Gosh, president Johnson knew, and did nothing? Regular readers of this website have been following the ridiculous #ExxonKnew campaign put together by Al Gore and a smattering of activist attorney generals, aided by 350.org nutty activist “Weepy” Bill McKibben. It isn’t going well, as there has been setback after setback, with some AG’s being ordered to appear in court, and refusing to do so.
Thanks to a tweet by Associated Press activist journalist Seth Borensten, I became aware of this November 1965 report from the President’s Science Advisory Committee titled: Restoring the Quality of Our Environment Link: PSAC-1965-Restoring the Quality of Our Environment (PDF)
Borenstein makes this claim:
52 years ago today fed report warned 25% jump in co2 = 1.1-7.0 dF warming; Since 1965 co2 up 26%; temp up 1.6 dF https://t.co/eKmbUa5iRa pic.twitter.com/e3lFzM5mjZ
— @borenbears (@borenbears) November 5, 2017
From Seth’s point of view, it looks like an “open and shut case”, and no further investigation is needed. However, one commenter was quick to remind Seth that “global warming” was reported well before 1965:
Always important to remember: #Scientists have reported #GlobalWarming for more than a #Century. #ClimateChange https://t.co/Bho6dk0pXQ
— Dr. Jonathan R. Buzan (@JonathanRBuzan) November 5, 2017
Indeed. But Al Gore, the activist AG’s, and the McKibbenites tried to make a manufactured big deal out of the fact that Exxon scientists had internal reports on climate change back in 1977, and “did nothing” with them, especially not advising shareholders. This ludicrous claim has caused much climatic caterwauling such as we see in the former jewel of science magazines, Scientific American: Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking.
Gosh, that’s 12 years after President Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), knew, and did nothing. Here’s the money quote from that 1965 report:
SciAm foolishly thinks that the “ground zero date” for public awareness of CO2 and climate was June 1988, when James Hansen went before congress with his famously modeled 3 scenarios, and told the world we have a serious problem.
What most people don’t know, is that Hansen’s science was so…so…er, “robust” at the time, that he and his sponsor, Senator Timothy Wirth (D-Colorado), had to do some stagecraft by choosing a hot day for testimony (thanks to Weather Bureau forecast), and opening the windows, which negated the air conditioning. I kid you not, they needed the room “hot” to convince legislators to throw money at them.
This transcript excerpt is from PBS series Frontline which aired a special in April 2007.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
Watch the Frontline video
Science and stagecraft, for the cameras, for the funding, for the win!
So, to recap…a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, knew in November 1965, well before it “became a public issue” in June 1988, that “increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of human beings” and did nothing.
Gosh.
Surely Johnson can now be labeled a “denier”. I’m sure Al Gore, the activist AG’s and the McKibbenites will jump right on that, and work hard to smear the name of President Johnson, and sue his estate for his “crime against humanity” of knowing, and doing nothing.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
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Readers (Stokes?) are referred to the report to verify what it actually concluded. Besides quotes referenced by me above the main things I noted were “….could be deleterious…” and “At present it is impossible to predict….” Their positive prediction of fertilizing effect (“….increase in photosynthesis…” and “…significantly raise the level of photosynthesis…”) sounds like it may be true.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/05/exxonknew-meh-johnsonknew-the-1965-presidential-science-report-on-carbon-dioxide-and-pollution/
I remember that back in the early 1970s, people were worried about climate change, meaning the impending onset of a new glacial epoch. Not Warming.
Belief in AGW caused by CO2 = denying the science of thermalization, Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecule energy & quantum mechanics. The IR energy absorbed by CO2 is immediately (0.0002 microseconds) shared with surrounding molecules (thermalization) so, at low altitude, there is little chance for a CO2 molecule to emit a photon (relaxation time about 6 microseconds) as a direct result of having absorbed one. Water vapor has many absorb/emit lines at substantially lower energy levels than the 15 micron absorb/emit band for CO2 and on average there are about 35 times as many WV molecules as CO2 molecules. At low altitude, energy absorbed by CO2 is effectively rerouted up via water vapor radiation and some convection. End result is CO2 has no significant effect on climate. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
Janice, Our Lord created us with two ears, two eyes, and only one mouth. What could that possibly mean? Let’s see how it goes; probably all long term folk have noticed the changes; first take, WUWT is on best financial footing yet = wider audience = more diverse opinions = dilution of your viewpoint. Live with it. L
Re: WUWT is on the best financial footing yet
So. It’s about money. How sad. It used to be about advocating for the truth.
I should have figured it was about money when Anthony took our money to go to AGU last year and essentially thumbed his nose at us when we asked for a summary report of how things went, then, asked for our money for a well-deserved vacation and thumbed his nose at us again when we asked for a short report or two about what he did. Money/”stuff for me” has started to become more important to him than being courteous and getting truth out. Reminds me of what happens to a lot of decent leaders after they’ve been in power for awhile. VERY sad.
There is no point to a “wider audience” when what you are saying is JUNK.
That summed up Anthony’s response perfectly, “L.”
And I reply, “Of course. What else can we do?”
Now you are just sounding peevish, insensitive and rude, Janice. Lets see how well you would do after ten years of wrangling the most important blog on the topic. Stop whining.
Everyone with a good team of technical staff knew…
…that ‘climate change’ was even more of a joke than renewable energy.
So they did nothing.
The optimal policy. For shareholders and the public.
It even conforms to the ‘precautionary principle’. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I read about how scientists were worried about global warming in the 40’s in a boys encyclopedia. That was in 1958 when I was 12.
“I read about how scientists were worried about global warming in the 40’s in a boys encyclopedia. That was in 1958 when I was 12.”
Keep in mind that the 1940’s followed the *very* hot 1930’s, and being climate scientists, they think the trend, hot or cold, is going to go on forever, so they were predicting human-caused Global Warming, because it was hot at the time.
The fact is climate scientists were declarig both human-caused Global Cooling and human-caused Global Warming as being real from the 1940’s to today, depending on who you asked.
As the climate cooled from the 1940’s to the late 1970’s, there were fewer and fewer claims of human-caused Global Warming and many more claims of human-caused Global Cooling. And then when the climate started warming up in the early 1980’s, everyone switched back to predicting human-caused Global Warming.
Climate scientists have been all over the map since the 1940’s when it comes to human influence on the Earth’s climate. And in all this time they have not proven their case that humans are causing the climate to change, whether colder or hotter. Pure speculation since the 1940’s.
Nick Stokes ==> November 5, 2017 at 7:47 pm
I’m hearing you loud and clear but I’d just like to have you on record.
Nick, are we in the midst of man-made climate warming right now – imminent or otherwise – as we speak this very day in the year of our Lord 2017, according to the worlds eminent scientists! Or is it all a media beat-up?
A yes or no answer will do.
Again, to be as clear as possible, I’ll ask the question again*:
Is it “the conventional scientific understanding” today**, that the world is actually being threatened by man-made global warming?
Simple question, I’m sure you can answer!
If it helps, I am expecting, a Mosher type answer (e.g.Yes and yes!).
*Answer both separately if you feel the rephrasing might change your answer.
**November 2017
Yes, our carbon dioxide is warming the climate.
Warming the climate… That sounds like a climate fueled comment.
Where exactly do I find this climate that you speak of?
“Yes, our carbon dioxide is warming the climate.”
UNPROVEN ANTI-SCIENCE NONSENSE, NIck
You know there is absolutely ZERO CO2 warming signal in the satellite temperature data
You KNOW there is no CO2 warming signature in sea level rise.
You KNOW there is NO CO2 warming signature anywhere,
You are NOTHING but a low-level lying AGW propagandist.
That more CO2 is warming the planet is not in evidence, but warmer is better than colder.
What is evident however is that more CO2 is greening the planet. It’s all good. More would be better.
And in the 52 years since that report, the climate gas cooled, warmed, had more storms and fewer storms, more ice and less ice, floods and droughts, heat waves and killing cold.
In otherveords, nothing.
Only many of us have changed, into cowering, scared, non-rational climate kooks who see worldwide catastrophe in every weather event.
And who support destruction of habitat by the industrialisation of the wind.
A bit of literary info.The correct term is”attorneys general”, NOT “attorney generals”. We get this from French, which permits adjectives to come after the noun they describe more often than English does. That’s why you see it pop up a lot in law and military language, where we borrowed heavily from French. The more English way to say it would be the general attorney … The attorney that represents the general public … and the plural would be the general attorneys.
So when does the disaster begin?
LBJ knew a lot of things like how to reconfigure the seats on Air force One to face backwards toward the throne chair. I don’t thing they even do that in NK or on the Putin plane.
If Wirth thought that the hottest day of summer in Washington was June 6 or 9, that shows how little he knows about climate. The summer solstice (longest hours of daylight and highest sun angle) usually occurs on June 21 (sometimes on June 20 due to leap years). But there is a lag between increasing solar heating and warming of the atmosphere, due to the heat capacity of the atmosphere (and also the oceans, which pull heat out of the atmosphere during spring), so that the hottest days of summer (on average) are in mid-July.
By the way, the Northern Hemisphere gets the same amount of sunlight at the vernal equinox (March 21) as at the autumnal equinox (September 21). But March 21 is usually colder than September 21, because the Northern Hemisphere gets cold during the winter months of short days and low sun angles, and takes several weeks to warm up, while on September 21 the Northern Hemisphere has accumulated heat from the summer months of long days and high sun angles, and takes several weeks to cool down. Which is why most places in the Northern Hemisphere have about equal temperatures in mid-April as mid-October.
If Senator Wirth was from Colorado, he should have known that the skiing is better in March than in September!
Asimov wrote one of his scientific essays on the subject in 1959.
Can I just say what a relief to find someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people need to read this and understand this side of the story. I cant believe youre not more popular because you definitely have the gift.
Aaand, you are a spambot.
To be fair, LBJ had a lot on his plate at the time.