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Satellite images as tools of visual diplomacy: NASA's ozone hole visualizations and the Montreal Protocol negotiations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2023
Abstract
On 16 September 1987, the main chlorofluorocarbon-producing and -consuming countries signed the Montreal Protocol, despite the absence of a scientific consensus on the mechanisms of ozone depletion over Antarctica. We argue in this article that the rapid diffusion from late 1985 onwards of satellite images showing the Antarctic ozone hole played a significant role in this diplomatic outcome. Whereas negotiators claimed that they chose to deliberately ignore the Antarctic ozone hole during the negotiations since no theory was able yet to explain it, the images still loomed large for many of the actors involved. In Western countries, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) satellite visualizations were diffused through the general press and television stations. Other popular and mass media outlets followed quickly. In describing the circulation and appropriation processes of these images within and beyond the scientific and negotiation arenas, we show that the ozone hole images did play an important part in ozone diplomacy in the two years leading up to the signing of the Montreal Protocol, both in the expert and diplomatic arenas and as public diplomacy tools. We conclude by encouraging scholars to engage with new visual archives and to contribute to the development of the vibrant new field of research on visual diplomacy.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 56 , Special Issue 2: Science, Technology and Visual Diplomacy , June 2023 , pp. 247 - 267
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science
References
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12 Constantinou, op. cit. (9), p. 389.
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14 Litfin, op. cit. (6), p. 97. See also Litfin, op. cit. (7), p. 260.
15 Benedick, op. cit. (3), p. 19.
16 Litfin, op. cit. (6), p. 97; Grundmann, op. cit. (8), p. 280; Reiner Grundmann, ‘Interview with Dr. Robert Watson’, White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, Washington D.C., at https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/circlingthesquare/2015/07/03/interview-with-robert-watson-by-reiner-grundmann (accessed 12 April 2022); Keynyn Brysse, ‘Interview of Mack McFarland on 31 July 2009’, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, at www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/33362 (accessed 12 April 2022).
17 Parson, op. cit. (2), p. 142.
18 An ‘Ozone Trends Panel’ was created by Bob Watson in 1986 to resolve the latest conflicts between the ground-based ‘Dobson’ network data and the data from the satellite-based instrument named TOMS. Among other things, the panel concluded that TOMS was reporting more depletion than there actually was, but the conclusions were drawn months after the negotiations in Montreal. Naomi Oreskes and Erik 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, pp. 122–3.
19 National Security Archive, case no. F-2008-03441, document no. C17575095, p. 2.
20 On the historical role of ‘go-betweens’ see Simon Schaffer, Lissa Roberts, Kapil Raj and James Delbourgo (eds.), The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820, Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2009.
21 Keynyn Brysse, ‘Interview of Robert Watson on 13 March 2009’, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, at ww.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/33575 (accessed 12 April 2022).
22 Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin, ‘Large losses of total ozone in Antarctica reveal seasonal CIOx/NOx interaction’, Nature (1985) 315(6016), pp. 207–10.
23 John Gribbin, The Hole in the Sky: Man's Threat to the Ozone Layer, London: Corgi Books, 1990, p. 123.
24 Paul Merchant, ‘Interview of Joseph Farman’, British Library National Life Stories, An Oral History of British Science, C1379/07, track 15, transcript, p. 291; Steve Norton, ‘Interview of Joseph Farman 11 October 1999’, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, at www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/33753-1, session I (accessed 12 April 2022).
25 See Michael Oppenheimer, Naomi Oreskes, Dale Jamieson, Keynyn Brysse, Jessica O'Reilly, Matthew Shindell and Milena Wazeck (eds.), Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019, Chapter 3; see also Grundmann, op. cit. (16), n.p.
26 Grundmann, op. cit. (16), n.p.
27 See NASA/WMO, Atmospheric Ozone 1985: Assessment of Our Understanding of the Processes Controlling Its Present Distribution and Change, 3 vols., WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project Report no. 16, Geneva: WMO, 1986, vol. 1, p. 316, vol. 2, p. 438, vol. 3, p. 719.
28 NASA/WMO, op. cit. (27), vol. 3, Chapter 14.
29 On the visual strategies involved see Grundmann, op. cit. (8), p. 102; Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, ‘A visual history of the ozone hole: a journey to the heart of science, technology and the environment’, History and Technology (2017) 33(3), pp. 333–44; Grevsmühl, ‘The creation of global imaginaries: the Antarctic ozone hole and the isoline tradition in the atmospheric sciences’, in Birgit Schneider and Thomas Nocke (eds.), Image Politics of Climate Change, Berlin: Transcript, 2014, pp. 29–53. For a history of the ozone hole metaphor see Grevsmühl, ‘Revisiting the ozone hole metaphor: from observational window to global environmental threat’, Environmental Communication (2018) 12(1), pp. 71–83.
30 Another telling example of the importance of the choice of colours and discrete value intervals in science diplomacy comes from the IPCC negotiation process and, for instance, the discussions involved in the making of the famous burning-embers diagram. Martin Mahony, ‘Climate change and the geographies of objectivity: the case of the IPCC's burning embers diagram’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2015) 4(2), pp. 153–67.
31 In many oral-history interviews, Farman describes the important US embassy meeting with Bob Watson and Adrian Tuck. See, for instance, Merchant, op. cit. (24), track 15; and Norton, op. cit. (24), session I.
32 Oppenheimer et al., op. cit. (25), p. 81.
33 Clark, William C. and Dickson, Nancy M., ‘Civic science: America's encounter with global environmental risk’, in The Social Learning Group (eds.), Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, vol. 1, p. 267Google Scholar.
34 Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1990, p. 67.
35 Walker, op. cit. (8), pp. 111–12. For examples of published image series see Richard Stolarski et al., ‘Nimbus 7 satellite measurements of the springtime Antarctic ozone decrease’, Nature (1986) 322(6082), pp. 808–11; Arlin Krueger et al., ‘TOMS observations of total ozone in the 1986 Antarctic spring’, Geophysical Research Letters (1987) 14(5), pp. 527–30.
36 Grundmann, op. cit. (16), np.
37 Note that the first experimental TOMS images were shown by Pawan Bhartia at the joint IAMA/IAGA meeting in Prague in August 1985 and were already put together in late 1984. Grevsmühl, op. cit. (1), Chapter 6.
38 Grundmann, Reiner, ‘Politiknetzwerke und globale ökologische Probleme: Der Fall der Ozonschicht’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift (1997) 38(2), pp. 247–73, 263Google Scholar.
39 Grundmann, op. cit. (39), p. 263.
40 Grundmann, op. cit. (8), p. 281.
41 Christie, op. cit. (1), p. 51.
42 ‘The public accounts of the ozone hole served, among other things, the purpose of public science: they helped protect scientists and science against loss of authority and focused public attention upon present knowledge-producing activities’ rather than previous, erroneous theories. Stephen Zehr, ‘Accounting for the ozone hole: scientific representations of an anomaly and prior incorrect claims in public settings’, Sociological Quarterly (1994) 35(4), pp. 606–9.
43 We found few non-scientific images in our corpus. One popular cartoon by cartoonist Herbert Block related to Donald Hodel, Secretary of the Interior in 1986, who proposed a personal protection plan instead of political action, encouraging people to wear hats and sunglasses. His plan was leaked and mocked as the ‘Ray-Ban plan’ in many press outlets such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. See Cagin, Seth and Dray, Philip, Between Earth and Sky: How CFCs Changed Our World and Endangered the Ozone Layer, New York: Pantheon Books, 1993, pp. 332–3Google Scholar; and Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Item LC-DIG-hlb-11452. Another cartoon was published in the Washington Times on the very eve of the signing of the Montreal Protocol. In a reworking of the myth of Atlas or Prometheus, the drawing depicts a man rushing toward the globe to take care of it, as if he had abandoned or had set it on fire in the first place. Francesca Lyman, ‘Along the ozone trail’, Washington Times, 15 September 1987, p. F5.
44 Grundmann, op. cit. (8), pp. 258–60.
45 Robert Reinhold, ‘Los Angeles weighs change to cut smog’, New York Times, 19 December 1988, p. A14. For a media analysis of the Chernobyl disaster see Katrin Jordan, Ausgestrahlt: Die mediale Debatte um ‘Tschernobyl’ in der Bundesrepublik und in Frankreich 1986/87, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018.
46 Grundmann, op. cit. (3), pp. 83–4. Grundmann also showed that the press coverage of CFCs and ozone – and along with them ‘the expectations raised by the media’ – were ‘much higher in the United States than in the EC countries’: the difference in numbers of articles published in the main newspapers in US and Germany was important from 1974 to 1977, and was even larger from 1986 to 1990.
47 In 1985 Walter Sullivan was a renowned and distinguished science reporter and editor for the New York Times who had been awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1980. He first became known to the broad public through covering the International Geophysical Year (1957–8), an effort that resulted in his 1961 publication The Assault on the Unknown, New York: McGraw-Hill.
48 Grundmann, op. cit. (8), p. 175.
49 Walter Sullivan, ‘Low ozone level found above Antarctica’, New York Times, 7 November 1985, p. B21.
50 We will not discuss this point here. On ‘path dependency’ mechanisms see Greener, Ian, ‘The potential of path dependence in political studies’, Politics (2005) 25(1), pp. 62–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Another early visual example is James Gleick, ‘Hole in ozone over South Pole worries scientists’, New York Times, 29 July 1986, p. C3.
52 This counts for all issues released between May 1985 and mid-September 1987.
53 Walker, op. cit. (8), p. 115.
54 For instance, 66.4 per cent of French households were equipped with colour television sets in December 1984. Gaillard, Isabelle, ‘De l’étrange lucarne à la télévision: Histoire d'une banalisation (1949–1984)’, Vingtième Siècle: Revue d'histoire (2006) 91(3), p. 20Google Scholar.
55 Debora MacKenzie, ‘Two cheers for the ozone layer’, New Scientist, 3 September 1987, pp. 66–7.
56 MacKenzie, op. cit. (55).
57 Oreskes and Conway, op. cit. (18).
58 MacKenzie, op. cit. (55), pp. 66–7.
59 SRF, Medien, Technik, Wissenschaft, 13 March 1987, SRF Archive, Switzerland, at www.srf.ch/play/tv/srf-wissen/video/ozonloch-ueber-der-schweiz?urn=urn:srf:video:4cf626a3-543c-4239-9d6d-f347c094bee4 (accessed 12 April 2022). The SRF Archive is accessible online at www.srf.ch/play. We cross-checked all results with the Swiss audiovisual archive memobase at https://memobase.ch/fr/start (accessed 12 April 2022).
60 Johannes Staehelin, Pierre Viatte, Rene Stübi, Fiona Tummon and Thomas Peter, ‘Stratospheric ozone measurements at Arosa (Switzerland): history and scientific relevance’, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2018) 18(9), pp. 6567–84.
61 CBS, ‘Ozone in the news’, 1986, accessible at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugHeAAgrW9w (accessed 12 April 2022); Antenne 2, ‘C'est la vie’, 28 April 1987, INA Archives, BNF, Paris.
62 Finis Dunaway, Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015, p. 247–8.
63 Our corpus reveals that only two different colour schemes were used by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for the time-lapse movies released between 1985 and 1987, yet both reserved blue and violet tones for very low ozone values (i.e. the ozone hole).
64 See Erik Conway, Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
65 For instance, on French television, the Blue Marble and similar space photographs were used in conjunction with NASA's ozone hole animations during the news broadcast on Antenne 2 (21 October 1986, 22 October 1986, 5 December 1986, 17 September 1987), La 5 (1 October 1987) and TéléRéunion (22 October 1986). On other occasions news programmes adopted globe animations in order to better explain the ozone layer and its vital functions: TF1 (21 October 1986, 17 September 1987, 2 December 1987), Antenne 2 (28 April 1987), INA Archives, BNF, Paris.
66 The Arctic ozone hole was, for instance, schematically illustrated in ‘Le journal de 20 heures’, Antenne 2 (21 October 1986), op. cit. (65).
67 Sheila, Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990Google Scholar.
68 The reader will find some answers in Conway, op. cit. (64).
69 By doing so, they were actually taking up one of the new favourite figures of speech of ozone scientists, as used, for instance, by Susan Solomon in October 1986. The French television newscaster reported that she had declared on the phone that she was ‘very worried science was not able to find a tangible explanation’ to the widening of the gigantic hole as large as the European continent observed in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Antenne 2 (21 October 1986), op. cit. (65).
70 Such quantitative data are often very controversial anyway. The opponents of the ‘alarmists’ willingly compute and recompute statistical data; the present case was no exception.
71 See SRF, op. cit. (59).
72 Walker opposes the notion of ‘uncertainties’ to the notion of ‘risk’, which, he says, ‘is often the language of the market, the institution, and the corporation that uses speculation to reduce complexity (often through quantification) and limit the creative possibilities of deliberation’. Walker, op. cit. (8), p. 106.
73 Gribbin, op. cit. (23), pp. 166–7. On negotiations see Litfin, op. cit. (6); and Nicholas Booth, How Soon Is Now? The Truth about the Ozone Hole, London: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
74 Neumann, op. cit. (9), pp. xi–xii. On images in science see, for example, Peter Galison, Image & Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
75 Walker, op. cit. (8), p. 105. One must note also with Nicholas Cull that the nature of public diplomacy may vary significantly from one country to another due to specific domestic cultural traditions. Cull, Nicholas, ‘Public diplomacy: taxonomies and histories’, Annals of the American Academy (2008) 616(1), pp. 31–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.