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
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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?
@ur momisugly 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.