Guest post by Steven Goddard
In Woody Allen’s classic 1977 movie “Annie Hall,” there is a wonderful scene in a theatre queue where he is having a heated argument with a Columbia University academic about the meaning of Marshall McLuhan’s writing. His opponent is getting quite agitated, so Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a sign to prove his point.
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called “TV, Media and Culture.” So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Woody Allen: Oh, do ya? Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me…
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Woddy Allen: come over here for a second… tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Woody Allen: Boy, if life were only like this!
Sometimes life is like that. Pen Hadow has been reported to be telling the press some interesting things this week :
and from the Catlin Web Site :
Fortunately, there is an expert standing behind the sign. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research has just completed a much more expansive investigation of Arctic Ice, and yes they did actually make it to the North Pole – the old fashioned way – in an airplane. Below is the original German text and the Google translation :
At the North Pole ice sheet is thicker than expectedDas Forschungsflugzeug “Polar 5” beendet am Dienstag in Kanada seine jüngste Arktis-Expedition.The research aircraft Polar 5 “ended on Tuesday in Canada’s recent Arctic expedition.Bei dem Flug haben Forscher die aktuelle Eisstärke am Nordpol gemessen, und zwar in Gebieten, die nie zuvor überflogen worden sind.During the flight, researchers have Eisstärke the current measured at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown.Das Ergebnis ist überraschend.The result is surprising.Das Meer-Eis in den untersuchten Gebieten ist offenbar dicker, als die Wissenschaftler vermutet hatten.The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.Normalerweise sei neu gebildetes Eis nach zwei Jahren gut zwei Meter dick.Normally, ice is newly formed after two years, over two meters thick.“Hier wurden aber Eisdicken von bis zu vier Metern gemessen”, sagte ein Sprecher des Bremerhavener Alfred-Wegener-Instituts für Polar- und Meeresforschung.“Here were Eisdicken up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.Für die Wissenschaftler steht dieses Ergebnis derzeit noch im Widerspruch zur Erwärmung des Meerwassers.For scientists, this result is still in contradiction to the warming of the seawater.
And from the Wegener Institute web site :
Another focal point of the campaign were large-scale measurements of ice thickness in the inner Arctic, which were conducted in close collaboration of the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the University of Alberta. An ice-thickness sensor, the so-called EM-Bird, was put into operation under a plane for the first time ever. To conduct the measurements, Polar 5 dragged the sensor which was attached to a steel cable of eighty metres length in a height of twenty metres over the ice cover. Multiple flights northwards from various stations showed an ice thickness between 2.5 (two years old ice in the vicinity of the North Pole) and 4 metres (perennial ice in Canadian offshore regions). All in all, the ice was somewhat thicker than during the last years in the same regions, which leads to the conclusion that Arctic ice cover recovers temporarily. The researchers found the thickest ice with a thickness of 15 metres along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island.
So the question is – why does the suspect Catlin data get unlimited press coverage, while the comprehensive data of the Wegener Institute gets buried by the press? Is it possible that some members of the press have an agenda?
Woody Allen made some great movies in the 1970s, while the press was up to it’s usual antics – as reported by The Business and Media Institute.
The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s.Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.Journalists took the threat of another ice age seriously. Fortune magazine actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics for its own analysis of the danger. “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed,” Fortune announced in February 1974.“It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,” the article continued.That article also emphasized Bryson’s extreme doomsday predictions. “There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest.”Bryson warned, “It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” However, the world population increased by 2.5 billion since that warning.Fortune had been emphasizing the cooling trend for 20 years. In 1954, it picked up on the idea of a frozen earth and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.”The story debunked the notion that “despite all you may have read, heard, or imagined, it’s been growing cooler – not warmer – since the Thirties.”The claims of global catastrophe were remarkably similar to what the media deliver now about global warming.“The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations,” wrote Lowell Ponte in his 1976 book “The Cooling.”If the proper measures weren’t taken, he cautioned, then the cooling would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.”There were more warnings. The Nov. 15, 1969, “Science News” quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. about global cooling worries. “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization,” he said.If the cooling continued for 200 to 300 years, the earth could be plunged into an ice age, Mitchell continued.Six years later, the periodical reported “the cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”A city in a snow globe illustrated that March 1, 1975, article, while the cover showed an ice age obliterating an unfortunate city.In 1975, cooling went from “one of the most important problems” to a first-place tie for “death and misery.” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.”He claimed it was not his disposition to be a “doomsday man.” His analysis came from “the facts [that] have emerged” about past ice ages, according to the July/August International Wildlife Magazine.The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.”
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1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
What should have happened is for the catlin route to be traversed to do a check on results.
Catlin say somewhere that the say a plane flying low on a number of occasions – perhaps Alfred Wegener were doing just that?
La-di-da. La-di-da.
The Catlin post on initial survey results can be found here:
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/headline.aspx?postId=187
In the movie, just before the exchange cited above, Woody Allen, after listening to the university professor pontificate endlessly in the movie line, turned to Diane Keaton (or the camera, I can’t remember) and exclaimed:
“boy what I’d give for a giant sock filed with cow manure right now”
Very funny………
last week in aussieland we had Prince Charle’s Sth American trip on the TV news – it was accompanied by a video showing Pen Hadow supposedly at the North Pole telling us the ice was thinner than expected.
unbelievable.
they are going to ram this down our throats regardless.
my prediction: this is going to come to damage the Left, Science and Media in an unimaginably painful way. Only question in my mind is when.
The measurements are based on just 33 days/measurements out of the 73 days they were on the ice.
I thought Pen was busily measuring ice constantly on the journey. Must just be another misunderstanding.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/assets/downloads/CAS%20Snow%20%20Ice%20measurements%20-%20March%20and%20April.xls
The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.
Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”
In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.
“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.
James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.
Hmmmm…. “The Thing” meets “Godzilla” meets “King Kong”….
A group of arctic explorers (researching thinning ice) stumble across an ancient, buried flying saucer (discovered by the tip of their ice drill). They manage to open it and out spills a strange, glowing goo.
The goo rapidly incorporates ice into it’s makeup with the help of millions of nano-machines. It forms a huge animated ice monster that rampages across the ice, heading south, it attacks New York. A small team made up of a brave reporter, a tough NYPD Cop and a brilliant crazy scientist, defy city hall and the federal government to launch a giant magnifying glass into orbit.
As NY is about to succumb to a new freeze from the ice monster, the glass is turned to concentrate the sun’s rays, melting the icy beast.
As the credits roll, some icy green glowing goo slowly drips into the sewers…
Now – If i pretend this is real, can I get an AGW Grant????
neill (16:02:28) :
unbelievable.
they are going to ram this down our throats regardless.
my prediction: this is going to come to damage the Left, Science and Media in an unimaginably painful way. Only question in my mind is when.
The Catholic Churches “Scientific” credibility has never recovered from the Copernicus/Galileo incidents.
bill,
The article contains a link and statement from the Wegener Institute. I’m sure though you read it very carefully in your zeal to be the first poster.
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/ende_pam_arcmip/?cHash=ff957775e4
Alfred Wegener the father of plate tectonics.
His work was reviewed by his peers and rejected as nonsense by the consensus of scientists. How ironic.
Hey haven’t you heard the Ice Age predictions from scientists never happened in the 1970s I have read it on every Pro AGW source on the net and even heard it in debates. Never happened.
Just like this German/Canadian Ice Thickness Study never happened.
You see if you ignore the truth you create your own reality, and in the AGW version of reality the following things never happened.
Little Ice Age
Medieval Warming Period
1970s Ice Age Scare
2008 Arctic Ice Recovery
NY TImes posted a Retraction to Revkins Front Page Slander of Oil Industry used in Congress by Al Gore
Al Gore made himself rich off of Global Warming
There are scientists who take an opposing view
The Sun is in a “quiet” phase
Antarctic Ice coverage is Growing
Greenland has stopped melting
The temperature has at a minimum stop rising.
The rate of Temperature change is not unusual historically
Caitlin Expedition did not make it to the North Pole
Monboit had to take a mea culpa on his latest slanderous attack
Hansen is an Activist Scientist using his position as NASA as leverage
Real Climate actually contributes to Scientific Discourse
See how easy it is to deny reality… you just make up the narrative that fits your preconceptions… the human mind is an amazing thing because it can actually suspend reality by sheer force of preconception, expect to see a cat, look its a cat!
A Perfect example is the conversation regarding the USN Skate and its surfacing at the North Pole. This was apparently planted in the Navy Archives in 1959 as misinformation for this exact moment in time, per the intellectuals over at Monboit’s blog. (sorry last post rehash)
Love and Death was Allen’s best movie in the 70s. No connection that I know of to warming or cooling, just a good movie. It did take place in Russia though, which I understand was cold before the days of Gore.
bill (15:31:33) :
1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
What should have happened is for the catlin route to be traversed to do a check on results.
Catlin say somewhere that the say a plane flying low on a number of occasions – perhaps Alfred Wegener were doing just that?
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science? (As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.
The way I see it is that during the 60’s and early 70’s there wasn’t sufficient MSM coverage of alarmist global cooling to create any mass hysteria. Flash forward and alarmist global warming is splattered all over both the internet and MSM. But what Hadlow and his alarmist colleagues don’t appreciate is that we (the general public) fully understand the internet’s capacity to produce instant “mis”information and usually have sufficient nouse to filter out what is obviously crap. The error of the internet. LOL
I mentioned in previous thread that those people or organisations that are the subject of a blog on this site because of their outrageously bad or inaccurate comments should be invited to come over and read the blog (thats in their honour) and also invited to submit a riposte. The invitation should also mention the current visitor numbers to WUWT just in case there is any doubt they will be widely read….
This was funny when reported during the expedition, it’s funny now, and will still be funny a year from now. Classic comedy never gets old.
Climate Heretic (16:27:25) :
…
See how easy it is to deny reality… you just make up the narrative that fits your preconceptions… the human mind is an amazing thing because it can actually suspend reality by sheer force of preconception, expect to see a cat, look its a cat!
Not just any Cat – a Barking Cat!
I just read a small piece in this weeks San Diego Union Tribune – from the AP. It had a headline: “North Pole explorers forced to end mission”.
The reason listed in the article for their abandonment of the mission, according to the “team”, was “because of an early summer ice melt”.
How can they continue to lie so blatantly???
This AGW thing appeared long time ago, since Arrhenius biased speculations on carbon dioxide role on icehouse periods (1896) or, perhaps, before Arrhenius.
Arctic explorer Pen Hadow has warned that the polar ice cap he has been examining to gauge the extent of climate change appears far thinner than expected after trekking more than 250 miles to the North Pole
Was that far thinner than pre trek per determined
conclusion of far thinner, or really far thinner?
And in ~30 years, global warming (aka climate change) will be so passé. The stories, honed for simplicity and scare headlines, will be about the coming ice age as areas of ice expand in the polar regions and the weather turns cooler. It must have something to do with generational stupidity – it runs in cycles – the weather, not the stupidity; the stupidity we’re stuck with.
When the just begun cooling cycle (which we’ve witnessed) has nearly run its course after ~30 years, the news will be about the danger the cooling presents. The voices protesting that the cooling is masking warming will be dismissed as fringe weirdos.
And then the warming will resume …
The beat changes but the tune remains the same.
You know – one of these days (or centuries), the cooling won’t stop and real estate values from Florida and Georgia to Texas and California will skyrocket …
.
“A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.”
The Catlin experiment IS repeatable. They only have to be dropped off next year in the same place, have their equipment fail at the same time, have the storms arrive at the same time, drill holes in the ice haphazardly in the exact same locations, have the ice drift exactly as it did the year before, depend on the wind blowing in the same direction (for navigation purposes), get lots of tent time in the exact same locations, stick to first year ice, get picked up early and be the toast of London and the good Prince!!!
What could be easier?
Graeme Rodaughan (16:44:59) :
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is
floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science?
(As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.
You’re joking of course
If it’s floating/moving for Catlin its floating/moving for Wegener isn’t it?
Catlin are measuring a stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few cm. Wegener are measuring a different stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few 10s of cm. Both cannot ever measure the same ice again. Which is doing the beter science?
Bill,
Catlin crew can make measurements to 0.001m with a bob line and a tape measure? This is ridiculously accurate, as a matter of fact anybody with a basic scientific background should call this into question. The bottom of the polar ice cover couldn’t possibly flat. So even when they used SPRITE they couldn’t possibly have data that accurate. We should have seen measurements to 0.1 meter at best. + or – 0.1 meter.
These guys must not have been paying attention to the beginning of their science courses. Non of my science courses started without specific instructions on how to measure.
Great research, Steven! I have searched for information on the “planetary chilling” scare that I remember from the 1970’s, but you found much more than I have. Thank you for this.
With the PDO and now the AMO both turning negative, we may see a return of these types of claims. I think it’s going to get really interesting in the next few years.