Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review decided to ask George Will a few questions about his recent column. I respect Steigerwald, precisely because he goes to the trouble of calling up people and asking questions directly. As many WUWT readers know, Will was recently villified for his column and for his printing of his interpretation on arctic sea ice. in particular. The excerpt below gives a window into Will’s thinking. – Anthony
Will on warming: The cold facts
By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 7, 2009
After George F. Will wrote a column last month questioning the faulty premises and apocalyptic predictions of global-warming alarmists, he caught holy heck from America’s “eco-pessimists.” He and his editors at The Washington Post were blasted with thousands of angry e-mails, most of which challenged Will’s assertion that global sea ice levels have not been dramatically reduced by man-made global warming, as environmentalists claim, but are essentially the same as they were in 1979. Will, who had used data from the Arctic Climate Research Center as his source, also was accused of multiple inaccuracies by The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. Will wrote a second column defending his data and returning fire at Revkin.
All is calm now and Will is getting ready for the start of his favorite season — baseball season. I talked to him by phone on Thursday from his office in Washington.
- Q: You have felt the righteous wrath of those who believe in man-made global warming. Are you still all there?
- A: Oh, heavens. Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns. Now I don’t blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn’t want to engage in argument either.
- Q: The big issue was about how much global sea ice there is now compared to 1979.
- A: And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. The critics completely ignored — as again, understandably — the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.
- Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn’t any hysteria back then.
- A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it’s a little hard for them to deny it.
- Q: What disturbs you most about this global warming consensus that seems to be pretty widespread and doesn’t seem to be eroding?
- A: Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it’s socially responsible … (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.
I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I’ve never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade — and this is a political crusade, because it’s about how we should be governed and how we should live; those are the great questions of politics. It is clearly for some people a surrogate religion. It’s a spiritual quest. It offers redemption. But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it’s warming, the government’s going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.
read the entire column at the Pittsburg Tribune-Review
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So they picked the media reports that they wanted to pick.
the paper actually doesn t really look at “media reports” at all. it looks at SCIENTIFIC PAPERS.
there is a difference. as there is a difference between GLOBAL sea ice extent and ARCTIC sea ice extent, and its relevance for AGW.
there was at best a tiny “hysteria” about global cooling in newspaper headlines and popular magazins in the 70s.
this is something completely different to the major concern about global warming in scientific papers today.
Just because something has a .pdf appended doesn’t mean it’s not intended to be propaganda.
please read it, before you comment on it. it doesn t say, what you claim it says.
Anybody familiar with the 1980’s nuclear freeze crowd and the West Germans ‘Greens’? These ‘enviro’ groups were heavily funded and supported by the former Soviet Union.
all of this is false.
We didn’t have the World Wide Web in those days, or other alternate media. The media then was all over the threats of a new ice age, but this was quickly forgotten after a few years and some other ‘crisis’ was found. (I believe it was ‘nuclear winter’ that next came to forefront.)
again, what the media said is irrelevant.
and even the media problem was mainly in false headlines, that didn t fully capture the story. (a rather typical problem, since much longer than the 70s..)
and false representation of scientific articles. (another problem, that continues up until today. Will s articles about global warming are the best recent example!)
Off subject:
As an anesthetist I think it is hilarious that the EPA may soon deem co2 a pollutant. In surgery during laparascopic procedures we insufflate the abdominal cavity with co2. This is done thousands times each day all over the globe. Will this co2 insufflation become illegal? Hundreds of thousands of liters are used each day around the world.
Tenney Naumer (05:27:37) :
George Will lives in his own mental parallel universe — his entire column was pure rubbish, totally unfounded in science, not just the bit about the global sea ice extent, a virtually worthless number when discussing the science of climate change, a fact that you ALWAYS conveniently leave out for your readers — what’s up with that?
Someone obviously forgot to tell the IPCC:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10560630&pnum=0
sod, you must be too young to remember the frantic alarmism over the global cooling scare in the ’70’s. You stated that “there was at best a tiny “hysteria” about global cooling.” ‘Tiny’?? That statement is so far off the mark it can only be called flat wrong. There was a huge amount of global cooling hysteria back then, comparable to today’s global warming hysteria. The only thing missing was the internet.
I remember very well the scary speculation and panicked frenzy about how global cooling would bring climate disaster; anyone who believes that the scientific establishment wasn’t on board the global cooling bandwagon is either young and naive, or mendacious. Our friend William Connolley is in the latter category.
Let’s look at just one of the endless media reports of the scientific establishment during the 1970’s, on the specter of global cooling. Newsweek cited a study by the National Academy of Sciences, which stated that the famines resulting from global cooling could be “catastrophic.”
The NAS study continued: “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale because global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
It also reported on a survey done the prior year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the NOAA, which showed a decline of .5° in global temperatures between 1945 and 1968.
And a report from Columbia University referred to satellite photos showing large increases in Northern Hemisphere snow cover during the 1971 – 72 winter.
Other scientists reported that the growing season in England had been shortened by two weeks since 1950, resulting in a loss of 100,000 tons of grain. The same report stated the consensus that meteorologists are “almost unanimous” in their view that the cooling trend would continue.
Yet another NOAA study was reported, which concluded that the average amount of sunshine reaching the ground fell by 1.3% between 1964-72.
Still another NOAA scientist, Dr. James McQuigg, stated in 1970’s-style global cooling alarmism worthy of Al Gore: “The world’s food producing system is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”
Reid Bryson was quoted as saying in 1975 that the cooling had taken the planet one-sixth of the way to the next Ice Age. That’s scary, no?
And the National Academy of Sciences back in 1975 sounded just like they sound today: “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Yet today’s political establishment is very anxious to spend $Trillions in new tax money to mitigate… what, exactly? There happens to be no global warming at all, only scary alarmism backed by endless “what ifs.”
You say that “this is something completely different to the major concern about global warming in scientific papers today.” That is simply not true. And Connolley, et al, know this, so they are trying to cover up the truth with their academic-style propaganda piece.
The reports from the scientific community quoted above are all from just one issue, from just one magazine, from a decade that saw many hundreds, if not thousands of similar global cooling reports from the scientific community.
Connolley falsely asserts that all of these different scientists and professional organizations were not jumping on the global cooling bandwagon, and he’s falsifying the record when he says that the scientific community believed in global warming in the 1970’s just the same as they do today.
The quotes above prove that William Connolley is lying when he argues that the global cooling scare was mostly limited to the media, and that the scientific consensus in the 1970’s believed in global warming. Did Newsweek simply fabricate those quotes?
Finally, another poster made the comment: “Anybody familiar with the 1980’s nuclear freeze crowd and the West Germans ‘Greens’? These ‘enviro’ groups were heavily funded and supported by the former Soviet Union.”
Your lame response: “All of this is false.” Not only is that no answer, but it is completely wrong. It is a fact that throughout the Cold War the Soviets funneled plenty of money to individuals and organizations helpful to their ideology. And today’s FSB [successor to the KGB] continues to use useful fools to undermine the countries that it still considers to be their capitalist enemy.
The old Soviet Union funded the same “green” groups that people like George Soros fund today. After the Berlin Wall came down, a lot of formerly classified Soviet documents found their way to the West. Google the Venona papers. There are reams of information showing conclusively, among other things, that the Soviets heavily financed and supported the environmental movement [and many other anti-Western organizations].
I hope you’re simply too young to have much perspective in these matters. Youth and inexperience gets cut a lot of slack, and rightly so. But if you’re old enough to have lived through the global cooling scare of the ’70’s, and you are still defending the mendacious Mr. Connolley, then you’re just another Fellow Traveler. So let’s hope you’re still a young guy riding the learning curve.
J,
I see that Tenney isn’t the only one living in a parallel universe. From your link:
The AGW proponents’ desperate scare tactics are looking more and more like the boy who cried “Wolf!!”
An amazing article about Obama on Bloomberg today:
People are not stupid and they starting to understand where they are up to:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=amhpOT5rlR1Y
At CO2 skeptics you can vote to whistle Obama back from his planned Climate Legislation.
On Lucia’s blog it has apparently been decided that George Will did not tell the truth about sea ice. I have taken the liberty to type up this recantation that I am sure George Will will be happy to sign:
I, George Will, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Revered Scientists, having before my eyes and touching with my hands, the IPCC Report, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by Gore’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, revealed, and taught by the IPCC. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the global sea ice was at the same level on Dec. 31, 2008 as it was on the same day in 1979, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false information, and after it had been notified to me that the said doctrine was contrary to the IPCC– I wrote and printed a column in which I discuss this new information, already condemned, and adduced arguments of great cogency in its favor, without presenting any solution of these, and for this reason I have been pronounced by the IPCC to be vehemently suspected of Lying, that is to say, of having held and believed that the global sea ice was at the same level on Dec. 31, 2008 as it was on the same day in 1979:
Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Warmers, this vehement suspicion, justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and lies, and generally every other error and Lie whatsoever contrary to the said IPCC, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but that should I know any skeptic, or person suspected of Lying about the climate, I will denounce him to the IPCC. Further, I swear and promise to pay all fines that shall be imposed upon me by the IPCC or any other governmental body. And, in the event of my contravening, (which Gore forbid) any of these my promises and oaths, I submit myself to all the pains and penalties imposed and promulgated by the IPCC and other governmental bodies against such delinquents. So help me Gore, and these His IPCC Reports, which I touch with my hands.
I, George Will, have abjured as above with my own hand.
______________________________(sign here)
__/__/2009
sod, you have no idea what you are talking about, re the 1970s cooling scare.
I posted this on the earlier George Will thread, but it bears repeating here:
Re the Global Cooling in the 70’s
This illustrates just how pervasive and convincing the impending doom of Global Cooling was in those days. I was there. It affected me (but in a good way).
Apart from the hysteria from the media, there was ample proof for the average Joe / Jane just by looking at the outside thermometer.
For example, the winter of 1972-73 was notable in Texas, where I was a freshman in undergrad in Austin. Just after New Year’s, the entire state grew very cold for a prolonged period, such that there was not enough natural gas to keep everyone warm (hard to believe in Texas, but it was true).
The extreme cold and natural gas shortage led to natural gas rationing, and non-essential users were cut off, including colleges. The University of Texas made an unprecedented move to remain closed after the Christmas holiday (we were still allowed to call it that, back then). The administration delayed the start of classes for a week as I recall, but it may have been two weeks. Classes were extended into June to make up the lost hours, with much disruption to graduation plans and starting dates for new jobs, as one can imagine.
Lawsuits were filed all around, of course, against Oscar Wyatt and his Coastal corporation. One allegation was that Oscar had over-sold his natural gas delivery capabilities, with the expectation that the entire state would not freeze at the same time. Usually, that strategy worked, but not that winter. (The same Oscar Wyatt who got in rather more trouble recently).
In response to the natural gas shortage, the University dug a big hole in the ground under the south steps leading to the main building, and installed two giant fuel storage tanks. The idea was that they would have their very own little Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and burn fuel oil in the University’s central utility system when a severe cold snap happened again. Classes would not be delayed ever again.
Now, if the Global Warming side was convincing in those days, why would a rather large and sophisticated University go to all that trouble and expense to install their own private SPR?
There was also a really nice (and rare) snowfall in January 1973 in Austin, I remember it being about 6 to 8 inches on the Austin campus. It was much more fun to play in the snow, than go to classes! We loved it. Ahh, to be 19 again!!!
John Laidlaw (04:37:04) :
The key phrase in your response is “Popular Literature of the Era”, which clearly shows that you (and Smokey) are missing the point. “Popular Literature of the Era” was a side-bar discussion and irrelevant to the main thrust of the article, which is the scientific literature of the era. I’ve already qualified my acceptance of the authors’ data, so there is no need to re-hash that. The rest of your response is simply a collection of putative reasons why we shouldn’t trust the authors, esp. Connelly. I agree with you on most of them, but that discussion is irrelevant. Connelly, et al, provided hard data which showed that warming was the main concern of working scientists of the era, no matter how the popular press chose to portray it. Their data may very well have been cherry-picked, which I also acknowledged, but until you or someone provides hard evidence of this, I, at least, am prepared to provisionally accept them. They also provided an explicit list of search terms, which you are free to agree or disagree with, or even indpendently verify.
sod (07:15:29) :
Mostly accurate; but no matter how much you qualify, slice, and dice, you can’t call something “global” when the long-term trends of two huge regions (the poles) are going in opposite directions (see recent threads at Climate Audit for problems with the most recent Mannian/Steig meta-analysis alleging that Antarctica has actually warmed slightly since the mid-50’s).
Your closing statement is semi-accurate: recent ice loss in the arctic is much greater than the models predicted, which is why the more emprirically-minded researchers are looking at things like the NAO. Atmosphere alone couldn’t possibly transport enough heat to melt that much ice that quickly (and of course, the arctic ice pack has rebounded significantly this year).
John Galt (10:33:45) :
“The agenda driven pseudo scientists appear to have learned from their failure to get modern society to commit suicide with . . .”
That’s a ways over the top, don’t you think? Especially considering that the scientists from the 70’s are mostly retired, and it’s now a completely different crowd (except, of course, for the Godfather of Global Warming, James Hansen).
Smokey (15:49:03) :
“Let’s look at just one of the endless media reports . . .”
Exactly – media reports. No matter how much the media claims to represent the science, simply claiming doesn’t make it so. Connelly, et al, provided hard numbers from the scientific literature. Accept them or reject them, but please stay focused on them, and forget the popular media.
“And the National Academy of Sciences back in 1975 sounded just like they sound today: ‘Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.’ ”
Actually, that sounds nothing like today. That sounds like real science – appropriately tentative, as opposed to the over-certainty and over-selling that has characterized climate science lately.
You accuse Connelly of bald assertion, sans evidence, but by relying – in your own words – on “just one issue, from one magazine” you engage in the same practice, and when you assert that
“Connolley falsely asserts that all of these different scientists and professional organizations were not jumping on the global cooling bandwagon, and he’s falsifying the record when he says that the scientific community believed in global warming in the 1970’s just the same as they do today.”
you are being, frankly, bizarre. Connelly, et al, provided hard data from the scientific literature. Were they cherry-picked? Quite possibly, but If you’re going to accuse them of falsifying the record, you’ll have to do better than just making your own bald assertions.
And BTW, I lived in Boulder, CO during the mid-late 70’s, and with Stephen Schneider then working at NCAR, Boulder could have been fairly described as the epicenter of the Global Cooling Scare. While there was a lot of talk, and Scheider and collegues were regularly quoted in the local media, there was nothing even remotely close to the AGW hysteria of today (and it is hysteria – there is simply no other word for it).
“Not only is that no answer, but it is completely wrong.” Right; it’s no answer, but it’s the wrong answer. The remainder of this and the following paragraph rapidly descend into rambling rabid-right paranoia. Did the soviets support western groups that they thought might be cordial to their interests? Absolutely – just as the U.S. and other western powers supported groups within the Soviet Union for the same reasons. If you’ve got any evidence of Soviet support for the specific cases mentioned (German Greens & the nuclear freeze crowd)(or any other enviro groups, for that matter), let’s see it.
Finally, regarding Will’s article: Give it up, people. Lucia just did a fine job of refuting it:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/what-george-will-meant-why-its-wrong/
Will foolishly relied on Tech Central Station (never the most reliable of sources), which in turn chose two outliers in the dataset, apropos of nothing, except their desire to “prove” that arctic sea ice is about in the same condition it was 30 years ago. The only points of significance in the whole tawdry affair were the foaming-mouthed fury it provoked in the greens, and that even Andy Revkin’s impeccable green creds provided no protection. Hell hath no fury like a church scorned.
sod (07:15:29) :
Mostly accurate; but no matter how much you qualify, slice, and dice, you can’t call something “global” when the long-term trends of two huge regions (the poles) are going in opposite directions (see recent threads at Climate Audit for problems with the most recent Mannian/Steig meta-analysis alleging that Antarctica has actually warmed slightly since the mid-50’s).
thanks Paddik, i agree with most of what you wrote.
but i disagree with the part that i quoted.
if i had just lost my left leg, it would have a massive “global” impact on my whole body. an argument focused on “but we should look at both legs” doesn t really make sense under this conditions.
on the other hand, a “global” problem, like smoking, could easily only have a strong effect on one leg. again, looking at both would make the problem any better.
PaddikJ (20:26:27) :
You make some very good points. I (fairly obviously) cannot accept the article at face value, but I *am* going to keep my trap shut until I can prove my point :).
Mike Bryant,
Excellent parody. Why is George Will being held to a higher standard than Nobel prize winners and government bureaucrats?
Al Gore, the UN/IPCC, Michael Mann, James Hansen and others consistently make major errors, and even use fraudulent data, but they cause hardly a ripple. But George Will repeats one point that turns out to be inaccurate, and even Lucia goes on the attack. Makes you wonder.
PaddikJ,
See my comment to Mike. William Connolley could not be more biased. But we get a ‘Well, OK, he’s the Wiki gatekeeper, but after all he did provide us with charts and graphs and numbers.’
Please re-read my post, because I think you missed the whole point of it, which was that one Newsweek article [out of one issue, and among dozens/hundreds of similar magazine and newspaper articles spanning a decade] repeatedly quoted the NOAA, and physical scientists by name, and the National Academy of Sciences, and meteorlologists, and universities — all predicting global cooling.
Connolley contends that most scientists in the ’70’s were predicting global warming. If Connolley couldn’t find what I posted, and plenty of other scientists and organizations beating the global cooling drum, then it’s clear that he’s deliberately picking only those that support his highly inaccurate contention.
Connolley is heavily biased. He has an agenda, and he is doing everything he can to downplay the global cooling scare because its existence refutes today’s global warming/AGW scare; both were ratcheted up in large part by monkey-piling on the latest craze, whether it’s global cooling or global warming. And scientists followed the money back then, just like they do today.
If you prefer to give Connolley the benefit of the doubt because his self-selected propaganda has a .pdf at the end, fine. But I was working in a metrology lab in my late 20’s during the global cooling scare of the 1970’s, specifically on temp and humidity calibration. We received all the current literature, and I honestly can not recall any serious discussion, scientific or otherwise, claiming that we were heading toward global warming. Anything along those lines was definitely a minority opinion. The consensus in the 1970’s, among both scientists and the general public, was that global cooling was the probable outcome.
Today the frenzy is more pronounced because there is a lot more money involved, and the internet makes it much easier to question data, methodologies and motives. But human nature hasn’t changed. Money and status are big motivators. And scientists are not immune to their effects.
“I threw out some things from my parents house that were all related to programs in school that covered the “coming ice age”.”
Odd, I read similar comments occasionally as further support for the 70’s cooling meme. I was teaching at the time. At best, there were a couple of articles in Time for Kids or similar topics since all they had to do was rewrite an extant article and provide some reading comprehension questions for the classroom teacher.
If there were any ‘programs’ it seems odd that no one has actually been able to provide a copy or even a reference. For a program to be developed, it takes a few years to establish a need ( say updating science books), have material written or produced, vet, promote, get materials accepted into curriculum, purchased, and teachers trained in their use. The cooling paradigm didn’t last that long even in the public’s eye – the only mention of it was a brief mention that science was unsure in the 70’s in much later (late 90’s) science books.
Children’s comic book from the early 1990’s: click
The clique:
NASA/GISS Director: James Hansen. Gavin Schmidt works under Hansen.
NASA web site operators: Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann [of the discredited “hockey stick”].
GISS Modeler: Gavin Schmidt — whose models totally failed to predict the rapid cooling since 2007.
RealClimate is run by Gavin Schmidt, and owned by Michael Mann; contributor: William Connolley
Wikipedia editor: William Connolley.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
The Consensus:
Votes for “Best Science” site:
RealClimate: 1,446
WUWT: 14,150
Children’s comic book from the early 1990’s: click
uppps, that isn t a scientific piece of work, is it?
but even though, it is RIGHT.
looking at the experience with “global” sea ice, i have some doubts that you can spot the difference between this WILL happen (or this has a very high probability) and this COULD happen.
the plastic sheets (white ones though..) are currently used to protect alpine glaciers in Swiss.
GISS Modeler: Gavin Schmidt — whose models totally failed to predict the rapid cooling since 2007.
you don t understand the models at all. they simply will NEVER “predict” any annual events.
If you prefer to give Connolley the benefit of the doubt because his self-selected propaganda has a .pdf at the end, fine. But I was working in a metrology lab in my late 20’s during the global cooling scare of the 1970’s, specifically on temp and humidity calibration. We received all the current literature, and I honestly can not recall any serious discussion, scientific or otherwise, claiming that we were heading toward global warming.
so it is your personal memory, against his numbers?
sorry, you lose.
Giles, I noticed that some self-described sod butted in when I provided you with the cover of a fun comic book used by some schools in the early ’90’s.
Pay him no mind, it’s not important. But here’s another comic you might enjoy: click
In another 20 – 30 years’ time folks will look at PETA and AGW believers the same way; as extremist promoters of a failed movement.
Oh, and here’s another: click
PETA, AGW/catastrophe believers. Same closed mindset.
Haha…..the “clique.” More like…the INBRED family.
And we all know what Mother Nature thinks of inbreeding.
Perhaps some inbreeding has already occurred.
CASE IN POINT: One once-brilliant Astronomer / Director of NASA (something happened to him and we are not quite sure) became a founding member of the International Church of the Anthropogenic Global Warming…..and that was all she wrote.
The brainwashing of the cult had begun.
Move over Jim Jones and the Church of Scientology.
Is that goofy hat that ex-scientist-turned-social-activist Dr. James Hansen was wearing at the snowbound AGW event in DC last week, part of the garb for their new religion?? Just wondering… (LOL)
Chris
Norfolk, VA
“..fun comic book used by some schools ..”
No, not really. In some school libraries probably, certainly available in various book stores. But Usborne doesn’t provide curriculum materials and I’d be somewhat surprised if their stuff comes up on recommended reading lists either.
So, so far, no links to anything showing school materials actively promoting a consensus on ‘global cooling’. A nice meme, but not an accurate statement of the state of educational materials either currently or in the 70’s or 80’s.
Giles, Mrs. Smokey, a middle school Principal for seventeen years, doesn’t agree with you. You would be surprised at some of the educational reading material bought by school librarians.
Mrs Smokey should be able to explain the difference between “..programs in school’..” and school library materials which may or may not be bought to support said programs.
So, still; nothing but anecdotal reminiscences about purported “programs in school that covered the “coming ice age”.
When I wrote curriculum materials, our research was vetted and we couldn’t get ‘The Ice Age is Coming!’ type stuff into the materials since if there weren’t the scientific data to support that inclusion. The Peterson Connolley Fleck paper (http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008BAMS2370.1) provides that analysis in this case.
smokey isn t a greta fan of serious links. so far he provided exactly ZERO of those.
the Usborne children book obviously isn t a scientific book. it isn t “hysteric” either.
you can t simply take any mentioning of “global cooling” as evidence of a hysteria at that time. source, context and details matter.
i am looking forward to links on some curriculum…
As Roger Sowell comments above:
True dat [and who’s t a greta?]
Neither does Giles, who either didn’t read my post @15:49:03, or has a reading comprehension problem. That post had ample ‘source, content and details.’ And it named names — names which Connolley avoids mentioning, because he is writing propaganda and trying to pass it off as ‘science’ that only the gullible will swallow.
It’s not surprising that Giles and sod [one and the same?] posted the same information: the completely discredited .pdf file by Connolley, his pal and a newspaper scribbler. Those three stooges pretend they couldn’t find the names of the scientists and organizations, like the NOAA and the NAS, that were prominently displayed in one of the biggest U.S. news magazines expressing concern over declining global temperatures, in the middle of an article about global cooling.
They did, of course, read the Newsweek article, and plenty more like it. But they still pretend that the global cooling scare didn’t happen. Why? Because they can not admit that they were wrong before. Who are they trying to fool now? They’re just like Dan “Fake but accurate” Rather, who also fabricated his information.
There’s no convincing people whose minds are made up and closed tight, but as anyone else can see from other comments in this thread, the folks who grew up in the 1970’s remembered the whole global cooling scare. To pretend that it didn’t happen is wishful thinking.
In fact, there were several global cooling scares. They alternate with global warming scares, like the tide coming and going.
This detailed report covers several of the warming/cooling scares over the past century or so: click
Anyone who actually believes that schools do not teach current events — whether it is the global cooling scare, or Al Gore’s high-priced moneymaker foisted on schools — has no clue about how education works in this country.
sod, Giles Winterbourne: re school curricula regarding the Ice Age Cometh:
Will you accept eye-witness accounts from students who were taught this, in say, 1964?
If you will, I can provide at least 30 from my class (4th graders, in Houston, Texas).
I clearly remember those classes: The globe is cooling, our best scientists tell us so, the ice and snow are increasing, glaciers will be advancing, polar bears will range farther south, that is ok, we are in Texas and it is a long way for them, besides, we have rifles at home and our Dads know how to use them, and the trump-card: we have airplanes that can sprinkle charcoal dust on the snow to make it melt.
Public school, using approved curricular materials, authorized by the School Board.
No, I don’t have the materials, we had to check them out in September, then return them in May each year.
robert brucker (15:14:32) :
Off subject:
As an anesthetist I think it is hilarious that the EPA may soon deem co2 a pollutant. In surgery during laparascopic procedures we insufflate the abdominal cavity with co2. This is done thousands times each day all over the globe. Will this co2 insufflation become illegal? Hundreds of thousands of liters are used each day around the world.
An evil and heretical practice that must be banned to save the planet…
However, for a small fee, that can be appropriately passed on to the patient a carbon indulgence may be purchased to redeem these acts.