[update, reference sheet is now linked at the bottom of post]
By Angus McFarlane,
There was an overwhelming scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headinginto a period of significant cooling. The possibility of anthropogenic warming was relegated to a minority of the papers in the peer-reviewed literature.
Introduction
Whether or not there was a global cooling consensus in the 1970s is important in climate science because, if there were a cooling consensus (which subsequently proved to be wrong) then it would question the legitimacy of consensus in science. In particular, the validity of the 93% consensus on global warming alleged by Cook et al (2103) would be implausible. That is, if consensus climate scientists were wrong in the 1970s then they could be wrong now.
Purpose of Review
It is not the purpose of this review to question the rights or wrongs of the methodology of the 93% consensus. For-and-against arguments are presented in several peer-reviewed papers and non-peer-reviewed weblogs. The purpose of this review is to establish if there were a consensus in the 1970s and, if so, was this consensus cooling or warming?
In their 2008 paper, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus, Peterson, Connolley and Fleck (hereinafter PCF-08) state that, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.” This conclusion intrigued me because, when I was growing up in the early 1970s, it was my perception that global cooling dominated the climate narrative. My interest was further piqued by allegations of “cover-up” and “skulduggery” in 2016 in NoTricksZone and Breitbart.
Therefore, I present a review that examines the accuracy of the PCF-08 claim that 1970s global cooling consensus was a myth. This review concentrates on the results from the data in the peer-reviewed climate science literature published in the 1970s, i.e., using similar sources to those used by PCF-08.
Review of PCF-08 Cooling Myth Paper
The case for the 1970s cooling consensus being a myth relies solely on PCF-08. They state that,”…the following pervasive myth arose: there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent…A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth’s basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. In fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then.” [Emphasis added].
PCF-08 reached their conclusion by conducting a literature review of the electronic archives of the American Meteorological Society, Nature and the scholarly journal archive Journal Storage (JSTOR). The search period was from 1965 to 1979 and the search terms used were “global warming”, “global cooling” and a variety of “other less directly relevant” search terms. Additionally, PCF-08 evaluated references mentioned in the searched papers and references mentioned in various history-of-science documents.
In total, PCF-08 reviewed 71 papers and their survey found 7 cooling papers, 20 neutral papers and 44 warming papers. Their results are shown in their Figure 1.
A cursory examination of Figure 1 indicates that there is a 62% warming consensus if we use all the data and this consensus increases to 86% pro-warming, if we were to ignore the neutral papers (as was done in the 93% consensus). Therefore, the Figure 1 data seems to prove the contention in PCF-08 that 1970s global cooling was a myth.
However, I find it difficult to believe that the 1970s media “selectively misread” the scientific consensus of the day and promoted a non-existent cooling scare. Therefore, I present an alternative to the PCF-08 analysis below.
Methodology of this Review
In this review, I use an identical methodology to PCF-08, i.e., I examine peer-reviewed scientific journals. Non-peer-reviewed newspaper and magazine articles are not used. A significantly larger number of papers are presented in the current review than were used in PCF-08.
The PCF-08 database of articles is used but this is extended to examine more literature. Note that examining all of the scientific literature would have been beyond my resources. However, my literature survey was facilitated by the work of Kenneth Richard in 2016 (hereinafter, KR-16) at NoTricksZone, in which he has assembled a large database of sceptical peer-reviewed literature.
Some people may wish to ignore the KR-16 database as being from a so-called “climate denier” blog. However, almost all of the papers in KR-16 are from peer-reviewed literature and consequently it is a valid database. It is also worth noting that 16 of the papers used in the KR-16 database are also contained in the PCF-08 database.
The combined PCF-08 and KR-16 databases form the benchmark database for the current review. It was intended to significantly extend the benchmark database but, on searching the relevant journals, only 2 additional papers were found and these were added to form the database for this review.
It should be noted that KR-16 states that there were over 285 cooling papers. However, many of these papers were deleted from the current review as not being relevant. For example, several papers were either outside the 1965-1979 reference period or they emphasise the minor role of CO2 but do not consider climate trends.
I agree with PCF-08 that no literature search can be 100% complete. I also agree that a literature search offers a reasonable test of the hypothesis that there was a scientific consensus in the 1970s. I reiterate that the resulting database used in this review is significantly larger than that used by PCF-08 and consequently it should offer a more accurate test of the scientific consensus in the 1970s.
Most of the papers in the review database acknowledge the global cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s (typically 0.3 °C global cooling). Therefore, deciding between cooling, neutral or warming was relatively straightforward in most cases; namely did the paper expect the climate regime during the 1940s-1960s period to either to continue from the date that the paper was published, or did it expect a different climate regime in the medium-to-long-term?
Notwithstanding the straightforward test described above, some of the papers make contradictory statements and are thus more difficult to classify. Consequently, their classification can include an element of subjectivity. Fortunately, there are very few papers in this category and consequently an inappropriate classification does not materially affect the overall results.
The test criteria are summarised in Table 1.
| Classification | Test of Classification of Papers | Typical Examples from Papers |
| Cooling | Cooling expected to either continue or initiate | Kukla & Kukla (1972)
“…the prognosis is for a long-lasting global cooling more severe than any experienced hitherto by civilized mankind.” |
| Neutral | Either non-committal on future climate change or expects warming or cooling to be equally possible | Sellers (1969)
“The major conclusions that removing the arctic ice cap would have less effect on climate than previously suggested, that a decrease of the solar constant by 2-5% would be sufficient, to initiate another ice age, and that man’s increasing industrial activities may eventually lead to the elimination of the ice caps and to a climate about 14C warmer than today…” |
| Warming | Warming expected to either continue or initiate | Manabe & Weatherald (1967)
“According to our estimate, a doubling of the CO, content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2C.” |
Table 1: Summary of Classification System for Papers
The search terms “global cooling” and “global warming” used by PCF-08 are used in this review but they have been expanded to include “cool”, “warm”, “aerosol” and “ice-age” because these, more general terms, return a larger number of relevant papers. Additional search terms such as “deterioration”, “detrimental” and “severe” have also been included. These would fit into the PCF-08 category of “other less directly relevant” search terms.
Several of the papers in the database are concerned about the effects of aerosol cooling and they state that this effect dominates the effect of the newly emerging CO2-warming science. Indeed, a few papers warn of CO2 cooling.
However, PCF-08 do not include any papers that refer to aerosol cooling by a future fleet of supersonic aircraft (SST’s) but several papers in the 1970s assumed an SST fleet of 500 aircraft. This seems incongruous now but, to show that this number of aircraft is not unrealistic; Emirates Airlines currently have a fleet of 244 (non-supersonic) aircraft and 262 more on order. Therefore, I have included papers that refer to the effects of aerosols from supersonic aircraft and other human activities. Of course, supersonic travel was killed-off by the mid-1970s oil crisis.
Furthermore, a number of PCF-08 and KR-16 papers were re-classified (from cooling, neutral or warming) as summarised Table 2.
| Reference | Original | Amended |
| Sellers (1969) | Warming | Neutral |
| Benton (1970) | Warming | Neutral |
| Rasool and Schneider (1972) | Neutral | Cooling |
| Machta (1972) | Warming | Neutral |
| FCSTICAS (1974) | Warming | Cooling |
| National Academy of Sciences (1975) | Neutral | Cooling |
| Thompson, 1975 | Warming | Neutral |
| Shaw (1976) | Neutral | Cooling |
| Bryson and Dittberner (1977) | Neutral | Cooling |
| Barrett, 1978 | Neutral | Cooling |
| Ohring and Adler (1978) | Warming | Neutral |
| Stuiver (1978) | Warming | Neutral |
| Sagan et al. (1979) | Neutral | Cooling |
| Choudhury and Kukla, 1979 | Neutral | Cooling |
| a. Amended Classifications to PCF-08 | ||
| Reference | Original | Amended |
| Budyko, 1969 | Cooling | Warming |
| Benton (1970) | Cooling | Neutral |
| Mitchell, 1970 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Mitchell (1971) | Cooling | Warming |
| Richmond, 1972 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Denton and Karlén, 1973 | Cooling | Warming |
| Schneider and Dickinson, 1974 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Moran, 1974 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Ellsaesser, 1975 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Thompson, 1975 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Gates, 1976 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Zirin et al., 1976 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Bach, 1976 | Cooling | Warming |
| Norwine, 1977 | Cooling | Warming |
| Paterson, 1977 | Cooling | Neutral |
| Schneider, 1978 | Cooling | Warming |
| b. Amended Classifications to KR-16 |
Table 2: Amendments to Classification of Papers in Database
Two examples of the amendments to the classification of the papers in the database are explained below:
1. The Benton (1970) paper is classified as “Cooling” in KR-16 but the paper states that, “In the period from 1880 to 1940, the mean temperature of the earth increased about 0.60C; from 1940 to 1970, it decreased by 0.3-0.4°C…The present rate of increase of 0.7 ppm per year [of CO2] would therefore (if extrapolated to 2000 A.D.) result in a warming of about 0.60C – a very substantial change…The drop in the earth’s temperature since 1940 has been paralleled by a substantial increase in natural volcanism. The effect of such volcanic activity is probably greater than the effect of manmade pollutants… it is essential that scientists understand thoroughly the dynamics of climate.” [Emphasis added]. Consequently, this paper is re-classified as neutral in this review. Not the “Cooling” classification in KR-16 and not the “Warming” the classification in PCF-08).
2. The Sagan et al. (1979) paper is classified as “Neutral” in PCF-08 but the paper states that, “Observations show that since 1940 the global mean temperature has declined by -0.2 K…Extrapolation of present rates of change of land use suggests a further decline of -1 K in the global temperature by the end of the next century, at least partially compensating for the increase in global temperature through the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, anticipated from the continued burning of fossil fuels.” [Emphasis added]. Therefore, this paper is re-classified as cooling in this review (conforming to the KR-16 classification).
Results from Review & Discussion
The review database contains a total 190 relevant papers, which is 2.7 times the size of the PCF-08 database. Of the 190 papers in the review database, 162 full papers/books and 25 abstracts were reviewed (abstracts were used when the full papers were either pay-walled or could not be sourced). Furthermore, 4 warming papers from PCF-08 were not reviewed because they could not be sourced. Therefore, the PCF-08 classification was used for these papers in this review.
The results from the review are summarised in Figure 2.
It is evident from Figure 2 that, for the 1965-1979 reference period used by PCF-08, the number of cooling papers significantly outnumbers the number of warming papers. It is also apparent that there are two distinct sub-periods contained within the reference period, namely:
1. The 1968-1976 period when cooling papers greatly outnumber the warming papers (85% to 15%), if we ignore the neutral papers (as was done in the Cook et al (2103). The 85% to 15% majority is an overwhelming cooling consensus. Additionally, this is probably the period when the 1970s “global cooling consensus” originated because cooling was clearly an established scientific consensus – not the myth that PCF-08 contend.
2. The 1977-1979 period when warming papers slightly outnumber the cooling papers (52% to 48%) – a warming majority but not a consensus.
The following observations are also worth noting from Figure 2 for the 1965-1979 reference period:
1. Of the 190 papers in the database, the respective number of papers are 86 cooling, 58 neutral and 46 warming. In percentage terms, this equates to 45% cooling papers, 31% neutral papers and 24% warming papers, if we use all of the data.
2. The cooling consensus increases to 65% compared with 35% warming – a considerable cooling consensus, if we ignore the neutral papers (as was done in the Cook et al (2103).
3. The total number of cooling papers is always greater than or equal to the number of warming papers throughout the entire reference period.
Although not presented in Figure 2, it is worth noting that 30 papers refer to the possibility of a New Ice-Age or the return to the “Little Ace-Age” (although they sometimes they used the term “Climate Catastrophic Cooling”). Timescales for the New Ice Age vary from a few decades, through a century or two, to several millennia. The 30 “New Ice Age” papers are not insignificant when compared with the 46 warming papers.
Conclusions
A review of the climate science literature of the 1965-1979 period is presented and it is shown that there was an overwhelming scientific consensus for climate cooling (typically, 65% for the whole period) but greatly outnumbering the warming papers by more than 5-to-1 during the 1968-1976 period, when there were 85% cooling papers compared with 15% warming.
It is evident that the conclusion of the PCF-08 paper, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus, is incorrect. The current review shows the opposite conclusion to be more accurate. Namely, the 1970s global cooling consensus was not a myth – the overwhelming scientific consensus was for climate cooling.
It appears that the PCF-08 authors have committed the transgression of which they accuse others; namely, “selectively misreading the texts” of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979. The PCF-08 authors appear to have done this by neglecting the large number of peer-reviewed papers that were pro-cooling.
I find it very surprising that PCF-08 only uncovered 7 cooling papers and did not uncover the 86 cooling papers in major scientific journals, such as, Journal of American Meteorological Society, Nature, Science, Quaternary Research and similar scientific papers that they reviewed. For example, PCF-08 only found 1 paper in Quaternary Research, namely the warming paper by Mitchell (1976), however, this review found 19 additional papers in that journal, comprising 15 cooling, 3 neutral and 1 warming.
I can only suggest that the authors of PCF-08 concentrated on finding warming papers instead of conducting the impartial “rigorous literature review” that they profess.
If the current climate science debate were more neutral, the PCF-08 paper would either be withdrawn or subjected to a detailed corrigendum to correct its obvious inaccuracies.
Afterword
I reiterate that no literature survey can be 100% complete. Therefore, if you uncover additional references then please send them to me in the comments. It would make this review much better if we could significantly increase the number of relevant references.
Additionally, if you disagree with the classification of some of the references then please let me know why you disagree and I will consider appropriate amendments. Your comments on classification would certainly increase the veracity of the review by providing an independent assessment of my classifications.
References
The references used in this review and their classification are included in the spreadsheet here:
References-Global Cooling Consensus.xlsx
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I remember well, good ole Jame Hansen. LOL I was a senior in 1977. Some think this winter my approach the same conditions. Of course we will read that the blocking off the coast of Washington will be caused by CO2 and Global Warming. If NASA is correct and we cool some, the headlines will read, what happens after the solar minimum. I am 59, I really don’t care. We can’t change the climate.
The WA State record low was recorded on 30 December 1968, IIRC, in Winthrop.
The same day was also the lowest, ie -35, I ever experienced in my hometown in NE OR, but our state record low was set most recently at Seneca to my south in 1933, a tie with a previous date.
I believe it was -54F and it was recorded within a week or so of the lowest recorded temperature outside of Antarctica of -90F in Oymyakon Siberia. Same air mass? Survey says: Yes.
Is this really the climate to which Alarmunistas want us to return?
I am old enough to have memory of the press coverage for that era, and there were definitely dire warnings of a cooling trend. It would appear there is more than a bit of gaslighting going on.
285 Papers 70s Cooling 1
http://notrickszone.com/285-papers-70s-cooling-1/
I see that Nick Stokes completely IGNORE this link.
Gee I wonder why………….
Snicker………………
Because most of them, if you had taken the time to actually read them, are NOT about predictions of “imminent global cooling”at all.
Of course! & you know that Gaslights contribute to Global Warming, er, Climate Change!
Me too Tom. I was 14 in 1965. My memory isn’t the greatest but I don’t recall ever hearing anything about any possible warming but quite a bit about us humans causing an early arrival of the next ice age due the combustion partials blocking the sunlight. I never agreed with the global warming alarmist but mostly just ignored it until I realized (mostly from reading on this blog) just how must of our money and effort was being wasted and how much more is in planning stages to be wasted. My fear is that our economy is fragile and always has been and the actions demanded by the alarmist could make the great depression look like a picnic. Wars seem to come about when economic calamity occurs.
Even popular magazines such as True and Popular Science (and perhaps Popular Mechanics) carried articles warning of a new ice age, if memory serves me right.
Even popular magazines such as True and Popular Science (and perhaps Popular Mechanics) carried articles warning of a new ice age, if memory serves me right.
I remember that as well. Science Digest had a special issue about the Coming Ice Age. I think it was 1976. They also had an issue with a large article written by Isaac Asimov. I wish I’d kept them.
Tom Halla
Yes, there were popular articles
about global cooling
in the mid-1970s
It would have been tough
to predict global warming
after 30 years of cooling,
and get that prediction published.
But in the twentieth century,
and probably earlier,
there have ALWAYS been some scientists ,
desperately seeking attention,
in the mainstream media,
by predicting
a warming,
or cooling,
or some other,
coming disaster.
Unfortunately,
I believe this article
is meaningless data mining.
I also wonder why anyone
would care about opinions
in the 1970s, even if there
was some way to accurately
measure those opinions today.
The “re-interpretations”
of the papers
made me
VERY suspicious.
Does a study of some articles that
got published in the 1970s, not all of them,
really tell us what ALL qualified scientists
believed at the time ?
I say “NO”.
In the good old days,
it was considered junk science
to make wild guess predictions
of the future climate —
now it is a leftist sport.
.
.
Now let me explain why:
There were few scientists in the 1970s
who called themselves climate scientists,
or climatologists.
But there were many scientists qualified
to state an opinion about the future climate.
Few of them made long-term predictions
in writing, that were published.
Those that did put their opinions in writing,
would have had a hard time getting published,
if they predicted warming, after the
multi-decade cooling period, since 1940.
So, the subset of scientists
predicting the future climate,
is a minority
of all scientists qualified to do so
(assuming ANYONE is really qualified
to predict the future).
And the scientists whose papers
actually that got PUBLISHED in the 1970s,
were most likely to be those
who predicted global cooling.
What got PUBLISHED,
and publicized,
DOES NOT reveal
what all qualified scientists
believed at the time.
Of course I can’t read the minds
of scientists back in the 1970s,
any more than you can
… but I can observe
that it did not take long
for a global warming
consensus to develop.
The speed of the developing
global warming consensus
strongly suggests, but does not prove,
that many scientists already believed in
the greenhouse theory and man made
global warming in the 1970s,
even if they NEVER wrote, and
got published, papers saying that.
My climate change blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
any studies
Rasool &Schneider is mentioned above. That was originally neutral because in the introduction they say that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause 0.8 degrees of warming and you would need an 8 fold increase for 2 degrees of warming so it would be a minor effect, too small to negate the catastrophic cooling to come if we didn’t decarbonise the economy. Once their calculations were shown to be rubbish, they became leading scientists in the push to decarbonise the economy to stop global warming with Schneider even becoming Thinker in Residence in South Australia advising the government to turn the state into a basket case because of electricity from renewable sources.
Its pretty clear that the change from global cooling was influenced by science but going from benign warming to thermageddon was politics.
Their guess at ECS can now be seen not to be rubbish. Estimates keep falling. Since net feedback effects might well be negative, it’s entirely possible that climate sensitivity could indeed be less than the lab value of ~1.1 degree C per doubling of CO2, rather than the two, three, four or more times that figure, assumed due to supposed net positive feedbacks.
I interviewed Schneider over his “nuclear winter” paper. He admitted that the aerosol and particulate assumptions from sooty, burning cities, forests and fields had wide error margins.
“had wide error margins” as in they shouldn’t have bothered publishing?
“Their guess at ECS can now be seen not to be rubbish” . They didn’t provide the calculations. Just stated it as the consensus. And its still rubbish. Despite all the adjustments to the various estimates of temperature anomalies to get rid of the pause, they are still only consistent with about a third of a degree of warming going from 300 to 400 ppm, due to emissions.
In 1974, the CIA reported the “growing consensus” among scientists that dangerous global cooling was in the offing:
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/05/cia-1974-global-cooling-to-produce-global-unrest-beyond-comprehension/
Me too.I remember working out how old I would be when this happened.Even as a young snow lover I can remember thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t enjoy it so much in my 70’s.I will be 66 in a few days and I’m getting very twitchy about the quiet sun.
Peterson et al, also missed this gem, in the NOAA.
1972 – Kukla-Mathews publishes in Science, an article about the end of the current inter glacial. Also writes a letter to Nixon in 1972, specifically warning about global cooling.
1973 – First Climate office started in Feb 1973 (ad hoc Panel on the Present Inter Glacial). This was after a meeting of 42 of the most prominent climatologists, and apparently there was consensus about cooling. Especially as the NOAA, NWS and ICAS were involved.
1974 – Office of Climate Dynamics opened.
1978 -Carter signs Climate Program Act, partly due to the SEVERE WINTER experienced the preceding winter.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
Little did the know that the unforgettable winter of 1976/77 was just the PDO flip.
The PDO wasn’t discovered until the mis-’90s, by a UW fisheries researcher.
Excellent work Angus, I believe what you say, thanks.
Angus McFarlane -good work – thank you.
It cooled .3 from 1940 to 1978. It warmed .3 from 1979 to 2018.
Any questions?
Were either numbers ‘right’ then or now?
1) What caused the cooling?
2) What caused the warming?
3) What are the error bars on those numbers?
Mark
0.3 + 0.3 adds up to 0.6 degrees of “climate change”.
Head for the hills !
Or perhaps it cooled by nearer 0.5degC between the highs of the late 1930s/early 1940s and early 1970s, and has since the early 1970s warmed by about 0.5 to 0.6 degC.
There is much evidence to suggest that the temperatures today in the Northern Hemisphere are no higher than they were in the late 1930s/early 1940s. But of course, the thermometer temperature reconstruction is not fit for scientific purpose such that no one really knows what the correct position is.
A review like this without any details is useless. Perhaps the details are meant to be in the spreadsheet mentioned, but there is no live link.
Only one example of reclassification to cool is given, and it is in the classic KR style of picking out and bolding out of context. Just repeating the quote without bold:
“Extrapolation of present rates of change of land use suggests a further decline of -1 K in the global temperature by the end of the next century, at least partially compensating Extrapolation of present rates of change of land use suggests a further decline of -1 K in the global temperature by the end of the next century, at least partially compensating for the increase in global temperature through the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, anticipated from the continued burning of fossil fuels.”
and it isn’t forecasting cooling at all. It is saying that land use, a minor factor, may partially compensate “for the increase in global temperature through the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, anticipated from the continued burning of fossil fuels”
IOW, it won’t warm quite as much as it might have. That is not a cooling paper.
Nick, did you apply your reasoning to the other consensus???
Just asking for specifics of n actual cooling paper that PCF-08 is supposed to have missed.
I counted 8 . Amended Classifications to PCF-08
Rasool and Schneider (1972) Neutral Cooling
FCSTICAS (1974) Warming Cooling
National Academy of Sciences (1975) Neutral Cooling
Shaw (1976) Neutral Cooling
Bryson and Dittberner (1977) Neutral Cooling
Barrett, 1978 Neutral Cooling
Sagan et al. (1979) Neutral Cooling
Choudhury and Kukla, 1979 Neutral Cooling
Yes, but no details or justification is given; just an assertion. There are 16 cases shown where a cooling paper in PCF08 was changed to neutral or warm.
The references seem to be missing…hopefully he will it..
Dammit! I forgot to put up the excel file. It’s on me. Let me get at it.
It’s now linked at the bottom of the post
Tanx.. : )
It doesn’t say “partially” compensate, it says -1 K exactly. But yeah, I’d say that is a neutral paper.
“at least partially compensating for the increase in global temperature”
Two opposing mechanisms are presented without declaring the net effect, although the preponderance of evidence suggests cooling as that is the only trend given a magnitude. It does NOT say the net effect is warmer, only that there is a warming effect from CO2.
“partially compensating” says the net effect is warmer.
But “at least partially compensating” means it may more than compensate for the warming. The phrasing is rather odd, but suggests the net effect could be either warming or cooling.
To this UK English speaker the phrase “at lesst compensating for” means that the best outcome is neutral and the worst is continued cooling.
The effect of cooling aerosols might be equalled by the warming effect of CO2 but not exceeded by the warming.
Quite straight forward.
I missed that because of the weird double paste, but it’s not the language they should use. If it’s partially compensating, they should state quantifiably the net change and why or who thinks that.
Its called a ‘buck each way’.
Later when accused of making the wrong call all that is said is that the claimer does not understand the science.
I am an old guy and maybe have the onset of senile dementia, but the papers refer to cooling (net) of -1 K. Or down 1 degree Centigrade if you prefer. Now, if you are hung up on the dire effects of CO2 you can cite the ameliorating effect, but the subject at hand is whether the paper predicts cooling or not. Nick, stick to the subject.
I would call this the ‘Topiary” effect: hedges trimmed to the shape of one’s confirmation bias.
We all hate it when our ox is Gored. And so the discussion continues.
It is saying that land use, a minor factor, may partially compensate
That is NOT what it said. I quote, bold mine, taken directly from your comment:
at least partially compensating for the increase in global temperature through the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect
There is a substantial difference between “may” and “at least partially” compensate. In fact the latter suggest that partially compensate is the minimum, and could plausibly be more, as in fully or more than compensate for greenhouse effect.
It is a cooling paper, by your own quote. You only made it into a warming paper by changing a single word and hoping nobody would notice.
“It is a cooling paper”
So how does “at least partially compensate” warming translate into definite net cooling, and so overruling PCF08, which put it at neutral.
It says
“Extrapolation of present rates of change of land use suggests a further decline of -1 K in the global temperature by the end of the next century”
The key is it definitely says a further decline of -1 K,
which I read as the net result of various factors causing declines and increases.
Obviously that decline is presented as one factor (anomaly) weighed against the clearly stated warming factor of global increase. This is exactly why this type of paper research should be done very carefully since people tend to interpret in the way that fits their initial motivation to start looking.
That said, even with all the corrections, in my view there will be likely no warming consensus found for the stated period. It would become 50-50 or 60-40 either way and in such environment the media bias & selection method will become way more decisive in how it’s remembered. Which is exactly the lesson to take away from it.
Nick, Nick, Nick,
The question was, what was the science saying about the current state of the global temperature trend at the time. Was the earth cooling at that point in time or not? The statement from the paper was that AT THAT TIME the earth was cooling, that land use would accelerate that. The observation that “by the end of the next century” this cooling would at LEAST partially off set greenhouse effect (if not more) is talking about what? 120 years later?
The paper clearly describes a cooling earth at the time, not a warming one.
David,
“The question was, what was the science saying about the current state of the global temperature trend at the time.”
No, it wasn’t. There was indeed a consensus that the temperature trend at the time was down. There still is. That is different from a “cooling scare”. The issue (question) defined in the article is:
“There was an overwhelming scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was heading into a period of significant cooling.”
“if there were a cooling consensus (which subsequently proved to be wrong) then it would question the legitimacy of consensus in science.”
Now downtrends in temperature are in the record; they haven’t proved to be wrong, and they aren’t a big deal.
The point, Nick, is that the warmists of today are claiming that there was never a “scientific” consensus of a cooling trend. This article is demonstrating that there was actually a consensus and that the warmists of today are (yet again) rewriting history to suit their own narrative.
” that the warmists of today are claiming that there was never a “scientific” consensus of a cooling trend”
Well, quote them. What do they actually say? It’s sort of quoted in the araticle. From the abstract of PCF08:
“An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age”
That is what they say is wrong. It involves prediction, not a description of recent trends. And it speaks of imminent, not eventual. That is what KR and Angus confuse. They bring in a whole lot of papers that merely describe recent trend, or the glaciation cycle, and say they promoted the myth. But it is quite different. Many papers they cite are not controversial, then or now.
That is different from a “cooling scare”.
I sat through multiple classes in high school in that time frame where multiple students broke down and cried because they thought the ice age was coming. I really don’t give a d*mn what evidence you cite, I LIVED THROUGH THE COOLING SCARE AND IT WAS REAL.
As I relate downthread, I was one of the few to call bsh*t on the hysteria, and I took a ton of grief from teachers and other students for it. I called bsh*t on the cooling scare then, and I call bsh*t on the warming scare now.
Hivemind,
Not only was there a cooling consensus, it was based on extrapolating the behavior of the recent past. That consensus was wrong and the trend reversed. Apparently, they failed to learn that it’s invalid to extrapolate short term climate trends allowing another ‘consensus’ to arise around extrapolating the new short term trend.
Nick
It’s a shame you didn’t go to the same lengths to critically examine Resplandy et al.
davidmhoffer you are not alone, I too lived through it. It wasn’t just in the schools, it was one TV and in the newspapers as well. As Leonard Nemoy’s popular “In search of…” program attests with the 1978 episode “In search of the coming ice age”.
“There is a substantial difference between “may” and “at least partially” compensate. ”
Exactly right, that “at least” phase tends to tip it onto the cooling side
Nick the link to the spreadsheet is at the bottom of the article.
I came to the same conclusion, Nick.
You don’t need to be a scientist or anything other than literate to understand the meaning of “partially compensate”.
On the other hand I lived through the 70s. Whatever the “consensus” that Connolley et al might have been trying to downplay — and after his persistent activist tinkering with Wikipedia, why should anybody assume anything he says on climate is to be trusted? — the media consensus was that cooling was what we needed to worry about.
Since the media have always been mugs for a good scare story (personal experience!) it is a certainty that “global cooling” was what they were being fed by sources that they had every reason to believe were reliable. (Hype, exaggeration, a bit of scaremongering are OK; actual lying they try to avoid!) Which had to be either the science establishment or the environmentalists.
They were being fed rubbish then just as they are being fed the other side of the the same rubbish now. And for the same reason. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” (H L Mencken)
The question isn’t and has never been whether or not the media supported the idea of imminent global cooling – there may well have been a lot of reporting claiming the ice age was coming (I don’t know of any studies of media reporting at the time), the question was always, “was there a scientific consensus in the 70s that a significant and long term global cooling trend was imminent?” I do not think there is any evidence suggesting the answer to that question is “yes.”
But this to me raises another important consideration. If there was a cooling consensus in the 70s, so what? So what if scientists “got it wrong” 50 years ago – we know a lot more now about the climate than we did then. The earth actually was cooling at the time, probably as a result of aerosol forcing, so hypothesizing about continued cooling would hardly have been unreasonable.
To me the entire premise of this argument is fallacious – that we shouldn’t trust scientists now if they’ve ever been wrong in the past.
I disagree with the final sentence. If scientists in the climate field have been wrong in the past, then laymen are wise to be skeptical of their claims in the future.
This is true of any field. Eggs were good, then bad, then good, then bad, … Laymen should be skeptical of findings in the diet/nutrition field because of the contradictory results over time. Especially since lots of money is involved in selling dietary and nutritional advice.
Which reminds me, the climatology field also has a lot of money involved. So there are two excellent reasons for laymen to be skeptical of climate scientists: They have been wrong in the past, and there is the potential for them to make a lot of money off of either global cooling or global warming.
Agree, that paper should be classified as neutral or warm.
Nick, once again you thread-hijack with false wording.
Nice work. And it’s 100% true that if this paper isn’t retracted that a bias is proven. I’d only add that a 52% in this cased doesn’t represent a “majority” but is more of “a roughly even split.”
Extra, extra read all about it, US model backwards on temps in the eastern united states for Nov., Ky is -8 mtd.
Who runs and programs this model anyway, all the others have it the opposite. Gore running it?
Once upon a time scientific consensus included: caloric, phlogiston, spontaneous generation, luminiferous ether, the four humours, etc.
Over time they eventually fell to the scientific process. Maybe we need another Paris Academy of Science to sponsor a red team/blue team competition as it did for spontaneous generation.
Ya know consensus and most everythang else discussed^4 about climate change is moot because:
1) 33 C warmer w/ atmosphere is rubbish,
2) Up/down/”back” GHG energy loop is thermodynamic nonsense,
3) BB upwelling LWIR from surface is not possible.
1 + 2 + 3 = 0 RGHE & 0 GHG warming & 0 CAGW.
Still waiting for an alarmist defender to refute these points.
Actually, there’s a much more recent consensus. Ancel Keys came up with the theory that everything was the fault of dietary fat. His science was crap. In spite of that he captured the consensus and it was enforced. People who bucked the consensus had their careers trashed. link The comparison with CAGW is pretty direct.
The usual thing when people find out about past bad science is to say that we’re more sophisticated than that now. Ancel Keys and his fat consensus are modern. That was within the lifetime of most of the people on WUWT.
Cooling world was my understanding for a long time. At some point I was working in remote regions of developing countries & upon visiting family heard people expounding global warming. Personally I think, in the long run, cooling is destined to be a feature. I suppose I want to see how it plays out.
Yes I want to see how it plays out, and give the warmists a chance to prove their theory,
because if we reduce the CO2 like they want, neither side can show they were right.
gringojay,
A while ago you posted a link to a study on chickpeas and elevated CO2, the link didn’t work. Do you have a good one?
@aaron chmielewski, – Do you recall the WUWT OiginalPost title or maybe the publihed research paper’s title? I don’t keep “files” so can’t pull up source documnts & this tablet makes it hard to search back WUWT posts (there are so any a ot). I know where I was when cited the chickpea study & that means it was posted someime during the last week of Sept. or by 10 October (2018).
That’s Naomi Oreskes’ take on it.
But here’s what happens if you try to explain this to believalists.
Dr. Oreskes is a woman, so she must be believed.
She’s right, for a change, that the consensus in the late ’60s and ’70s was cooling. As anyone alive then and payding attention knows.
I was alive then, and paying attention, and I agree the consensus was definitely Global Cooling. That’s one reason I’m so skeptical of the current Global Warming claims because I have seen all this before and the consensus turned out to be wrong.
It had been cooling for decades since the 1940’s so why wouldn’t people think we were experiencing global cooling. We were!
The Global Warming papers were just speculating about the possible effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Just like they do today.
Right at the end of the 1970’s the temperatures started warming and not soon after that, we had a Global Warming consensus.
It seems that whatever direction the temperature trend takes, many climate scientists seem to think that trend will last forever and make wild predictions about the future.
Tom,
There is something that can be said for the synoptic view provided by experience. One comes to a very different conclusion if the examination of the behavior of the sine function is limited to 0 to 90 degrees, versus the looking at 0 to 360 degrees.
+1
Remember the cooling scare well. Man-made aerosols (pollution) blocking out the sun. Famine coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_1975!_America%27s_Decision:_Who_Will_Survive%3F
Ah the ’60s and ’70s. There was a cooling scare, an overpopulation scare, a man-made pollution scare all rolled into one. At the time it was hard to separate them all out.
And in the media, (I understand this isn’t a media study) there was a steady drumbeat of an immanent ice-age.
‘imminent’ if you please…
And they made and make wold predictions.
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/08/1970-global-cooling-scare-front-page-news/
“The ice age scare was front page news in 1970. Scientists said it was caused by burning fossil fuels, and would cause the Antarctic ice sheet to collapse – drowning coastal cities. They wanted to melt the Arctic and poison Africans to save the planet.
Front page of the Washington Post, January 11, 1970. Colder Winters Held Dawn Of New Ice Age. “That’s the long range forecast being given out by climatologists”
I also remember from that time, an analysis (repeated in a couple of popularized articles) that found short (a decade or so), medium (several decades), and long term (several centuries) cycles into which the temperature record could be decomposed with a reasonable fit; and that all three cycles seemed to be adding together to create a large cooling trend for the 1970’s-90’s time period.
Although that analysis did NOT find a exact match with the 11 year sunspot cycle, it was an attempt to fit a noisy record, so .. could have been.
I lived through it as well. It was real, and there was a consensus on cooling.
We were being encouraged to burn Fossil fuel to increase atmospheric CO2 in the hope that a greenhouse warming effect could “at least partially compensate” for the cooling that was predicted. That was the wording.
Yes, there was talk of GHE, as a possible hope against the next ice age.
That’s one gem of a mistake, though the paper was not published scholarly, was it?
Oreskes, Naomi. “From weather modification to climate change: The work of Gordon JF MacDonald.”
Dyslexic typo in a couple of places – Cook et al (2103)
Another typo is at the top of the page where it is stated there was a 93% consensus, when the actual figure is 97%.
I get confused about which Time magazine cover(s) are fake – isn’t the Penguin one fake?
Doesn’t affect the substance of the article though.
Yes, it is fake. Details here.
Time magazine itself also tells the story: http://science.time.com/2013/06/06/sorry-a-time-magazine-cover-did-not-predict-a-coming-ice-age/
But it may still be worthwhile to find out exactly who faked it in the first place. Remember, folks in the old Ozone Action environmentalist organization planted a fake name in Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project in order to prompt major news organizations to declare the whole petition worthless, so I wouldn’t put it past some enviro-activists to plant a fake magazine cover on the internet and then crow about how many ‘conservative zealots’ use it without question to say the global cooling craze (which I also remember well) never happened.
” some enviro-activists to plant a fake magazine cover on the internet “
That was the point of the article I linked. It debunked a 2017 WUWT article claiming that it had been planted by activists just prior to the linked Time article in 2013. But I traced it back to at least a Free Republic article in 2007, where it appears with the true 2007 cover. It seems to be someone’s idea of a parody, which people liked and passed on as real. And here it bobs up again, despite all the debunkings.
ps the 2007 links seem to have dead images. But they were there.
Nick,
I was a teenager in the 70’s and I remember distinctly all the hysteria around the impending ice age. Particularly sensitive when you live on the frigid Canadian prairie in the first place. One class discussion got so intense that some students broke down and cried because they thought they were going to have to abandon their homes and farms and find a new place to live.
I was one of the few (very few) students to call bsh*t. I didn’t have access to scientific journals at the time, but I did have access to all the magazines and newspapers that the school library subscribed to. I read the articles, and there were lots of them, cover or no cover. Some of them had enough references and detail that I could take it back to the teachers and point out the exaggerations and misrepresentations. Not that they listened to me, but that’s not the point. The point is that Time cover being real or not, the articles and general discussion of the science centered on cooling. Anywhere from a little to ice age. That was the consensus at the time.
Nick, more of the dead pics work in the Internet Archive version of that Free Republic piece, but the one in question might still be among the dead links there: https://web.archive.org/web/20091202083034/http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1887747/posts
Russell,
Thanks. That is the page with many of the cartoons, but unfortunately the Time cover one is still not working. It might be to do with the disappearance of the StrangePolitics site. Fortunately I kept a copy of the animated gif, which is here. I believe that 2007 image is the first appearance of the fake.
The REAL magazine cover in question is here
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601740624,00.html
The scare article from that issue, linked to on that page is reproduced here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1663607/posts
Don’t let the fake news about the fake cover planted by the warmist fakers confuse you.
There WAS a real scare article in Time Magazine, which fueled the REAL fake scare of the seventies.
I have a 1944 birthday and in the ’70s is was “Global Cooling” sometime in the ’80s it had morphed into “Nuclear Winter” and I distinctly remember “Nuclear Winter” and “Global Warming” stories in the press running at the same time. That’s why I KNOW that something isn’t kosher.
The word “myth” in PCF-08 is a tell-tale term more suitable for propaganda purposes than science. William M. Connolley, the C in PCF was the sometime editor of Wankerpedia famed for promptly editing out anything skeptical posted there about global warming. It’s not particularly surprising that PCF-08 has been proven wildly erroneous, Nick Stokes’s tarantella to confuse the issue notwithstanding.
Early’80’s was also acid rain
Give it another couple of years and Time can just reprint their 1977 cover-page article, just change the dates.
I am so ready for the next big environmental crisis. The climate crisis is long over due to be replaced with something else. I remember when environmentalist shifted their focus (zero population growth, acid rain, deforestation, toxic waste, anti-nuclear power) like they changed clothes.
Just check the forecasts for Europe:
From Accuweather:
Winter to get an early start as cold sweeps from Warsaw to Paris and London early this week
November 19, 2018, 11:37:07 AM EST
The coldest air so far this season will sweep across northern Europe during the first half of this week, bringing the potential for snow to some communities.
D’ont forget that after we finish off the global warming scam there is still the ozone hole scam to deal with.
Tomalty
The ozone scare is yesterday’s newspapers.
The next scam, I predict,
will be exploding
silicone breast implants
caused by global warming,
and/or burning fossil fuels.
There will ALWAYS be
a coming catastrophe
and the “solution”
will always be to do exactly
what the leftists say,
without question !
oh its here…its plastic!
in oceans animals and even us..
meanwhile I too copped the 70s iceage running outta everything crap via schoool and media as a teen
Id never heard of warming con till 2007 and gores movie showing appeared in my small rural town via his “converts”
luckily for me i was pre primed by the first scare that stuffed my mind n life around
and had an older wiser chap who also told me to go and really look at the subject
then bless Anthony and the rest of the people here and elsewhere who speak up show data and discuss, i realised it really is a load of sh*t and another global conjob.
9 yrs since copenhagen and im STILL firmly skeptical and angrier by the day
As usual idology gets in the way of the truth.
But really it does not matter, climate or weather, it changes.
We are still faced with the bottom card in the giant sized “House of Cards”That of good old CO2. Lets have the truth about CO2 and all of this nonsence will finally go away.
MJE
Well, I would say that the Canadian government believed the cooling part. I ran a 16mm projector showing a film entitled something like, “The Coming Ice Age”. I would like to find it. Did the national library destroy it, convert it to tape, or save it?
It was co-sponsored by CMOS – Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.
Here is a short 2 minute clip by Leonard Nimoy (Spock) of a similar video from the early 1970’s I believe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUq0JnaIock
I just watched the 90 minute video you are talking about last winter, but now Google searches comes up empty for it. I suppose it could be in the process of being scrubbed from online ‘memory’ so it disappears, but I have seen it several times, including originally in the early to mid 1970’s at school too. For the record, I lived through that period on the northern prairie in Sask near the tree line at 53 north. It was all the talk for at least 10-15 years of the pending ice age, as were the news reports and my Dad actually starting selling the farm off quarter x quarter and we moved to the city and farmed from there for anther 10 years as winters were just brutal. It was clearly not working out for farming and land prices stagnated or fell during that time. Winters were -40 lows overnight for weeks on end with a brutal windchill, and we had -51F on our farm for the record low in one really bad stretch for which my father kept records. Some of our cows died, and the neighbours horses died from exposure.
If that cooling trend was still happening, we obviously would been entering at least an LIA event by now, but like most cycles, 30 years feels like a real long time, especially if you are just waiting around, like waiting for the kettle to boil. Summers were real short, but also real hot though, I recall. And then Bam!, another Arctic high would descend from Siberia in late Oct/Nov, and not climb above freezing until mid March. Let’s hope we never see that again. If you don’t live through that and suffer, you will never know how bad cold can really be. Cold is real quick death sentence.
I, too, remember the global cooling scare. The twin fears of global cooling and acid rain were the impetus for ending the practice of abating ground-level air pollution by building quarter-mile-high smokestacks.
Here’s Walter Cronkite on 9/11/1972:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhoB-Vf0N08
For a longer example, here’s Leonard Nimoy narrating an In Search Of episode (which also features a very young Dr. Stephen Schneider, in bell bottoms):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ndHwW8psR8#t=7m40s
EXCERPT:
Ah yes, the era of tall stacks to spread the pollution around. Those stacks were 1000 ft tall. Especially along the Ohio river in the valleys. Those were not fun to climb when you had to do testing in the stacks. Elevators were installed later.
Reflecting on this and being old enough to have been watching the TV news during the Vietnam War, my take on all this is that the media became quite addicted to their new found power to influence the public discourse that ever present cameras in the field, rapid transport of film back home ( i.e. within 24 hours) and on site reporters talking directly to camera opinionizing with ‘on the spot’ authoritas provided.
This addiction has now been turbocharged by satellite technology and the internet such that almost no matter what the issue some bobble head can opinionize their video package literally live while events are taking place. Add to that simply faking footage such as hilariously exposed in the recent hurricane in the US and the world is their oyster and brioche their staple diet.
Into this msm world wanter the self important narcissists like Hansen who see the opening to peddle some scklock – horror prognostication of doom conveniently just over the horizon so firm counter evidence is just not possible. In the 70’s global cooling resonated with the still present ( and quite reasoanble) fear of nuclear winter that had been round since the Soviets detonated their first nuke. In the 90’s that was a bullet dodged with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new narrative was the evil, greedy excesses of The West into which the global warming narrative slotted beautifully. Shameless to the core it was the likes of Hansen who peddled the new great fear narrative.
The CAGWarmists are just the shamans, the witcdoctors, the high priests of our time whose vector to power and influence has always been fear of the great deity/demon lurking over the horizon or in a pattern of stars.
Surprised not to see a mention of Nigel Calder’s influential book and associated TV programme from 1974 called The Weather Machine and the Threat of Ice.
John Gribbin was also writing articles for New Scientist around that time on the same subject.
No doubt in my mind that global cooling was the consensus 40 years ago.
Nigel Calder gave an update on his blog in 2010:
https://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/next-ice-age/
In it he wrote: ”I was present in Rome in 1961 when global cooling was already the main concern at a conference of the World Meteorological Organization and Unesco. The discussions were led by Hubert Lamb of the UK Met Office, who went on to found the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.”
Excellent review of the Peterson 2008 myth paper. Thank you.
My 2 cents
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/23/the-1970s-cooling-anomaly-of-agw/
Interestingly, the human cause fingerprint methodology with climate models shows human cause in warming only after 1970. Has wuwt written about that?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/24/humancausedwarming/
Here is an article from the famous climatologist Hubert H Lamb described as “an international authority on the long term processes of climatic change” published in August-September 1973:-
Lamb, H. H. (1973) Is the Earth’s Climate Changing? For the past 30 years the temperature of our planet has been steadily dropping. The UNESCO Courier: a window open on the world; Vol. XXVI (8/9), 17-20.
The summary by H.H. Lamb in his book “Climatic
History and the Future”, is a more accurate statement of the scientific
viewpoint in the 70’s:
“It is to be noted here that there is no necessary contradiction between
forecast expectations of (a) some renewed (or continuation of) slight cooling
of world climate for a few decades to come, e.g., from volcanic or solar
activity variations: (b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing
carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and
a while thereafter; and this followed in turn by (c) a glaciation lasting
(like the previous ones) for many thousands of years.”
I am so sick of revisionist history, anyone that lived during that time knows full well that the 2 things that everyone was worrying about was Nuclear war and the coming ice age.
One thing is unequivocal, that the media grandstanded the scientists that predicted immediate global cooling in the 1970s, and that’s the important part. It’s exactly what the media is doing today. It just wasn’t politicized as much, and it was used to reduce real pollution, which made quite a bit more sense than demonizing plant food.
I see the Sellers paper was reclassified from warming to neutral, and in Table 1, is said to be “expects warming or cooling to be equally possible”. So Sellers said that emitting CO2 might warm by 14C, and a change on solar constant might cool by 2-5C. Well, of course, they aren’t equally effective. But they also aren’t described as equally possible. In fact, there is no indication that Sellers expected solar to reduce rather than increase. What he said in more detail was:
“Thus man’s activity, if it continues unabated, should eventually lead to the elimination of the icecaps and to a climate much warmer than today. Annual mean temperatures of 26C, now characteristic of the tropics, would extend as far poleward as 40°. Considering the thermal inertia of the world’s oceans, it is impossible to say how long it will take for this warming to occur – possibly as little as 100 years or as long as 1000 years. During this time, it is not inconceivable that the solar constant will change. A decrease of slightly more than 7% in its value would yield a global mean temperature equal to today. Since such a large drop in solar constant is on the fringe of being highly unlikely, if one believes the earlier results of this paper, it follows that Budyko et al (1966) may be correct after all in stating that eventually man may inadvertently generate his own climate. “
PCF08 correctly said that was a warming paper. It is not neutral, as said here.
it is impossible to say how long it will take for this warming to occur – possibly as little as 100 years or as long as 1000 years.
So cooling for at LEAST a century and possibly as much as a 1,000 years.
So, cooling at the time, and for the foreseeable future. Cooling paper.
“So, cooling at the time, and for the foreseeable future”
No, he doesn’t say it was cooling at the time. And the times quoted seem to be times to completion of warming, not commencement.
Nick,
And the times quoted seem to be times to completion of warming, not commencement.
Nonsense. From your own quote:
Thus man’s activity, if it continues unabated, should eventually lead to
They’re clearly saying that if things continue as they were at that point in time, those things would EVENTUALLY lead to warming. Not that they are causing warming now.
Upon rereading the whole piece however, I agree that it isn’t a cooling paper. Neutral is the better classification since it doesn’t in fact say that the current condition is either cooling or warming. You’re kinda getting pummeled in this thread by those of us with actual memories of the 70’s, but that one I give you.
“You’re kinda getting pummeled in this thread by those of us with actual memories of the 70’”
Memories and anecdotes, but very little that can be put in writing. I have memories of the 70’s too. In 1976, I was a junior research scientist with CSIRO, just transferred from the East to Perth, WA. The state government there asked CSIRO (the federal research body) for advice. Wheat growing was big there where rain permitted, and automation had made it economic to plant crops where the winter rains were marginal, so crops might only succeed every second or third year. But harvesting would require extension of the rail network and other state infrastructure. So, they asked, where is the climate going?
I didn’t know, but being from the East, I was believed to have informed contacts. I did know some people from Atmospheric Physics, in Aspendale, Vic, so I asked around. The answer was unequivocal. Warming from the greenhouse effect. Warming would expand the Hadley cells, whose descent created the Roaring Forties westerlies that brought winter rain to WA. They would be pushed further south, and come north less frequently in winter. Bad news for marginal wheat areas in WA. Don’t do it.
So that was our advice. As it happened, that was followed by three very dry hot years. Our advice looked good, and the extensions were never built. And it has stayed dry.
Such disingenuous lying:
“Thus man’s activity, if it continues unabated, should eventually lead to
They’re clearly saying that if things continue as they were at that point in time, those things would EVENTUALLY lead to warming. Not that they are causing warming now.”
No if you replace the words you deliberately omitted what they’re clearly saying is:
“Thus man’s activity, if it continues unabated, should eventually lead to the elimination of the icecaps and to a climate much warmer than today.
Hmm, such vivid and exact memories from over 50 years ago, and of course anecdotal as well. Don’t play word games of you are going to use the same methods.
The cooling bias was covered over the media and those aren’t anecdotal, those are recounts of past events. Otherwise your recounting is just anecdotal as well.
I agree with your nit picking of the literature, but not of the reality of the media coverage and prominent scientists warning of impending ice age. If the media twisted or conflated, they did it on the same appeal to authority they do now. It’s the same exact methodology, they aren’t known for change.
Enough scientists were concerned about a return to an ice age and the media ran with it for numbers and fear mongering.
How can someone demonstrate such intellect yet be so obtuse, unless he subscribe to a religion without admitting such?
The self deception is strong in this one
If you think CO2 warming of 14C is a valid claim, … then I have some ocean front property to sell you in Colorado. If anything, the paper proves the Author didn’t know squat, and I’m not sure that that situation has been remedied today.