Regular WUWT readers know of the issues related to Arctic Sea Ice that we have routinely followed here. The Arctic sea ice trend is regularly used as tool to hammer public opinion, often recklessly and without any merit to the claims. The most egregious of these claims was the April of 2008 pronouncement by National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Dr. Mark Serreze of an ice free north pole in 2008. It got very wide press. It also never came true.
To my knowledge, no retractions were printed by news outlets that carried his sensationally erroneous claim.
A few months later in August, when it was clear his first prediction would not come true, and apparently having learned nothing from his first incident (except maybe that the mainstream press is amazingly gullible when it comes to science) Serreze made another outlandish statement of “Arctic ice is in its death spiral” and” The Arctic could be free of summer ice by 2030″. In my opinion, Serreze uttered perhaps the most irresponsible news statements about climate second only to Jim Hansen’s “death trains” fiasco. I hope somebody at NSIDC will have the good sense to reel in their loose cannon for the coming year.
Not to be outdone, in December Al Gore also got on the ice free bandwagon with his own zinger saying on video that the “entire north polar ice cap will be gone within 5 years“. There’s a countdown watch on that one.
So it was with a bit of surprise that we witnessed the wailing and gnashing of teeth from a number of bloggers and news outlets when in his February 15th column, George Will, citing a Daily Tech column by Mike Asher, repeated a comparison of 1979 sea ice levels to present day. He wrote:
As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
The outrage was immediate and widespread. Media Matters: George Will spreads falsehoods Discover Magazine: George Will: Liberated From the Burden of Fact-Checking Climate Progress: Is George Will the most ignorant national columnist? One Blue Marble Blog: Double Dumb Ass Award: George Will George Monbiot in the Guardian: George Will’s climate howlers and Huffington Post: Will-fully wrong
They rushed to stamp out the threat with an “anything goes” publishing mentality. There was lots of piling on by secondary bloggers and pundits.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I got interested in what was going on with odd downward jumps in the NSIDC Arctic sea ice graph, posting on Monday February 16th NSIDC makes a big sea ice extent jump – but why? Then when I was told in comments by NSIDC’s Walt Meier that the issue was “not worth blogging about” I countered with Errors in publicly presented data – Worth blogging about?
It soon became clear what had happened. There was a sensor failure, a big one, and both NSIDC and Cryosphere today missed it. The failure caused Arctic sea ice to be underestimated by 500,000 square kilometers by the time Will’s column was published. Ooops, that’s a Murphy Moment.
So it is with some pleasure that today I offer you George Will’s excellent rebuttal to the unapologetic trashing of his column . The question now is, will those same people take on Dr. Mark Serreze and Al Gore for their irresponsible proclamations this past year? Probably not. Will Serreze shoot his mouth off again this year when being asked by the press what the summer ice season will bring? Probably, but one can always hope he and others have learned something, anything, from this debacle.
Let us hope that cooler heads prevail.
By George F. Will, Washington Post
Friday, February 27, 2009; A17
Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.
Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was — as it is today in a contrary crusade — a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.” Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today’s war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.
On Wednesday, the Times carried a “news analysis” — a story in the paper’s news section, but one that was not just reporting news — accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.
Reporter Andrew Revkin’s story was headlined: “In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall.” Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing — sometimes a distinction without a difference — concerning today’s climate controversies.
Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts — how does he know this? — that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just “a pause in warming.” His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive — it concerned controversies already many days running — that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that “experts said” this columnist’s intervention in the climate debate was “riddled with” inaccuracies. Revkin’s supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
Citing data from the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September “the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began.” According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were “near or slightly lower than” those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.
So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying “we do not know where George Will is getting his information.” The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center’s Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.
The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:
On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times (“All the news that’s fit to print”), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.
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Hey Joel….you going to be joining Dr. Hansen in DC on Monday for the protest??
Should be a fun time. Temperature maxima in the mid 20s with snow showers on top of a fresh snow cover.
Brendan H (22:11:22) :
Many people’s memories are not about peer reviewed papers, but about magazines and newspapers. They were scaring us into cooling, which probably means that the Hansens of the time had a good ear in some influential news outlets.
I said before that at that time the grants system was not as corrupted as now, because it was much less centralized. The universities funded, various societies funded research. The EU did not exist. I suppose with the fall of the soviet union in 1989 grants given for classified projects ( no peer review there, hmm) could be released to other disciplines and the central planning carried through: instead of funding the universities, and each university the researchers, the researchers applied to central planning. This gave the possibility of cliques forming and keeping a strong hold on what was pc funding for science, to a greater extent than before. It is the effect of a feedback mechanism with the peer review system that we have now this extreme muzzling of oppositions :).
Secondly, t is the media that create the frenzy. We get that in Greece periodically over predictions of earthquakes from a small group of seismologists. The majority of seismologists hold an unflattering opinion of this group, but that makes no difference to the media. An earthquake is predicted by VAN is a great first page.
Brendan H said
“The authors identified seven papers claiming global cooling, 44 papers claiming global warming, plus a number of neutral papers. In other words, if there were any scientific consensus, it was in favour of warming. This finding is supported by an opinion survey carried out in 1977 of top climate scientists, who narrowly favoured warming over cooling.”
It hardly supports much of a warming consensus either does it? That was in 1977 getting to the tail end of the hyptheses I think-what if the poll was taken a few years earlier?
Whatever, finding 7 papers for cooliong and 44 for warming, then suggesting a poll with only a narrow majority in favour of warming suggests to me they didn’t look hard enough for more cooling papers . Or perhps to be fair they are no longer available as they werent digitised in due course
TonyB
Brendan H (22:11:22) :
“….despite many people’s memories, the scientific record does not appear to support the cooling consensus argument.”
Climate science and its peer review were not corrupt back then.
Newspapers and magazines were how the vast majority of us absorbed the current state of science. Not scientific papers presented on Internet. Not mad scientists shouting on Youtube. Not alarmists blogs with more funding than integrity. Not government policy announcements/pronouncements.
It was a firestorm of icy doom predictions and we needed to run for the hills to survive. As others have noted it was sufficient reason to dismiss the current clap-trap until the policy became “fixed” around the (lack of) science. The time arrived to stand up and be counted.
Brendan H
Sorry, but I was in a hurry this morning so did not post my full reply. (00 46 39)
You said earlier that the report you linked to demolishing the myth surrounding Global cooling;
“…As for the opinions and activities of the report authors, I don’t see where they are relevant to my claim that their report “presents a persuasive and well-supported argument”.
I had made some very detailed anaysis suggesting that two of the three authors had an acknowleged warming agenda and the third-the keeper of the weather records- certainly did not appear as objective as he might, if the experience of others is anything to go by.
You then said;
“The authors identified seven papers claiming global cooling, 44 papers claiming global warming, plus a number of neutral papers. In other words, if there were any scientific consensus, it was in favour of warming. This finding is supported by an opinion survey carried out in 1977 of top climate scientists, who narrowly favoured warming over cooling.”
With respect Brendan the two statements do not correlate.
Let us for the sake of advancing the arguement (only) accept the poll at the time showed a narrow consensus in favour of warming, and for the sake of easy maths accept it was around 5%
Yet by the figures you cite around 80% of papers the thre authors ‘found’ supported warming. Surely it is more reasonable the figure would represent around 50/55%?
This suggests a number of possible explanations.
* The coolers didn’t write much
* The coolers documents were never digitised or became lost over time.
* The authors didn’t dig hard enough to find the true representation of papers that the poll shows should have been there.
Are you seriously saying a group of objective authors seeking to present a well balanced argument found only around 15/20% of cooling papers, when it should have been at least double or triple that number? In doing that is it really correct to say that they are presenting ‘a persuasive and well-supported argument?”
I suggest that the authors well known sympathies have prevented them from delving far enough to present anything that is balanced.
This is also so far from my own direct experience at the time as to exist in a parallel universe. Finding papers without the internet back in the 70’s was not easy and my own memory of writing my own article at the time is that I subsequently threw away far more than 7 cooling papers, and far fewer than 44 warming papers!
We will each continue to believe what we want Brendan, but it is only fair to point out that an important and widely cited report of this kind does need to be put into the context of the agenda behind those writing it.
Tonyb
TonyB – thank you for this wonderful article.
Best, Allan
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1078291
P.S. I guess I’m getting old – I find papers such as this one from 1941 and earlier are so well-written compared with many from today. The same goes for many early geology reports – here is the data, here is the analysis, here are the conclusions. Compare to MBH98 and Steig – the data is buried somewhere, and when you finally get it, it’s not as advertised – anyway, the Divergence Problem pretty much finished me off as regards dendrochronology.
PPS – Just when did the Uniformitarian Principle get revoked, anyway? I must have missed that. Seems to me that the MBH dendros, by burying the Divergence Problem, have simply tossed Uniformitarianism out the window.
Sorry if I’m being a bit picky…
To the many have posted that they remember global cooling, I would like to add my recollection. I did not read science papers at the time (high school kid), but I did read the newspapers and news magazines of the time. Was it a big deal? — no, but it was there. Probably the public was less inclined to be scared in those days.
To those who dispute that this was the case in the “70’s. There are a number of us on this essay who quite clearly remember this was the case. I should think you would at least allow some measure of respect people who are essentially your colleagues here and value first hand experience. Trying to make the reporting of cooling go away is just hand-waving.
In my own experience I also did a bit of reading about mad cow disease in the early 2000’s. Although you probably could not find it in the scientific literature, there were reports from the NYT and AP that in the next 30 years 500,000 people would die from CJD.
TonyB (02:49:25) :
* The coolers didn’t write much
* The coolers documents were never digitised or became lost over time.
* The authors didn’t dig hard enough to find the true representation of papers that the poll shows should have been there.
Tony, I think you are being overly generous in offering these explanations. However your direction is not lost. Were we to use the number of popular press articles as a “proxy” for underlying expert papers they are based on – it would indicate a lot more cooling papers than can be found.
And thank you for the NIH 1940 paper on the Alaska settlement. As Allen points out – present day papers avoid this form of clarity – even considering the expansion of knowledge and technology. We see so much apparent “statistical chicanery” in AGW papers, one easily concludes the authors hope to dissuade scrutiny by volume of obfuscation.
****************
Joel Shore (11:47:48) :
Smokey says:
We’ve all seen those scary, steeply rising Mauna Loa CO2 charts, going up at about a 45 degree angle. So let’s ask the same question: are they chosen in a realistic way? Or is this more realistic: click
Nice try…But this is not at all analogous. There is good reason to plot the Mauna Loa chart in a way that allows one to see the details. And, there is no rule that says that bottom of the chart has to start from 0. Furthermore, anyone with any understanding of graphs can look at the scale on the lefthand-side of the plot and immediately see how much rise there has been.
****************
Now if we can convince Gore to correct his upside down temperature graph we will all be happy.
How excited some get over a slight difference in sea ice. The same people do not get too excited over all the errors in Gore’s movie or in Steig’s paper. The most important part of George Will’s article was the point he was making but since a certain group does not like it they will spend a career on it.
The 70’s – if you were not there, a million surveys by “top scientists” will not make the point.
I scanned that report that purports to debunk the global warming consensus and i found that the most strident voice over global cooling, Steven Schneider, identified as such by Craig Bohren who remembers it well, and as admitted by the man himself on video is somehow listed as predicting global cooling and global warming at the same time (?). This paradox comes about because the authors took a very liberal view of Schneiders papers, ignoring the abstracts and conclusions, ignoring Schneiders many interviews with the press and his hysterical press releases in favour of delving into the discussion part of his papers where he threw in some caveats – as indeed all science papers do – about perhaps being wrong about massive cooling and that perhaps it might be balanced by some greenhouse warming.
Schneider is not the only author to be parsed in this manner and represented as 50/50 on the issue. Yet while i’m certain there was no consensus then on cooling or warming because – as Lindzen says the profession was a lot healthier then and more skeptical – I’m inclined not to trust this trio of revisionists.
savethesharks says:
No. While I think there is a place for non-violent civil disobedience in general, it seems to me that it ought to be the last option. And, particularly given that we now have a much more responsive government in D.C., I don’t really see the purpose of it.
TonyB says:
I don’t think there is any claim being made that there was already a consensus on global warming in the 1970s. In fact, the 1975 NAS report was quite clear in saying that while we did have an understanding of various aspects that might affect the climate, we did not yet understand enough to predict the future course of the climate.
No he didn’t. He noted that there were a number of neutral papers. The actually numbers found are 44 warming, 20 neutral, and 7 cooling.
As for the rest of your complaints about the study potentially being biased and so-on and so-forth. If this is the case, you shouldn’t have a very hard time finding several more cooling papers that they missed. (And, if you question their warming ones, they list all the papers in their tables and references so you can go check them out yourself.) And, by the way, I don’t think there is any significant issue about not being able to find papers from the 60s and 70s. We may have not been in the computer era then yet but it wasn’t exactly the Dark Ages either and most of that stuff has now been put online.
Mark_0454 says:
And, who has actually disputed that there was a fair bit of talk of global cooling in the popular press in the 1970s? My two points have been:
(1) In the peer-reviewed scientific literature where the study that I linked to conducted a quite thorough search, an imminent future of global cooling was not even the majority opinion, let alone a consensus opinion, during that time.
(2) No thorough study that I know have has been conducted regarding the popular press where it seems likely that global cooling was talked about more because of the “hook” the story had with the fact that there had been a gradual cooling over the previous decades in the Northern Hemisphere and a few particularly cold winters in the early-mid 70s. However, what can be said is that, even there, the stories we hear from people like George Will are quite selective and ignore some stuff in the popular press that was talking about warming.
But, as I’ve said, I am not interested in defending the thesis that the popular press is a reliable source of scientific information. Then, as now, the most reliable scientific information available is from reading the peer-reviewed literature or the reports of organizations like the National Academy of Sciences whose purpose is to summarize the opinions in that literature for the public and policymakers.
Pragmatic says:
Fine. Then find them. It is not hard to do so such a search. It is a wonder that none of the right-wing think-tanks so obsessed with this issue have already done such a study. It seems ridiculous to me that we give you serious peer-reviewed studies of the literature and you come back with these “Well, I bet there were a lot more” comments. It is not hard to do such searches if you really want to. Here is the link to the Science website…I think you should be able to search that magazine and at least pull up the abstracts without having to subscribe: http://sciencemag.org/search.dtl
JamesG says:
They classified Rasool and Schneider as predicting cooling. Which other ones do you think they misclassified? Be specific please. It should not be hard for you to at least be able to pull up the abstracts even if you can’t get access to the whole papers.
Joel
You have either missed the point (which would be unlike you) or failed to read one of my posts (which would be much more understandable).
I am saying that if there was only a narrow consensus in a poll of all scientists at the time in favour of warming, this should mean the papers found should be much more evenly spread betwen the two sides than the proportions that were located.
Two out of three of the authors certainly have an agenda and the third might. In this context of ‘committted’ authors wanting to prove their side is ‘right’ it is surely reasonable to point out that the study may well be good (which it was) interesting (which it was) )well written (which it was) but that does not make it either objective or well balanced or correct, and to cite it as a definitive document that disproves the consensus myth fails to recognise the context-Don’t worry Brendan-my words not yours:)
If someone would pay me I will gladly research the subject and attempt to locate the additional documents that may or may not still be out there after 30 or more years. However, in the unlikely event that Real Climate Noaa or the Albuerque journal will put up the money for me to do this, our only option remains to snipe at the work that has already been done- as you would do if you were in our position.
TonyB
George Will: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will030109.php3
It’s just too funny.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
Hi Joel your 10-59-12
I have been poking round a little in the expectation that Real Climate will be happy to pay my expenses 🙂
This is a good study of the four major scares of climate change through the centuries-two for cooling and two for warming.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
Their conclusion is
“It would be difficult for the media to do a worse job with climate change coverage. Perhaps the most important suggestion would be to remember the basic rules about journalism and set aside biases — a simple suggestion, but far from easy given the overwhelming extent of the problem.
Three of the guidelines from the Society of Professional Journalists are especially appropriate:
“Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”
“Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.”
“Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.”
Within this report are a number of links and references-this is one of them from Harvard;
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
“Cambridge, MA – A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.”
Joel, you will note most of my posts here are based on historical precedent and clearly show we have been this way before many times without the benefit of added co2. If you or anyone else would like to tell me why this time it is different to our recent past-since the Indus civilisations came into being during a warm climatic period-I will gladly listen. I have no record of dismissing any of your reports out of hand-indeed I have supported you on occasion.
TonyB
Gerald Machnee (10:16:25),
You’re right, some folks will nitpick and split hairs for hours on end trying to prove that George Will was wrong — an impossible task in this case, as shown by Bill Illis in his 17:55:09 post. Bill shows that the current ice extent is a million square kilometers greater now than it was in 1979.
And regarding this CO2 chart, I might be inclined to accept the reasons given for the use of the steeply rising Mauna Loa chart — IF the chart I provided was ever used by the alarmists. But it’s not, because a chart of a trace gas with a y-axis that begins at zero isn’t scary at all. So we always get shown the scary chart that shows CO2 heading straight for the moon.
Joel Shore, You didn’t take Anthony’s well meaning advice, so you should consider the possibility that posting here has become an obsession:
Earth to Joel: getting ‘all riled up’ is being overly emotional. Other people are not responsible for your feelings; they’re your feelings, see? They come from within you. And you are not the arbiter of all “wrong things.”
Really, Joel, you should stop getting so wrapped up in your personal crusade to show everyone else the error of their skeptical ways. It’s a big world out there. So relax, move out of your mom’s basement, meet some people, get involved with the non-internet world for a change. You’ll probably enjoy it.
Tenney Naumer (13:56:44) :
Lemme c, the view from the parallel universe that runs alongside most of yours is this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-ice-a-saga-in-five-chapters/
Of course, since this is the view from reality-land, I wouldn’t expect many of you to be able to comprehend it.
Say, Tenney, you still here? How are things over in AGW/CC fantasy land? Getting a good buzz from all the cognitive dissonance yet?
Good evening Tenney
If you would like to take a historic perspective of ice and the Arctic why don’t you read my earlier post? The current situation is not unprecedented, nor even unusual. That old arctic ice keeps melting in well documented 60/80 year cycles.
Tonyb
Typo:
JamesG (10:20:15) :
“I scanned that report that purports to debunk the global warming [sic–should be cooling–RK] consensus and i found that the most strident voice over global cooling, Steven Schneider, …”
TonyB says:
I guess I understand that…and I am not sure why the poll results don’t better mirror what you see in the papers. But, on the other hand, we know very little about that poll that Brendon H mentioned, such as who was surveyed and how the question was asked. And, it seems to be a pretty weak argument to say that since one piece of evidence shows a fairly strong majority for warming and the other shows only a weak majority for warming, the conclusion that there was actually a consensus for cooling is still at all likely!
Point taken but frankly, I hope I would snipe with a little more substance. I’m not being paid to do this either but I did previously do an informal search of Science magazine to confirm for myself what the state of the science was at that time, which is partly why I am so insistent on this issue. It is not like you guys have to do a complete counter-study. Even finding a few papers that they missed would be something…Or papers that they seriously miscategorized.
Hmmm…I guess I would question your definition of “good”. First of all, it doesn’t deal at all with the issue of the state of the peer-reviewed literature, only of articles in the popular press. Second of all, it doesn’t explain what its methodology was for finding the articles. For all we know, they may have just cherry-picked articles to support their picture. And, in fact, we can identify articles that they did not mention…The August 1975 New York Times article on warming is one. This Newsbusters story gives some other ones: http://newsbusters.org/node/11640 . (I sort of enjoy using one source to undermine the simplistic notions of another source when both are coming from the same political perspective!)
That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if a more rigorous study was basically supportive of the general thesis that reports in the popular press tended to mirror the current trend in climate. Here is how the Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck paper explain it:
Still, that is a question of limited interest to me since I have never been supportive of the idea that we should take climate change seriously because the popular media tell us to. I am more interested in what the peer-reviewed scientific literature and the National Academy of Sciences, for example, has to say.
TonyB says:
Well, that is a large detour from our general discussion, so rather than “go off” on that infamous paper, I would just direct you to this interesting article about it: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i02/02a01601.htm Alas, this article used to be available for free although alas that is no longer the case. The upshot of it is that the publication of that paper in the small journal “Climate Research” caused the mass resignation of several editors, including von Storch who was to become editor-in-chief. And, the publisher himself admitted that the article was so deeply flawed it that should not have gotten past the editorial process. (Where the publisher and editors who resigned disagreed was that the editors thought it was an inherent problem with the editorial process that was not being corrected while the publisher felt that the editorial process of the journal was basically sound, at least after the changes that he instituted.)
Well, I’ll try to keep it very short. If you want more, there are hundreds of pages on the potential effects of climate change at the IPCC website!
First, I am not sure exactly what time period you are talking about. The industrial revolution actually happened during the Little Ice Age (although it is true that the beginnings of our civilization were likely during a warmer period). However, we have already raised CO2 to levels not seen in the at least the last 750,000 years…and likely several million years…and all of the substantial weight of the evidence is that this has begun and will continue to produce quite rapid (especially by geological standards) warming and other changes to our climate. It is a climate that, while it may not be “optimal” in any absolute sense is the one that we and the other species to the earth are adapted to (as is true of the current sea levels). Furthermore, many of those species have already been stressed by habitat fragmentation, pollution, and other effects that will make it even more difficult for them than it would have been in the past to adapt to a rapid change.
And, while some people here seem to think that the substantial uncertainties that do remain in the science somehow mean that we have nothing to worry about, I think if anything it means quite the opposite. I think we now know enough to know that what we are causing is very likely a significant perturbation to a climate system that throughout the geological history of the earth has shown itself to be quite sensitive to perturbations and quite capable of making very sudden shifts.
And that I appreciate.
TonyB: One more point that I meant to make is that even if you don’t have the time to research the peer-reviewed literature, don’t you find it a bit strange that people on the “skeptic” side who do have more time (and who may even be getting paid to do this sort of stuff!) haven’t been able to come up with gobs of examples of global cooling articles if such examples actually existed?!? I mean, why is Will reduced to quoting Shackleton et al. completely out-of-context in order to come up with his one single example from the peer-reviewed literature?!? Why do skeptics bring up Rasool and Schneider (which is really one of the few legitimate “global cooling” papers that I know of) so much? Where are all of the other examples that they could use? [Heck, even Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck managed to come up with 7 more that they could at least categorize as cooling!]
TonyB: “…two of the three authors had an acknowleged warming agenda and the third-the keeper of the weather records- certainly did not appear as objective as he might…”
For obvious reasons these factors say nothing about the quality of the report or its conclusions. The backgrounds of the authors may have some bearing on the paper’s methodology and conclusions, but you cannot discover faults in the paper by inspecting the views of the authors. That’s why the ad hominen is a logical fallacy. To fault the paper, you need to look at its arguments and evidence.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this paper. But it presents a case that casts doubt on the claim of a scientific consensus on cooling in the 1970s, and to a lesser extent, a media consensus.
“Let us for the sake of advancing the arguement (only) accept the poll at the time showed a narrow consensus in favour of warming…”
I’m not arguing for a warming consensus. I was speaking hypothetically: “…if there were any scientific consensus”. Warmers argue that in the 1970s there was no consensus one way or the other. It’s sceptics who are claiming a cooling consensus.
“Yet by the figures you cite around 80% of papers the thre authors ‘found’ supported warming. Surely it is more reasonable the figure would represent around 50/55%?”
Twenty of the papers were considered to be neutral, so I doubt that the ratio of warming vs cooling could be presented as 80/20. Also, while scientific papers in the 1970s may have favoured warming – although probably more tentatively than now – there’s no reason to assume that a large majority of climate scientists were in favour of AGW, since the evidence was less conclusive back then.
Anna V: “Many people’s memories are not about peer reviewed papers, but about magazines and newspapers.”
True, but I was talking about the scientific consensus. That said, the paper I cited also deals with media treatment of the issue, and provides evidence that the media presented several points of view regarding both global cooling and warming.
It’s ironic that the Artic Climate Research Center is in George Will’s(and my) hometown in Illinois! Mr. Will is today’s greatest living commander of the English language. He could verbally run rings around JK without breaking a sweat.
Joel Shore (19:19:36) :
“I mean, why is Will reduced to quoting Shackleton et al. completely out-of-context in order to come up with his one single example from the peer-reviewed literature?!?”
Joel, the issue is pretty much dead. Bill Illis has demonstrated that George Will was correct and that global sea ice extent is in fact larger today than 1979.
The following data taken from NOAA datasets is further confirmation that the statement made by George Will in his Feb 15th column is correct with respect to global sea ice extent.
Dec, 79 SH sea ice extent – 10.4 M km^2
Dec, 79 NH sea ice extent – 13.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 79 extent – 23.9 M km^2
Dec, 08 SH sea ice extent – 12.2 M km^2
Dec, 08 NH sea ice extent – 12.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 08 extent – 24.7 M km^2
An increase of .8 M km^2 from December 1979 to December 2008. An area larger than the State of Texas.
It is snowing on Dr. Hansen’s global warming protest and the Pew Polls show that global warming has slipped to the bottom of citizen concerns. What remains here is an opportunity for the alarmists to face their own demise due to intransigence. Had your campaign been more open and unbiased toward the scientific process – you may have won more followers. But the facts keep popping up to defeat an entirely outdated method of political expediency. Even with the MSM, the IPCC, the gov agencies and celebrity tag alongs – AGW is entirely unnecessary to accomplish its purported goal. The world is rapidly adopting alternative energy resources without need for alarmist cries of doom. There are myriad good reasons to become energy independent. But CO2 is not one of them.
AGW lost their fight when they refused to allow the opposing point of view to be heard. Even the dimmest of wits has scratched and pondered why don’t they let the other guy speak or publish? And therein you lost the battle. Only the weak do not tolerate criticism. And the very weak censor thought. Do like TonyB suggests – get outta mom’s basement and live a little. It’s a lovely planet and it’ll survive without you. Enjoy!