As the subzero ‘polar vortex’ that froze the nation turns into the latest selling point for global warmers, with even the White House getting in on the act, it is important to turn to history, because all this extreme weather hullabaloo has happened before.
Except, the situation was different, they were trying to tie it to global cooling, not warming.
“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval…the trend shows no indication of reversing.”
Time magazine, June 24, 1974, “Another Ice Age?”
h/t to David Deming
You can read it here: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
From a guest post by David Middleton on the subject:
The full text of the article can be accessed through Steve Goddard’s Real Science.
TIME, like most of the mainstream-ish media, has acted like a climate weathervane over the years…
Dan Gainor compiled a great timeline of media alarmism (both warming and cooling) in his Fire and Ice essay.
While the 1977 TIME cover was a fake, this 1975 magazine cover and article were very real…
Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics was a 1977 National Academies publication. It featured what appears to be the same temperature graph, clearly demonstrating a mid-20th century cooling trend…
The mid-20th Century cooling trend is clearly present in the instrumental record, at least in the northern hemisphere…
So, why are the warmists so obsessed with denying this? Is the mid-20th century cooling period so “inconvenient” that it has to be erased from history like the Medieval Warm Period?
This post from Steve is an excellent post to look at along with this article….
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/no-warming-in-the-northern-hemisphere-since-1866/
This reminds me so much of superstitious religious fanatics: No matter what happens, it is the hand of God. A tortilla with an interesting mark: a sign from God. A cow dies? A portent. A comet passes in the sky, a message form God.
AGW is pernicious because it enables its true believers to fool themselves into thinking they are on the “side of science”, and are not simply indulging their prejudiecs and predilections.
Think on this: If extreme weather was in fact becoming more frequent, then why do we typically have to look back 20 or more years to find the prior examples?
I believe the warmist argument is thus: “Well sure TIME magazine and other media sources talked about global cooling but there was never a bonafide, genuine, 100% authentic Scientific Consensus™ like there is about warming today!”
This post from Steve is an excellent post to look at along with this article….
Unless all 3 of those temperature series have been calibrated to the same base period, that is a completely useless graphic.
Scientific Consensus with a trademark. Best laugh I’ve had all day. Thanks.
And while I believe that yes C02 has certain radiative properties, “climate change” -at least so far -is largely a product of the ‘availability heuristic’: http://psychology.about.com/od/aindex/g/availability-heuristic.htm
Regarding the movement of the Polar Vortex. The alarmists are preying on
1. People’s longer term memory(especially young adults that haven’t been around a long time) being cloudy
2. Lack of meteorological expertise
3. Lack of readily available weather records that go back 100 years
As an operational meteorologist for 31 years, I have all 3 in spades.
The portrayal of the Polar Vortex as an extreme event, supposedly displayed as a result of Global Warming/Climate Change is complete hogwash. It has happened many, many, many times before CO2 levels went way up.
In, fact it would be more strange if it never happened and is a normal part of how this planet rebalances the disparate heat/energy imbalances.
The lower latitudes receive more heat/energy by many orders of magnitiude more than the higher latitudes. The greater the imbalance, the greater the amount of meridional flow(and potential) energy in the system.
During the 1980’s/90’s with global warming increasing temps most in the Arctic and decreasing the temperature disparity, there was less need for meridional flow and extreme events.
Global cooling is more likely to increase severe weather and extreme weather.
To make anything out of the Polar Vortex moving so far away from its average position is to imply that weather systems are not supposed to move outside of a regional boundary that is defined by their origin or conditions that led to them to acquire their noteworthy characteristics.
If these were the rules on our planet, the weather would stay pretty much the same most of the time everywhere.
The Polar Vortex moving so far south was clearly extreme weather but is supposed to happen from time to extreme time as it always has because of the physics that rule our atmosphere.
@ur momisugly lurker
Any particular reason you threw in the nasty hack at people of faith or is it just because you’re a hateful bigot?
@Mike
Perhaps there is a distinction between “people of faith” and “superstitious religious fanatics”?
Mike Freeman, I believe lurker was throwing a “nasty hack” at “superstitious religious fanatics”. If that describes you, then you probably think he is also a hateful bigot. Ho-hum, lighten up.
The term “inconvenient” seems to pop up a lot. 😉
Maybe the term is inconvient?
Mike Freeman says: January 9, 2014 at 9:55 am “Hateful”?
Full of Hate for people of Faith?
He said “superstitious religious fanatics”, are you suggesting that there are no superstitious religious fanatics?
Mike Freeman says: January 9, 2014 at 9:55 am “Hateful”?
What did he says that displays this “HATE” that you accuse him of?
Where are the alarmists when you need them.
The global temperature has remained almost stationery for over 17 years now, according to the satellite data and a lesser period for the homogenised/manipulated data from ground readings.
Any argument there?
No? So what is suddenly causing all these ‘extreme weather events’, if there is no change in the temperature?
Answer: Mann (and others) made fantasies.
Given that there is most likely a 60 year cycle to the weather, that means that for just about everybody, todays weather (whatever its warm or cold nature) is going to be a ‘once in a lifetime’ event (depending on how good your memory is from under 10 anyway)!
I remember when the Polar Vortex(tm) used to be the “Alberta Clipper”… 🙂
MattN says: January 9, 2014 at 9:39 am “Unless all 3 of those temperature series have been calibrated to the same base period, that is a completely useless graphic.
”
Wrong, the graphs show that the Temperatures as understood by the Scientists of the day and the older people like me who lived through some of those years went up 1 whole degree in only 60 years and down nearly 3/4 of a degree in only another 30 years.
And yet the whole warming of a century coming out of the LIA is only just over a degree.
WUWT??
Whats up with that is the Hockey Stick and Current Temperature data manipulation which has removed that 1 degree from the historic record.
Cannot resist…
I see a tie in here to Chris Christie as I’ve been trying to re-publicize Christie’s AGW stance, as Republicans don’t go for that and now that Christie has perhaps been given a bit of a jab on the lane closure thing I want to finish the one two punch on him. Christie has been effusively supportive of the AGWers, and especially on Sandy he went along with Obama on at least implying that Obama was 100% right that it was a climate change thing, and Romney was wrong… a week before the election! So here’s a 2 minute video of Christie, from just two years ago, obsessing in agreement with the leftists, even talking of the continuing rise in temperatures when at that point we’d had 13 years on no warming, really it’s pitiful for a “Republican,” see it yourself:
Reblogged this on leclinton and commented:
The internet and those of us with memories of this have to point this fact out to everyone that will listen .
I believe an Alberta Clipper is more a wave/front of cold air, than the cyclonic vortex. Both of these events have happened before and will happen again. All I know, is that it probably cost me a car battery.
The government will always attempt to control the people through fear. If people had any sense, they would clearly recognize the alternations between “we are all gonna freeze!” and “we are all gonna fry!” scare tactics every 30 years or so.
Given the “normal” climate cycles, the “every 30 years or so” should be a dead give-away that what is going on is perfectly natural, but the vast majority of people will never see this and will simply believe the “experts” when they claim that the heating (or cooling) is caused by something that we are doing that now “must be stopped” (for the greater good, of course!)
The best definition of “expert” I have ever heard is “X is the unknown quantity, and spurt is just a drip under pressure”.
RichardLH says: @ur momisugly January 9, 2014 at 10:31 am
…. depending on how good your memory is from under 10 anyway!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The snow is over my head! I lived in the lake effect snow belt of New York state and I was very short, still looking up at door knobs in second grade.
@Gail Combs – yea, but when you tell the kids, do you show them how high on their bodies or on yours? 😉
Since climate and weather are random processes, does anyone, including climate scientists, know the distribution of any climate/weather observations well enough to say that any particular observation is extraordinary? Hansen’s 99% probability claim in his 1988 Congressional testimony implies he must have had in mind some distribution–normal most likely. Since he never explained what distribution he had in mind, and defended its use, his testimony was hyperbole.
Mike Freeman, why do you think that believing in a Fuehrer makes you a better person? I mean, the difference is not whether your Fuehrer is in Heaven or in the Reichstag – the difference is whether you are a man yourself or whether you need someone greater than youself as your guide. You have outed yourself as having the mindset of a mere slave. Sorry for you.