Since we recently had some assistance from an old 1976 copy of National Geographic which showed us some differences between temperature data then and now, it seems an opportune time to announce that Popular Science magazine archives are now online and totally free.
Check out the “one armed monster” on the right panel. Looks like a wind turbine nobody ever built.
Popular Science, in partnership with Google, just put its 137-year archive online, for free. Unfortunately, you can’t yet browse by issue. [Yes you can, I missed this on the first pass.] The interface is a keyword search box.
I need help from WUWT readers in locating something that may be found in the pages of Popular Science.
The entire magazine content is available, including ads. One specific ad I’ve been looking for for years (and I’m hoping someone will find it here) is from the late 60’s to early 70’s. It is an ad for nuclear energy, sponsored I think, by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The ad has a picture of a lump of coal, and says something like “Nuclear Energy – the clean fuel” and it speaks of the pollution problems (and Co2 if I recall) associated with coal. If anyone finds it, please let me know, there’s an interesting historical backstory to it that I’ve been itching to write for years, but I have to have this ad as proof.
It may also be in other magazines of the era.
Also, maybe our readers can find some relevant things about climate in this newly available resource. If not, maybe somebody can tell me how many times we’ve been promised flying cars and basement nuclear reactors.
Link: Search the PopSci Archives
h/t to BoingBoing blog
It wasn’t in ‘Our Friend the Atom’ was it?
====================
Follow the money folks:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/breaking_the_obama_code_the_gr.html
This one will be for sale late 2010;
http://www.martinjetpack.com/
Look at the movie!
Every time I try to tell people about my one-armed monster, I either get slapped or put in jail.
kwik (00:08:02) :
yep a kiwi was the first to split the atom, first to fly a motorised uncontrolled flight and also apparently developed a jetpack. But not sure how it’s gonna help Anthony find his advert.
Surely the best way to handle this is by central direction?
Our huge advantage over the warmists is that we have a large, skilled workforce willing to work for free. For doing this sort of work I suggest that someone sets up a long list of the Popular Science magazines which need looking into, divided up into work-sized chunks, so that volunteers can pick a chunk and cross it off the list.
Of course we will need multiple persons looking at each chunk, and should only confirm it as done once several independent people report back, to guard against anyone sabotaging the system by selecting work units and then not doing them, or intentionally reporting incorrect data …..
Oops – fly an uncontrolled motorized airoplane.
Nothing in the April 1973 mag from the AEC. There was an article on electric cars with something called an aluminum motor. Will scan more but we need a updatable list. Pukapedia?
Loved the smoking ads and everyone is so slim. Any connection?
There are, in fact, one-bladed turbines and, though the look strange, they are physically not much different to three-bladed ones. Three-bladed ones just look better.
http://www.popsci.com/results?query=can+science+solve+our+power+crisis
It’s strange how familiar looks this 1971 article today!
At school in the 70s I remember a lesson based around an article or short story entitled ‘Leisure Citizens of the Future’ which promised that by the time I was in my 30s I wouldn’t have to work because robots and machines would do everything for us. This would give us the enviable task of filling our lives trying to find something useful to do in our limitless leisure time. Seeing as I’m now 45 and 10-12 hrs days are the norm for me, I’d like a word with the author.
Anthony, I’ll peruse all of my old ’60’s and 70’s mags when I can find some spare time and look for one of those ads.
I recall that in the 1980’s, “Greenies” were in heavy opposition to nuclear power. “Greenies” also were in opposition to the waste sites being established in pristine wilderness, so instead the NRC sought to establish sites in rural populated areas. Pro-nuclear power advocates had a response to the “Greenies” that went like this:
“The more complicated the issue, the more simple-minded the opposition”.
Then when the “Greenies” later decided that CO2 was a more important issue than nukes, many changed their position.
I’ve always been luke warm to nuclear power. Nuclear power is a mixed bag. There is always the “Chernobyl factor” to be feared. An adequate (and fool proof) long term method to deal with disposal of radioactive waste has not yet been found, and the best radioactive waste disposal sites are often blocked by politicians using “NIMBY”. A quarantined area with a fixed perimeter is imposed by the NRC, in league with the USDA around any radioactive waste site, where the production of certain foods, including certain dairy products are prohibited. Property values plummet within the perimeter area once a waste site is established. On the other hand, nuclear power is very efficient, and can be quite successful if done properly. For example, France operates 59 nuclear power plants, which provides most of its electricity.
As has been said many times on this site, nature tends to do better when it isn’t quite so cold.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8575537.stm
Here’s one you might find interesting from 1972. Its about unlimited clean solar energy.
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=WgO75jsrSkoC&pg=87
I’ve searched for the ad without success, using keywords like: aec, nuclear, co2 pollution, coal — no luck, sorry.
No, but i did find a story from June 1929, titled : A New Ice Age Might Bury Us.
You can find it here:
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=XSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=22&query=iceage
If you follow the link to the story, it has an interesting quote in it.
Guess these explanations from June 1929 doesn’t sound that much different than the explanations we hear today. History does repeat itself.
Only thing different in the quote I posted above.. CO2 is responsible for glacial invasions. Just thought Id clarify that.
Anthony, by the 60s, “Our Friend The Atom” was already being demonized. Sure it wasn’t from the 50s?
There has long been a controversy about when the first homebrew (JATO strap-on) rocket car was created. There’s an urban legend about how the feckless inventor supposedly couldn’t make the first turn in the road and continued straight, airborne, into the side of a mountain.
I saw and tore out a page from a 1946 or 1948 magazine of the Pop. Sci. type (includes Pop.Mech. & Mech. Il.) that described (with a photo) a black boxy old car with two JATO jets strapped to its sides. I sent the page to a Darwin Awards honcho in London about 15 (??) years ago, but got no response.
If anyone finds this item (it was about a half a page long), please update the Wikipedia article on the topic, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
PS: I believe the locale of the photo was the Southwest, and that the military may have been involved in some way. (E.g., the inventor may have been a retired serviceman.)
PPS: Hmmm … check if that location was near Roswell …
Very interesting item on sun spots in 1872.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_1/June_1872/The_Spots_on_the_Sun
Great article on “The Carbon Dioxide Dilemma” from Feb 1982 page 76.
“Will we keep fiddling until the planet burns”
“Most scientists think the scenario will be more complex than catastrophic. Global temperatures will probably go up a few degrees. Climate and weather patterns will change. Some people will be hurt, some will benefit, som nations will adjust better than others.”
Descriptions of problems with GCMs of the day sound familiar.
PPPS: Well I’ve searched the Pop. Sci. archive for “JATO” and “Rocket Car” and haven’t found my item in the years I recall it being in. So the magazine must have been PM or MI.
“Unfortunately, you can’t yet browse by issue.”
You can if you go to Google Books and type in Popular Science. Thirty three pages going back to the Dec 1925 issue.
I just love the Arctic history to repeat itself:
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=diEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=254&query=ice+melting+in+the+arctic
One thing that makes me wonder is why you would want to look at popular magazines to find out about scientific research. Wouldn’t it make more sense to read actual scientific research papers from the 1970s and 1980s?
This author argues, quite relevantly in this context, that there was a discrepancy between the actual science and the media reports (some things never change, it seems):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
I did a search on ‘Climate’ and found a very interesting 1906 article on Climate Change by Robert DeC Ward of Harvard University
A cautionary tale for anybody who assumes that there was ever an era when there were no problems with the temperature record.
A few excerpts:
“Belief in the change of a climate of one’s place of residence, within a few generations, and even within the memory of living men, is widespread. It is confined to no special region or people. It finds support among the most intelligent as well as among the uneducated.”
“Human memories are very unreliable things, and there are many reasons for their being particularly untrustworthy in matters of this kind.”
“Accurate instruments, properly exposed, and carefully read, do not lie; do not forget; are not prejudiced. When such instrumental records, scattered though they are, and difficult as it is to draw general conclusions from, are carefully examined, from the time when they were first kept, which in a few cases goes back about one hundred and fifty years, there is found no evidence of any progressive change in temperature, or in the amount of rain and snow.”
“Apparent signs of a permanent increase or decrease in one or another element have been fairly easy to explain as due to the method of exposing the thermometer or of setting up the rain gauge. Little care was formerly taken in the construction and location of meteorological instruments. They were usually in cities, and as these cities grew, the temperature of the air was somewhat affected. The rain-gauges were poorly exposed on roofs or in court-yards. The building of a fence or a wall near the thermometer, or the growth of a tree over a rain-gauge, was enough, in many cases, to explain any observed change in the mean temperature or rainfall.”
If you’re looking for a better/different way to scan the magazines, try http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:01617370?rview=1&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s – it’s a bit easier to read, and you can look at the covers en masse.
Anthony,
I am not sure what you mean exactly about not being able to browse PopSci by issue. If you go to Google Books..magazines, pick PopSci and then choose Cover View from the left, you can see each magazine in the archive by cover. Pick the one you want and browse through it like you did with a physical copy.
I did a search on AEC, Atomic Energy Commission, Coal, Nuclear Energy and opened the issues from 1965-1975. Couldn’t find it the ad you mention. I don’t think I got everything though. March 1974 was really interesting for energy issues by the way.
Very good article on our atmosphere is split into 3 cirtculation zones of heat and distribution of moisture (1875).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_7/August_1875/Distribution_of_Atmospheric_Moisture
I’m with Boudu. Today, I am 46, and I work an average of 9 to 10 hours a day, just to make what I did 3 years ago.
I have 4 issues of PS from the 30’s right beside me on my magazine rack (I’ve got to clean up that rack one of these days.)
Yup. Flying cars are in one of the issues, and we’re all STILL waiting for them to show up on the dealers’ lots.
TerrySkinner (03:48:01)
Nice find! The more things change, the more they remain the same, eh?
BTW, are you sure the author of that article wasn’t Anthony’s grandfather?
From the Economist:
‘……..Three questions arise from this. How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again? Behind all three lies a common story. The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists…..’
I feel this is important is make predictions as to how the AGW Govts are going to deal with these questions above.
The obvious answer is: It is certain the Science is so bad the policy issues should be scrapped. To ensure doesn’t happen again—rely on the true science process (and not PNS) and this will NEVER happen again!
But, the Government who sees the bogus AGW as a way to address their pressing national questions over natural resource availability….
B) Determine who leaked the CRU emails and prosecute. Pump money into Big iron projects that land the data collected under Governmental/national security juristiction. Make sure the data sets, etc. are so big that no armchair Skeptic could possibly deal with it. Await the next heat wave. Um…..continue building the carbon exchanges along European lines…..?
What are their options???
Predicting the future political moves will make it alot easier to ride out to meet it head on. Certainly, a parent resource packet should be developed for school teachers, a downloadable PDF that can be printed, that can be given to little johnnny to take to school to give to teacher….
Was it a full page advert?
Popular Misconceptions Concerning the Weather from 1915 is fun read:
Dodgy Geezer (01:06:28) :
I´m with you. We are here, and we can look, Together.
Somebody break the work-load into manageable chunks. That ¨body¨ set up a central location and find another to monitor the site. The worker bees will bring home the bacon. We won´t even have learn the bee dance.
Donna Laframbeau´s Citizen Audit may be a useful model.
Roger Knights (02:53:30) :
“There has long been a controversy about when the first homebrew (JATO strap-on) rocket car was created. ”
Roger, I can tell you that my Uncle Dan, when he was a kid in the late Twenties or Thirties, built some sort of rocket motor, and attached it to his wagon. To this day, he has neither eyebrows nor eyelashes!
Just did a search for ‘global cooling’ and came up with this one
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=GSoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=74&query=global+cooling
‘Are we changing our weather’
It mentions man-made particulate emissions from cities and motor cars as the cause of global cooling (courtesy of Reid Bryson) and claims that the early 19th century warming to 1940 was caused by CO2 emissions (first time I’ve heard of that!).
It mentions UHI effects and cliams that cities can cause droughts in rural areas.
According to Walter Orr Roberts of NCAR, jet contrails cause the formation of Cirrus clouds which in temperate and tropical regions cause cooling.
And all this back in 1969!!
Tom at 01:21:40 says: “There are, in fact, one-bladed turbines and, though the look strange, they are physically not much different to three-bladed ones. Three-bladed ones just look better.”
True, the one bladed windgenerators actually do a pretty fair job of converting wind to electricity. There is, however, at least one good reason why three bladed turbines are better. Either one or two bladed will work fine if the wind is from a constant direction or only shifts slowly. However, when the wind gusts suddenly from a different direction and the blades have to slew around quickly, the one and two blade turbines experience a violent shuddering which can literally shake them apart. Consequently, turbines with only one or two blades require extra engineering to ensure that they do not slew so suddenly. Three (or more) blades do not have the same imbalance of forces that creates the shudder and will survive wind shifts better.
@James Allison
“..yep a kiwi was the first to….. fly an uncontrolled motorized airoplane…”
Actually, I would guess that was Santos-Dumont, or some other dirigible specialist. What you mean is ‘uncontrolled heavier-than-air motorised flying machine’….
While, of course Lilienthal had been flying ‘a controlled heavier than air UN-motorised aircraft’ some time before this. Perhaps we should define an aircraft as an ‘aeroplane with a seat’….
I have always had a bee in my bonnet about the Wright claims (which were made entirely for patent purposes, and primarily succeeded in closing down American aircraft development in the early years – to such an extent that the US had to buy French aircraft for WW1.
The Wrights were important early developers. They pioneered technical development in small steps, and the practical use of aerodynamic controls. Their motor (made by Charles Taylor) was superb and a key reason for their success. But if they had never existed, functioning heavier than air flight would still have been developed in the same way at the same time, and their wing-warping canard designs were neither scaleable nor, ultimately, the right way to go.
It was their patent fighting which led to the claim that they had ‘invented the aeroplane’, and hence the American view that they were in some way unique in the world….
J. Berg
Thanks for the find in the November, 1951 magazine. Some interesting quotes are:
“Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic … Many new birds are appearing in the far northern lands for the first time in our records.” (page 254)
“The recession of the northern glaciers is going on at such a rate that many smaller ones have already disappeared.” (page 254)
“The glaciologist Hans Ahlmann reports that most Norwegian glaciers ‘are living only on their own mass without receiving any annual fresh supply of snow’: that in the Alps there has been a general retreat and shrinkage of glaciers during the last decades which have become ‘catastrophic’ in the summer of 1947, and that all glaciers around the North Atlantic coasts are shrinking. The most rapid recession of all is occurring in Alaska, where the Muir Glacier has receded about 10 1/2 kilometers in 12 years” (page 256)
Note: as I cannot copy/paste from the article please forgive any transcription or spelling errors.
Gary
Larus (03:45:48) :
You have missed the very, very important point.
You say;
“One thing that makes me wonder is why you would want to look at popular magazines to find out about scientific research. Wouldn’t it make more sense to read actual scientific research papers from the 1970s and 1980s?”
Say what!?
Please read what is being requested; i.e.
“The entire magazine content is available, including ads. One specific ad I’ve been looking for for years (and I’m hoping someone will find it here) is from the late 60’s to early 70’s. It is an ad for nuclear energy, sponsored I think, by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The ad has a picture of a lump of coal, and says something like “Nuclear Energy – the clean fuel” and it speaks of the pollution problems (and Co2 if I recall) associated with coal. If anyone finds it, please let me know, there’s an interesting historical backstory to it that I’ve been itching to write for years, but I have to have this ad as proof.”
Clearly, such an advertisement costs money. And the suggested advertisement was placed in a magazine that provided scientific information to the public so would have been bought and read by non-scientists with an interest in ‘scientific’ matters.
Assuming the suggested advertisement does exist, says what is partially remembered, and is found, then it is undeniable proof that in “the late 60’s to early 70’s” a lobby was promoting nuclear power by opposing coal on the basis of CO2 emissions from coal usage. And the promotion was aimed at non-scientists with an interest in science.
The “late 60’s to early 70’s” was when the global cooling scare was raging. The globe cooled from ~1940 to ~1970. So, the existence of such an advertisement could only have had the intention of ‘conditioning’ its readers as the global cooling scare was starting to be disproved by the global climate.
The global cooling scare was that emissions from power generation (notably SO2) were causing the cooling and this could ‘run away’ such that global catastrophe (i.e. a new Ice Age) could result.
Then around 1970 the globe started to warm. So, the global cooling scare was morphed into the global warming scare.
The global warming scare is that emissions from power generation (notably CO2) are causing the warming and this could ‘run away’ such that global catastrophe (i.e. floods, droughts, etc.) could result.
The existence of the suggested advertisement would be clear evidence of the identities of some who conducted the morphing.
Richard
Irrespective of the climate I think they should be applauded for making these fascinating old issues so freely and easily avaiable.
TerrySkinner (03:48:01) : (1906 ) They were usually in cities, and as these cities grew, the temperature of the air was somewhat affected.
Hush, Terry… folks think they’ve just discovered such facts in the past couple years. You risk spoiling reputations based on brilliant research. (I certainly will not be letting you into my new development of something I have code-named for now, “the wheel”)
I’ve looked through the entire issue:
Jun ’65
Feb ’68
Sep ’68
Dec ’72
Feb ’73
Sep ’73
and did not see the advert. I see someone else did Apr ’73. I’ll scan more later.
Anthony, I think that late 50’s early 60’s might be more of the correct time frame. It seems to me that there was a big flap along about the time of the Nuc Sub Thresher when it sank that put an end to lots of the ads about nuc power for some time. Raising 4 grand kids and keeping up with the difference in education processes since I graduated high school some 40+ years ago keep me pretty busy. But I will try to contribute to the effort. could there possibly be a link maybe on the side bar where we can list the issues that we have scanned over so that hopefully we will not duplicate the initial work and that will provide a place for us to go to get up dates and maybe replicate some of the relevant articles.
Thanks,
Bill Derryberry
All you guys complaining of no robots. Sure, there’s no human-shaped maid in your kitchen, but as I type, I have a robot washing my dishes, a robot vacuuming my floor, and a robot vacuuming my pool. I have a machine that can cook my dinner in 2 minutes flat and one that can brew coffee for me so it’s ready when I wake up. I can drive my car to a car-washing robot, and I have a magical device that watches television for me and records only the good bits. You’ll all agree that these are time-saving devices. I have a small electronic device smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and in a couple of pushes of a button, I can talk to a friend on the other side of the world who might be walking through some woods, sitting on a beach or driving along the road.
You’re all working extra hours because we tend to fill up freed-up time with more work to make more money, rather than taking it off as leisure.
My big complaint is the loss of civilian supersonic air travel. We had it, then we lost it. Now that’s not progress.
Try searching on “ice age”
Used Google Books to select Popular Science. Then I searched all issues for “atomic energy commission coal”- got a number of hits, but none of the hit pages of the issues within your date range has the ad (I checked out Dec 63, Sep 69, Apr 73, Mar 74, Dec 77, Jun 79, and Sep 79.)
I’ve also checked all pages in the Jan 65 issue and the Sep 73 issue – no luck. (Why these two? Don’t ask).
I’m now going to search through all pages from Dec 69 thru Jan 69, then Jan 70 thru Dec 70. I’ll report back then.
Thanks to the link posted by “JLawson (04:03:48) : ” it is possible to browse the issues. I just browsed a couple, one from the mid-1950’s, and one from the mid-1960’s. I’m left wondering if this is likely to be where such an advert appeared. At least in those days, PopSci really wasn’t about science at all. It was about technology, and mostly consumer technology. Especially in the 1950’s, issue after issue was about “cars.” It also seemed to be very much a competitor to Popular Mechanics, with a lot of shop talk and DIY type articles. Very little, if any, pure science. And then the ads! In the mid 50’s, the issues were almost 300 pages long, with the first 100 pages devoted to advertisements. Then about 150 pages of articles, with the last 50 pages or so being more advertisements, mixed with the “continuing” portion of articles.
I’m left thinking that Scientific American might be a more likely place where the ad you are looking for appeared.
Futureman explaining 2010 to PopSci executives circa 1957: click
Would the backstory have something to do with Teller?
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=245789
Hey, take a look at this:
Changes at climate
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=zyUDAAAAMBAJ&pg=458&query=climate+temperature+years
Sorry Anthony,
My PhD is not in “Climate” (and I luurv you to death and all) but it IS in wind turbines, and they did build it:
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Mod-0_Wind_turbine.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mod-0_Wind_turbine.jpg&usg=__xHJohHktNrxhqj-Xpgw444dBNUI=&h=389&w=300&sz=53&hl=en&start=7&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=FIqAT3CeJ3vCIM:&tbnh=123&tbnw=95&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsingle%2Bblade%2Bwind%2Bturbine%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26tbs%3Disch:1
Flying cars will never be “readily available” on dealers forecourts. The technology exists, and there are several designs being tested now. The problem is that no developed country allows things that size and weight to be flown without being registered and operated by licensed pilots. The time and money needed even to get a basic daytime only VFR ticket will put this idea out of the reach of the vast majority of people. They will always be a compromise, and unless they have vertical take off/landing capability will still need suitable airfields to operate from.
Paul Z,
Thanks for the link to Patti Villacorta’s article in the American thinker. It’s well researched and gives a sobering idea of the behemoths we’re up against.
Well at least now we’ve got one more answer to the Big Oil jibe.
That’s Nuclear Power Agency, not commission.
Somebody was willing to pay money for the ad in 2003, but no success.
Google Answers: Nuclear Power Magazine Ad
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=245789
No coal, but found one with a lump of uranium promising a golden future:
http://depletedcranium.com/wp-content/uploads/uranium.jpg
From here:
http://depletedcranium.com/20-classic-atomic-energy-ads/
Also a simple 7-point program to obtain your nuclear reactor – let them know if you want a small water boiler reactor or a larger swimming pool reactor:
http://depletedcranium.com/wp-content/uploads/ge_reactor.jpg
I’m not certain what the backstory you want to write up is, but one of the best articles I’ve come across looking at radioactive isotopes in coal fly ash is at http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
One of my favorite factoids is that if nuclear plants released the same amount of radioactive material as do coal plants, the nuclear plants would be shutdown.
The article quantifies the difference, and it’s a lot bigger than I had guessed:
It also looks at the energy content in the Uranium and Thorium in coal ash and concludes (breeder reactors required) that there is more energy available in coal ash than was released by combustion.
Off to work, the way it should be: click
Librarian here.
Search engines don’t find ads. Ad pages are not included in the searchable fields.
The only way to do this is type in 1965 and scan every issue; then 1966 and scan every issue; then 1967 and scan every issue………………………..
I cannot remember the AEC (pre-DOE construct of civilian control of nuclear energy) saying anything at all about CO2 in the air and nuclear power. Never, but I don’t know anything.
I do know that Popular Science was the first place I read about nuclear reactor powered flying cars, that’s what inspired me to buy my first one. The one I have now gets pretty good mileage, too.
I’m flashing on the same theme but different images. Not a small lump of coal but a small, maybe, fuel rod element, juxtaposed with a snaking coal train. The message was that the small bit of atomic fuel had as much energy as the trainload of coal.
And, although I did read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, in my mind’s eye, this was a larger format . . . Time or Life or Scientific American?
Time frame? I’m thinking mid to late ’60s.
Advertiser? Could have been General Electric or Westinghouse. Or one of the electric power industry associations — Edison Electric Institute or Electric Power Research Institute.
HTH.
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=WScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=25&query=polar
May 1937 – Russia’s Polar Empire
notables:
Wind Turbines for Electricity
Opening of the Arctic Passage for Ships with Ice Breakers
Coal Mining
Modified Foods
Aero Sleds (I think I want to build that!)
A Ship reaches 630miles from the Pole following a giant Crack in the Ice…OMG!
Not too much Climate but Is Interesting that in 1937 The rush to develop the Arctic was on, and now is in about the exact same state as it was.
While I have not found your nuclear industry ad, I would point out the October 1977 issue and the article “Our Changing Climate: Colder Winters Ahead”
I remember reading that at the time. The cover story, on the 8K Commodore PET computer is fun to read, too.
I found this article in Pop Science by Rachel Carson, (yes, the book author) in 1951:
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=diEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=256&query=is+it+getting+warmer
The article starts on page 114.
The July 1945 issue has a story titled “Carbon Dioxide… The Breath of Life” on page 200.
Popular Science-October 1977 Page 100
Our Changing Weather: Part 2
Are Colder Winters Ahead?
Could not find coal but found the following ad (links) that are selling the green angle on nuclear power:
http://oldmagazineads.blogspot.com/2007/07/1992-nuclear-energy-magazine-ad_29.html
(this title is 1992 but the side description says it is an original 1974 ad, text is to small to read)
http://www.ratical.com/radiation/CNR/PP/fig12.gif
(this one is clipped so you are unable to read all the text or see if it is from the AEC but the source site attributes it to AEC ad campaign)
http://www.ratical.com/radiation/CNR/PP/fig11.jpg
(this one you can read the text but the AEC emblem? if that is what it is, is hard to make out)
And from almost two years ago from WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/04/05/scavenger-hunt-find-the-lump-of-coal/
(part of the back story?)
Dodgy Geezer (01:06:28) :
Surely the best way to handle this is by central direction?
Our huge advantage over the warmists is that we have a large, skilled workforce willing to work for free. For doing this sort of work I suggest that someone sets up a long list of the Popular Science magazines which need looking into, divided up into work-sized chunks, so that volunteers can pick a chunk and cross it off the list.
As a start, to reduce the overlap of effort by parties, relate the back-issue search by individuals to their MOB (Month of Birth); those born in January look only at January etc … this by de facto reduces workload to 1/12
.
.
Are you sure it wasn’t National Geographic? I seem to remember a lot of those kind of ads in the magazine in the 50’s and 60’s.
January 1932, page 30
This discovery by Wright’s expedition proves ice masses are disappearing At left , poling a canoe through ice pack at the edge of the glacier GLACIERS …
The Muir Glacier in 1932 was “half its size 25 years ago”.
Interesting pre-AGW theory as to why the glaciers were melting.
Either the system is overloaded (doesn’t seem possible with Google) or it just doesn’t like dial-up. I’m getting no results at all. Perhaps the search engine “forgets” the old requests it hasn’t been able to deliver yet too soon to cope with a slow connection.
Did find an interesting example of green energy hype among the current article listings:
Pop Sci: “With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House”
From the linked Scientific American piece:
Yup, that’ll sure please the neighbors.
How many kilowatt-hours can one expect to be generated over four hours by a massive five by six meter array, as straight electricity?
Kate (06:00:43) :
“Search engines don’t find ads. Ad pages are not included in the searchable fields.”
Can’t speak to Google’s magazine archive but the newspaper archive does include advertisements, both classified and display, in search results.
Check out http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fQckAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lyUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4799,2813161&dq=appliances+general-electric+-classified&hl=en
Image of an actual page of the July 17 issue of The Milwaukee Journal showing a “General Electric” display ad for appliances.
Pretty AMAZING, eh?
So, in the context of my earlier post, thinking that Anthony’s ad might also have been placed in a newspaper, I tried some of terms that I had suggested above.
No hits, yet, possibly ’cause it’s the smaller papers that have their actual printed pages archived. Larger papers, like NYT, Chicago Trib, LA Times have pay-per-view access to the items.
Larus, I totally agree. Gray papers, such as can be found in this magazine, should not be relied upon for any kind of serious climate discussion, much less used to make predictions of future climate change. Right on.
Dave, the solution is to begin in Elementary school. Back in the day, we used to study “lift” starting in the 4th grade. Now flight is hardly mentioned. Why bother, we let someone else do our flying for us. If we want to start using flying cars, we need to start teaching grade school kids the aerodynamic properties of flight. The same can be said for teaching kids how to drive on terra firma. We wait till they are in their teens before we even mention it. And then they spend, oh maybe 5 hours studying it, get their license, and crash.
MODERATOR/ANTHONY – VERY IMPORTANT!!!
ARTICLE ON RAPIDLY MELTING GLACIERS 75 – 100 YEARS AGO!
Just want to make sure the January 1932 Popular Science article by James Nevin Miller on melting glaciers is not overlooked.
The article states that by 1932 the Muir Glacier in Alaska had melted to just one-half its size of 25 years earlier. Plus many other observations and theories as to why.
This article deserves to be a separate post from Anthony (IMO)
REPLY: Got it, thanks. -A
Went back and reread the photo caption. To be clear it is the 10 mile long Cushing Plateau ice field where the Muir Glacier meets the sea – not the entire glacier – that has melted in half over 25 years.
September 1977
Special Report Drought: Our Changed Weather – Part 1
This is an excellent article from before the politicization of climate change that states that climate change is not unusual, it is due to changes in sunspot activity, orbital and rotation shifts, ocean patterns etc.
I think Anthony will have the opportunity for a number of future posts based on this treasure trove.
My activist primary school teachers had me do a project whinging about the operational altitude of Concorde (70,000 ft Vs. 40,000 ?) and how it’s high Contrail would destroy something up there and would have been around 1969-1970.
An observation – Back In 1977 scientists were simply scientists and had not yet become science-advocates. Hopefully the profession will return to its integral roots some day.
Pamela Gray (07:12:15) :
Larus, I totally agree. Gray papers, such as can be found in this magazine, should not be relied upon for any kind of serious climate discussion, much less used to make predictions of future climate change. Right on.
I disagree, those old articles show exactly the same conditions that we have now, firmly establishing that nothing happening now is “Unprecedented” as the IPCC claims, especially regarding Glaciers, the Acrtic and Sea Ice.
In fact I am amazed at how well they understood “Climate” in 1906.
Popular Science August 1983 pg 66: Nowcasting – New weather computers pinpoint deadly storms
Mentions Boulder Colo new supercomputer predicting weather in 3D.
I seem to remember seeing ads like the one you are looking for in Scientific Americans of that vintage
imapopulist, these are grey papers. My advice to Anthony on reviewing these articles: Wouldn’t touch them even if they looked like food to a starving person.
Minor point – But the War is Over:
‘AGW’ is OUT, ‘AGC’ is IN (Substitute the word ‘Change’ for ‘Warming’ and it covers all the bases. Subscribers are no longer bound by ‘warming’, and ‘deniers’ can join without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Annual Subscriptions = Pledge of Annual Gross Taxable Income; Lifetime Memberships Available for those with sponsorship by Three Lifetime Members click mannmadeclimatechange.com, jonesclimatedatacenters.com, or algoreforabuck.com for more information;-)
toyotawhizguy (01:36:35) :
I recall that in the 1980’s, “Greenies” were in heavy opposition to nuclear power. “Greenies” also were in opposition to the waste sites being established in pristine wilderness, …
Then when the “Greenies” later decided that CO2 was a more important issue than nukes, many changed their position.
You recall it correctly. As an Aussie Green voter for the last ten years and a fresh AGW sceptic (yup, there is a few of us), I have watched with dismay the softening of the Green politics with regard to nuclear power. I think the environmentalist movements’ strong opposition to the nuclear option at the time was the correct policy, and that opposition ought to continue. All things considered, nuclear power plants are more dangerous to humanity and to environment than coal-fired power plants. It is a real shame that the Green movement have been duped into thinking the CO2 is more dangerous than Uranium-235.
Pascvaks (08:20:47) :
“Minor point – But the War is Over:
‘AGW’ is OUT, ‘AGC’ is IN ”
___________________
Sorry but, this is soooooo important:
The ‘new’ title for True Believers is “Change-ist” (or Change’ers, or Change-ees, or… -you get the idea, right?)
Don’t know if this was up when you posted, but you can browse by Issue.
http://books.google.com/books?id=zyUDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=3&atm_aiy=1950#all_issues_anchor
about middle of the page will let you select a decade and then make available all individual issues for that decade.
I was in high school in 1970. In grade school every kid, including me, had a wooden airplane (or in my case, several, as I kept breaking them). Paper airplanes were flown regularly in class and with “death to the loser” competitions between designs. We studied the way the upper wing curve and the lower wing curve of real planes provides lift. We compared that to the design of the Wright brother’s craft and why those wing designs provided lift. We studied the way the tail moves the plane this way or that, and why (we didn’t get to study wing flaps, just studied the basics). It was great fun. Then rockets came a long and everything changed to whatever would explode an object into space.
Popular Science, Page 74, May 1969
Are We changing Our Weather?
….
In fact, the whole world has been cooling off since 1940. Before that, the earth had been warming up for a considerably longer time.
The switch to cooling was first spotted by Dr, J. Murray Mitchell Jr., a climatologist for the U.S. Environmental Science Services Administration. Arctic winter temperatures have now dropped an average of six degrees, he says.
…..
Some meteorologists think inadvertent weather modification is overrated, compared to changes that may be taking place in natural weather forces-which are also difficult to measure. The earth’s weather engine is so intricate that it still resists total scientific understanding.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence to justify concern. Through sheer numbers and increasing complexity of civilization, man is capable of tampering with the weather by accidentally changing the intricate patterns that produce our climate.
Nothing yet but I found a Chrysler boat ad that made me think about all the warmists doom and gloom predictions. March 1970, page 52. Shows some water skiers in a boat on an icy lake waiting for the ice to melt so they can ski. They must have listened to the warmists claiming all the ice was going to melt.
You realize that I’m likely to get little work done today going through the archive don’t you?
How about Popular Mechanics or Mechanics Illustrated?
Is there any way to search them online too?
Man, this is GREAT stuff! The ads might be the best part.
$189 radio in 1929! That’s like what, $50,000 today? 😉
This is great, I loved that magazine back in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
I wish the Popular Electronics archive from the 1960’s and 1970’s would be made available someday. There were some pretty cool tube hi-fi amp projects published “back in the day”.
Anthony, here is how you search by issue.
http://books.google.com/books?id=mgEAAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s#all_issues_anchor
Alvin M. Weinberg is the one responsible for AGW hysteria.
Looks to me like he used it as a way to promote nuclear power after hearing of the theory from Roger Revelle
http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/news_items/news_061019.shtml
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Revelle/revelle_3.php
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115×71130
Third link has a pic of Alvin Weinberg with John and Jackie Kennedy and Al Gore Sr. in the comments.
It’s not hard to join the dots.
Don’t post if it is too far off topic,or all been covered before.
Anthony
I don’t understand your comment that you cannot search by issue. I used the search term “January 1962.” One of the results was the January 1962 issue, which I scrolled through. I tried this for several other dates as well. Is this what you want to do? We could have volunteers scroll through various months in the time period you want searched.
REPLY: Mea culpa. It was almost midnight when I posted that, so I blame my tired state. Other commenters have shown this also. – Anthony
From a more hopeful time when most saw nuclear energy and nuclear technology as the amazing and hopeful field that it is, these ads ran in magazines in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
http://depletedcranium.com/20-classic-atomic-energy-ads/
did not see it in Jan 1960, although there was a full page ad about a guy who dreamed of making a million in uranium but ended up cleaning homes instead.
I like this “be a uranium prospector” one: http://national-radiation-instrument-catalog.com/Image875.gif
Pamela: “Dave, the solution is to begin in Elementary school. Back in the day, we used to study “lift” starting in the 4th grade. Now flight is hardly mentioned. Why bother, we let someone else do our flying for us. If we want to start using flying cars, we need to start teaching grade school kids the aerodynamic properties of flight. The same can be said for teaching kids how to drive on terra firma. We wait till they are in their teens before we even mention it. And then they spend, oh maybe 5 hours studying it, get their license, and crash.”
Unfortunately, you are absolutely right. Our children are largely taught trivial BS… I’m not into memorization, but I’d rather my children memorize the multiplication tables–which I do make them write out once per week–than memorizing the number and name of ‘presidents’–TRIVIAL BS that is meaningless unless you are to become a ‘history’ teacher; this type stuff can be referenced via thousands of ways and serves as a waste of time… trivia.
OT: Has anyone figured out the amount of energy/pollution it takes to charge a battery for a vehicle to travel 100 miles vs the actual energy/pollution the same can be achieved via 2-3 gallons of gas per a reg vehicle (not a gas guzzler, not a death trap ultra-light)?
I mean how much fuel is used to create the energy, push it across lines (with loss) and charge the thing…
Anyone? I know that ethanol produces MORE CO2 and other pollutants when the energy used is equal to fossil fuel (gas), but I’d like to know the above. If I did the calcs, I’d probably miss something.
Thanks
July & Aug, 1966 are done. No nuc ad. But what a trip! this is going to be fun….
I do remember seeing an ad (though I don’t think it was with a lump of coal) in an old Nat. Geographic at my in-laws mountain cabin for nuclear energy.
Woo Hoo, I found the editor’s remark at root of all my skepticism. It’s even better than I remember! March 1976, page 69. I had actually looked for this piece before but could never find it.
“… Thus his experiment proved the “greenhouse effect” is the result of little more than confining a body of air and preventing the removal of air by convection. Mysteriously, you’ll still find the old fairy tale in most standard reference works 67 years after Dr. Woods experiment. You’ll also find it in the past issues of Popular Science. Sorry. But never again.”
http://www.popsci.com/results?query=Greenhouse+effect+1976+Hazlett
This is not to say that I totally discount a small degree of warming from greenhouse gases, but the real question is how much the exaggeration is – about as much exaggeration as seeing a resemblance between lightening and a lightening bug.
I also built the Geodesic Sun Dome from May 1966, page 108.
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=zikDAAAAMBAJ&pg=2&query=May+1966+geodesic
Let me suggest that people handle this the same way we handled the FOIA at CA.
Make a list of all the issues from 1965 to 1980
That’s 180 issues
When you finish paging through an entire issue looking for the ad
post the issue you looked at:
Like so:
Jan 65: no hit.
shouldn’t take long to manually search every issue in this time period.
dont everybody start at the begining
Anthony just create a permanent project for this till they are all read
For a very readable book on coal vs nuc emissions, see “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear,” (Beckmann 1976 and later).
Have done 1969 Oct, Nov & Dec. Not there.
Anthony, can you remember (a) if it was a color ad; (b) whether it was full page or half-page or what?
There’s one thing that everyone seems to be missing (or I am deluded): all of the fossil fuels we burn contain carbon sequestered from the atmosphere of the time. Therefore, it’s impossible to release more co2 than has existed in the past. If you go back to the time when the first vegetation was laid down that is now oil or coal, surely all of that sequestered carbon must have been in the atmosphere, but the planet wasn’t burning up then, was it?
Can someone explain what I am missing here?
@ Pamela Gray – Yes I agree. I used to watch what my father was doing when he was driving, and being mechanically minded understood what the various controls did. Result – when I was able to reach the pedals I started his car and drove off virtually unaided. (On private roads and with him beside me at the time!)
However I didn’t take to flying quite as easily…. I got there eventually, but like all pilots, have occasionally found myself wishing I had stayed on the ground!
For light aviation to be practical regular transport you need a full instrument rating, and a suitably equipped aircraft. Neither of these come cheap. When you factor in the increasing amount of controlled airspace, the dream of flying to work every day will remain a dream for most, unfortunately.
The question of trust arrises. If Steve Goddard says issue 67 of June 1968 doesn’t have it……. I’m not saying Steve’s not trustworthy, but, then I don’t know him from adam. So, someone has to give this thought.
Kate (06:00:43) : “Librarian here. Search engines don’t find ads. Ad pages are not included in the searchable fields. The only way to do this is type in 1965 and scan every issue; then 1966 and scan every issue; then 1967 and scan every issue………………………..”
I’ve succeeded in finding the advertisers’ index by searching on INDEX in the search box. Google might work better. My first thought was that Mechanix Illustrated might be the place to look. There might be other magazines of that era that were similar to Popular Science. It would sure help to know if this was a full page ad in color. That would narrow down the number of pages that need to be searched.
Re: Brian Williams (Mar 19 11:14),
Non biological oil. There is a theory that the origin of oil fields is abiogenic
from wikipedia
Abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing theory of biological petroleum origin. Most popular in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s, the abiogenic hypothesis has little support among contemporary petroleum geologists, who argue that abiogenic petroleum does not exist in significant amounts and that there is no indication that an application of the hypothesis is or has ever been of commercial value.[1]
The abiogenic hypothesis argues that petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The presence of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan is cited as evidence supporting the formation of hydrocarbons without biology.
Just like all of the bauxite, Copper, Gold and Iron and other compounds/some elements which are found ‘grouped’ together in pockets, in veins around the world?
next …
.
.
anna v (12:28:24),
Here’s a map of an area of Titan: click
I don’t think there were many dinosaurs there that turned into hydrocarbon seas.
Here’s an article from ’69, page 94. “cut your electric rate and reduce air pollution. (about nuclear projects)
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=PioDAAAAMBAJ&pg=208&query=aec
There’s this ad from Cook Electric Company. A little odd.
Jim (12:54:56) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
Here’s an article from ‘69, page 94. “cut your electric rate and reduce air pollution. (about nuclear projects)
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=PioDAAAAMBAJ&pg=208&query=aec
It does mention dirty coal in the article. It is about the Brown’s Ferry nuke plant.
Not an ad, but a full article. This looks promising.
“By 1980, the Atomic Energy Commission forecasts, atom plants will make a fourth of the country’s electricity; by the year 2000, half of it.”
Later, “An A-power plant is attractive, silent, clean. Missing are smokestacks belching soot and fumes, huge coal piles and rumbling trains to replenish them.”
Paul Z. (00:02:54) :
Follow the money folks:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/breaking_the_obama_code_the_gr.html
Wow! Thanks Paul. It just goes to show you what we’re up against.
The stink!
Here, Google has scanned all of the available issues into their books.google.com database.
http://books.google.com/books/serial/wzsEAAAAMBAJ?rview=0
You can pull them all down, put all the files in a desktop search, and have at them. I’ll start tonight.
Does the style of this ad (if not the substance) ring a bell as to the type of ad?
It is from a series popularly described as being “the hand of God ads”
If so, it might an alternate starting point.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/04/05/promise-of-a-golden-future/
Article in Pop Science (06:33:45) :
I found this article in Pop Science by Rachel Carson, (yes, the book author) in 1951:
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=diEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=256&query=is+it+getting+warmer
The article starts on page 114.
———-
Two interesting things.
First, Anthony posted a “copy” of this article in 2008 (from some transcript on the web):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/25/who-knew-rachel-carson-climate-change-expert/
Second, there was a little debate in the comments from the above article about the veracity of the article’s claim, “In 1982, for example, the Knipowitsch sailed around Franz Josef Land for the first time in the history of arctic voyaging.” Anthony’s reply at the time was, “REPLY: It was “reissued” in 1982, see the Amazon link from the book title”
However, the popular science article (from your link above on p. 252) has the Knipowitsch circumnavigation as the year 1932. Google Books shows 1932 as well (see link below). This makes much more sense and I remember being bothered by the 1982 date when I read it at the time. There must have been a transcript error somewhere along the way.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PvkDFTtW6f4C&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=Knipowitsch+sailed+around+Franz+Joseph+Land&source=bl&ots=FCNkCcJQs6&sig=7u4bedXqKunE7LqDrJU4s48S-Fs&hl=en&ei=uOmjS-DCG8WAlAfEw6D_CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Someone else was looking for the same ad in 2003. I ran across this while searching.
Hopefully there will be enough to narrow down the search a bit.
The links given are dead though.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=245789
REPLY: That someone else was me, note the link to the ChicoER, which is my newspaper. The fellow searching on my behalf was an ad hobbyist – Anthony
Have done 1969 June thru September.
Looking at what I and others have reported, the following issues have now been searched:
1963-12
1965-01
1966-07
1966-08
1969-06
1969-07
1969-08
1969-09
1969-10
1969-11
1969-12
1973-04
1973-09
1974-03
1977-12
1979-06
1979-09
Some of the outliers in this list were searched because searches by such things as “nuclear”, “AEC”, “coal”, etc. showed promise.
I suggest that people doing searches post an updated list of everything searched by everyone, adding their own efforts to the list. You could start with the list I just posted. That way we should avoid duplication. Tomorrow (my UK time) I’ll work on the rest of 1969 and then go on to 1970.
Pamela Gray (08:18:50) :
imapopulist, these are grey papers. My advice to Anthony on reviewing these articles: Wouldn’t touch them even if they looked like food to a starving person.
Such articles and ads can provide historical context. And clues.
steven mosher (10:28:07) :
Anthony just create a permanent project for this till they are all read
++++
Fire up “www.popscisearch.org”
Hey TWG, I am not sure about your recollection, and I reckon it helps to be carefully about this. As I recall there were no “Greenies” until the 1990s. It is true that in the 1980s there were was the Green party in Germany, but elsewhere there were environmentalists, conservationists, neo-hippies, peacenix etc.
Towards the end of the 1980s the polarisation of Left/Right (aka socialist-liberal vs. free market capitalist) was degenerating, but yet still prevailing in the anglophone west. The 70s & 80s ‘No Nukes’ was a mixed left-wing bag, and tied up with the anti-arms race and Ban The (nuclear) Bomb campaign.
So what’s the difference, and why does it matter? If there is no difference between 1980s conservationism (campaigning to stop effluent pouring into a stream, preservation of wilderness etc) compared to “Greenie” of the 2000s, then I guess we should also call “greenies” those that campaign for Yosemite NP, and the earlier naturalists like John Burroughs, Emerson and Teddy Roosevelt also ‘Greenies.’ Perhaps some of us think that all conservationist should be condemned outright, or condemned for the sins of their children. But consider that we all now enjoy the benefits of the conservation movement, and most of its successes in the the 1980s are now broadly accepted as beneficial. As part of that movement, it is offence to me when no distinction is made between what we were doing then compared to the Alarmism of Erhrich, Schneider, Hansen, Gore etc that now dominates the total political movement that usurped the “reds” at the end of the 80s and goes by the name of “Green.”
My goodness – those covers! Science, unconscious fantasy and the phallus! Can be the first to record… science porn?
Quoting:
“The presence of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan is cited as evidence supporting the formation of hydrocarbons without biology.”
Commenting:
OR…it is evidence of biology on Titan! You neglected that possibility! 😉
P.S.
In either case, it is a stunning revelation!
@Dodgy Geezer
“For doing this sort of work I suggest that someone sets up a long list of the Popular Science magazines which need looking into, divided up into work-sized chunks, so that volunteers can pick a chunk and cross it off the list.”
Your method is strangely similar to how westerners attempt to locate a given street address in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. Just replace “Popular Science magazines” with “Google Maps” and you’ve got it!
brc (05:21:08) : All you guys complaining of no robots. Sure, there’s no human-shaped maid in your kitchen, but as I type, I have…
Nice point, brc.
I have seen exactly the same about artificial intelligence. (The Age of Spiritual Machines — Ray Kurzweil)
@H.R. (04:27:50) :
“Yup. Flying cars are in one of the issues, and we’re all STILL waiting for them to show up on the dealers’ lots.”
– – – – – – –
In the mid 1980’s, the public was assured that within ten years, we’d all be using flying jetpacks to commute to and from work.
I recall the add as a promotion for peaceful uses of nuclear energy. However, the idea was to shoe that the energy present in a lump uranium the size of a lump of coal could light the lights in a major city equivalent to a coal fied plant. I find it intersting that Alvin Weinberg who headed the ERDA which was promoting the fast breeder reactor in the late sixties used the CO2 argument for promoting safe nuclear power. I wonder if he really believed it or was using it to support his program. Now we are using Co2 to kill off coal power use. Weinberg along with Jimmy Carter also killed the fast breeder program when the problems looked to expensive to fund.
I googled for ads for nuclear power and got 1,410,000 hits.
I appended “1965” and got 44,000 hits.
I appended Popular Mechanics and got 3,350 hits.
Thus it might be possible to check a year per day and cover the suspect period in a couple of weeks. If unsuccessful, try again with Mechanics Illustrated, etc.
I tried a little googling in the Image section without any luck.
Snicker…
From the call-out box on Page 26 – Pop Sci October 1921 in “What Made the Weather So Hot This Summer?”
“Can We Blame It on the Sunspots?
A summer of unequaled drought in Europe – the Thames is drying up; London’s water supply threatened; Paris blinded by a hot spell unprecedented in fifty years; Switzerland baked by the sun until it’s lakes shrunk; such drought in parts of the United States that farmers appealed to traveling rainmakers.
These abnormalities of the spring and summer afflicted the earth in a sun-spot year. Perhaps there was no connection between sun-spots and the heat. But human comfort, convenience, and efficiency are so much affected by intemperate weather that any indication of such connection, making long-range weather prophecy feasible, is of interest to all. You will find in this article remarkable evidence of direct relationship between solar cyclones and earthly weather disturbances.”
From the accompanying image:
“The upper curve indicates variation in tree growth over an eleven-year cycle; the lower curve shows the sun-spot variations over the same period, suggesting that vegetative growth on earth is affected by the recurrence of storms on the sun.”
Been searching a while, coming up with a lot of dreck. However, the July 1901 issue shows another cycle of global warming. “Climate and Carbonic Acid”, pp242-256, talks about Arrhenius and the effects of CO2 on the climate. It is a well-written piece about the global “bank account” of CO2 and the various major deposits and withdrawals that change the balance. The author’s attitude is so strikingly different from that of modern climate scientists. He goes over the various theories and, while explaining the theories and reasons behind his beliefs, is very understated in his approach. You’d never picture this guy issuing dire warnings or threats.
Anyhow, back to the search function….
@berniel (17:08:02) :
toyotawhizguy (01:36:35) :
I recall that in the 1980’s, “Greenies” were in heavy opposition to nuclear power….
Hey TWG, I am not sure about your recollection, and I reckon it helps to be carefully about this. As I recall there were no “Greenies” until the 1990s.
– – – – – – –
Bernie, perhaps your views and mine differ partially due to being in different geographical locations. You are technically correct about no “Greenies” until the 1990s, since the term wasn’t in use in the ’80’s, but there really is not another good label for them either. It would be a stretch to call most of the activists of those days environmentalists, since the local groups in the ’80’s I was familiar with really didn’t have a good grasp on the scientific principles of ecology. They also tended to be alarmist, left-wing politically, anti-establishment, anti-science and anti-technology. And just as with today’s “Greenies”, they sought to impose their views and lifestyles onto the rest of us.
I have worked a number of years with a large group of Ph.D. scientists in a University setting, some of whom who are ecologists and environmental toxicologists, thus my view of environmentalism has been formed by my relationship to that group of scientists. My approach to conservation and environmentalism has always been scientific and analytical, with a touch of libertarianism thrown in. This centrist approach differs radically from the doctrines and methods used by groups such as Greenpeace and The Sierra Club.
BTW, the term “hippies” pretty much fell out of use in the USA by the mid ’70’s (your reference to “neo-hippies” is my first encounter with the term), and many of the members of that loose knit group later morphed into YUPPIES, although that label wasn’t coined until c. 1984. I can cite numerous times when I ran into male acquaintances, former classmates, etc, who in the late 60’s and early ’70’s had sported shoulder length hair, and wore jeans and tie-dyed shirts, and by the late ’70’s had flattop haircuts and were wearing business suits.
Rebivore (15:23:13) :
Have done 1969 June thru September.
Looking at what I and others have reported, the following issues have now been searched…
I spent an hour waiting for flickr to populate the archives site, and another half hour waiting for the January 1972 issue to appear.
Snip-snip-snippety-snipping server…
The one armed monster wind mill was built and did work. it was a noise control experiment, I believe, it’s now obsolete. There’s several smaller one armed windmills out there. Never assume that renewables wont work or don’t work. I’m a climate sceptic trained in that field.
They can, and in some places do work. They just haven’t been allowed to work. For renewables to work you need 17 % grid storage and that part of the puzzle keeps getting blocked. If renewables were really allowed to go forward you would see carbon trading die as the price falls to zero.
Brian Williams says:
March 19, 2010 at 11:14 am
There’s one thing that everyone seems to be missing (or I am deluded): all of the fossil fuels we burn contain carbon sequestered from the atmosphere of the time. Therefore, it’s impossible to release more co2 than has existed in the past. If you go back to the time when the first vegetation was laid down that is now oil or coal, surely all of that sequestered carbon must have been in the atmosphere, but the planet wasn’t burning up then, was it?
Can someone explain what I am missing here?
I attended a climate talk at a scientific conference a few years ago and asked this very question of the speaker. She had no answer.
@sHx (08:21:18) :
toyotawhizguy (01:36:35) :
I recall that in the 1980’s, “Greenies” were in heavy opposition to nuclear power. “Greenies” also were in opposition to the waste sites being established in pristine wilderness, …
Then when the “Greenies” later decided that CO2 was a more important issue than nukes, many changed their position.
You recall it correctly.
– – – – – – –
Opposition to nuclear power in the USA ramped up quickly after this event in 1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Given that my locality was less than 200 miles away from the accident, there was a lot of protest activity near me during the early ’80’s. Protest activity ramped up again in ’88 when the NRC wanted to locate a nuke dump site nearby. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the later reversal by many (formerly) anti-nuke activists in favor of nuclear power over fossil fuels as a result of the AGW /CO2 issue, but recall first learning about it in the mid 1990’s. Pro-nuclear is even now the official position of President Obama in 2010.
It appears that Nuclear power (i.e. fission) will continue to be a necessary evil until a breakthrough is made in nuclear fusion, which I believe is still several decades into the future. Both solar panels and wind turbines are still much too expensive, even with the government subsidies. Wind turbines have an enhanced future potential, but only if the approach is radically altered from the current mega-generation to widescale micro-generation.
BTW, when I tried to track down the origination of the term “Greenie”, the source I found said it originated in Australia.
DavidL and Brian Williams
Not only is all the carbon present in fossil fuels once in the atmosphere but also all the carbon present in carbonate rocks – meaning limestone. There are huge amounts of carbon sequestered in limestone. Probably many many times as much as in coal, oil and natural gas. There is a reason there is so little CO2 found in the atmosphere and that is the biosphere would like more. You could say it’s starving for more. I think that the little CO2 that is in the atmosphere is part of a fairly complicated carbon cycle.
The July 1977 issue has a Solar House on the cover and a great story about how that Solar House achieves energy savings using native materials. Whatever happened to these ideas? Well, most new houses now have better insulation and double-glazed windows, but the concept of heat storage has not caught on.
Thanks for the link! That issue also holds fond memories in a piece I wrote that features a photo of our daughters and one of me at about half my current age. Our granddaughters will get a kick out of seeing their mother and aunts when they were about their current age.
Oct & Dec 66 done Nada…
Search “bruckner”. See the 1906 link. Could have been written as a peer reviewed paper today.
There’s just no way i can plough thru these mags. They are far too interesting, even the ads. takes ages just to go thru one issue lol
p.s. Can I still buy $1million in confederate notes for $2.98?
OK June & Nov 1966, Mar 67 Jan 69 done…
From November 1966, Page 43:
The biggest blizzard in US history was 1921…..
THE YEAR? 1921. THE SCENE? SILVER LAKE, COLORADO – WHER5E 76 INCHES OF SNOW COVERED THE TOWN IN 24 HOURS ACCORDING TO US WEATHER BUREAU STATISTICS…….
An ad for Ariens Company Sno-Thro
And – MOTORCYCLES:
What I like in a bike – and why.
By STEVE McQUEEN
And maybe best of all –
HOW TO BUILD A WEATHER ANTICIPATOR
“Don’t let a sudden cold wave this winter catch you with your heat down. This gadget lets you plan ahead”
I’m going to build it and see if I can modify it with some later technology and make it into a CLIMATE ANTICIPATOR. Hmmm, lets see…. A little chip here, a little Fortran there – some averaging of temperatures from poorly sited digital thermometers, some tree ring measurement for calibration, a bit of automatic updating from a satellite or two….. that should about due it…..
OMG!! Page 144 has an article comparing MY (Yes, I still have it!) SEARS & ROEBUCK 12” Radial Arm Saw to a Montgomery Ward 10” when they were brand new on the market!
Mar 69 & 70, May 71, Oct 70 & Dec 71 done… no nuc/coal ad
But from May 1971:
BART – The way to go for the ‘70s
Ready now, the space-aged San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system will cut travel time and help clear car-clogged highways. 1.3 Billion dollars…. Ah, that’s 1971 dollars….
And:
TOPPING OUT THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDING
The World Trade Center….. just being finished. Poignant…
From Oct 1970: Page 97
BUILD YOUR OWN AIR-POLLUTION TESTER
With this device, you can measure hydrocarbon and other pollutants in the air.
Mar 74 & Aug 77 done… AND Aug 1941 – – don’t ask but you can probably guess….
Personal helicopters are my fave.
Some climate issues
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=GSoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=74&query=winter+1940
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=bQEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=180&query=BAd+winters+ahead
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=2SkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=50&query=Ice+age+coming
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=fkktZ45KH3UC&pg=10&query=Ice+age+coming
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=fygDAAAAMBAJ&pg=52&query=Ice+age+coming
Jan 75, Aug 72 & 73 done.
Wow were there a lot of cigarette ads back then….!
And i obviously didn’t get into the rubber stamp business as i’m NOT a billionaire – darn…
A, are you SURE it was late 60’s, early 70’s?? 🙂
I HATE Popular Science for doing this! They have consumed my whole entire weekend, and will continue to steal my spare hours for a long, long time. It’s like reliving my youth, reading those issues, and even the ones from the fifties that my dad still has.
So anyway, for a laugh, lookup August 1989, page 51. Yes, there is Hansen’s face looking at you, telling you about the horrid Global Warming about to ignite the world. Yep, the alarm bells are in full clang.
There is a very interesting article about the relationship between sunspots and the “wind-disturbances of the earth’s atmosphere” (read: cyclones 😉
4th item, page 366, Jan. 1878 issue (http://books.google.com/books?id=miwDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover)
~17.5% increase in casualities on UK vessels, when they compared maxiumum/minimum solar spots periods (mostly due to extreme weather?), “connections between sunspots area and annual rainfall”… One has to wonder how come they were able to publish thoses observations back then without the help of supercomputers and satellites…
…oh wait – there was no CRU at the time to interfere with the publishing and “correct the data” lol
Aug 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 75 & 76 done, which means ALL Aug’s – 66 thru 77 – have been reviewed.
Great article starting on page 54 in aug 74 issue on fusion power:
FUSION POWER: IS IT ALL COMING TOGETHER?
They thought we’d be producing fusion power in the 70’s….
Gotta take another break as the urge to go out and shoot something with my Remington while smoking a cigarette and drinking a Schlitz is getting too great. But hey, i have decided to go back to school and become a CPA – or nurse – or – something…
When you look at a chart illustrating the Earth’s experience with temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and atmospheric oxygen during the Phanerozoic Eon in which those fossil fuels were deposited; you can see how the temperature tended to stay flat at about 25C +2/-5C, ~12C greater than present, except whenever an ice age occurred.
During the Andean-Saharan Ice Age, the temperature plunged from 25C to 10C, and the carbon dioxide increased from ~4,200ppm to ~4,400ppm. During the Karoo Ice Age, the temperature plunged from 25C to 10C and warmed again to 26C, while the carbon dioxide decreased from ~4,000ppm to ~300ppm before following the increase in temperature with a later increase of carbon dioxide to ~1,800-1,900ppm. During the presently occuring ice age, the temperature decreased from the normal 25-26C to about 12C at present, and the carbon dioxide decreased from ~2,400ppm to the present ~280-380ppm. There was also a Jurassic-Cretaceous event during which the temperature decreased in a plunge to ~16C and then increased back to a normal 25C without a correlating change in carbon dioxide, which simply continued its decreases unaffected by the major temperature changes.
The Earth’s primordial or first atmosphere was composed of about the same gaseous materials as the Solar nebula and the Sun. This first atmosphere was overwhelmingly composed of hydrogen and helium. Since the Earth’s geomagnetic iron core and the geomagnetic field had not yet formed, the Earth lost the vast majority of its atmosphere as major impact events and Solar winds stripped gaseous atmosphere having nearly five Lunar masses from the Earth’s gravitational control. The remaining atmospheric mass including methane, ammonia, nitrogen, water vapor, and nitrogen was transformed into the Earth’s second atmosphere as temperatures began to decrease below 2,000K and the hydrosphere condensed out of the atmosphere to add to the lithosphere and create a new hydrosphere.
After the massive percentage of water vapor condensed out of the first atmosphere, the second atmosphere came to be dominated by carbon dioxide which made up around 80% or 800,000ppm of it. There was virtually no oxygen in the second atmosphere. What little oxygen was liberated by the geochemical processes tended to be immediately oxidized by and compunded with the exposed rocks. Chemical weathering with the rocks, absorption by the hydrosphere, and biochemical processes began to greatly decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide levels far below the early 800,000ppm level. It was the development of aerobic life forms during the Proterozoic Eon which transformed the second atmosphere into the third atmosphere.
The third atmosphere was created by aerobic life forms by removing most of the remaining carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replacing it in part with oxygen. By the time of the Phanaerozoic Eon, the carbon dioxide levels had fallen to the 7,000-8,000ppm range, while temperatures had increased from less than 10C during the Huronian Ice Age and the Cryogenian Period to 25C in the Cambrian Period.
Since the fossil fuels were deposited, the Sun’s luminosity has increased by more than 10%, yet the Earth remained nearly steady at a temperature of about 25C except during the occurences of the glacial periods of the ice ages.
Temperatures of 10C occurred during the ice ages no matter how high and low the carbon dioxide levels were or whether the levels were increasing or decreasing as the tempertures increased and decreased. It remains to be explained how a change of 100ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can change the temperature by 1C to 4C virtually instantaneously in the present geologic time period when past increases and decreases of 1,000ppm had no discernible effect whatsoever upon the Earth’s 25C temperature norm.