaty at the 1992 Rio

Conference on Environment and Development. The General Assembly resolution “[r]equests the

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization and the Executive Director of the

United Nations Environment Programme, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change, immediately to initiate action leading, as soon as possible, to a comprehensive review

and recommendations with respect to:… (c) Possible response strategies to delay, limit or

mitigate the impact of adverse climate change; (d) The identification and possible strengthening

of relevant existing international legal instruments having a bearing on climate; (e) Elements for

inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.”*

December 6, 1988, https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/43/196

1988

Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush promises in a campaign speech to act against

climate change

In Michigan on August 31, Bush states, ''Those who think we are powerless to do anything about

the greenhouse effect forget about the 'White House effect'; as President, I intend to do something

about it.'' He promises to convene an international conference on the environment. ''We will talk

about global warming,'' he said, ''and we will act.'' Eight months later The New York Times notes

that “Mr. Bush has not acted. He hasn't called for an international conference or even arranged a

conference of his own policy makers to resolve their differences. Hence he is hearing no clear

advice.”*

*Editorial Board, “The White House and the Greenhouse,” New York Times, May 9, 1989,

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/opinion/the-white-house-and-the-greenhouse.html

1989

A Department of State briefing memorandum urges the G.H.W. Bush Administration to

engage proactively on the issue of climate change

According to the February 15, 1989 Department of State briefing memorandum (declassified

March 2015), climate change is “the most far reaching environmental issue of our time:”

“There is no way that the U.S. can develop a credible international strategy on climate change

unless it addresses U.S. emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion. Once we have developed

a domestic strategy for stabilizing and then reducing our use of fossil fuels over time, we can then

develop an international strategy which is consistent with our domestic strategy.” Another

briefing memorandum dated February 9, 1989 and declassified in March 2015 from Frederick

Bernthal, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environment and Scientific

Affairs, observes, “While it is clear that we need to know more about climate change, prudence

dictates that we also begin to weigh impacts and possible responses. We simply cannot wait—

the costs of inaction will be too high.”*

1980’s,” George Washington University National Security Archive, December 2, 2015,

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/

1989

The conservative George C. Marshall Institute issues its first report attacking climate

science

The conservative George C. Marshall Institute, with economist William Nierenberg [see 1983]

on its Board, issues its first report attacking climate science. As described by historians of science

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, “Their initial strategy wasn’t to deny the fact of global

warming but to blame it on the Sun. They circulated an unpublished ‘white paper’ …published

as a small book the following year, entitled, ‘Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us?’

Echoing the tobacco industry strategy, they claimed the report would set the record straight on

global warming. The Institute’s Washington office staff contacted the White House to request an

opportunity to present it. Nierenberg gave the briefing himself, to members of the Office of

Cabinet Affairs, the Office of Policy Development, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the

Office of Management and Budget.” Presentations of the report to the G.H.W. Bush

Administration “had a big impact, stopping the positive momentum that had been building” on

climate change policy.*

*Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco

Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 186-7.

1989

The G.H.W. Bush Administration takes unprecedented steps to censor a government

scientist’s Congressional testimony on climate change.

In testimony delivered to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Review on March

19, 2007, NASA scientist James Hansen stated that “[d]uring the past 25 years I have noticed an

increase in the degree of political interference with scientific testimony to Congress.” He in

particular describes a difference between his various testimonies to Congress during the Reagan

Administration, where there was only one case where he and White House reviewers could not

agree on acceptable language, and in that case he was given permission to testify “as an

individual,” and negotiations with the G.H.W.Bush White House on testimony in 1989: “In

1989, after climate change had become of greater public and political concern, the constraints on

communication via congressional testimony became stricter, at least in my experience. When I

submitted written testimony to NASA Headquarters in 1989 for presentation to a Senate

Committee chaired by Senator Gore, my secretary was instructed by NASA Headquarters to send

the original typescript to NASA Headquarters so that they could insert several changes that were

required by the White House OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. When I was informed

of this I was angered, intercepted the typescript, and insisted that any changes had to be made in

my office. Several acceptable rewordings were negotiated (NASA Headquarters being the

intermediary between OMB and me), but three changes that OMB required were unacceptable to

me. Unlike the case earlier in the 1980s, I was told by NASA Headquarters that I needed to accept

the changes or not testify. I agreed to accept the changes, but I then sent a fax to Senator Gore

requesting that he ask me during the hearing about those specific statements, because I wanted to

make clear that they were the opinion of the White House OMB, not my opinion.” The changes

demanded by the White House, detailed by Hansen in his 2007 testimony served either to

exaggerate uncertainties about climate science, or discourage policy responses. *

*James E. Hansen, “Political Interference with Government Climate Science,” Testimony before the Committee on Oversight and

Government Review, U.S. House of Representatives, March 19, 2007,

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/Testimony_20070319.pdf; Nathaniel Rich and George Steinmetz, “Losing Earth: The Decade

We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” New York Times, August 1, 2018,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

1989

United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warns the United Nations General

Assembly about the threat of climate change

Prime Minister Thatcher, who holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and has worked as a

research chemist, states that “Of all the challenges faced by the world community in [the

previous] four years, one has grown clearer than any other in both urgency and importance—I

refer to the threat to our global environment. I shall take the opportunity of addressing the general

assembly to speak on that subject alone.” Thatcher notes that, “We are seeing a vast increase in

the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is three billion

tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution still remains in the

atmosphere… Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more

people, and their activities: The land they cultivate ever more intensively; The forests they cut

down and burn; The mountain sides they lay bare; The fossil fuels they burn; The rivers and the

seas they pollute. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more

widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the

atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we

live in the most fundamental way of all. That prospect is a new factor in human affairs. It is

comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could

be even more far-reaching.”*

*Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (Global Environment),” (Speech, New York, November 8,

1989, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817

1990

First assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: increase in

global temperatures during the next century “greater than seen over the past 10,000 years”

The first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the result

of the work of several hundred scientists from 25 countries, and describes itself as “the most

authoritative and strongly supported statement on climate change that has ever been made by the

international scientific community.” The Executive Summary begins with the statement: “We

are certain that:… emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the

atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane,

chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide These increases will enhance the greenhouse

effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface The main greenhouse

gas, water vapour, will increase in response to global warming and further enhance it.” The IPCC

predicts based on current models that under “Business-as-Usual” emissions of greenhouse gases

the planet will experience “a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1°C above the

present value by 2025 and 3°C before the end of the next century.” With respect to mitigation

efforts, the report cautions that “the long-lived gases [carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, and

chlorofluorocarbons] would require immediate reductions in emissions from human activities of

over 60% to stabilise their concentrations at today's levels.” The report addresses and rejects the

Marshall Institute argument for blaming the sun: “On a decadal time-scale solar variability and

changes in greenhouse gas concentration could give changes of similar magnitudes. However

…over longer time-scales the increases in greenhouse gases are likely to be more important…The

changes predicted to occur by about the middle of the next century due to increases in greenhouse

gas concentrations from the Business-as-Usual emissions will make global mean temperatures

higher than they have been in the last 150,000 years.”*

*Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment (Ca</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div>2016 (December)

President Obama moves to protect Arctic waters and Atlantic coast from oil and gas leasing

President Obama announces that 98 percent of U.S.-controlled Arctic waters (115 million acres)

and 3.8 million acres of underwater canyon along the Atlantic coast will be permanently withheld

from any future oil and gas leasing under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. President

Obama notes that “[These actions] reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety

standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are

significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited... By

contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any

large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region—at a time when we need to continue to

move decisively away from fossil fuels.” Simultaneously, the Canadian government announces

it will withdraw all oil and gas leases in Canadian Arctic waters.* The Wall Street Journal’s

editorial response: “This rule even purports to be ‘permanent,’ unchangeable by any future

President for all time. We’ll see about that, but in the meantime spare us the liberal panic about

Donald Trump’s supposed authoritarianism... No policy decisions are engraved in stone as if

through holy stenography, and they’re definitely not beyond democratic consent on the basis of

a 63-year-old law.” [see 2017 (April)]

*Samantha Page, “Obama Permanently Protects Huge Portions of Arctic, Atlantic from Offshore Drilling,” ThinkProgress, December

20, 2016, https://thinkprogress.org/permanent-protections-arctic-atlantic-e6978298eae1#.xukkcm6dm

Editorial Board, “Obama’s ‘Permanent’ Drilling Freeze,” Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2016,

http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-permanent-drilling-freeze-1482364429

2017 (January)

Within two days of President Donald Trump’s swearing in, numerous references to

climate change disappear from the EPA website

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), a newly founded network of

academics, librarians, and technology professionals, goes to work rescuing and archiving

scientific data in numerous government agencies regarded as at risk in the new administration,

and monitoring website changes. Changes in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

website are apparent within two days of the January 20 inauguration. For example, as EDGI

documents, EPA's page on "Federal Partner Collaboration" becomes "EPA Adaptation

Collaboration" sometime between Jan. 16 and Jan. 22, with new text highlighting adaptation

research as a core function of the EPA rather than climate change mitigation, preparedness or

resilience. When E&E News enquires about these changes, EPA transition team spokesman

Doug Ericksen denies responsibility and points to the "old administration:” “ ‘We did not direct

that,’ Ericksen says, noting that changes occurred over the Trump's first weekend in office,

when transition aides were just ‘meeting people and greeting people.’” * EDGI will continue its

work in the ensuing months and years, archiving public databases in “archive-a-thons”,

reviewing tens of millions of pages of websites from EPA, DOE, NASA, NOAA, and

Whitehouse.gov, as well as conducting confidential interviews of agency personnel, “to

illuminate the human sides of this versus earlier transitions.” EDGI’s May, 2017 report, The

EPA Under Seige: Trump’s Assault in History and Testimony, will present a compilation of

interview quotations, including the following: “(February) this is unlike any transition I've been

through…on so many different levels…Like do we have a president who really believes in

democracy? We have not had to deal with that before. Then on another level down, he said

nothing to say about EPA other than bad. So you are starting off with a lot of—there's a lot of

overt hostility which we've never had before. Obviously, by comparison the Bush 2 years were

sweetness and light.”*

*Hannah Hess, “Watchdogs report changes in website climate information,” E&E News, February 3, 2017,

https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/02/03/stories/1060049539

Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, Introducing the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (n.p.:

Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, February 1, 2017), 1, https://envirodatagov.org/publication/introducing-edgi/

*Christopher Sellers et al., The EPA Under Seige: Trump’s Assault in History and Testimony (n.p.: Environmental Data and

Governance Initiative, May, 2017), 1, https://100days.envirodatagov.org/epa-under-siege/

2017 (February)

A group of distinguished leaders of prior Republican administrations comes out with a

“conservative climate solution,” taxing carbon pollution

The group, the Climate Leadership Council, is led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker

III, with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary

of the Treasury, none particularly noted for environmental activism. The group visits the White

House to advocate for this approach as an alternative to the Clean Power Plan. They propose an

initial $40 a ton tax, which would raise $200 to $300 billion a year, and be adjusted upward over

time. The proceeds would be returned to the public, in what the group calls a “carbon dividend”

amounting to an estimated $2,000 a year for the average family of four. The proposal is similar

to legislation proposed by Maine Senator Susan Collins in 2009 [see 2009 (June)]. Baker is

quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the plan follows classic conservative principles of

free-market solutions and small government. He suggests that even former President Ronald

Reagan would have blessed the plan: “I’m not at all sure the Gipper wouldn’t have been very

happy with this.” He says he has no idea how the proposal would be received by the current White

House or Congress.* By June 20, 2017, the Council will announce a substantially expanded

roster of “founding” individual and corporate members committed to the carbon tax plan, in a full

page ad in the Wall Street Journal. Business members include Bp, ExxonMobil, Shell, GM,

Unilever; individual members include Michael Bloomberg, Steven Chu, Stephen Hawking, and

Rob Walton.

*John Schwartz, “ ‘A Conservative Climate Solution’: Republican Group Calls for Carbon Tax,” New York Times, February 7, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/science/a-conservative-climate-solution-republican-group-calls-for-carbon-tax.html?_r=0

Climate Leadership Council, accessed January 12, 2020, https://www.clcouncil.org/founding-members/

2017 (March)

The EPA cancels Obama era request for information about methane emissions from oil and

gas companies

In November, 2016, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had sent a notice

requiring oil and gas producers to provide a broad range of information about their methane

emissions and equipment and the feasibility of controls designed to limit methane release. The

information was gathered as part of a project to regulate methane emissions in oil and gas

production, which grew out of an agreement between President Obama and Canadian Prime

Minister Justin Trudeau.* A March 2, 2017 notice to the affected companies states, “EPA has

withdrawn the 2016 information request for the oil and gas industry, effective immediately. If

you received a letter requiring you to fill out a survey, you are no longer required to

respond.” The notice is issued one day after the new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt receives

a letter from nine state Attorneys General and the Governors of Mississippi and Kentucky,

expressing concern about the pending information request.*

*Suzanne Goldenberg, “US and Canada continue climate alliance with move to curb methane emissions,” Guardian, April 6, 2016,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/06/us-canada-obama-trudeau-climate-change-methane-emissions

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Background on the Information Request for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry,” March 2,

2017, https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-industry/background-information-request-oil-and

*Rafi Letzter, “The EPA will no longer require oil and gas companies to report their methane emissions,” Business Insider, March

2, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/epa-requirement-methane-emissions-2017-3

2017 (March)

President Trump announces an Executive Order for review of the Obama Administration’s

fuel efficiency standards at a ceremony in Detroit.

As Reuters reports, “In a move widely seen as a preamble to loosening fuel standards, Trump told

an audience of cheering union workers, he would ‘ensure that any regulations we have protect

and defend your jobs, your factories,’ and promised he would encourage growth in the U.S. auto

sector. ‘The assault on the American auto industry is over,’ Trump said, standing in front of a

banner that read ‘Buy American-Hire American.’” When a member of the audience expressed

concern about environmental issues, Trump “said he agreed but did not want an "extra thimbleful

of fuel" to get in the way of growth.”*

*Nick Carey and David Shepardson, “Big win for automakers as Trump orders fuel economy standards review,” Reuters, March 16,

2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-autos-idUSKBN16M2C5

2017 (March)

President Trump approves the Keystone XL Pipeline

The pipeline will bring Alberta, Canada’s tar sands crude 1,200 miles to refineries in Texas.

President Obama had rejected the pipelines because of climate impacts [see November, 2015].

President Trump describes the project as “the first of many infrastructure projects” that will

put Americans back to work. Trump says that “government too often failed its citizens and

companies over the past long period of time. Today we begin to make things right.” The

pipeline still requires approval by the Nebraska Public Service Commission. *

*Brady Dennis and Steven Mufson, “As Trump administration grants approval for Keystone XL pipeline, an old fight is reignited,”

Washington Post, March 24, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/24/trumpadministration-grants-approval-for-keystone-xl-pipeline/?utm_term=.8112262f2c99

2017 (March)

Arctic winter sea ice sets a record low for the third consecutive year – measuring the least

extent in nearly four decades of satellite measurements

Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that “This is just

another exclamation point on the overall loss of Arctic sea ice coverage that we’ve been seeing.

We’re heading for summers with no sea ice coverage at all.” Much of the ice appears thinner

than normal as well.*

*Henry Fountain, “Arctic’s Winter Sea Ice Drops to Its Lowest Recorded Level,” New York Times, March 22, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/climate/arctic-winter-sea-ice-record-low-global-warming.html

2017 (March)

Study explores the link between climate change, changes in northern hemisphere wind

patterns like the jet stream, and extreme weather events

As Damian Carrington in The Guardian explains, “Planetary waves are a pattern of winds, of

which the jet stream is a part, that encircle the northern hemisphere in lines that undulate from

the tropics to the poles. Normally, the whole wave moves eastwards but, under certain

temperature conditions, the wave can halt its movement. This leaves whole regions under the

same weather for extended periods, which can turn hot spells into heatwaves and wet weather

into floods.” The study by Michael Mann, of Pennsylvania State University, finds new

scientific support for the conclusion that climate change increases the likelihood that these wind

patterns will be stalled. The wind patterns are affected by the temperature differences between

the poles and the tropics, and consequently are altered when the Arctic is heating up faster than

lower latitudes. One of the coauthors of the study, Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute

for Climate Impact Research, states that the warming of the Arctic “is not just a problem of

nature conservation or polar bears, it is about a threat to human society that comes from these

rapid changes. This is because it hits us with increasing extreme events in the highly populated

centres in the mid-latitudes. It also affects us through sea level rise, which is hitting shores

globally. So these changes that are going on in the Arctic should concern everyone.”*

*Damian Carrington, “Climate change: ‘human fingerprint’ found on global extreme weather,” Guardian, March 27, 2017,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/27/climate-change-human-fingerprint-found-on-global-extreme-weather;

Michael Mann et al., “Influence of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Planetary Wave Resonance and Extreme Weather Events,”

Scientific Reports 7, article number 45242 (March 27, 2017), https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45242

2017 (March)

President Trump issues an Executive Order “Promoting Energy Independence and

Economic Growth,” calling for review of Obama’s Clean Power Plan and rescinding

numerous other actions and policies related to climate change

The order states that “ It is in the national interest to promote clean and safe development of

our Nation's vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that

unnecessarily encumber energy production, constrain economic growth, and prevent job

creation….Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that executive departments and

agencies (agencies) immediately review existing regulations that potentially burden the

development or use of domestically produced energy resources and appropriately suspend,

revise, or rescind those that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources

beyond the degree necessary to protect the public interest or otherwise comply with the law.”

The order specifically repeals or rescinds seven actions of President Obama related to climate

change dating from 2013 to 2016, including an Executive Order “Preparing the United States

for the Impacts of Climate Change,” Presidential Memoranda on “Power Sector Carbon

Pollution Standards,” and “Climate Change and National Security,” and the Climate Action

Plan. It calls for the EPA Administrator to review the Clean Power Plan, including regulations

on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, and regulations on methane

emissions from oil and gas production, and, “ if appropriate, shall, as soon as practicable,

suspend, revise, or rescind the guidance, or publish for notice and comment proposed rules

suspending, revising, or rescinding those rules.” It calls for review of the EPA estimates of the

social cost of carbon for regulatory impact analyses, to ensure that it is based “on the best

available science and economics,” “disbands” the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost

of Greenhouse Gases, which developed the social cost of carbon estimates, and “withdraw[s] as

no longer representative of governmental policy,” six technical support documents on the social

cost of carbon, dating from 2010 to 2016. It directs the Secretary of the Interior to “lift any

and all moratoria on Federal land coal leasing activities,” and to review five regulations enacted

during the Obama presidency on hydraulic fracturing, oil and gas drilling rights, and methane

emissions on federal and Indian lands.* In his remarks at the signing ceremony, President

Trump says of the Clean Power Plan, “perhaps no single regulation threatens our miners, energy

workers and companies more than this crushing attack on American industry.” The Hill quotes

Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a former

aide in Obama’s White House, as saying that Trump was giving coal miners “false hope:” “

‘We’ve seen coal production and coal employment in decline for many years now, driven by

market forces. And those factors will still be there,’ he said. As for energy independence — which

mainly relates to using domestic oil instead of oil imported from unfriendly countries — Bordoff

said it isn’t much of a problem. ‘U.S. oil production nearly doubled under President Obama,’ he

said. ‘These regulations may have had some marginal costs to them, but regulation did not stand

in the way of a dramatic surge in U.S. oil production.’” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael

Brune says in a statement, “Donald Trump is attacking clean-energy jobs purely in order to boost

the profits of fossil fuel billionaires.” And an EPA employee expresses his or her opinion in a

creative way: at the top of an EPA press release highlighting praise the President has received

for the Executive Order is the following quote, attributed to Republican Senator Shelly Moore

Capito of West Virginia: “With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly

bury his head in the sand. Walking away from the Clean Power Plan and other climate initiatives,

including critical resiliency projects is not just irresponsible – it’s irrational. Today’s executive

order calls into question America’s credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest

environmental challenge of our lifetime. With the world watching, President Trump and

Administrator Pruitt have chosen to shirk our responsibility, disregard clear science and undo the

significant progress our country has made to ensure we leave a better, more sustainable planet for

generations to come.” The press release is quickly corrected, the quote deleted. It is in fact a

quote by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, a Democrat. Michael Brune’s comment: “That

quote is the first true thing Scott Pruitt’s office has put out yet.”*

*The White House, Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth, March 28, 2017,

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/28/presidential-executive-order-promoting-energy-independence-and-economi1

Timothy Cama, “Trump signs order to roll back Obama’s climate moves,” The Hill, March 28, 2017,

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/326124-trump-signs-order-to-roll-back-obamas-climate-moves

*Rebecca Leber, “‘Irrational,’‘Reckless,’‘Irresponsible’: The EPA Just Accidentally Told the Truth About Trump’s Climate Plan,”Mother Jones,March

30, 2017, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/pruitts-epa-capito-carper-lol

2017 (April)

Study finds that anthropogenic emissions need to peak within the next ten years in order

to achieve targets of the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement set a goal of keeping global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius

above preindustrial temperatures, and encouraged a more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Agreement did not detail a strategy for achieving those goals, leaving those decisions to the

individual nations. A group of researchers led by Brian Walsh of the International Institute for

Applied Systems Analysis in Austria set about to plot through computer modeling a realistic

pathway to achieving those goals. Their conclusion: “We find that, barring unforeseen and

transformative technological advancement, anthropogenic emissions need to peak within the

next 10 years, to maintain realistic pathways to meeting the COP21 emissions and warming

targets. Fossil fuel consumption will probably need to be reduced below a quarter of primary

energy supply by 2100 and the allowable consumption rate drops even further if negative

emissions technologies remain technologically or economically unfeasible at the global

scale.”* As Tim Radford of Climate News Network notes, fossil fuel consumption now

represents 95% of global energy supply. At the same time that we reduce fossil fuel

consumption to 25%, humans must stop clearing forests and restore them, to serve as carbon

sinks. “Once achieved, this would mean a 42% drop in cumulative emissions by the century’s

end – compared to the notorious “business as usual” scenario. But to make this happen would

require a global economy in which wind, solar and bio-energy output increase by 5% a year, and

carbon emissions peak by 2022. Unless humans find some way of actively taking carbon dioxide

out of the atmosphere, that would deliver a final temperature rise of 2.5°C, well above the Paris

target. If the peak comes at the end of the century, that commits the world to a 3.5°C rise.”

*Brian Walsh et al., “Pathways for balancing CO2 emissions and sinks,” Nature Communications 8, Article no. 14856 (April 13,

2017), https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14856

Tim Radford, “Next decade critical for climate targets,” Climate News Network, May 2, 2017, http://climatenewsnetwork.net/nextdecade-critical-climate-targets/

2017 (April)

Despite lack of leadership in government, the nation’s largest companies are maintaining

and somewhat expanding carbon reduction policies

A report from World Wildlife Fund, Calvert Investments, CDP and Ceres finds nearly half of

Fortune 500 companies—48 percent—have at least one climate or clean energy target, up five

percent from an earlier 2014 report. Key findings include: “Nearly 80,000 emission-reducing

projects by 190 Fortune 500 companies reporting data showed nearly $3.7 billion in savings in

2016 alone,” and “The annual emission reductions from these efforts are equivalent to taking

45 coal-fired power plants offline for one year.”*

*World Wildlife Fund, “Power Forward 3.0: How the largest US companies are capturing business value while addressing climate

change,” April 25, 2017, https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/power-forward-3-0-how-the-largest-us-companies-are-capturingbusiness-value-while-addressing-climate-change

2017 (April)

President Trump Executive Order expands offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic

Oceans, and seeks to assess possible drilling in Pacific and Atlantic marine sanctuaries

The order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” seeks, among other

actions, to rescind President Obama’s action in December permanently withholding areas of the

Arctic and the Atlantic from oil and gas development.[see 2016 (April)]* In signing the Order,

Trump comments, “We can’t spend too much time talking about drilling in the Arctic, right? And

we’re opening it up.” Notes the Washington Post: “Still, even Trump administration officials said

it would take years to rewrite federal leasing plans and open up these areas to drilling. And global

energy prices may deter investors from moving ahead with additional drilling in the Arctic Ocean

in the near term, despite the effort to make more areas eligible for development.” The response

from Kristen Miller, interim executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League: “In no point in

history has a president challenged another administration’s permanent withdrawals. Trump’s

action could set a dangerous precedent, which will only undermine the powers of the office of the

president.” And from Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society, regarding drilling in

the Arctic: “the chance of a tragic spill in those remote, icy waters is simply too high, and the

impacts to marine life and the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could

be devastating.”[see 2019 (March)]

https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/EO-America-First-Offshore-Energy-Strategy.pdf

Juliet Eilperin, “Trump signs executive order to expand drilling off America’s coasts: ‘We’re opening it up.’” Washington Post,

April 28, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/28/trump-signs-executive-order-to-expandoffshore-drilling-and-analyze-marine-sanctuaries-oil-and-gas-potential/

2017 (April)

Hours before the Climate March on Washington, the EPA removes its websites related to

climate science and policy

The Washington Post reports that “The change was approved by [EPA Administrator Scott]

Pruitt, according to an individual familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of

anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, to avoid a conflict between the site’s content and the

policies the administration is now pursuing.” Gone is the information related to the Clean Power

Plan, as well as sites explaining climate science and the impacts of climate change which have

been maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for nearly two decades. Some

of the deleted language: “Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural

causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming,

especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities

have been the dominant cause of that warming.” On March 9, Pruitt had argued on CNBC that

“measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and

there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a

primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”* In an op/ed in The Washington Post,

Jason Samenow, a meteorologist who had maintained the EPA’s climate science website for five

years, writes that the removal of the climate science website “signifies a declaration of war on

climate science by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. There can be no other interpretation:” “Some

20 years in the making, the breadth and quality of the website’s content was remarkable. It lasted

through Democratic and Republican administrations, partly because its information mirrored the

findings of the mainstream scientific community, including the National Academy of Sciences…

In its heyday in the early 2000s, if you Googled ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming,’ the EPA’s

site was the first hit. The site not only presented climate science , it was also a portal to data on

warming’s effects and greenhouse gas emissions, along with guidance and tools to help people,

municipalities and states reduce their carbon footprints. It included a vibrant kids’ site treasured

by educators, featuring interactive teaching tools and videos, which was also taken down.”

*Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin, “EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades,” Washington

Post, April 29, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/28/epa-website-removes-climatescience-site-from-public-view-after-two-decades/

Jason Samenow, “I worked on the EPA’s climate change website; its removal is a declaration of war,” Washington Post, June 22,

2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-worked-on-the-epas-climate-change-website-its-removal-is-a-declaration-ofwar/2017/06/22/735f0858-5697-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html; see also, Juliet Eilperin, “The EPA just buried its climate

change website for kids,” Washington Post, May 6, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energyenvironment/wp/2017/05/06/epa-buries-climate-change-site-for-kids/

2017 (May)

The EPA’s year 2018 budget proposal cuts science and technology spending by more

than $282 million, almost a 40 percent reduction

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is zeroed out; air and energy research are cut by 66

percent. Three Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators from prior Republican

administrations, William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas and William K. Reilly, write an op/ed

in the Washington Post declaring that the Trump Administration budgetary proposal “is putting

us on a dangerous path.” After describing President Reagan’s successful efforts to address the

threats to the ozone layer through international lawmaking, the former administrators write,

“Today, presented with the undeniable warming of the planet, we are faced with a global

environmental threat whose potential harm to people and other living things exceeds any we have

seen before…Yet…this week’s final 2018 budget plan say[s] we should look the other way;

[President Trump] has chosen ignorance over knowledge. The need for extensive and accelerated

scientific research about the nature of the problem and its possible policy solutions should be

beyond question. Not to get more information is inexcusable. Trump’s budget proposals have

scrubbed every agency and department of expenditures that would provide us with vital

information about the pace and impacts of climate change. Among those severely cut or

eliminated altogether are programs in the departments of Energy, State, Interior and Homeland

Security, and at the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration, NASA, and EPA.”*

dangerous path,” Washington Post, May 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-republican-epa-administratorstrump-is-putting-us-on-a-dangerous-path/2017/05/26/10060ad2-424b-11e7-9869-

bac8b446820a_story.html?utm_term=.990696c4d5e7

2017 (May)

The monthly average of carbon dioxide concentration measured in the atmosphere at

Mauna Loa Observatory reaches a record high of nearly 410 parts per million

As Joe Romm writes in ThinkProgress, “now CO2 levels have surpassed those seen not just during

modern civilization, but during all of human evolution. Indeed, current levels haven’t been seen

for many millions of years.” In addition to the impact of fossil fuel emissions on spiking CO2

levels, scientists suspect that warming and melting permafrost is releasing significant CO2. The

Earth’s permafrost “contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does today.” Romm adds,

“The last time the Earth sustained CO2 levels near the 400 ppm range, a few million years ago,

the Arctic was 14°F warmer, and ‘the West Antarctic Ice sheet did not exist,’ according to a 2013

study in the journal Science. Sea levels were about 80 feet higher.”

“That’s why,” Romm concludes, “a rational and moral society would be scrambling to strengthen

[the] Paris [Agreement], not destroy it.”

*Joe Romm, “7 reasons to be alarmed by record-setting levels of CO2,” ThinkProgress, June 6, 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/recordsetting-levels-of-co2-3acbbddbf0a6 , quoting from Julie Brigham-Grette et al., “Pliocene Warmth, Polar Amplification, and Stepped

Pleistocene Cooling Recorded in NE Arctic Russia,” Science 340, no. 6139 (June 21, 2013): 1421-1427,

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6139/1421

2017 (May)

In an unexpected setback for the fossil fuel industry, the Senate rejects a move to override

President Obama’s regulation on methane emissions from drilling on public lands

The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to override any regulation by a federal agency

within sixty days of its going into effect, and, even more consequently, provides that any

regulation that is “substantially similar” may not be enacted any time in the future without

Congressional approval. This legislation had only been used once since its enactment in 1996,

until the election of Donald Trump with a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress.

Congress quickly proceeded to override more than a dozen Obama administration regulations,*

but hit a roadblock on the regulation designed to reduce fugitive methane emissions from oil and

gas facilities on public lands [see 2016 (November)]. Override of the regulation which would

have prevented an estimated 180,000 tons of methane leaks annually from oil and gas facilities

on public lands was approved by the House, but fell three votes short in the Senate, with a vote

of 49 to 51. Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and John

McCain of Arizona vote against the measure, as does Independent Senator Angus King of Maine.

Senator McCain says that "While I am concerned that the BLM [Bureau of Land Management]

rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government,

under any administration, from issuing a rule that is 'similar,' according to the plain reading of the

Congressional Review Act. I believe that the public interest is best served if the Interior

Department issues a new rule to revise and improve the BLM methane rule." Senator Collins

state that “Reducing harmful air pollutants— including emissions of methane, a major climate

driver — is important for public health and the environment…There is no doubt that climate

change poses a significant threat to public health as well as our state’s natural resources economy,

from our working forests, fishing, and agricultural industries, to tourism and recreation.”*

*Brian Naylor, “Republicans Are Using An Obscure Law To Repeal Some Obama-Era Regulations,” National Public Radio, April 9,

2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/04/09/523064408/republicans-are-using-an-obscure-law-to-repeal-some-obama-era-regulations

Georgina Gustin, “GOP Fails to Kill Methane Rule in a Capitol Hill Defeat for Oil and Gas Industry,” insideclimatenews, May 10,

2017, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10052017/methane-climate-rule-oil-gas-flaring-congress-vote-rejec

* Editorial Board, “Three Republicans stopped a methane rule rollback. They must continue to buck Trump,” Bangor Daily News,

May 13, 2017, http://bangordailynews.com/2017/05/13/opinion/editorials/three-republicans-stopped-a-methane-rule-rollback-theymust-continue-to-buck-trump/

2017 (May)

A study finds that sea level is rising three times as fast as before 1990

As the Washington Post reports, the study, by Sonke Dangendorf of the University of Univesity

of Siegen and coauthors, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences,

“isn’t the first to find that the rate of rising seas is itself increasing — but it finds a bigger rate of

increase than in past studies. The new paper concludes that before 1990, oceans were rising at

about 1.1 millimeters per year, or just 0.43 inches per decade. From 1993 through 2012, though,

it finds that they rose at 3.1 millimeters per year, or 1.22 inches per decade.” Dangendorf explains

that sea level rise for most of the 20th century was caused by the melting of glaciers and the

expansion of warming seawater, but in the 21st century sea level rise is accelerated by melting ice

sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.*

*Chris Mooney, “Scientists say the pace of sea level rise has nearly tripled since 1990,” The Washington Post, May 22, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/22/scientists-say-the-rate-of-sea-level-rise-has-nearlytripled-since-1990/; Sonke Dagendorf et al., “Reassessment of 20th century global mean sea level rise,” Proceedings of the National

Academies of Sciences 114, no. 23 (June 6, 2017): 5946-5951, http://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5946

2017 (June)

President Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate

Agreement

Stephen Bannon and the anti-globalist, climate denying contingent of White House advisors

trump the personal entreaties of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pope Francis, Ivanka Trump, Rex

Tillerson, European Union heads of state and many others. Oblivious to the fact that the

emissions standards under the Agreement are voluntary, subject to revision, and entail no

penalties for noncompliance, the President calls the deal “draconian,” imposing unfair standards

on American companies and employees. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what

point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump says. “We don’t want other leaders and

other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.” The New York Times observes that

“Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations

is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of

the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying

blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising

temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major

blow,”* and its editorial board calls the withdrawal “disgraceful.” Wall Street Journal

headlines declare: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat: Trump’s

withdrawal from Paris accord gives China a new opening to exert sway on a big global issue” *

Some find a May 30 op/ed in the Wall Street Journal by presidential advisors H. R. McMaster

and Gary Cohn as illuminating on the withdrawal decision in: “The president embarked on his

first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena

where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

Writes David Brooks in The New York Times: “That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project.

It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs.” Al Gore’s statement on the

withdrawal declares that “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and

indefensible action. It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage

humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: if President Trump

won’t lead, the American people will. Civic leaders, mayors, governors, CEOs, investors and the

majority of the business community will take up this challenge. We are in the middle of a clean

energy revolution that no single person or group can stop. President Trump’s decision is

profoundly in conflict with what the majority of Americans want from our president; but no

matter what he does, we will ensure that our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy

continues.”* Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers states that “We may have our

first post-rational president,” and that “It is possible that last week will be remembered as a

hinge in history — a moment when the United States and the world started moving on a

path away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75

years.” The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reportsthat US voters favor

staying in the Paris Agreement by a margin of 5 to 1, and that half of Trump voters support staying

in, with fewer than 3 in 10 saying we should not stay in.* The formal process of

withdrawal will likely take four years, and not be final until after the 2020 presidential election.

[see 2015 (December)]

*Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html

Editorial Board, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html

*Brian Spegele and Te-Ping Chen, “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-climate-pivot-puts-a-reluctant-china-in-drivers-seat-1496380249

David Brooks, “Donald Trump Poisons the World,” New York Times, June 2, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html

*The Climate Reality Project, “Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on Today’s Decision by the Trump Administration

to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” June 1, 2017, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-al-gore-us-commitmentparis-agreement

Lawrence Summers, “After 75 years of progress, was last week a hinge in history?” Washington Post, June 4, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-75-years-of-progress-was-last-week-a-hinge-in-history/2017/06/04/2085b91e-47cf11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.7ccf9ee984ec

*Jennifer Marlon, Eric Fine, and Anthony Keiserowtiz, “Majorities of Americans in Every State Support Participation in the

Paris Agreement,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 8, 2017,

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/

2017 (June)

President Trump announces that the United States will “terminate” payments into the

Green Climate Fund

The former U.S. representative to the Fund, Matthew J. Kotchen, writes in The Washington Post

that “Nearly everything Trump said about the Green Climate Fund to justify his decision was

wrong or misleading.” Kotchen, a professor of economics at Yale University who served as the

deputy assistant secretary of energy and the environment at the U.S. Department of the Treasury

in 2013, writes that the President’s decision “reverses decades of bipartisan agreement on the

need for climate-related assistance to developing countries,” strongly supported by both

Presidents G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush. Professor Kotchen’s response to some of Trump’s

assertions: Trump: the Green Climate Fund “calls for developed countries to send $100 billion

to developing countries.” In fact, 37 developed countries plus the European Union agreed to

“mobilize” “a combined $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries by 2020. But that

money is intended to come from both the private and public sectors. The Green Climate Fund is

only one of many potential sources, most of which are aimed at using public money to leverage

much larger pools of private sector investment. In 2016, the combined flows from all the

developed countries were already at $66.8 billion.” Trump: the Fund is “costing the United States

a vast fortune.” In reality, “the United States has contributed to date $1 billion out of a total pledge

of $3 billion. Which is to say that what we’ve spent so far amounts to about .026 percent of the

annual federal budget…. [W] hile the United States is the largest contributor in absolute dollars,

on a per capita basis, the U.S. pledge ranks 11th among the 45 contributing countries, and as a

fraction of gross domestic product, the United States ranks 32nd. Every country with an official

pledge has made a contribution, and nearly all have already paid a larger share of their total pledge

than the United States.”*

*Matthew J. Kotchen, “Trump will stop paying into the Green Climate Fund. He has no idea what it is.” Washington Post, June 2,

2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/06/02/trump-will-stop-paying-into-the-green-climate-fund-he-hasno-idea-what-it-is/?utm_term=.b7be2b3a2d57

2017 (June)

World leaders respond with disapproval and resolve to President Trump’s announced

withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement

As Al Jazeera reports, “The leaders of Germany, France and Italy issued a joint statement,

saying the "Paris Agreement remains a cornerstone in the cooperation" between the three

countries. They also dismissed Trump's claim that the agreement could be renegotiated.

‘We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly

believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our

planet, societies and economies,’ their statement added. French President Emmanuel

Macron also said in a televised statement that ‘there is no plan B’ on climate because ‘there is

no planet B’.” Macron also tweets, “Make our planet great again.”*

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/170602051722262.html

2017 (June)

The EPA issues a 90 day stay of the Obama administration’s standards for reducing fugitive

emissions of methane in the oil and gas sector

The stay is promptly vacated in environmentalists’ appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals. The EPA

not only issues a 90 day stay of the regulations designed to control methane emissions from the

oil and gas sector [see 2016 (May)] on June 5, * but also announces that it “is proposing a twoyear stay of the fugitive emissions, pneumatic pump and professional engineer certification

requirements in the rule while the agency reconsiders them.” In a 2 to 1 ruling in a lawsuit

brought by the Clean Air Council and five other environmental organizations, the District of

Columbia Court of Appeals holds that the Trump administration can reconsider the Obama era

rules, but cannot stay them without following the procedures of the Administrative Procedures

Act for publishing notice of the proposed changes, the reasons for the changes and a regulatory

impact analysis, and soliciting and reviewing public comment on their proposal. The court holds

that the EPA’s decision to stay the methane rule is “arbitrary and capricious – that is, unlawful…”

The court concludes that each of the four reasons asserted by the EPA for justifying the stay, on

the grounds that the regulated industries did not have adequate notice and opportunity to comment

when the original Obama rules were developed, are “inaccurate and thus unreasonable.”* The

Washington Post quotes Harvard Law professor Richard Lazarus as opining that “The court’s

ruling is yet another reminder, now in the context of environmental protection, that the federal

judiciary remains a significant obstacle to the president’s desire to order immediate change… The

D.C. Circuit’s ruling today makes clear that neither the president nor his EPA administrator, Scott

Pruitt, can by fiat unilaterally and instantaneously repeal or otherwise stay the effectiveness of

the environmental protection rules put into place during the Obama administration… Changing

the rules midstream can occur only after a thorough administrative review, including public notice

and opportunity to comment, that ensures that there are good reasons for the change, backed up

by sound policy and science.” The Washington Post notes that “The ruling could affect myriad

agencies that have delayed the Obama administration’s regulations, some for long

periods.”

*U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified

Sources; Grant of Reconsideration and Partial Stay, proposed rule, Federal Register 82 (June 5, 2017): 25730,

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/06/05/2017-11457/oil-and-natural-gas-sector-emission-standards-for-newreconstructed-and-modified-sources-grant-of

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Actions and Notices about Oil and Natural Gas Air Pollution Standards, June 12, 2017,

https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-industry/actions-and-notices-about-oil-and-natural-gas

*Clean Air Council v. E. Scott Pruitt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 17-1145, On Emergency

Motion For A Stay Or, In the Alternative, Summary Vacatur, July 3, 2017,

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/A86B20D79BEB893E85258152005CA1B2/$file/17-1145-1682465.pdf

Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson, “Federal court blocks Trump EPA on air pollution,” Washington Post, July 3, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-court-blocks-trump-epa-on-air-pollution/2017/07/03/464a7344-601e-11e7-84a1-

a26b75ad39fe_story.html

2017 (June)

Senator Al Franken questions U.S. Secretary of Energy chief Rick Perry about climate

science in a Senate budget hearing

Perry is flabbergasted when Franken states that “humans are entirely the cause” of recent

warming. Perry’s response is “I don’t believe it” and “I don’t buy it.” And when Franken reminds

him this was the conclusion of a team of climate science skeptics funded by no less than the Koch

Brothers [see 2011 (October), 2013 (January)], Perry raises his voice and says: “To stand up and

say that 100 percent of global warming is because of human activity, I think on its face, is just

indefensible.” As Joe Romm of ThinkProgress responds: “Perry is so used to denying the

overwhelming consensus that humans are responsible for most recent warming, he

simply couldn’t get his head around the fact that scientists’ best estimate is humans are

actually responsible for all recent warming. Franken, I think, has hit on a winning

message—one that is also factually accurate, as the latest scientific literature makes

clear.”*

*Joe Romm, “Al Franken just set climate deniers’ last strawman on fire,” ThinkProgress, June 28, 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/al-franken-isright-humans-are-entirely-the-cause-of-recent-warming-ddda0077308a

2017 (June)

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre releases a first global assessment of the threats to World

Heritage-designated coral reefs from climate change

The report finds “reefs likely to disappear by 2100 unless CO2 emissions drastically reduce.” As

the press release on the report explains, “Bleaching is a stress response that causes coral animals

to expel the microscopic algae (zooxanthellae) whose photosynthesis provides the energy needed

to build three-dimensional reef structures. Mass bleaching is caused by rising water temperatures

associated with climate change.” Over the last three years, record high ocean temperatures have

damaged 21 of the 29 World Heritage reefs, causing extensive bleaching across the globe, from

the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to the Papahānaumokuākea reefs in Hawaii. The conclusions

of the World Heritage Centre assessment are that “delivering on the Paris Agreement target of

‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial

levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C’ offers the only opportunity

to prevent coral reef decline globally, and across all 29 reef-containing natural World Heritage

sites.”* The report follows upon and is consistent with the conclusions of a study of bleaching of

the Great Barrier Reef in 2015-16, published in the journal Nature, by Terry Hughes of the

Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and coauthors. The

study concludes that neither local measures to reduce fishing pressure or improve water quality,

nor the corals’ ability to adapt over time to increased ocean temperatures, are likely to save the

reefs: “Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in

2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat.

Similarly, past exposure to bleaching in 1998 and 2002 did not lessen the severity of bleaching

in 2016. Consequently, immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a

future for coral reefs.”

2017, http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1676/

Terry Hughes et al., “Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals” Nature 543 (March 16, 2017): 373-377,

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7645/full/nature21707.html

2017 (June)

Analysis of satellite data measuring temperatures over time in the lower troposphere finds

warming dramatically faster than previous 2009 analysis

The study finds 36% faster warming since 1979 and nearly 140% faster warming since 1998

when compared to the previous analysis in 2009. The analysis is performed by scientists at

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) in California, one of two groups producing satellite temperature

records globally, and is published in the Journal of Climate. In this analysis, the researchers make

adjustments to take into account the “drift” of satellites in their orbits over time, which results in

temperature readings not being taken at the same time each day. Adjusting results to compensate

for skewed readings from drift yields substantially higher temperature readings, particularly in

the period after 2000. These results refute denialist claims of a 15 year “hiatus” in surface air

temperature rise after 1998. As CarbonBrief explains, “Climate sceptics have long claimed that

satellite data shows global warming to be less pronounced than observational data collected on

the Earth’s surface. This new correction to the RSS data substantially undermines that argument.

The new data actually shows more warming than has been observed on the surface, though

still slightly less than projected in most climate models.” *

*Zeke Hausfather, “Major correction to satellite data shows 140% faster warming since 1998,” CarbonBrief, June 30, 2017,

https://www.carbonbrief.org/major-correction-to-satellite-data-shows-140-faster-warming-since-1998; Carl Mears and Frank Wenz,

“A satellite-derived lower tropospheric atmospheric temperature dataset using an optimized adjustment for diurnal effects,” American

Meteorological Society Journal of Climate 30 (June 26, 2017): 7695-7718, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0768.1

2017 (June)

Researchers estimating the economic impacts of climate change in the United States

through the end of the century find dramatic disparities from region to region

The greatest impact is in the South, exposed to as much as a 20% decline in G.D.P.. Writing in

the journal Science, Solomon Hsiang of the University of California at Berkeley and coauthors

estimate, on a county by county basis, the combined value of market and nonmarket damage

across sectors of U.S. agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor, as

a function of increased temperature. They estimate that as a national average increasing

temperatures will cost “roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1o C,” but that

“[i]mportantly risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value

northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest

third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county

income…under business-as usual emissions [no carbon reduction policies].”* As summarized in

the New York Times, “The greatest economic impact would come from a projected increase in

heat wave deaths as temperatures soared, which is why states like Alabama and Georgia would

face higher risks while the cooler Northeast would not. If communities do not take preventative

measures, the projected increase in heat-related deaths by the end of this century would be roughly

equivalent to the number of Americans killed annually in auto accidents. Higher temperatures

could also lead to steep increases in energy costs in parts of the country, as utilities may need to

overbuild their grids to compensate for heavier air-conditioning use in hot months. Labor

productivity in many regions is projected to suffer, especially for outdoor workers in sweltering

summer heat. And higher sea levels along the coasts would make flooding from future hurricanes

far more destructive.”

*Solomon Hsiang et al., “Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States,” Science 356, no. 6345 (June 30,

2017):1362-1369, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full

Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, “As Climate Changes, Southern States Will Suffer More Than Others,” New York Times, June

29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/29/climate/southern-states-worse-climate-effects.html

2017 (July)

An iceberg the size of Delaware breaks off from the Antarctic Ice Sheet

The iceberg weighs an estimated trillion metric tons and is one of the largest icebergs ever

recorded. It results from a crack in the ice shelf 120 miles long. The remaining Antarctic ice shelf

“will be at its smallest ever known size,” according to Antarctic researcher Adrian Luckman.

Reports the New York Times: “Some climate scientists believe the warming in the region was at

least in part a consequence of human-caused climate change, while others have disputed that,

seeing a large role for natural variability — and noting that icebergs have been breaking away

from ice shelves for many millions of years. But the two camps agree that the breakup of ice

shelves in the peninsula region may be a preview of what is in store for the main part of Antarctica

as the world continues heating up as a result of human activity.”*

*Jugal K. Patel and Justin Gillis, “An Iceberg the Size of Delaware Just Broke Away from Antarctica,” New York Times, July 12,

2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/09/climate/antarctica-rift-update.html

2017 (August)

President Trump executive order: no consideration of climate change and rising sea levels

in infrastructure projects

President Trump signs an executive order rescinding President Obama’s requirement that

recipients of federal funds for infrastructure projects take climate change and rising sea levels

into consideration in planning construction. President Trump asserts that red tape in approving

federally funded projects is a “massive self-inflicted wound on our country” and that “no longer”

would there be “one job-killing delay after another.” The Obama rules sought to reduce the

burden on taxpayers when storms and rising sea levels damaged projects in flood prone regions.*

*Darryl Fears and Steven Mufson, “Trump to reverse Obama-era rule aimed at planning for climate change,” Washington Post, August

15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/15/trump-to-reverse-obama-era-order-aimed-atplanning-for-climate-change/

2017 (August)

President Trump disbands the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National

Climate Assessment

This committee advised federal agencies, states, cities, and the private sector on concrete

responses to the impacts of climate change. The Washington Post quotes Seattle Mayor Ed

Murray as saying that the move to dissolve the climate advisory committee represents “an

example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality.”* [see 2019

(April)]

*Juliet Eilperin, “The Trump Administration just disbanded a federal advisory committee on climate change,” Washington Post,

August 20, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/20/the-trump-administration-justdisbanded-a-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/

2017 (August, September)

The United States and the Caribbean experience a hurricane season of unusual intensity

The New York Times quotes Bob Henson, a meteorologist for the forecasting service Weather

Underground, as saying (in mid-September) that “This season has been an overachiever by almost

every index… We’ve had more than a year’s worth of named storms when you look at the longterm average, and that’s being just past the midpoint of the season.” Four of those storms, Harvey,

Irma, Jose and Maria reach Category 3 or higher, the threshold for a major hurricane on the SaffirSimpson scale. The Times adds the caveat that “the phrase ‘above average’ loses some of its

significance when 10 of the 15 most active hurricane seasons since antebellum America have

occurred in the past two decades.”* The National Weather Service tweets that Hurricane Harvey,

which dumped at least 20 inches of rain over an area of 29,000 square miles, and 60 inches in

some areas, is “unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything

experienced.”* President Trump tweets: “Wow - Now experts are calling #Harvey a once

in 500 year flood!” It is in fact classified as a once in 1000 year flood. Stamford

professor of earth science systems Noah Dieffenbaugh opines in the Times that “Hurricane

Harvey Was No Surprise:” “Climate science has repeatedly shown that global warming is

increasing the odds of extreme precipitation and storm surge flooding. Refusing to acknowledge

this impairs our ability to prepare for future extreme weather and endangers American lives and

property. .. Refusing to account for climate change is an expensive proposition. We won’t know

the full costs of Hurricane Harvey for some time. But extreme weather causes billions of dollars

of damage in the United States each year. The number of these events and their costs have been

increasing, with the toll over the last decade exceeding $250 billion. And that number doesn’t

include the full humanitarian and ecological destruction left in their wake.” * The 2017

hurricane season is the costliest in U.S. history, costing over $200 billion. An EPA

spokesperson accuses climate scientists of trying to “politicize” Hurricane Harvey, and EPA

chief Scott Pruitt states that it is “very, very insensitive to this people in Florida” to focus on

the [climate related] cause of Hurricane Irma. Washington Post opinion writer Eugene

Robinson responds: “No rational U.S. administration would look at the devastation from

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and seek to deny climate change. At present, however, there is no

rational U.S. administration.”*

*Maggie Astor, “The 2017 Hurricane Season Really Is More Intense Than Normal,” New York Times, September 19, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/us/hurricanes-irma-harvey-maria.html

Jason Samenow, “60 inches of rain fell from Hurricane Harvey in Texas, shattering U.S. storm record,” Washington Post,

September 22, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/29/harvey-marks-the-most-extremerain-event-in-u-s-history/; Jason Samenow, “Harvey is a 1,000-year flood event unprecedented in scale,” Washington Post, August

31, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/31/harvey-is-a-1000-year-flood-eventunprecedented-in-scale/

* National Weather Service, Twitter Post, August 27, 2017, 11:44am,

https://twitter.com/NWS/status/901832717070983169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E90183271

7070983169&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2017%2F8%2F27%2F16211428%2Fharvey-flooding-houston-nationalweather-service-tweet

Donald Trump, Twitter Post, August 27, 2017, 9:25am, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/901797906046439426

*Noah S. Dieffenbaugh, “Hurricane Harvey Was No Surprise,” New York Times, August 28, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/hurricane-harvey-global-warming.html

Bryan K. Sullivan, “The Most Expensive U.S. Hurricane Season Ever: By the Numbers,” Bloomberg, November 26, 2017,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/the-most-expensive-u-s-hurricane-season-ever-by-the-numbers

*Valerie Volcovisi, “EPA says climate scientists trying to 'politicize' Texas storm,” Reuters, August 29, 2017,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-harvey-climatechange/epa-says-climate-scientists-trying-to-politicize-texas-stormidUSKCN1B92V0; Lisa Friedman, “Hurricane Irma Linked to Climate Change? For Some, a Very ‘Insensitive’ Question,” New York

Times, September 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/climate/hurricane-irma-climate-change.html; Eugene Robinson,

“The cruelest insult to Harvey and Irma’s victims,” Washington Post, September 11, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cruelest-insult-to-harvey-and-irmas-victims/2017/09/11/60e54caa-9715-11e7-82e4-

f1076f6d6152_story.html

2017 (October)

The EPA announces a proposed rule to repeal the Clean Power Plan greenhouse gas

emissions regulations for existing power plants

The EPA states that it has concluded that the Clean Power Plan (CPP) [see 2015 (August)]

“exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority.” It is not forthcoming on the content of any replacement

rulemaking: “EPA has not determined the scope of any potential rule…to regulate greenhouse

gas emissions from existing [power plants], and, if it will issue such a rule, when it will do so and

what form that rule will take.” The repeal is motivated by “substantial concerns that the CPP

would necessitate changes to a state’s energy policy, such as a grid-wide shift from coal-fired to

natural gas-fired generation, and from fossil fuel generation to renewable generation,” and the

interpretation that the EPA may only regulate on-site technologies under the Clean Air Act, not

the energy mix. In an important footnote to the proposed rule, the EPA states that it is not seeking

to rescind the Obama Administration’s 2009 “endangerment finding” determining that

greenhouse gas production “may be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare”

[see 2009 (December)]: “The substance of the 2009 Endangerment Finding is not at issue in this

proposed rulemaking, and we are not soliciting comment on the EPA’s assessment of the impacts

of GHGs with this proposal.”* In a follow-up action on December 18, 2017, the EPA issues an

Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to “solicit information from the public about

a potential future rulemaking to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing electric utility

generating units.” An editorial in the Bangor Daily News comments: “Despite the outcry from

the fossil-fuel industry and the legal challenges, led by Pruitt when he was attorney general of

Oklahoma, the Clean Power Plan was far from draconian. Half the states are on track to surpass

the Clean Power Plan’s 2030 targets, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group. Maine and

the eight other northeastern states that participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative…

are among them… [W]hile states like Maine could easily comply with the plan’s targets, it still

would be harmed by other states’ slow progress in reducing emissions. Gutting the Clean Power

Plan simply puts off action that is needed to avert much worse climate disasters than we are

already experiencing.”* [see 2018 (August)]

*U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Repeal of Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources:

Electric Utility Generating Units, Proposed Rule,” Federal Register 82 (October 16, 2017): 48035,

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/16/2017-22349/repeal-of-carbon-pollution-emission-guidelines-for-existingstationary-sources-electric-utility#footnote-3-p48037

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: State Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas

Emissions from Existing Electric Utility Generating Units,” December 18, 2017, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-

12/documents/anprm-state-guidelines-ghg-emissions-existing-egu.pdf

*Editorial Board, “Gutting the Clean Power Plan puts off steps needed to avert climate disasters,” Bangor Daily News, October 16,

2017, http://bangordailynews.com/2017/10/16/opinion/gutting-the-clean-power-plan-puts-off-the-steps-needed-to-avert-climatedisasters/

2017 (October)

EPA purges its Scientific Advisory Board of scientists who receive EPA grants, substituting

industry representatives and regulators from conservative states

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt first announces his intentions to change the composition of the

agency’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) at a meeting of the conservative Heritage Foundation:

“What’s most important at the agency is to have scientific advisers that are objective,

independent-minded, providing transparent recommendations…If we have individuals who are

on those boards, sometimes receiving money from the agency . . . that to me causes questions on

the independence and the veracity and the transparency of those recommendations that are

coming our way.” He does not raise questions about the objectivity of the industry representatives

whom he substitutes on the committee. The Washington Post quotes Terry F. Yosie, who was

the advisory board’s director during the Reagan administration, as saying the changes “represent

a major purge of independent scientists and a decision to sideline the SAB from major EPA

decision-making in the future.”* In December, more than 1000 scientists will submit a letter to

Congress protesting the EPA’s assaults on science and scientists: “Congress has long recognized

that experts with the most relevant expertise who have no stake in regulatory outcomes are best

positioned to provide independent scientific advice. Advisors should be selected based on

scientific and technical expertise, not on the stakeholders they represent. Administrator Pruitt has

fundamentally rejected this principle, further endangering the independence of the EPA.

Scientists are therefore given a false choice: apply for EPA grant funding or serve your country

as a science advisor. Unfortunately, the decision to compromise the independence of science

advisory panels is just one example of how science has been sidelined and politicized at the EPA.

Former Republican and Democratic EPA Administrators have repeatedly expressed concern

about the impact of Administrator Pruitt’s actions on public health and safety.” In July, 2019,

an investigation by the Government Accountability Office will conclude that the restructuring of

the advisory committees violated federal ethics requirements, by failing to properly vet the

replacements.*

*Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney, “In unprecedented move, EPA to block scientists who get agency funding from

serving as advisers,” Washington Post, October 30, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energyenvironment/wp/2017/10/30/in-unprecedented-shift-epa-to-prohibit-scientists-who-receive-agency-funding-from-serving-as-advisers/

Letter to Chairs and Ranking Members, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and House Energy and Commerce

Committee, December 5, 2017, https://www.nrcm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ScientistsLetterHouseSenateScienceAdvice.pdf

*Lisa Friedman, “E.P.A. Broke Rules in Shake-Up of Science Panels, Federal Watchdog Says,” New York Times, July 15, 2019,

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/climate/epa-advisory-panels-gao-report.html

2017 (October)

The New York Times publishes a list of 60 environmental regulations that the Trump

Administration has sought to roll back in its first nine months

The Trump Administration has overturned 29 environmental guidances, rules or regulatory

actions, is in the process of concluding another 24 rollbacks, and 7 proposed rollbacks are “in

limbo.” The list is compiled from Harvard Law School’s Environmental Regulation Rollback

Tracker, Columbia Law School’s Climate Tracker and other sources.*

*Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Kendra Pierre-Louis, “60 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump,” New York

Times, October 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html; see also

Environmental and Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School, Regulatory Rollback Tracker, https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/regulatoryrollback-tracker/; Sabin Center for Climate Law, Columbia Law School, Climate Deregulation Tracker,

https://climate.law.columbia.edu/climate-deregulation-tracker

2017 (November)

The Trump Administration releases the Fourth National Climate Assessment, with

scientific conclusions starkly at odds with administration actions and policies

Mandated by the Global Climate Research Act of 1990, the report is an “authoritative assessment

of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States.” It reflects the work of

hundreds of scientists in government and academia, and is peer-reviewed by the National

Academy of Sciences. The Executive Summary states: “Global annually averaged surface air

temperature has increased by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) over the last 115 years (1901–2016). This

period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization. The last few years have also

seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, and the last three years have been the

warmest years on record for the globe. These trends are expected to continue over climate

timescales. This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely

that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of

the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there

is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence. In

addition to warming, many other aspects of global climate are changing, primarily in response to

human activities. Thousands of studies conducted by researchers around the world have

documented changes in surface, atmospheric, and oceanic temperatures; melting glaciers;

diminishing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; rising sea levels; ocean acidification; and

increasing atmospheric water vapor…. The global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)

concentration has now passed 400 parts per million (ppm), a level that last occurred about

3 million years ago, when both global average temperature and sea level were significantly

higher than today. Continued growth in CO2 emissions over this century and beyond would lead

to an atmospheric concentration not experienced in tens to hundreds of millions of years. There

is broad consensus that the further and the faster the Earth system is pushed towards warming,

the greater the risk of unanticipated changes and impacts, some of which are potentially large

and irreversible.”* The New York Times quotes Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole

Research Center: “This report has some very powerful, hard-hitting statements that are totally at

odds with senior administration folks and at odds with their policies…It begs the question, where

are members of the administration getting their information from? They’re obviously not getting

it from their own scientists.” The Wall Street Journal publishes an assessment by Steven

Koonin, undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term, who argues

that “While much is right in the report, it is misleading in more than a few important places,”

including the characterization of historic trends in sea-level rise.*

*D.J. Wuebbles et al., Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I (U.S. Global Change

Research Program, Washington, D.C., 2017), 12-34, https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/executive-summary/ (emphasis in

original)

Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush, “U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials,” The

New York Times, November 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html

*Steven Koonin, “A Deceptive New Report On Climate,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/adeceptive-new-report-on-climate-1509660882

2017 (November)

The Global Carbon Project estimates that global carbon dioxide emissions will increase by

2% in 2017, after three years of almost no growth

The Project predicts a total of 10.0 gigatonnes carbon (36.8 GtCO2) emitted to the atmosphere, a

new high. In 2016 China accounted for 28% of these emissions; the United States for 15%.

Average global per capita CO2 emissions were 4.8 tonnes (T); China’s per capita emissions were

7 T; the United States’ were 16.5 T.*

*Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget, Summary Highlights 2017,” Earth System Science Data 10, no. 1 (2018): 405-448,

https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/10/405/2018/

2017 (November)

President Trump’s nominee to head the CEQ, Kathleen Hartnett White, has asserted that

carbon dioxide, the “gas for life,” is not a harmful pollutant

White, President Trump’s nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, is former head

of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and a fellow of the conservative Texas Public

Policy Foundation. She has written an article in The Federalist titled “Signing the Paris

Agreement is the Worst Way to Celebrate Earth Day.” White contends that the “Paris agreement

represents the first energy regression in mankind’s history,” where “accelerating a transition

from fossil fuels to renewables means subsidizing and mandating a return to pre-industrial energy

scarcity when the energy upon which fundamental human welfare depended was far more

expensive but less efficient, versatile, and reliable.”* Amanda Lynch, a climate scientist at Brown

University and head of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, drafts a letter signed

by 300 scientists in opposition to the nomination. Brown explains: "The thing that tipped me

over the edge was her appearance before the Senate [Environment and Public Works Committee]

where she just couldn't answer fundamental questions about environmental science that would

affect her ability to do her job." As InsideClimate News reports on White’s Committee

confirmation hearing: “White seemed to question whether warm water expands, which is basic

physical science. When asked if the law of thermal expansion applies to sea water …, White

replied: ‘Again, I do not have any kind of expertise or even much layman study of the ocean

dynamics and the climate change issues.’ Asked about her understanding of fossil fuels' impact

on oceans, White said: ‘I have a very superficial understanding as far as that. Acidification issues

are one. I have not read widely or deeply.’ Asked about her previous statements that carbon

dioxide is not dangerous, White said at the hearing: ‘CO2 in the atmosphere has none of the

characteristics of a pollutant that contaminates and fouls and all of that that can have direct impact

on human health. As an atmospheric gas, it is a plant nutrient.’”In February, 2018, the White

House will withdraw White’s nomination.*

*Kathleen Hartnett White, “Signing the Paris Agreement is the Worst Way to Celebrate Earth Day,” The Federalist, April 22, 2016,

https://thefederalist.com/2016/04/22/signing-the-paris-agreement-is-the-worst-way-to-celebrate-earth-day/

“300 Scientists Oppose Trump Nominee: 'More Dangerous Than Climate Change is Lying'” InsideClimateNews, November 29,

2017, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28112017/kathleen-harnett-white-senate-confirmation-ceq-vote-trump-climate-changecarbon-dioxide

*Juliet Eilperin and Brady Davis, “White House withdraws controversial nominee to head Council on Environmental Quality,”

Washington Post, February 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/02/03/white-house-towithdraw-controversial-nominee-to-head-council-on-environmental-quality/

2017 (December)

The UNFCCC COP 23 meeting in Bonn faces grim realities: goals too modest to achieve

objectives, emissions not on track for meeting goals, and the United States bailing

The United States has a notably low profile at the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change 23rd Conference of the Parties in Bonn. A New York Times interactive

demonstrates how far the commitments of the Paris Agreement are from greenhouse gas

emissions cuts necessary to keep global temperatures under 2o above preindustrial levels, and

notes that “no major industrialized country is currently on track to fulfill its pledge, according to

new data from the Climate Action Tracker.” * The Times reports that “the office of the official

American delegation at the international climate talks here is almost always closed. A sign taped

to the door informs the curious that entry is for authorized staff members only.” But Al Gore,

Jerry Brown, a handful of Democratic Senators, and Michael Bloomberg are on hand as a

“shadow delegation” at the American pavilion, funded largely by Bloomberg, to send the message

that “the U.S. has not gone dark on climate action.” Syria announces on the eve of the talks

that it will sign the Paris Agreement, meaning that every country in the world has signed or

signaled an intent to sign on, and only the U.S. has stated its intention to

withdraw.* Accomplishments of the meeting include a new “Powering Past Coal Alliance” of

19 nations pledging to “quickly phase out coal,” which now accounts for 40% of global

electricity, and progress on developing a process for nations to regularly and publicly

disclose their progress toward their voluntary goals, and acknowledge failures. As The New York

Times aptly characterizes it, the Paris Agreement “is, in effect, a giant bet on the power of peer

pressure,” a bet with longer odds since the United States announced its withdrawal.*

*Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, “Here’s How Far the World Is From Meeting Its Climate Goals,” New York Times, November 6,

2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/climate/world-emissions-goals-far-off-course.html?_r=0

Lisa Friedman, “A Shadow Delegation Stalks the Official U.S. Team at Climate Talks,” New York Times, November 11, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/climate/un-climate-talks-bonn.htm

*Jonathan Ellis, “The Bonn Climate Conference: All Our Coverage in One Place,” New York Times, November 13, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/climate/bonn-climate-change-conference.html

Damian Carrington, “'Political watershed' as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal,” Guardian, November 6, 2017,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/16/political-watershed-as-19-countries-pledge-to-phase-out-coal

*Brad Plumer, “At Bonn Climate Talks, Stakes Get Higher in Gamble on Planet’s Future,” New York Times, November 19, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/climate/un-bonn-climate-talks.html

2017 (December)

President Trump’s National Security Strategy does not characterize climate change as a

threat, and suggests rather that climate change mitigation efforts threaten U.S. dominance

In stark contrast to President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, which stated that rising

global temperatures were an “urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to

increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water,”

the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) eliminates any reference to climate

change as a threat to U.S. security.* As Breitbart News points out, the document instead suggests

that “efforts to push a climate change agenda [are] a potential threat to national security.” The

relevant passage of the NSS, with emphasis added by Breitbart, is: “Climate policies will continue

to shape the global energy system. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an antigrowth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security

interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil

fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of

poverty.”

*The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, December, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf; Lisa Friedman, “Planet Insecurity,” New York Times, December 20, 2017,

Cited in Sherri Goodman, “Planet Insecurity”, Linked In, December 21, 2017, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/planet-insecuritysherri-goodman

Joel B. Pollak, “Trump’s National Security Strategy Suggests Climate Change Lobby Is a Threat,” Breitbart News, December 18,

2017, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/12/18/trump-national-security-strategy-doesnt-ignore-climate-change-namesclimate-change-lobby-threat/

2017 (December)

China announces a national emissions trading system, the “world’s biggest ever

mechanism to reduce carbon”

Years in the making, this plan will start by mandating emissions trading in the electric

generating sector, then expand to other parts of the Chinese economy. The Guardian describes

it as the “world’s biggest ever mechanism to reduce carbon.” Nathaniel Keohane, vice

president at the Environmental Defense Fund, describes the plan as “a game-changer:”

“This shows global leadership on the part of the Chinese government.” He suggests that

this plan could allow China’s still growing emissions to peak years before its goal under the

Paris Agreement of 2030.*

*Fiona Harvey, “China aims to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions through trading scheme,” Guardian, December 19, 2017,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/19/china-aims-to-drastically-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions-through-tradingscheme

2017 (December)

More than 700 employees have left the EPA under the Trump Administration, 200 of

them scientists

Few of those employees have been replaced. The Trump Administration is nearly a quarter of

the way toward its goal of achieving a 20% reduction in the EPA workforce, a cut of 3,200

positions. This is after substantial cuts during the Obama Administration, due to Republican

led budget cuts. During his campaign, President Trump pledged to whittle the EPA down to

“little tidbits.”*

*Lisa Friedman, Marina Affo, and Derek Kravitz, “E.P.A. Officials, Disheartened by Agency’s Direction, Are Leaving in Droves,”

New York Times, December 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/climate/epa-buyouts-pruitt.html

2018 (January)

NOAA releases its updated historical table of disasters costing more than $1 billion since

1980, with 2017 a record-breaking year

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