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Most knew about the climate crisis in the 2000s, some knew in the 1980s, but very few people anywhere on the planet knew about it, with any clarity, in the early 1970s.
That’s when Professor John Bockris leaned on his blackboard, and began to speak.
He said, “There’s no getting around it.”
He was standing in Adelaide when he spoke about climate disaster with a sense of certainty.
“The urgency of the argument is entirely dependent upon carbon dioxide. The evidence for the carbon dioxide damage … is completely definite.”
The South African-born electrochemistry professor was in a lecture hall at Flinders University in 1973 and he was answering a question from the audience at an energy conference organised by the UN.
He was wearing a wide tie over a suit jacket with a wide collar. His hair — what was left of it at the age of 50 — was unkempt.
“You would need to be a nonscientist to reject it,” said he.
“If it were possible to use coal for say 100 years, we have plenty of it, and so do many countries,” Professor Bockris told an ABC crew after the lecture.
“The problem with coal over such long periods is that it produces carbon dioxide.”
He gestured pointedly with his left arm, explaining that humans were now producing carbon dioxide faster than plants could absorb it through photosynthesis. This was causing it to build up in the atmosphere.
He said, “Now, it can clearly be shown that this does unfortunate things to the atmosphere.”
“The final energy source of man”
The ABC interview was one of four Professor Bockris gave to the ABC in 1973 and 1974, as he tried to alert the public to the dangers of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It wasn’t the first time that a scientist had spoken about climate change on ABC. The phenomenon had already been mentioned about half a dozen times by that time.
The most remarkable thing about Professor Bockris’ interviews was his confidence in science and the solution.
He said that “I think almost all scientists, at minimum those with some knowledge in this field, agree that sun energy is going to become the final energy source for mankind.”
“But whether that solar energy has to be built up by the end of this century on a large scale, or whether it has to be built up 50 years later, that’s the argument,” he added.
At that time, solar energy was used only in Australia to heat water.
Photovoltaic solar panel, which uses the sun’s energy as electricity, are very expensive and are only used on space probes and satellites.
“I think a solar home could be built right now,” Professor Bockris told the ABC in early 1974.
“Heating and cooling, refrigeration, and electricity will be collected from the Sun.
“In the case a single house, we’d store electricity, probably in battery.”
Professor Bockris would end up at odds with the Australian government over years as he tried desperately to convince them to invest heavily into solar energy research.
“What we want, clearly, is a kind of Snowy River project in solar energy research,” he told the ABC in 1977.
Peter Nixon, the transport minister at that time, stated that Professor Bockris’s suggestion was not feasible.
Mr Nixon stated that it was not possible to find the money Professor Bockris would like to spend on solar energy at the moment. He spoke to ABC’s AM.
“Professor Bockris is pushing for his own barrow.
“I doubt that Australia can lead countries like the United States in solar energy.”
John Bockris responded angrily accusing the government only of being interested in talking to fossil fuel lobbyists and taking a “supine position” towards solar research.
Subsequently significant advances were made in Australian solar research, partly supported by NASA grants in the USA.
We provided solutions to the climate crisis before most people knew about it
While Professor Bockris’s views on solar energy and climate change have stood the test, his view on another area seems almost prophetic.
“Could Australia export solar energy in some way, perhaps to Japan or even the United States?” In a lecture broadcast by ABC in 1973, he stated these words.
“Once we have converted the energy to hydrogen by electrolysing brackish, it will be possible to pipe it over very long distances at very low prices.”
John Bockris was interested in hydrogen.
A year earlier, he had invented the term “hydrogen economy” in a paper. It was a concept that enables energy to be transferred around the world through pipes made of hydrogen. He credited Franz Lawaczeck, an ex-Nazi engineer, for the idea.
He was certain that Australia would play a significant role in the new economy.
“With an area of land approximately 150 miles a side [58,000 square kilometres] Australia could produce sufficient energy from its sunlight to give the basic power for the whole of the United States as calculated at the year 2000,” he said.
“Australia’s position in the world — in the hemisphere — is just at the right position to obtain, constantly, the largest amount of solar energy.
“There are few other places in the world, and none within developed countries, where this capability is so high.”
This idea of Australia exporting solar energy as hydrogen to the rest the world is now being pursued by both the Australian government and the private sector.
According to climate experts today, Bockris was a ‘prophetic’.
The Australia, If You’re Listening podcast featured a recording of John Bockris’s lecture from 1973 to some top Australian energy advisers.
Professor Alan Finkel, an ex-chief scientist of Australia and now an energy advisor for the Commonwealth government was shocked to hear the news.
He said, “I’m stunned to have heard that.”
“He saw back then when the cost would have seemed inconceivable the possibility to take our renewable energy, convert it into electricity and then use hydrogen as a vector for exporting that renewable energy around world.
Professor Ross Garnaut, the author of Garnaut Climate Change Review was also taken aback.
“I hadn’t heard that before, Bockris was saying something revolutionary and sound,” he said.
“It’s very impressive.”
Professor Graeme Pearman, a contemporary of John Bockris who corresponded with him in the early 1970s, was amazed at the foresight.
He said, “It’s incredible, how prophetic it is, it’s fantastic.”
“That’s a visionary statement. I think it probably reflects his broad view of the world as well as all of our engineering capabilities.”
Alison Reeve (lead author of Australia’s national strategy for hydrogen) laughed when she heard the recording.
She said, “That’s amazing.”
“The thing it shows you is that there’s actually very few new ideas out there — or we have ideas and then we forget them.”
John Bockris wasn’t entirely correct in his predictions in 1973 and 1974.
On hydrogen, he incorrectly predicted that sending gas through intercontinental pipelines would be more cost-effective than liquefying it and shipping it in specially made tankers.
These tankers are already being used for liquid hydrogen transport around the globe.
Although he predicted it in 1982, hydrogen from Australia could be converted to ammonia. This is easier to transport by ships.
On solar power, he wrongly predicted that the price of solar power would not fall below $300 per Kilowatt, leaving out the cost of battery storage. It would still be slightly cheaper than nuclear power.
Actually, solar power is now half the price it was predicted after adjusting for inflation. It is also far cheaper than nuclear power even if you include the cost of battery storage.
These errors are very minor in comparison to the many accurate predictions he made in the 1970s.
The rest of John Bockris’s career was contentious
After moving to Texas A&M University, Professor Bockris made a number of incredible claims of breakthroughs during the 1980s and 1990s which proved less than impressive.
His “breakthroughs” to produce hydrogen directly from sunlight were based on simple scientific errors, but he never admitted that he was wrong.
Then, he was involved in research into nuclear transmutation and nuclear fusion.
He said he and two other researchers had made progress in inventing cold fusion — an entirely safe form of nuclear power generation which would save the world from fossil fuels.
Joe Champion, an ex-con, was also his collaborator on a project that tried to convert mercury into golden. This led colleagues and newspapers to mock him as an alchemist.
“He is an ambitious, egocentric, driven human being who has come a long way … by aggressive, outlandish at times, scrapping,” a colleague told the Houston Press newspaper in 1994.
Ramesh Bhhardwaj, a colleague, described the descent into these ideas as shocking.
“I never thought Dr Bockris could be made a fool of.”
A letter was published from 15 fellow chemistry professors demanding he resign.
Newsweek magazine began their article on the subject with the question:
“In the revered name of academic freedom, universities tolerate faculty members who are avowed communists and lifelong fascists, outspoken racists and anti-Semites, radical lesbians and rabid homophobes — but alchemists?”
Despite his desire to win a Nobel Prize in satire, Professor Bockris was unable to do so. He won the Ig Nobel Prize for satire in 1997.
He left Texas A&M University after being investigated and cleared three times for fraud or scientific misconduct.
His views became more controversial as he grew older.
In 2004, eight years before his death, he published a book called The New Paradigm: A Confrontation Between Physics and the Paranormal Phenomena, which cast doubt on almost every scientific theory in existence — from evolution to the big bang to Einstein’s theory of relativity.
He wrote about paranormal events, including those he had personally experienced, in it. For example, a mysterious half-eaten sandwich of ham appeared on his bathroom floor.
On the final page of the book he writes: “I may be going a bit too far too fast.”
That was likely true throughout his entire career.
Now, 49 years after he suggested it, billions of dollars have been invested to realize his dream of an Australian hydrogen sector.
The number of Australian solar homes is close to 4 million.
Climate change is threatening our daily lives.
John Bockris was “a bit too far too quickly” in 1973 and 1974. But we should have listened to him.
