Steve Goddard tips me to this article in the Canberra Times on May 16th, 1974:
SUPPORT FOR A THEORY OF A COOLING WORLD
It has some interesting claims in it that sound much like climate change claims made today. Apparently they detected large albedo changes via satellite, with a 12% increase in snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere that started in 1971, and continued through 1974 when this article was published:
Click to enlarge. Source: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/12217427?zoomLevel=1
They claim that due to albedo changes which help induce cooling, wind, drought, and rainfall patterns will become worse, much like identical claims made today about the effects of warming. The article also claims, quoting Dr. Reid Bryson, there would be increased uncertainty about “stable patterns of weather” that may affect “food reserves”, and he also claimed “much of that change was man-made”. Sound familiar?
The news article is based on a paper by George J. Kukla, and Helena J. Kukla of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University.
Increased Surface Albedo in the Northern Hemisphere
Did satellites warn of the weather troubles of 1972 and 1973?
Science 22 February 1974: Vol. 183 no. 4126 pp. 709-714 DOI: 10.1126/science.183.4126.709
Routine mapping of snow and ice fields in the northern hemisphere was started by NOAA in 1967. Large year-to-year variations of the snow and pack-ice covers were observed. The annual mean coverage increased by 12 percent during 1971 and has remained high. The index R, which shows the approximate amount of energy reflected from the surface by snow and ice under the mean cloudiness, increased correspondingly. Thus, if the cloud cover over the snow fields did not increase substantially, the anomalous weather patterns of 1972 and 1973 could have been connected with the deficit in surface heat exchange which originated in the northern hemisphere the year before. During the past 7 years the largest changes occurred in the fall and in the continental interiors of Asia and America (8).
Two synoptic parameters which could readily provide information on the development of snow and ice cover in the northern hemisphere are (i) the total area momentarily covered and (ii) the running annual mean of snow and ice coverage for the preceding 1-year period. By 20 September 1973 the annual mean coverage was 37.3 x 106 km2, 11 to 12 percent higher than at the same time during 1968 through 1970. Snow cover-fall, the season when 15 x 106 to 55 x 106 km2 of the northern hemisphere is covered with snow and ice, started on 20 September 1973, compared to 17 September 1972 and 5 or 10 October during 1967 through 1970.
The links between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land surfaces must be better understood before the role of snow and ice can be thoroughly explained and exploited for long-range weather forecasting. But it is clear that snow, hitherto almost overlooked in synoptic meteorological reports, must be important in the mechanism of weather changes.
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Back then, even the BBC was certain enough to bring in Dr. Kukla for an interview to explain how global cooling was a danger for the future.
And others were still talking about a coming ice age in 1977:
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
At the time of that article George Kukla and a group of paleo-oceanographers (the term climatologist wasn’t as common as it is now) were in the process of confirming the Milankovich hypothesis (project CLIMAP) that ice ages were caused primarily by changes in the earth’s orbital obliquity, tilt, and precession. Albedo was the control knob. Extrapolation of those parameters predicts decent into another glacial period. There was much less data available for analysis forty years ago and resolution in the time domain not much better than on a millennial scale. Deep-sea sediment cores rather then tree rings were a major source.
Alarmism is alarmism whatever the time period. Historical perspective ought to temper it, but rarely does. Even the most careful words of a researcher become cudgels in the hands of journalists.
Someone here recommended reading Climate of Hunger written in 1977. The book has graphs which show a temp decrease of .6C for the N. Hemisphere since the 1940’s. So if we accept the current charts showing a .6C or a little over .6C rise in N Hemi temp’s since 1977, then the N Hemisphere is right now about the same as it was in 1940.
And of course the Climate of Hunger book warns of the same natural disasters because of global cooling that in the present day we are told to be frightened of due to global warming.
This is the same scenario you find when you look at Hansen’s 1998 US temp data and append current US data through 2013. The US temp is about the same as it was in the 1940’s.
The point though is that there was global cooling consensus between 1972 and 1975 circa.
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We studied global cooling in grade 11 or 12 social studies. I graduated class of ’69.
I have an old paperback first printed in 1977 titled “The weather conspiracy” the coming of the new ice age.
Its all there.
The over the top pure alarmism with wording identical to what the alarmists use today.
Only their talking about freezing your butt off.
Open the first page and the first paragraph gives you an idea of what’s inside.
“This vitally important document is compiled with expert testimony,scientific studies,government inquiry and the growing body of data in the field. It’s purpose is to inform the public of the true facts about a topic often clouded by fiction,superstition and alarmist misrepresentation.”
Scared the begeezus out me back then but who would have known that within a few short years I’d be out of the fridge and into the frying pan.
Some of the chapter titles are just as over the top as now.
“Climate-The last great mystery” or the “Upside down green house.”
But I especially like chapter 9 for its unadulterated pure alarmism.
“Take your chances-Some scenerios for survival”.
Yes and scientist’s are wondering why I’m a skeptic.
omnologos says:
March 13, 2014 at 2:19 am
“The point though is that there was global cooling consensus between 1972 and 1975 . . . ”
my bold
To arrive at that consensus an on-line survey was done of thousands of published and creditable . . . etc. . . . and 97% agreed etc., etc.
Actually, there IS documentation that there was NOT a consensus then just as there is not a general agreement now. TIME magazine and others of the popular press, then like now, reported on the we-are-all-doomed stories.
Well, that helps establish Lamont-Doherty as the Center for Man Made This and Man Made That.
One more to add to the over 100 media stories I have compiled,
1970s Global Cooling Alarmism
It all just sounds to familiar in an opposite kinda way.
For a discussion of the weather patterns expected during and a forecast for the timing and amount of the coming cooling see
.http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/07/skillful-so-far-thirty-year-climate.html
Hold on, what’s this? Scientists talking about global cooling in the 70-ties and articles, even meetings, about it are a figment of the mind of us skeptics. Everybody knows that (claim the warmists) also in those days global warming was the hot topic of the day.
Just that you know.
‘Climate Science’ is fun to watch. It’s like watching dietary fads in slow motion. If fact, ‘Climate Science’ has a lot in common with ‘Nutritional Science’ in that they both seem to rely more on untested supposition, buzzwords and fads than they do on science. Only the life cycle of the buzzwords are a bit longer. In ‘Nutritional Science’ you can expect most any theory (or fad) to be either falsified or reversed in around 4 to 5 years. In climate science it takes from 30 to 40 years. You just have to be a bit more patient.
Well there could be a very simple explanation to it all with the missing heat moving in and out of the really, really deep oceans-
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/ringwoodite-discovery-vast-ocean-hiding-beneath-earths-surface/story-fnjwvztl-1226853417746?from=public_rss
Now don’t be sceptical as this could be the missing link to our ancestors’ understanding of Big Climate- ‘Stonehinge!’
And while we’re on the topic of the times, whatever became of Eric Von Daniken? Nostradamus win the battle of peer review or some such?
Geez, does this mean that warming and cooling cycles are cyclical? Maybe every 30 years or so? Don’t ya wish there were temperature data from previous years so we could know for certain.
We must act then!
That is very interesting because that is also how they end. What an odd way to define natural climate variability.
In my analysis of the Milankovitch cycles – those cycles that control the major episodes of the glacials and interglacials – extremes in climate/weather are a good sign for these occur during the interglacials. It is when the world’s overall climate tends towards the static is the condition wherein those hundred thousand year glacial episodes take hold.
“This outlook, based on all available evidence from the last millenium, commits us to intensified research on climate which is now under preparation within the framework of the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) and its sub-programmes….”
Now I think you’re really beginning to put some pieces of the 1970s climate puzzle together there Jimbo. Well spotted. Of course it was ‘The World According to GARP’ back then.
ferdberple says:
March 13, 2014 at 6:52 am
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We studied global cooling in grade 11 or 12 social studies. I graduated class of ’69.
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I hope your school balanced that by teaching comparative political systems in your physics class.
Another interesting point showing the bizarre world of alarmists: They can use the exact same arguments to tell us how opposite claims are true, with nary a pause to consider the fallacies they accept.
It might be useful to put up a resource page documenting the global cooling alarm, in case you run out of things to do.
What is needed is a site for all the climate warming articles where they can be cataloged and searched by topic and date.
Is there such a thing? It should be user-edited where anyone can add material as it is found.
I would love to help with a project such as that.
Here’s Kukla in Gelf in 2006: http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/an_unrepentant_prognosticator.php
–AGF
The rhythm of the ice ages makes it clear that there is going to be another in the future. The warning shots in the 1970s were laid upon legitimate concern. Those that have “profited” from the global warming scam undoubtedly believe in the coming ice age. You need the ability to acquire the ability to survive such periods, and that, in general, is supplied by wealth. No, the individuals will not survive the ice age, but their lineage will.
The opportunity that the highly active Sun gave them to manufacture wealth through the warming scam was fortuitous for them. It would never have been offered to them by the continuation of the obvious plunge towards an ice age that seems now to be beginning to assert itself. In fact, when you factor in the chemtrailing that supposedly is increasing the cooling effect, you can see that they are prepared to ride out the coming deep freeze, but are in a hurry to bring it on, along with the forced reduction of the human population.
The ruse of global warming is to keep more people from preparing to survive the coming deep freeze. Only real cooperation between people could bring a human population of billions through what is coming, and that is not being allowed. That is one of the reasons that so many countries seem to be in political turmoil – a nation and its population in turmoil can not prepare for the lack of space to grow natural food by finding innovative ways to create nutritional food substitutes, for example, and technology to survive in a cold climate. I will admit one thing – I cannot fathom the cold-bloodedness that would be necessary to willing allow billions to die of hunger and cold, just so I could live the life of luxury during my lifetime – not when well spent research could allow us all to live.
Science at its best : a study starting in ’71, ending in ’74, quoted by a Canberra paper (’twas just a village then…).
Some good science on climate came out of the 1970s. Dr Libby & Pandolfi published the most accurate and longest running climate prediction so far. I’m hoping they are wrong about what happens next (1-2 degree F drop & possibly 3-4) but they’ve been correct for 3+ decades so I’m getting ready for cold.