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allouryesterdays.bsky.social
All Our Yesterdays
@allouryesterdays.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.8K following 2.3K posts
Daily "on this day" posts abt climate history - science, politics, protest, technology, etc (from 1661 to 2024). Also interviews, commentary.

Ideas for posts? Tag or chat...
Run by @marchudson.bsky.social
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allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Yeah, this from 2014
Newsroom screengrab, with interviewee explaining climate impacts - "Mass migration, food and water shortages, spread of deadly disease, endless wildfires, storms that have the power to level cities, blacken out the sky and create permanent darkness"
November 10, 2025 at 3:03 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
"In the 1990s we will be watching the planet itself. Although the generally agreed timetable for global warming puts its harmful effects 40 years hence, some scientists think it may happen faster, and there may be, in the words of a leading American climatologist, Dr Wally Broecker, 'unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse'." McCarthy, M. 1989. Dawning of 'green age' shatters old certainties; Environment; The Turbulent 80s. The Times, December 29
November 8, 2025 at 6:42 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
I will now lower the tone with a Simpsons meme - the one about "so far?"
Simpson meme. Top panel is Bart, unhappy, with the text "It is also one of the only species that will happily destroy its habitat deliberately... and still manage to survive." bottom panel is Homer, smiling and saying "So Far!"
November 8, 2025 at 5:35 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
FT editorial from September 1988.

The whole shooting match in a nutshell. FT is the best daily paper I know. Written by the smart for the rich who want to stay rich/get richer. (The poor get the picture, as per Midnight Oil) www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QzH...
There is a respectable economic case for spending money on environmental protection. It rests on the need to counteract what economists call external diseconomies, or the additional costs borne by society that are not paid for by individuals or firms as they legitimately pursue their private interests. But here is the rub: the discrepancy hetween private and social costs that gives rise to pollution and other forms of disamenity has been used to justify the enhanced role accorded to the state in the 20th century - that same state whose regulations Mrs Thatcher has been so anxious to roll back.
November 8, 2025 at 3:38 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Truth bomb.
The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defense correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons. E. P. Thompson
November 8, 2025 at 2:49 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
60 years ago today (November 5, 1965), the first US government report to warn about climate change was published.

"Restoring the Quality of Our Environment" included a brief section on carbon dioxide build-up, and a longer annexe. Details below...

allouryesterdays.info/2025/11/04/6...
Revelle was not above echoing his earlier paper with Hans Seuss in 1957, in which they had suggested that mankind was engaged in an unwitting vast experiment. “Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. The CO2 produced by this combustion is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it remains there. The estimated recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are sufficient to produce nearly a 200% increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.”
November 5, 2025 at 6:33 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Sixty years ago today (November 5, 1965) - when not escalating the butchery in Vietnam, the Lyndon Johnson administration was... warning people about climate change. I kid you not.

allouryesterdays.info/2025/11/04/6...
On page 9 (and this is the complete quote) readers are told. CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF POLLUTION Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO2 in our atmosphere than at present. This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable though local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.
November 5, 2025 at 12:42 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Because education and communication, famously, bend the emissions curve downwards.
FFS.
"In commenting on the complex nature of many environmental problems currently facing policy makers, the Group recognises that there are few if any easy solutions, and, because of this, considerable stress is laid on the importance of education and communication in this field."
November 5, 2025 at 10:34 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Well, I think it's fawking excellent.

(Also, if you want lurid 1970s political paranoia around this, then, well...

www.trashfiction.co.uk/weatherman_g...
Cover of Weatherman Guy novel
November 5, 2025 at 10:29 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
The report was read by the head of the American Petroleum Institute, Frank Ikard. He talked about it at the API's annual conference, just after the PSAC report was released.

7/n
Screengrab of relevant bit of Ikard's speech.
November 4, 2025 at 10:20 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
The report outlines the impacts - Melting of icecaps, changes in alkalinity etc etc.

The report was well covered by major US newspapers.

Read all about it here

allouryesterdays.info/2025/11/04/6...

6/n
After flagging research being conducted about what the implications of carbon dioxide might be for the Earth’s temperature by Manabe and Weatherald (their pivotal paper would not appear until 1967) the report turns to possible impacts. They flag the “Melting of the Antarctic ice cap” (something well underway) Rise of sea level.-”The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years, 40 feet per century. This is a hundred times greater than present worldwide rates of sea level change.” Warming of sea water. Increased acidity of fresh waters. Increase in photosynthesis. Revelle was not above echoing his earlier paper with Hans Seuss in 1957, in which they had suggested that mankind was engaged in an unwitting vast experiment.
November 4, 2025 at 10:18 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
60 yrs ago today (Nov 5, 1965), the 1st US government report to warn about climate change was published.
"Restoring the Quality of Our Environment" included warning of C02 build-up and sea-level rise/melting ice-caps.

allouryesterdays.info/2025/11/04/6...

1/n
Restoring the Quality of Our Environment
November 4, 2025 at 10:12 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Editorial Doomsday revisited The news coming from Washington Tuesday was gloomier than usual. The Environmental Protection Agency warned the continued warming of the earth's climate due to pollution could create serious problems as early as the 1990s. The EPA released its report, titled, "Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming?" and concluded that regardless of any future restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels, the warming of the earth's atmosphere is inevitable. The greenhouse effect is the name given to the buildup in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide gases, produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas, which act as glass in a greenhouse, allowing the sun's rays to warm the earth and trapping the heat. The EPA warned the warming trend will disrupt food production worldwide, create changes in rainfall and probably raise coastal waters due to polar ice caps melting. At the same time, however, the EPA went out of its way to emphasize the report merits urgent action, but it's not a doomsday warning. The announcement by the EPA of the earth's warming trend is not the first. Scientists have been giving the same warnings for years. It is significant, however, that the Reagan administration is taking the problem seriously enough, at least to make the study and subsequent warning. The EPA under Reagan has been criticized, justifiably in many cases, for not protecting the environment and of representing the interests of big business in its pursuit of profits regardless of environmental effects. Unfortunately, studies and announcements alone will not solve the problem. It's not just a problem for
November 3, 2025 at 4:23 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
thnx for the heads-up. Top notch reporting from the FT, as usual.
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/4e0a9a30-b014-4745-afe5-c841e36b41da While the Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for the UN and multilateral organisations, diplomats and experts warned that the behaviour at the IMO crossed a line, with potential long-term consequences for global governance. “It was like the New York street,” said a diplomat from a nation that was threatened with visa restrictions for shipping crews and other penalties, including increased fees to access US ports, if it did not drop its support for the framework. “They went from delegation to delegation . . . threatening them. Telling them to go back and speak to their capitals, warning what would happen if they didn’t change their minds,” the diplomat said. A second veteran of IMO meetings said the US tactics had left the entire organisation — usually a forum for technocratic discussion and consensus-based decision making — in a state of “complete shock”.  “It’s like dealing with the Mob,” the veteran added. “It’s bully-boy tactics. They don’t need to tell you exactly what they’re going to do to you, just make it clear that there will be consequences.” A State Department official did not address the personal threats to delegates
November 3, 2025 at 8:37 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
On this day 18 yrs ago @albomp.bsky.social said in Parliament, during a debate on climate change that "we simply cannot afford to wait any longer."

allouryesterdays.info/2025/10/29/o...
Eighteen years ago, on this day, October 30th, 2007, Albanese grievance debate on climate on launch of Stern Review Grievance Debate Climate Change Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler) (4.18 p.m.)—My grievance is against the Howard government for its failure to address the greatest challenge facing the global community: climate change. Today Sir Nicholas Stern launches his report on the economics of climate change. It is a very clear warning that climate change will ruin our environment and our economy if we do not take action. Early action will be far cheaper—perhaps five, 10 or 20 times cheaper. We simply cannot afford to wait any longer. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm. The broader context was the Australian Labor Party, having lost four federal elections on the trot (1996 1998, 2001, 2004) was looking for a bruise to punch. They’d found it in climate change, which had
October 29, 2025 at 10:36 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
more here. Cry benighted country...
strongly against Australia’s net-zero targets and amplifies climate contrarian arguments. By combining high-volume culture-war advertising with persistent anti-renewable and anti-climate organic messaging, Advance is attempting to influence the wider public sphere in ways that rival party campaigns while evading the same levels of scrutiny and accountability. Other notable third-parties include: • Australians for Prosperity: 570 ads, $280,000–$390,000 in spend, with ~33 million impressions. Framed as “community advocacy,” but functioned as a vehicle for fossil-fuel-aligned messaging. • Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance: 190 ads, $206,000–$267,000 in spend, ~14 million impressions. Positioned its anti-renewables and pro-fossil fuel arguments as taxpayer advocacy. • Nuclear for Australia: 107 ads, $356,000-$443,000 in spend, ~20 million impressions/ Pushing strongly pro-nuclear messaging. In each case, the level of spend and reach was vastly disproportionate to the groups’ apparent community standing, with some having negligible organic followings outside of paid campaigns. What is striking is not only the scale of expenditure but the systematic targeting of climate and energy issues. Even where pages framed themselves more broadly, around families, affordability, cost of living, the dominant themes of their advertising were opposition to renewables, defence of fossil gas, and promotion of nuclear power. The impact on media narratives and policy debates relating to climate change is significant. These groups blur the line between legitimate community advocacy and covert lobbying, while injecting highly polarising, misleading claims about renewables, nuclear, and fossil gas into the national debate.
October 29, 2025 at 11:27 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Another submission to the Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate and Energy.

We. Are. Screwed.

The ability of liars to lie convincingly has destroyed any hope of threat perception.

We will die of the heat and the dry, and the epic loneliness of having killed all the other creatures.
Executive Summary Introduction This submission draws on research conducted by the ADM+S Australian Ad Observatory team ahead of the 2025 Federal Election to track political advertising in key electorates. The McKinnon Foundation supported this work by funding participant recruitment. We recruited more than 106 people in these electorates to install the Observatory’s ad collection tool on their phones during the two weeks prior to election day and collected a total of 22,370 ads. We then sorted through these ads to identify and analyse the political ads they received, noting that this did not include unsponsored, user-generated content. Of the 580 political ads seen by our participants, many focused heavily on energy and climate change, often in relation to increases in energy prices and the cost of living. As well as political parties, 7% of these ads came from third party organisations with a strong focus on energy and climate. Additionally, we used the PoliDashboard tool, developed and supported by our academic partners at the Social Media Lab (Toronto Metropolitan University), to track spending by major political parties, third-party organisations, and other actors. This submission summarises our key findings, focusing on third party groups, energy misinformation and political advertising. Key Findings ● Astroturfing is mainstream. Campaigns designed to appear grassroots are in fact coordinated, well-financed, and often linked directly to major political parties, donors, or lobby groups. ● Climate and energy are prime targets. Most third-party advertising during the 2025 Federal Election focused on energy costs, nuclear power, and climate action, framing vested interests as “ordinary Australians.” ● Systematic misrepresentation. Groups with names like Mums for Nuclear or Australians for Natural Gas disguised their partisan or corporate origins, sometimes even copying the identity of legitimate grassroots organisations. ● Heavy spending and reach. Lobby groups spe…
October 29, 2025 at 11:21 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
"Practical" and "pragmatic"
It reminds me of the word “praktisch” and how it was used in Germany between the wars. According to an incredibly brave anti-Nazi German, who parachuted behind the German lines in 1944 to gather intelligence and then get captured by advancing Allied troops, this is what praktisch actually means “… the word praktisch had been a two-syllable club he’d been beaten with by fellow students and teachers and businessmen and clergy all through the nightmare years. “Stop being such a god-damned idealist! Be practical!” “Practical means I know right from wrong but I’m too fucking scared to do what’s right so I commit crimes or permit crimes and I say I’m only being practical. Practical means coward. Practical frequently means stupid. Someone is too goddamn dumb to realize the consequences of what he’s doing and he hides under practical. It also means corrupt: I know what I ought to do but I’m being paid to do something different so I call it practical. Practical is an umbrella for everything lousy people do.” (Quote from Brendan Phibbs amazing book The Other Side of Time: a Combat Surgeon in World War II Little Brown & Co, New York (1987)
October 29, 2025 at 11:15 AM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
October 28, 1956 – New York Times reports “Warmer Climate on the Earth May Be Due To More Carbon Dioxide in the Air”

Can't say there were no warnings, now can we?

This one is based on the work of Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass.

allouryesterdays.info/2022/10/27/o...
Page of New York Times for October 28, 1956 - in Science in Review section
October 27, 2025 at 10:53 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
John Elledge writing in the New Staggers.

The smart phones are best thought of as id-portals. You can find other people to cheer on your worst, stupidest and frankly most evil impulses.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
Ted Heath led the British right in a very different age. Partly that’s because he didn’t have Reform to contend with – if you’d called him an “elitist”, he’d surely have been baffled you meant it as an insult – but partly too because he didn’t have the internet. Heath will surely have been aware of popular support for Enoch Powell. But he didn’t have a buzzing box in his pocket to remind him of it, and how easily it could be mobilised against him, let alone an app owned by a foreign billionaire designed to radicalise his own views.
October 27, 2025 at 1:12 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Cracking example, on this day 37 years ago, of how advertising shapes reality... (One of the 5 filters in the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model)

allouryesterdays.info/2025/10/26/o...
This recalls an infamous case from 1988 involving the Guardian, considered Britain’s most liberal newspaper. An article by Guardian journalist James Erlichman covered a Greenpeace campaign to name and shame Ford motor company – then by far the country’s biggest advertiser – because it lagged behind other car manufacturers in adapting engines to take unleaded petrol. A Greenpeace poster showed exhaust fumes in the shape of a skull and crossbones with the slogan: ‘Ford Gives You More.’ Greenpeace tried to publish the poster as an advertisement in The Times, the Guardian and the Independent – all refused. The conclusion to Erlichman’s piece contained one of the great bombshells in the history of British journalism: “Greenpeace booked 20 hoardings for its poster campaign. But then the advertising agency was informed that most of the sites – those owned by Mills & Allen – had been withdrawn. Carl Johnson, who is handling the account, said: ‘We were told that the posters were offensive, but I am sure someone was afraid of losing a lot of Ford advertising.’ Mr Johnson attempted to book the ‘skull and crossbones’ advertisement with The Times, the Guardian and the Independent. ‘I have no doubt that they all feared losing Ford’s advertising if they accepted ours,’ he said.” (Erlichman, ‘Threat of boycotts “turns firms green”,’ The Guardian, October 27, 1988) https://www.medialens.org/2009/the-guardian-climate-and-advertising-an-open-email-to-george-monbiot/
October 26, 2025 at 10:05 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
This is the kind of Blairism I can get behind...

www.marxists.org/archive/orwe...

2/2
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ʻit wouldn't doʼ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ʻnot doneʼ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ʻnot doneʼ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
October 26, 2025 at 8:20 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Will Stancil being interviewed in Renewal.

Fwiw, George Orwell said this in the (suppressed) introduction to Animal Farm in, what, 1944 or whenever.

1/2

renewal.org.uk/blog/all-tha...
I also think that highly educated people tend to be very good at rationalizing the positions that they are socially expected to hold. You see this with really high powered business leaders, commentators, politicians, that they're very good at arriving at the conclusion that is socially convenient. They might come up with a lot of highly sophisticated rationales for why they believe that, but you can’t help but notice that at the end of the day they are believing the thing that is embedded most deeply in their social environment.
October 26, 2025 at 8:15 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
It's later than you think....

(And if you want, guess the year...)
Today, unintentional alteration of the atmosphere by man is a minor problem compared with what it will be one or two generations hence. No prospect appears for a slackening in the exponential growth of such civilized activities as burning carboniferous fuels, building cities, flying aircraft and launching rockets. We are just now beginning to realize that the atmosphere is not a dump of unlimited capacity, but we do not yet know what the atmosphere's capacity is or how it might be measured. The overriding immediate need is for greatly improved and expanded methods of detecting man-made alterations in the composition and energy budget of the atmosphere. 1. It is generally agreed that the total amount of carbon dioxide (COz) in the atmosphere has increased by 10 to 15 per cent in this century, and that the increase is due to the burning of fossil fuels. The most recent calculations of the enhanced "greenhouse effect" of increased atmospheric C02 indicate that surface temperatures may have been caused to rise only about 0.2C since 1900, but the stratosphere may have cooled by ten times that amount. Considering the continuing consumption rate of carboniferous fuels, the implications of this for future tropospheric stability cannot be ignored. The obvious needs are for continued monitoring of atmospheric and oceanic C02 content and for the simulation of C02 effects (including effects on atmospheric circulation due t
October 25, 2025 at 1:17 PM
allouryesterdays.bsky.social
Another belly laugh. I love me a digital archive, I do...
Screengrab from a memo - "The inter-action between industry and the environment is a recurring theme in the work of the Versailles Group, though not central to it. The Group has identified five environmental protection issues requiring urgent attention, namely: [others] (iv) world climate and climatic change (for example the impact of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere)....
October 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM