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.
Coldest 6 month span..(Oct-Mar)..since 1912. Does this mean anything?
Just curious. What did these “scientists” recommend as a way to counteract global cooling? CO2? Or did want a more efficient greenhouse gas?
Folks, we have not been keeping records for a long enough period to discern a trend either up or down.
As I’ve always understood it (high school physics only), weather is mostly the result of the differences in temperature between one location and another and the resulting flow of air and the mixing of it between them.
Thus extreme temperatures would logically cause higher gradients than more tepid temperatures. Unless the entire globe became more homogenous temperature wise. And as the physics of the earth’s orbit, axial tilt and spin make this almost impossible to achieve, it will always have violent weather at times, somewhere.
The weather is not a system that lends itself to easy and simple analysis. We are talking about a sphere over 7,000 miles in diameter with a surface area of 196.9 million sq miles to cool and warm and with geological intrusions along with a massive amount of water to deflect, funnel the air and saturate it with water vapor. It will always be a chaotic system, difficult to predict.
JimS
You are bang on the money when you say that for a ice age to form there needs to be static weather patterns in place. lts for this reason that l think the Polar jet stream moved south and went zonal over a large part of the NH during the ice age. This winter has given me a big clue as to how a change in the weather patterns could make this happen. Because it looks to me that it is current strong and fairly stable Azores high is what is key to prevent this from happening between the USA and central Russia.
Could the reality be that our climate is catastrophically static?
I remember the talk about global cooling. One year in the later 1970’s the lower Hudson River near New York City completely (or almost completely) froze over.
I say that in 1972 we were at the height of global warming, where the speed of warming was at its highest. However, in those days we had many of those idiots in France and England and the USA who actually thought that it was OK to explode atomic bombs in the pacific. Hence, the man made global cooling around that time. (look at the destruction of pacific islands). We only see the biosphere going much greener in the past 3-4 decades (as observed from the satellites).
I also say that in 2016 we will be at the point where the speed of natural global cooling will be at its highest.We can only hope that there will not be another ice age.
Either way, there are ways for man to avoid the ice age trap if it comes.
Joe Crawford suggested: “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.”
But you’ve left out the singular *government* sponsored nutritional movement that has indeed lasted decades: the single bullet dietary cholesterol theory of heart disease in which the Michael Mann of his day, Ancel Keys, noted that arterial plaques were solidified by oxidized/polymerized cholesterol, a perfectly natural biological cell membrane stiffener, and then used cherry picked population studies to declare (directly to congressmen) his big discovery minus any real biochemical evidence which itself quickly debunked his claim to utterly no effect as the resulting upsidedown Food Pyramid led to sugar laced stealth candy on supermarket shelves for generations. Only lately with Internet exposure have afrw official medical organization even started to backtrack after four decades of readily disproven toxic advice. But boy were those BMW driving MDs condescendingly confident in their declarations, nearly every last one of them.
@taxed
Thanks for your feedback.
@Larry Cullen Geary
“Could the reality be that our climate is catastrophically static?”
At the moment it is not, but in the next few thousand years, it will slide into this “catastrophically static” state.
The only Milankovitch cycle that is holding the next glaciation episode at bay is the obliquity or tilt of the earth. Within the next few thousand years, obliquity will bring us into the “bottom end” of the cycle wherein the seasonal extremes will become noticeably less. It is quite possible that we will think, “Hey, this is nice – more moderate weather is growing worldwide – utopia is arriving.”
However, the default state of the earth in this 2.8 million year Ice Age we live in is an earth with large continental glaciers in both North American and Eurasia. For about 90% of the time for the last 2.8 millions years, this has been the state of our global climate. For the other 10% of the time, the earth has enjoyed these short warm interglacial episodes, one of which we are now living within – the temperate zones – mid-latitude zones – experiencing extreme seasons and extraordinary weather events.
Calder on Kukla here: http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/next-ice-age/
When the next 100,000 year glaciation episode comes, and it will for in the past million years, we have had nine of them, we will not have ourselves to blame. That is the good news. The bad news is, it won’t matter that much because our civilization will more than likely collapse and disappear for a few thousand years.
Larry Greary @ur momisugly
The weather pattern that has given the USA its bitter winter this year. Was just of the type that would of turned up during the last ice age. The clue to this is the large extent of the ice sheets over North America but rather little over NE Russia. But lucky for us here in europe the Azores high blocked the jet stream from going zonal over the Atlantic when it pushed to the south down across the USA.
And its this that l think is a key difference between the weather patterns we have now and the one’s that happened in the ice age. At present we have a strong and stable Azores high sitting in the North Atlantic, but back in the the ice age l suspect there was not.
JimS @ur momisugly
As long as we have a waving Polar jet then things in the NH are likely to get no worse then it was in the LIA.
As a waving Polar jet limits the area where the cold weather can extend.
Gary says: March 13, 2014 at 6:43 am
“Alarmism is alarmism whatever the time period.”
Indeed. It seems there’s always some kind of human induced climate problem that we have to be anxious about. I rather like the one below from the 1880s. Donna Laframboise summarises from a news article of the time (note the words ‘cannot be a doubt’ within the article) :-
The concern back then involved the effect an expanding telegraph system might have on – you guessed it – the climate. The article says that if there were “sufficient electrical connection by wires around the earth” with the Earth itself, the planet’s polarity could be reversed. The result would be a “sudden melting of the vast ice fields” followed by a “glacial flood” that would wipe out the human race. The article continues: “Of course, tremendous earthquakes would follow…Whether this theory prove [sic] correct or not, there cannot be a doubt that something has of late gone wrong with atmospherical arrangements, and perhaps the telegraph wires are not wholly blameless in the matter.”
Leigh says: March 13, 2014 at 6:54 am
“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.”
And just like this article not one “Computer Model” being used to predict/project the outcome. This cannot be a real study without the use of models.
Besides HADCUT4 clearly shows the mid 70’s were the coldest time since 1957?
Thank you for this post. I remember the movement vividly. Freezing seemed like a plausible scenario in Finland, until practically snowless winters during 1972-1975, that is.
Repeating the experience, even in reverse, is too much to bear. Confidence in publicly funded awareness campaigns can soon be rounded to zero with the accuracy of four numbers, a bit like the hypothesis founding them.
Yet, I do have a fear: The longer this every passing day more obvious BS lingers on, the wider this societal distrust expands to the supporting structures. It may power the popularity of movements offering resistance as a solution. But how can that be good news? We need someone influential to snap out of it. Hopefully Ban Ki-moon before he experiences with the United Nations what Seán Lester had to face with the League of Nations.
In reply to Ed Zuiderwijk.
Ed back in the seventys the global warmists had a different name chiselled into the millstone around their necks
They were called “hot earth men”.
So what happened next, after these dramatic fluctuations of +/- 0.15 °C about the mean of the more or less flat period 1956-1976?
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/graphics/land-and-ocean/land-and-ocean-sea-ice-comparison-1950-large.png
Oh, right.
…….and the same tired old lefty reporters, Hull, Waterford and Warden, all surviving staff cuts….the only bright note is when my letters appear 🙂
Of course, now, 40 years on, we have infinitely more sophisticated Climate Models………
(—-)
The National Science Board predicted human-caused Global Cooling in 1974, see http://tvpclub.blogspot.com/2009/12/national-science-board-prediction.html for a link to their report.
Direct quotes:
1- “Human activity may be involved on an even broader scale in changing the global climate.”
2- “During the last 20-30 years, world temperature has fallen …”
3- “… there is increasing concern that man himself may be implicated, not only in the recent cooling trend but also in the warming temperatures …
4- “… activities of the expanding human population – especially those involved with the burning of fossil fuels – raised the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, which acts as a ‘greenhouse’ …”
5- “But simulataneously … growing industrialization and the spread of agriculture introduced increasing quantities of dust into the atmosphere which reduced the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. … the cooling effect of the dust particles more than compensated for the warming effect of the carbon dioxide, and world temperature began to fall.”
6- “Several consequences [of colder temperatures] have been observed: … southward intrusion of sea-ice … unusually large numbers of severe storms … development of a calamitous drought belt extending around the world …”
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME.
Ira Glickstein