The 1970's Global Cooling Compilation – looks much like today

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/#comment-1236065
David (UK), islam is a real problem no government scare. Maybe you try to fools us Here?

I wasn’t accusing anyone – I was asking a semi serious question – just because I missed the link is no need to be so unkind

To add – I had never heard the abbreviation Poptech before which is the reason I missed it

A couple of years ago I was informed by some youngsters that the stories about the Ice Age scare was an invention of Evil Oil. When I told them I lived through it and remembered it clearly, and also remembered how we laughed when the story suddenly changed to Global Warming, they told me my memory was faulty and that it never happened at all. I couldn’t believe just how cock-sure of themseves these youngsters were, how unprepared to listen, and how arrogant to dismiss my life experience simply because it didn’t fit their narrative. It also made me wonder why it was so important for them to believe that it never happened; as if they believe that Science has to be correct about everything all the time, rather than being an iterative process.
So: thank you. This is a very useful resource. A whole decade’s worth of references should shut up all but the most rabid 70’s Ice Age Scare Denier 🙂
[Mods, if my use of the D-word (which was intended as humour) is deemed inappropriate, please snip.]

Derek Sorensen says:
March 1, 2013 at 2:21 pm
“I couldn’t believe just how cock-sure of themseves these youngsters were, how unprepared to listen, and how arrogant to dismiss my life experience simply because it didn’t fit their narrative. ”
____________________
Yep. They certainly fit the profile.
It would not shut them up if you showed them this thread.
I call them the “Oh, but…” people; able to rationalize anything to support their reality.

Do you honestly think the people who are pushing agenda do not know there is a roughly 30 yr cycle?.. The downfall of that is that about the time everyone starts to believe… it changes:) Unfortunately we have let pseudo science agenda get away with stupid things like ozone hole scares and acid rain.. now they are on a rampage, time to take back our lives and freedoms from the greebly ones.

Schneider was such a master propagandist, and now he’s dead, and warmism is in shambles.
Honesty or Efficiency….

A Crooks says:
March 1, 2013 at 2:46 pm
“On that basis, I predict that a cycle of ice age scare stories is due – and wouldn’t you know it – the press is actually just starting to turn.”
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a top warmist “scientist” would switch to become an Ice Age scare prophet; much like Schneider switched in the 70ies – they had no problems blaming CO2 for the ice age threat, and later for the warming threat.
It is easy for climatists to postulate any kind of weird shit:
“n short, the theory is that during interglacial periods, over thousands of years, the earth’s soils get depleted of minerals, the plants become less robust and weaker at absorbing carbon dioxide and so carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. It causes more water in the equatorial belt to evaporate and move to the poles where it accumulates as snow. This snow causes the ice caps to advance and a new 100,000 year glacial period begins.”
Stopping The Coming Ice Age by Larry Ephron & Andy Caffrey – ca. 1988 (!)

climatereason says:
March 1, 2013 at 11:54 am
‘So the 20 year long (very real) cooling scare was most rife during the 1960′s and came to an end in the early 70′s. It is pointless of Connelley to cite selected later studies when the scare had ended, rather than the earlier studies when it was in full swing.”’
Not quite sure what you mean. The scare extended into ’78 or so and was embraced by first rate scientists at first rate universities.
Something you might want to research is the attempt to create a new scare based on several theories of Nuclear Winter following a nuclear war. It was extremely popular as Reagan’s popularity grew. It peaked and disappeared in the early Eighties.

philjourdan says:
March 1, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Very well said. The Left’s scare stories directed at children have been effective and just might be their greatest sin in the CAGW fiasco. I cannot forgive them.

Theo
Concern was at its greatest in the climate science world in the early 1970’s as the 20 year cooling trend reached its lowest point. Temperatures then started to rise again and eventually concern switched to warming. This was pre internet days and science papers, research and especially books, would take some time to reflect the changing beliefs.There were few top climate scientists by the late 70’s who were still promoting cooling, other perhaps than those who didnt like to admit they were wrong. Im not sure who would fall into that category although to be fair a 20 year cooling trend followed byonly a five year warming trend -at the time- might still be considered as a threat
Yes, whatever happened to nuclear winters?
tonyb

Oldjim says: A question – who is plagiarising who – This http://www.populartechnology.net/ is a dead ringer for this article and is dated one day earlier

ROFLMAO! Even if he did it would be an honor but Anthony has far more integrity than those who throw around such baseless allegations. Clearly I have his permission to repost this here so the global cooling scare of the 1970s can stop being denied.

Hello Poptech! Permission to repost your article to Deviantart, if I may!

Correction, make that a 1.1 deg. C increase.

During the 1970s the media promoted global cooling alarmism with dire threats of a new ice age. Extreme weather events were hyped as signs of the coming apocalypse and man-made pollution was blamed as the cause.
Man-made pollution caused some cooling, mostly through aerosol seeded clouds. We don’t have data to say how much. But when we cleaned up the pollution, it warmed. And when we reached the point of no serious atmospheric pollution left to clean up, it stopped warming.
Surprise, surprise.

I find it particularly stupid that NCAR was worried about TOO MUCH arctic ice, and are now worried about TOO LITTLE. Do they really expect everything about this planet to be static? What kind of morons are these people??

Cool!
/Mr Lynn

@ Jeff Alberts 7:31, indeed, thats twice in my life the media has attempted to stampede us into servitude. Hopefully this time the conditions are right to pay them back in kind.
Last seen reporting from the spring ice in Hudson Bay, works for me.
Who pulls the strings of our media?
Or is group think really that pervasive?
After this we will abolish political correctness and go back to physically educating bullying fools.
I notice some of the smarter ones, already fear this internet thingy.

I was pleased to someone mention Ponte’s book “The Cooling”. In the preface Ponte wrote,
“It is cold fact: the global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species.”
It is standard alarmism that begins with a false premise and then appeals to emotions by threatening the children. It’s a pattern repeated many times since.
Another influential book, “The Weather Conspiracy”, was produced by journalists who called themselves The Impact Team. It was subtitled “The coming of the New Ice Age.” On the cover it asked an appropriate question, but then essentially ignored it in the book, “Have our weather patterns run amok? Or are they part of a natural and alarming timetable?” They tried to add credibility by adding a gold sticker on the cover advising it, “Includes two CIA Reports.”
Themes developed by the CIA reports are representative of academic and political thinking of the day. One CIA report was titled, “Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production, and Climate”. It argues,
“Trying to provide adequate world food supplies will become a problem of over-riding priority in the years and decades immediately ahead -….Even in the most favorable circumstances predictable, with increased devotion of scarce resources and technical expertise, the outcome will be doubtful; in the event of adverse changes in climate, the outcome can only be grave”
The UN through the WMO carried out several studies on the impact of cooling on major agricultural regions.
In the Climate section of the CIA report is this comment.
“Far more disturbing is the thesis that the weather we call normal is, in fact highly abnormal and unusually felicitous in terms of supporting agricultural output. While still unable to explain how or why climate changes, or to predict the extent and duration of change, a number of climatologists are in agreement that the northern hemisphere, at least, is growing cooler.”
Geo-engineering was another activity that relates to the global warming alarmism. The Soviets proposed a dam across the Bering Straits to block the outflow of cold arctic water resulting in a warmer North Pacific and by connection around the high middle latitudes. Another proposal suggested large reflectors in geo-stationary orbit and directing solar energy to cold northern cities.

Great post. I’ve bookmarked it.
What would be great is to have a list of the surviving activists that authored or backed this screed back in the day, cross referenced with what they are saying about AGW (or whatever the current term is). Does anyone doubt that a substantial number are being paid for trotting out their well honed “climate doom” talks?
I’d love to read and share THAT list!

Great post, Anthony. Thanks for the effort.

Back when as an young engineer I together with some friends used to fix valve based data logging equipment for some young what would now be called environmentalists looking at the sulphur emissions of power stations. The fears then were more about cooling than warming. At the time this group of us had just learned about Fourier analysis to understand the way waveforms were built up and showed the clearly cyclical nature of the patterns but with no way of even trying to understand why they were that form. We showed even back then they were cyclic but they lost our support for them when instead of listening they dismissed us as the spanner merchants who fixed things after helping to get the evidence that gave rise to power station cleaning.
This cyclic nature shown up by the Fourier analysis is really clear on the rainfall patterns and can be transferred across to see the underlying temperature patterns where the dominant ripple can easily be removed to see the temperature aberration as it really exists. Sadly the climate scientist at the top are so convinced the science is settled they refuse to even contemplate any explanation outside CO2 based warming and only recruited like minded people to the profession for the last two decades.

This post and some comments nicely show that the argument goes from the right to the left. We need a global totalitarian rule. In order to attain that goal, all people should comply. People will comply if there is a global danger we can do something about. The latter excludes local enemies and global dangers we cannot do something about. Some remaining candidates are a pandemic and the climate. It does not matter whether the world cools, warms, or both, provided it is dangerous. We need some science for the justification of the danger and that we can influence the climate in the opposite direction.
Some reasons why the cooling scare of the sixties/seventies did not work fine. (1) The Cold War was considered more dangerous but this divided mankind, (2) the temperature record could not be manipulated enough, (3) there was no additional scare of rising see levels, (4) if carbon dioxide were the human factor, we should have produced more of that stuff, unless science had discovered that it is a coolant, (5) air pollution was already a concern of many decades before and for quite other reasons.

Honestly, if you could just make this a sticky for a while…

Poptech says:
March 1, 2013 at 8:46 pm
“Otter says: Hello Poptech! Permission to repost your article to Deviantart, if I may!
It should not be necessary to repost the whole thing, just summarize and link to it directly or here to Anthony.”
I recommend duplication. Skeptics are under constant attack; currently Roy Spencer, a few days ago the German EIKE, several times. Warmists are warming up for all out cyber war.

Anthony I could not find this piece by Fred Hoyle in your list: He rather fell out of fashion because of his views on continuous creation and a steady state universe.
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce120799.html

That is because it is from 1999 and the list is about the 70s.

@ Espen says: / March 2, 2013 at 3:05 am “To the extent that it’s yet possible to verify them (the most dire predictions are still in the future), the Club of Rome were wrong.”
Espen, I was referring to the prognosed carbondioxideconcentration of the atmosphere;
in Limits to Growth, figure 17 they predict 380 ppm in the year 2000;
in reality this concentration was realised a little bit later, in 2005, but to say that they were wrong?

This is one of the provided links: St Petersburg Times: ( http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=h_0NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I3wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3656,4469550 ):
“If man keeps piping pollution into the atmosphere, he could bring on a new iceage that would cover states like Florida with 400 feet of water, television meteorologist Paul Cato told High Noon Club Yesterday”
I hope you all see the stupidity in this first line of one of the articles you rely on for your statement about the Coming Ice Age; a new iceage that would cover states like Florida with 400 feet of water
One lesson should be clear: don’t believe all television meteorologists;

Except today there is a supporting scientific base.
REPLY: and there was then too, note NCAR for example – Anthony
one magazine article on NCAR does not a “supporting scientific base” make. Certainly “climate books” don’t count, they are just opinion, but that the motivation for about half of the articles you found. Actually, I am not sure that even 5 to 10 research pubs would even do it. But isn’t that what you need to make a case, that “the scientists said this back then and say this now”?
Having lived in Buffalo during the big Great Lakes Blizzard of ’77 and two weeks of driving ban (and then moving to Mich the next year to catch the big anniversary storm that shut down Detroit for a week) I am surprised that I never noticed this big cooling scare, I mean, wouldn’t have we been the target for such news? I only remember the Sagen Nuclear Winter, but that was in the 80s.

The global warming scare is just that: an attempt by unscrupulous scientists to scare up more research funding. They need to keep the fright fest alive. Their careers depend on it. Plus, they’re desperate to salvage what’s left of their already diminished reputations. Their inflated egos won’t permit them to admit that real-world data has driven a stake through their theory of man-made global warming. Like a child hugging his favorite Teddy Bare, they cling desperately to their cockamamie climate models.

Meanwhile there has been record snowfall in Japan and Russia recently.
And the BBC, true to form, reported the snowfall in Japan with breathless alarmism and without a shred of background research, asking “Could this just be a one-off? of could it be due to Global Warming?”
Luckily the clip is still online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21625702
Even The Guardian managed to put the snowfalls in Japan and Russia into some kind of context: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/japan-record-snowfall-not-deepest-ever

Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 8:27 am
Alberts,
I provided both links to show that not everybody was in this ice age scare and that the list popular media promoting the new iceage is just showing one side of the picture;
if you want to blame popular media, go ahead; but dont forget that you also like to rely on those populars as The mail Online for the 17 years temperature standstill (David Rose) and recently The Australian for the Pachauri item (Graham Lloyd);

Well, you spectacularly failed to address my one-line statement. Please show where I have mentioned a “temperature standstill” anywhere. If you’re going to quote me, at least make your reply relevant to what I said.

Jeff Alberts, please read; I did’nt say that you promote a standstill, I just gave two examples where this website relays on the popular media while it is condemning them for the ice age scare;

What’s with the headline? Are these US newspapers still speculating about global cooling? How silly would that be.
The list just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers (especially US newspapers) or on the internet!
On climate matters, better to check what science finds and look at the evidence. If you can’t understand the science, then there are plenty of reputable scientific organisations providing information for the layperson in terms even the average person should be able to understand.
(Re the headline, must admit I’ve read comments and articles from some non-experts who still say we are on the verge of an ice age – even here on WUWT! There are people in this world who’ll ignore reality and believe just about anything.)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
~Robert Frost

John@EF,
There is nothing “overwhelming” about the false claim of catastrophic AGW. That is only your baseless assertion. In fact, it is the alarmist cult that sensationalizes the runaway global warming narrative. There is no runaway global warming, and there never has been. That is merely a desperate alarmist scare tactic, with no scientific evidence to back it up. In fact, the climate over the past century and a half has been a true ‘Goldilocks’ climate, with only minuscule fluctuations of ±0.8ºC. So much for your scary narrative. If it were not for fabricated scare stories, the alarmist crowd wouldn’t have much to say.
And ‘science based’? Who are you trying to fool? The fact remains that there is no measurable, testable evidence of AGW. None. Your false assertions are just that: false.
So run along now back to Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science, or whatever silly blog you get your anti-science nonsense from. This is the internet’s ‘best science’ site, not some alarmist propaganda blog. We know the difference, and we know a troll when we see one. You’re it.

anotherfred says:
March 1, 2013 at 10:40 am
It always comes down to the same thing: “Due to ‘’ you have to give me more money and power over your life.”
The Patriot Act-or struts and frets on the stage…

I added an additional 20 news stories and an update with a clip from the 1974 BBC documentary, “The Weather Machine”.
“The ice age is due now anytime” – Professor George Kukla, Columbia University, 1974

John@EF says:
March 2, 2013 at 8:40 pm
” The overwhelming scientific research, even then, pointed to man made global warming.”
================================================
Then why were the conferences and committees of prominent climatologists (e.g. at Brown in 1972, at the CIA in 1974) overwhelmingly worried about cooling?
Fundamentally, there were three major effects that virtually all climatologists acknowledged at the time:
1.) The length of the present interglacial (the Holocene) was already as long as the complete length of the previous several interglacials, and the dominant evidence was (and frankly still is) that on the scale of millennia, the late Holocene was cooler than the early Holocene.
2.) Rapid industrialization was putting more (real) pollutants in the air, reducing the clarity of the air and reflecting more sunlight back into space.
3.) Rapid industrialization was putting more CO2 into the air, increasing the greenhouse effect.
The question was which of these effects predominated. Given 30 years of measured cooling in the face of rapid CO2 increases, it was not surprising that many, and probably most, climatologists at the time, including Lamb, Bryson, and Kukla, were more worried about cooling.
Some people cite each scientific paper in that period (or even later!) examining the greenhouse effect as evidence that those scientists believed that this was the dominant effect. I don’t think that is the case at all.

AGW. The greatest scientific scam since Piltdown Man.

agfosterjr says:
March 3, 2013 at 4:06 pm
“Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next glacial age…. NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD, 1972″ –National Geographic, November 1976, p.595.
=============
National Geographic isn’t a science journal. That feature article was pretty neutral on the subject.
How did you miss this? ….
p 582: “Were the cooling trend to reverse… the earth could warm relatively rapidly, with potentially catastrophic effect.” National Science Foundation, 1975.
…. Never mind, I already know.
Kajajuk nailed it when he said this:
“NONE of the citations are peer review articles and are the media mouths releasing “news” as they still do; speculating dramatically for readership as they still do, mindful of the interests of their owner’s agendas, as they still do… At least now there are Climate Journals hehehe.”
This thread is all about sensationalized media reporting, not science. It doesn’t represent the predominant view of climate research at the time, but it is perfect for the internet’s ‘best science’ site … of a certain, profound bent.

agfosterjr says:
March 4, 2013 at 7:29 am
==========
Here’s the amusing part, AGFjr. You start your comment with …
“The AGW problem has little to do with science and much to do with psychology.”
… and then you end your comment with this …
“By the way, the National Science Board is the governing board of the National Science Foundation. That’s why I thought it was worth mentioning. –AGF”
… because, I suppose, you believe the board made a statement that could be construed as supporting your POV.
I hate to be the one to inform you that your National Science Board quote was incomplete – it was truncated mid-sentence. Here’s the actual 1972 National Science Board report with the quote starting half-way down the page in the first column.
http://www.archive.org/stream/patternsperspect00nati#page/55/mode/1up
Note that the full sentence reads:
“Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now.”
In its true form, the sentence doesn’t seem as supportive anymore, does it. Then, stunningly, and in direct contradiction to what you thought the NSB was conveying, the kicker is administered in the very next sentence, which is:
“However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path.”
You don’t think these parts were left out intentionally, do you? The origin of the intentional mis-quote (read “lie”) was from a 1974 hack piece by Gary Sutton written for Forbes magazine. The full story about that astounding work of dishonesty can be found at Dr. Drang’s blog, here:
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2009/12/climate-bullshit-from-forbes/
I hope you read it – doesn’t take much time, and full story is significantly worse than what ended up in the 1976 Nat Geo Mag.
Again, this thread is about advantageous use of sensationalized and sloppy media hype from the 70s, not science. And, yes, the predominant scientific opinion then pointed toward global warming, as reflected by the peer reviewed research articles of the time.

Poor John@EF arguing against his strawman. Try learning how to read,
“During the 1970s the media promoted global cooling alarmism with dire threats of a new ice age. Extreme weather events were hyped as signs of the coming apocalypse and man-made pollution was blamed as the cause. Environmental extremists called for everything from outlawing the internal combustion engine to communist style population controls. This media hype was found in newspapers, magazines, books and on television […]
While a silent majority of the scientific community may have been more skeptical, you ironically find one of the most outspoken supporters of modern day Al Gore style global warming alarmism was promoting global cooling in the 1970s, the late Dr. Steven Schneider”
I love warmists who cannot read.
FYI, I have added 32 more sources since this was published here and keep finding more. So much for the 1970s global cooling alarmism being a myth.

How come you “forgot” to include this passage in your quotation:
“For a long time man has been trying to do something more than talk about the weather. Ironically and unfortunately, he may already have done far more than he imagines, or desires.
That, at least, would seem to be the moral of the latest horror story from the pollution front. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, debris form manufacturing processes has been accumulating in the atmosphere to such an extent that the earth is now enveloped in a layer of dust which has the effect of reflecting back into space a portion of the energy radiated by the sun.
The result has been a measurable lowering of temperatures, not merely in industrial areas but worldwide. So far it is only a fraction of a degree. But even minor temperature changes, if prolonged and widespread, have startling effects on climate and, consequently, on plant and animal development and survival. It would not take many degrees to trigger renewed expansion of the polar ice masses.”
Owosso Argus Press, 26 January, 1970
Just change the algebraic sign to plus and the last sentence reads: “It would not take many degrees to trigger a renewed SHRINKING of the polar ice masses.”
Interesting what both discussions about climate change – although in the 70s it was rather a non-discussion – have in common: both see human activities behind climate change.
We were able to counter the past challenge by introducing environmental protection. The question now is: will we be able again to meet the challenge?
Denying that there is a problem in the first place does not do much to help with the issue.

“Global warming” is “chemtrails” for 21st Century urban leftists.
OLDTHINKERS UNBELLYFEEL INGSOC