Over at Bishop Hill’s blog, he posted this graph below which is an output from a special Google Labs search query. It lists the percentage of books that are about nuclear war and climate change.
Fittingly, the climate change graph (blue) is a hockey stick.
Bishop hill came up with what I consider to be a stunningly great caption, and this is well worthy of submitting to graphjam if somebody wants to do that. He called it:
“Conservation of worry”
…which is really one of the best labels I’ve read in a long time.
You can run this query yourself.
Here’s the link.
Taking that a step further, let’s add “global warming” to the mix.
It seems that term is falling out of favor compared with “climate change”, but we knew that.
Unfortunately it seems this query only covers data up to 2008. It will be interesting to see if there’s a recent decline after that given Climategate. Adding that word to the mix yields no hits, so it apparently is not in the database. Ditto for “climate disruption”.
But there is another word trend that seems to mirror “global warming” but may have peaked:
We live in interesting times.
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@Dan Lee: What you may view as juvenile language and imagery, others may view as a way of connecting with the common man for an appeal to humour. I understand your concerns, but I don’t believe this is the proverbial camel’s nose in the tent. Not everything can be G-rated everywhere at all times. Even Victorian society wasn’t like that. While this is a family site, there may be one or two things your kids may ask about, but I believe that it could be used as a teaching opportunity for the little ones that the word in question is not a polite synonym for a bull’s waste matter.
Just my two cents.
Strong correlation between bullshit and global warming. Hmm, anyone want to conjecture a causal relationship? Which direction? I don’t detect an 800 year lag, though…
For the fun of it, try these searches:
between 1800 and 2000 from the corpus English
Anthony Watts,James Hansen
Anthony Watts,Phil Jones
Anthony Watts,Michael Mann
higher sea levels,lower sea levels,rising sea levels
Meteorologist,Climatologist,Weatherman,Atmospheric Scientist,weatherman,meteorologist,climatologist,atmospheric scientist
hurricane,tornado,flood,drought,blizzard,snowfall,volcanic eruption
Global Warming,global warming,Global Cooling,global cooling,Ice Age,ice age
Global Warming,global warming,Climate Change,climate change,Climate Disruption,climate disruption
robust,scientific,consensus,post-normal science,scientist
robust,scientific method
energy dependence,energy independence
socialism,social justice,capitalism
between 1800 and 2008 from the corpus English
climate change,social justice,global warming
climate science,postnormal science
environmentalist,Greenpeace,green party
melting glaciers,glaciers are melting,glaciers are advancing
sea level rise,sea level fall
weather forecaster,climate forecast
climate experiment,climate model
anthropogenic,anthropogenic climate change
between 1970 and 2010 from the corpus English
Global Warming,Global warming,global warming
Climate Change,Climate change,climate change
Climate Disruption,Climate disruption,climate disruption
climate disruption,redistribution of wealth,wealth redistribution
between 2007 and 2008 from the corpus English
Climategate
between 1750 and 2008 from the corpus English
climate model,climate science,climatology
Franklin stove,air conditioning,HVAC,passive solar
wood stove,coal stove,natural gas furnace,electric furnace
gasoline automobile,electric automobile,diesel automobile
between 1980 and 2008 from the corpus English
global warming skeptic,global warming alarmist
climate change skeptic
climate change alarmist
carbon footprint,CO2 sequestration,carbon credit
global warming,IPCC,climate change,Climate Change
Inconvenient Truth,Al Gore
between 1950 and 2008 from the corpus English
climate modeling
Guido Botteri says:
January 22, 2011 at 8:22 am
Too many books on climate change? Good heating fuel.
@Huth:
I am afraid there’ll be not so many books to use as fuel, because my ironic post wanted to show that a trend doesn’t remain always the same. people don’t go always in the same direction, they turn left, right, and temperature trends do the same, like everyone can see looking at graphs of the past.
The trend about climate change books will not increase forever.
people don’t walk in the same direction so that they arrive to the see and start swimming… 🙂
So, only fanatic environmentalists can believe that this trend of increasing temperature can grow indefinitely, so that if it is increasing our planet will be hot like Venus, or, if it is decreasing will be facing an ice age.
Temperature goes up and down, that is what it did in more than 4,5 billions life.
In my opinion.
Slight OT, but as another person who helped fix the Y2K problem, I think the level of ignorance in the general public should be addressed by someone.
The Y2K problem was real, and a very large number of programmers made sure it was fixed in plenty of time, as evidenced by the complete lack of serious issues when the event occurred.
But there were other unreported consequences that had serious impacts on some lives. Many software companies exist from update income – they produce a product with reasonable new sales, but nowhere near enough to new sales to support the company, but survive thanks to the need to supply regular updates and enhancements that provide a regular influx of cash. Individual customers may upgrade only every 3 to 5 years, but there is a steady flow of upgrade sales.
But 1998 and 1999, almost the entire customer base of these software suppliers upgraded their software. These were boom years, and were misunderstood at the time. Companies, including the one I worked for at the time, were cash rich, stocks rose, staff levels grew, everything was rosy.
But early in the year 2000 the reason became obvious. Nobody was upgrading, so there was no cash flow. Even new customers dried up, as anyone considering replacing systems did so the year before, to avoid the need to upgrade legacy systems. Within six months, many of the companies, including the one I worked for, collapsed.
So I get a bit annoyed when the ignorant public say things like “remember Y2K? That was a fuss over nothing” – because it took a lot of work by many programmers to ensure that is was a “fuss over nothing”.
If that is not the kookiest web page on the Internet, I can’t imagine what one would be.
/Mr Lynn
That is truly far out.
I suppose he has a following though.One thing the Net has shown is that no matter how outre ones thinking is it is already out there and attracting like minded folk.
The vote is not for everybody.
In all seriousness I would have called this graph ‘Conservation of Millenarianism.’ I really wonder how graphs of ‘overpopulation’ and ‘Hubbert curve’ would compare.
To Grumpy Old Man:
You have Kipling confused with another Brit write, H.G. Wells. Wells named the “atomic bomb” and used it in his 1914 novel, The World Set Free.
This is but one of Wells’ many predictions in his speculative fiction. Virtually all were wrong in detail but right in outline.
Actually, Kipling wrote several stories we would call science fiction today. “With the Night Mail” is the one I believe the people who brought him up had in mind.
Possible explanation for the mid 1970s decline in books regarding Nuclear War:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=climate+change%2Cnuclear+war%2Coverpopulation&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
“steveta_uk says:
January 23, 2011 at 6:19 am”
Was “Y2K” a real problem? Certainly wasn’t for countries like Romania and many African countries who could not afford to spend the money to fix, what turned out to be, like AGW, a non-issue.
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=nuclear+weapons%2Cnuclear+energy%2Carms+race%2Cpeace+movement%2C+climate+change&year_start=1945&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
And if you know your history than all kinds items in this graphic become clear.
1953 – first hydrogen bom, people start to write about nuclear weapons.
1963 – Banning of atmospheric testing.
1979 – Three mile Island
1985/86 – Perestroika/Glasnost
And with these above it is interesting to watch what “Peace Movement” and “Climate change” do once the arms-race is over.