Guest “historical climastrology” by David Middleton
Nothing funnier than smarmy academics…
For 110 years, climate change has been in the news. Are we finally ready to listen?
Published: August 15, 2022 2.47am EDTOn August 14 1912, a small New Zealand newspaper published a short article announcing global coal usage was affecting our planet’s temperature.
This piece from 110 years ago is now famous, shared across the internet this time every year as one of the first pieces of climate science in the media (even though it was actually a reprint of a piece published in a New South Wales mining journal a month earlier).
So how did it come about? And why has it taken so long for the warnings in the article to be heard – and acted on?
[…]
Linden Ashcroft
The Conversation
Lecturer in climate science and science communication, The University of Melbourne
The article goes on to cite other historical apocalyptical warnings and predictions about greenhouse gas-induced warming.
The Callendar Effect
It wasn’t until the 1930s that human-induced climate change resurfaced. UK engineer Guy Callendar put together weather observations from around the world and found temperatures had already increased.
Not only was Callendar the first to clearly identify a warming trend and connect it to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, he also teased apart the importance of CO₂ compared to water vapour, another potent greenhouse gas.
Just like the 1912 article, Callendar also underestimated the rate of warming we would see in the 80 years after his first results. He predicted the world would be only 0.39℃ hotter by the year 2000, rather than the 1℃ we observed. However it did get the attention of researchers, sparking intense scientific debate.
[…]
The Conversation
Then it was all apparently scuttled by “the merchants of doubt”…
Fresh hope scuttled by merchants of doubt
In 1957, scientists began the International Geophysical Year – an intense investigation of the Earth and its poles and atmosphere. This saw the creation of the atmospheric monitoring stations tracking our steady increase in human-caused greenhouse gases. At the same time, oil companies were becoming aware of the impact their business was having on the Earth.
[…]
Momentum was growing.
[…]
Climate change became politicised, with conservative pro-business parties around the world adopting climate scepticism. Global media coverage often included a sceptic in the interests of “balance”. This, in turn, made many people believe the jury was still out – when the science was becoming ever more certain and alarming.
With this scepticism came delays. The 1992 Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gases took until 2005 to be ratified. Science — and scientists themselves — came under attack. Soon a vicious tussle was underway, with loud voices – often funded by fossil fuel interests – questioning overwhelming scientific evidence.
[…]
The Conversation
Let’s compare Callendar’s under-estimation with reality.
Just like the 1912 article, Callendar also underestimated the rate of warming we would see in the 80 years after his first results. He predicted the world would be only 0.39℃ hotter by the year 2000, rather than the 1℃ we observed. However it did get the attention of researchers, sparking intense scientific debate.
The Conversation
In 1938, Callendar predicted 0.39 °C of greenhouse gas-induced warming by the year 2000. The climate lecturer says that we observed about 1 °C of warming over that time period. Reality indicates a tad bit more than 0.3 °C of warming from 1938 to 2000.
The only way I can get anything close to 1 °C of warming over that time period, would be to connect the coldest point with the warmest point… Pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to be done.
Oddly enough, Callendar thought the warming would be beneficial to humanity.
British amateur meteorologist G. S. Callendar made a bold claim five years later that many would recognize now. He argued that man was responsible for heating up the planet with carbon dioxide emissions – in 1938.
It wasn’t a common notion at the time, but he published an article in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society on the subject. “In the following paper I hope to show that such influence is not only possible, but is actually occurring at the present time,” Callendar wrote. He went on the lecture circuit describing carbon-dioxide-induced global warming.
But Callendar didn’t conclude his article with an apocalyptic forecast, as happens in today’s global warming stories. Instead he said the change “is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power.” Furthermore, it would allow for greater agriculture production and hold off the return of glaciers “indefinitely.”
Fire and Ice
This bit is hilarious…
The best time to act was 1912. The next best time is now
After decades of setbacks, climate science and social movements are now louder than ever in calling for strong and meaningful action.
[…]
The Conversation
OK… I’m not sure how we should have acted in 1912. If the action was to stop burning coal and undiscover oil & gas, I don’t think humanity would have benefited.
Energy Consumption: Bjorn Lomborg, LinkedIn
The Bits in the Middle
Back in 2006, Dan Gainor and Warren Anderson wrote an excellent article (quoted earlier) on the historical warming-cooling media seesaw…
Fire and Ice
It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of “geologists.” Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming – it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age.
The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be “wiped out” or lower crop yields would mean “billions will die.”
Just as the weather has changed over time, so has the reporting – blowing hot or cold with short-term changes in temperature.
Following the ice age threats from the late 1800s, fears of an imminent and icy catastrophe were compounded in the 1920s by Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan and an obsession with the news of his polar expedition. As the Times put it on Feb. 24, 1895, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.”
Those concerns lasted well into the late 1920s. But when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, newspapers and magazines responded with stories about the new threat. Once again the Times was out in front, cautioning “the earth is steadily growing warmer.”
After a while, that second phase of climate cautions began to fade. By 1954, Fortune magazine was warming to another cooling trend and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.” As the United States and the old Soviet Union faced off, the media joined them with reports of a more dangerous Cold War of Man vs. Nature.
The New York Times ran warming stories into the late 1950s, but it too came around to the new fears. Just three decades ago, in 1975, the paper reported: “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.”
[…]
Fire and Ice
The media reports generally match up with how the average surface temperature of the Earth was changing over that time period.
I’m not familiar with the late 19th century ice age or the early 20th century inferno… But I am familiar with That 70’s Climate Crisis Show.
Global Cooling: 1954-1976
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Fire and Ice
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
’Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river
— The Clash “London Calling,” released in 1979
I have been a professional geologist/geophysicist in the oil & gas industry since May 1981. From September 1976 through May 1980, I was a college student at Southern Connecticut State University (“That fine oil school”) in New Haven, Connecticut. Winters were fracking cold back then. The Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 (AKA “Storm Larry”) shut the State of Connecticut down for almost a full week. If the science had been settled since 1912, I think it might have been mentioned in at least one of my textbooks. Fortunately, I still have most of them.
Historical Geology
Suggestion that changing carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere could be a major factor in climate change dates from 1861, when it was proposed by British physicist John Tyndall.
[…]
Unfortunately we cannot estimate accurately changes of past CO2 content of either atmosphere or oceans, nor is there any firm quantitative basis for estimating the the magnitude of drop in carbon dioxide content necessary to trigger glaciation. Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain.
Dott, Robert H. & Roger L. Batten. Evolution of the Earth. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Second Edition 1976. p. 441.
Meteorology
FORECASTING THE FUTURE. We can now try to decide if we are now in an interglacial stage, with other glacials to follow, or if the world has finally emerged from the Cenozoic Ice Age. According to the Milankovitch theory, fluctuations of radiation of the type shown in Fig. 16-18 must continue and therefore future glacial stages will continue. According to the theory just described, as long as the North and South Poles retain their present thermally isolated locations, the polar latitudes will be frigid; and as the Arctic Ocean keeps oscillating between ice-free and ice-covered states, glacial-interglacial climates will continue.
Finally, regardless of which theory one subscribes to, as long as we see no fundamental change in the late Cenozoic climate trend, and the presence of ice on Greenland and Antarctica indicates that no change has occurred, we can expect that the fluctuations of the past million years will continue.
Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464
Physical Geography
The atmosphere’s blanketing effect over the earth’s surface has been compared to the functioning of a greenhouse. Short-wave sunlight passes as easily through the glass of the greenhouse as through the atmosphere. Because glass is opaque to the long-wave radiation from the warm interior of the greenhouse, it hinders the escape of energy.
As a planet, the earth is not warming or cooling appreciably on the average, because it loses as much radiant energy as it gains.
Kolenkow, Robert J., Reid A. Bryson, Douglas B. Carter, R. Keith Julian, Robert A. Muller, Theodore M. Oberlander, Robert P. Sharp & M. Gordon Wolman. Physical geography today : a portrait of a planet. Del Mar, Calif. : CRM Books, [1974]. p. 64.
Yes… That Reid Bryson.
For 110 years, climate change has been in the news. Are we finally ready to listen?
Climate Lecturer
- “As a planet, the earth is not warming or cooling appreciably on the average, because it loses as much radiant energy as it gains.” 1974
- “Finally, regardless of which theory one subscribes to, as long as we see no fundamental change in the late Cenozoic climate trend, and the presence of ice on Greenland and Antarctica indicates that no change has occurred, we can expect that the fluctuations of the past million years will continue.” 1975
- “Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain.” 1976
There was also this classic from Newsweek…
The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
[…]
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.
[…]
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Newsweek, April 28, 1975 Full text.
—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports
The unsettled-ness of the science back in the 1970’s was quite unsettling…
Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing
By WALTER SULLIVAN MAY 21, 1975The world’s climate is changing. Of that scientists are firmly convinced. But in what direction and why are subjects of deepening debate.
There are specialists who say that a new ice age is on the way—the inevitable consequence of a natural cyclic process, or as a result of man‐made pollution of the atmosphere. And there are those who say that such pollution may actually head off an ice age.Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. Hints that it may already have begun are evident. The drop in mean temperatures since 1950 in the Northern Hemisphere has been sufficient, for example, to shorten Britain’s growing season for crops by two weeks.
As noted in a recent report of the National Academy of Sciences, “The global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
Vulnerability to climate change, it says, is “all the more serious when we recognize that our present climate is in fact highly abnormal, and that we may already be. producing climatic changes, as a result of our own activities.”
The first half of this century has apparently been the warmest period since the “hot spell” between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago immediately following the last ice age. That the climate, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, has been getting cooler since about 1950, is well established—if one ignores the last two winters.
[…]
Man‐Made Influence
There is general agreement that introducing large amounts of smoke particles or carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can alter climate. The same would be true of generating industrial heat comparable to a substantial fraction of solar energy falling on the earth. The debate centers on the precise roles of these effects and the levels of pollution that would cause serious changes.Carbon dioxide in the air acts like glass in a greenhouse. It permits solar energy to reach the earth as visible light, but it impedes the escape of that energy into space in the form of heat radiation (at infrared wave lengths).
Dr. Mitchell has pointed out that a variety of factors determine the role of carbon dioxide on earth. For example, the extent to which that gas, introduced into the atmosphere by smokestacks and exhaust pipes, is absorbed by the oceans depends on the temperature of surface waters.
This, in turn, is affected by climate, leading to so called feedback effects. Plants consume carbon dioxide at rates that depend on temperature and the abundance of that gas in the air, complicating predictions of their role.
The observatory atop Mauna Loa, the great Hawaiian volcano, has recorded a steady rise in the annual mean level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, amounting to 4 per cent between 1958 and 1972. That, however, was a period of global cooling—not the reverse, as one would expect from a greenhouse effect.
The Mauna Loa observatory has also recorded a steady rise in atmospheric turbidity —the extent to which particles overhead dim the brightness of the sun. The academy study finds that human activity over the last 120 years has contributed more to this atmospheric dust than have volcanic eruptions.
However, it says, the present atmospheric load of man‐made dust is perhaps only one fifth what was thrown into the stratosphere by the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. The role of of atmospheric dust is complex, for it cuts off sunlight from the earth, but is itself heated by that light, warming levels of atmosphere in which it resides.
Until recently the idea that ice ages are initiated by intense volcanic activity was unpopular for lack of evidence for such activity. The hypothesis has gained more credence from the analysis of sediment cores extracted from the ocean floors by the drill ship Glomar Challenger.
According to University of Rhode Island scientists, ash was far more common in layers laid down in the last two million years than in the previous 18 million years.
If worldwide energy consumption continues to increase at its present rates, catastrophic climate changes have been projected by M. I. Budyko, a leading Soviet specialist. He says that the critical level will probably be reached within a century.
This, he has written, will lead to “a complete destruction of polar ice covers.” Not only would sea levels rise but, with the Arctic Ocean free of ice, the entire weather system of the Northern Hemisphere would be altered.
However, Dr. Mitchell has suggested, warming of the climate due to pollution might be enough to head off an ice age “quite inadvertently.”
CAN THE TRUTH BE LEARNED?
More precise knowledge of the past is certain to aid in choosing between various explanations for long‐term climate changes. The Greenland Ice Sheet Program, with American, Danish and Swiss participants, is drilling a series of holes into the crest of the Greenland ice in the hope, ultimately, of reconstructing a year‐by‐year re cord of climate for the last 100,000 years.
So far the ice has been penetrated 1,325 feet, extending the record back 1,420 years. The yearly layers can be counted, like tree rings, in terms of summer and winter variation in the relative abundance of two forms of oxygen (oxygen 16 and oxygen 18). Their ratio indicates temperature at the time when the snow fell to form that layer of the ice sheet.
[…]
The New York Times May 21, 1975 Full text.
Here’s the pièce de résistance…
Closing the loop
OK. We’ve gone from cooling to warming to cooling hysteria. Now it’s time close the loop. According to the models, natural forcing mechanisms adequately explained all of the climate change from 1910 right up until “The Ice Age Cometh”…
The observed temperatures fell within the range of natural forcing mechanisms from 1880 to at least 1975, only clearly exceeding that range since the early 1980’s. Accepting arguendo that the forcing models are reasonable and that the temperature record hasn’t been improperly adjusted, “evidence” to support the settled science of 1912, didn’t exist before 1980. Furthermore, if the warming since 1980 can largely be chalked up to anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, it’s a good thing, as Callender posited in 1938.
Callendar, who died in 1964, aged 66, thought global warming was good because it would stop what he called “deadly glaciers” returning and could boost the growth of crops at high latitude.
BBC
He got that right, for sure…
According to the sacred climate models, if not for The Climate Wrecking Industry, the planet would be just as cold now as when “The Ice Age Cometh”…
This proud member of the Climate Wrecking Industry says, “You’re welcome.”
What “That 70’s Climate Crisis Show” post would be complete without The Clash?
References
Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464
Dott, Robert H. & Roger L. Batten. Evolution of the Earth. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Second Edition 1976. p. 441.
Kolenkow, Robert J., Reid A. Bryson, Douglas B. Carter, R. Keith Julian, Robert A. Muller, Theodore M. Oberlander, Robert P. Sharp & M. Gordon Wolman. Physical geography today : a portrait of a planet. Del Mar, Calif. : CRM Books, [1974]. p. 64.
Terando, A., Reidmiller, D., Hostetler, S.W., Littell, J.S., Beard, T.D., Jr., Weiskopf, S.R., Belnap, J., and Plumlee, G.S., 2020, Using information from global climate models to inform policymaking—The role of the U.S. Geological Survey: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2020–1058, 25 p.,
https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20201058.
What’s a gel to think?? Dem Peer Reviewed Climate Scientologists just can’t seem to predict anything proper!
I also think the science is not settled (yet)
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/08/02/global-warming-how-and-where/
Arrhenius claimed in 1896 that man-made CO2 might warm the Earth, but, like Callendar 42 years later, he too considered that a good thing.
I’m a strong supporter of Global Warming. The alternative sucks.
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Wait up. There’s a bright side to the next glacial. All those beachfront mansions will be miles inland when the oceans drop 100+ meters and can probably be bought for pennies on the dollar.
Are you telling me to go short on beachfront property in the long term. Sorry, my investment horizon shortens by the year.
Arrhenius said the Earth’s temperature was 15C back then, to only two significant figures.
NOAA reported it to three significant figures in 2011 as 14.4C.
I’ve often wondered about that, aren’t these “temperatures” taken from the recording stations? If so, what is the individual accuracy of those? I’ve heard that they were like +/- 2 degrees. How can any reading be to more than that for accuracy?
“Global Temperature” is not a measured value. Actual temperature measurements are put into a grinder and some organization (NOAA, NASA, UKMet) cranks out sausages. It is a totally artificial construct larded with assumptions. The organizations aren’t always transparent about what assumptions they make or how they synthesize the value. Often, in data-free areas, they will fill in the blanks with values far distant from the spot. So while actual error measurements do carry error bars, a synthesized value can be calculated out as many decimal places as you’d want.
As I like to say, “You can slice baloney as thin as you like, but after a while, you’re no longer putting anything in the sandwich.”
Mystery temps, the mystery meat of climate.
Actual temperature is in Kelvins. The 15 C is about 288 K, or three significant digits. The number of significant digits should not depend on an arbitrary offset.
OK, so what is 14.4C in Kelvins? 🙂
Wasn’t he rebutted by Angstrom? And didn’t Arrhenius publish another paper ~1908 stating tha increases in atmospheric CO2 would cool the atmosphere?
Yep…
https://ams.confex.com/ams/98Annual/webprogram/Paper329774.html#:~:text=Knut%20%C3%85ngstr%C3%B6m%20(1900)%2C%20an,%25%20of%20the%20existing%20value.%E2%80%9D
I don’t know if Ångström posited a cooling effect, but he suggested that the warming effect of CO2 was very limited.
And I think they were both soon rebutted. The settled science has been rife with rebuttals since its inception.
“I’m so confused!”
~Vinnie Barbarino
Not sure the international audience will get the reference, David.
So, it’s a tag line from a character on the sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, a good-looking dim bulb that was easily confused by simple things.
Vinnie Barbarino from Welcome Back, Kotter | CharacTour
Tag lines are like sarcasm… If you have to explain it… It’s not funny… 😎
Nah, the Brits usually give a pointer to their crop of routines or characters that I’m not familiar with as a Yankee and I get introduced to new things I’d otherwise never see.
But then there are some routines like “Who’s on first?” that need no explanation. I’d agree with you there.
I’m pretty sure ‘Kotter’ didn’t spread far from US shores. Travolta? Yes. Kotter? No.
When it comes to tag lines and sarcasm, I’m bilingual… I speak English and the other English. I’m fluent in Fawlty Towers and Douglas Adams… As well as the Three Stooges… 😆
Three Stooges?
Did you mean Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Kamala “word salad” Harris and Jennifer NoOneHome
That would be considered insulting to Moe, Curly and Larry.
A aficionado Benny Hill and Irish comic Dave Allen, I presume
I laughed more at Dave Allen routines than I did for Benny or Monty Python.
Dave Allen was extremely sharp.
Is Australia far enough? 😉
Kotter was in New Zealand. Kinda fancied his wife, from Nebraska wasn’t she
@Lee and davidf – wOw! Must have been picked up at bargain basement prices. I had no idea.
It was OK, but I only caught about a third of the episodes, if that, because the Mrs. had it on.
I heard that cannibals don’t like clowns because they taste funny.
Its all that makeup!
Up your nose with a rubber hose !
I have read enough history to conclude the Little Ice Age was a series of wars, famines, plagues, and general misery. So of course either any change from that is a bad thing, or we follow Michael Mann, and the LIA never existed.
It is widely known that Earth is in an Ice Age. So it is not coming, it is here and ever present.
Less well known is that Earth started the present cycle of glaciation 500 years ago. The evidence so far:
The Southern Ocean is cooling. (No climate model shows this vital clue)
The NH land masses have increasing summer temperature.
The Mediterranean Sea is now experiencing monsoon conditions in August. That will lead to greening of the northern Sahara.
The NH land masses have reducing autumn and winter sunlight that will eventually lead to colder winters with more precipitation and increasing proportion will fall as snow.
My forecast is that snow/ice accumulation will be clearly evident over the Northern land masses within the next 1000 years. It is unlikely I will be around to confirm this. I am hopeful that I will see climate models advance to something that is based on physics and are actually useful rather than curve fitting parameterisation that is worse than useless.
The Little Ice Age began about 600 years ago, or a bit more. It probably wasn’t much worse than the prior Dark Ages Cool Period, AD 450 to 850, and previous Greek Dark Ages CP, c. 1100 to 750 BC, during which Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization collapsed.
IMO, the Modern Warm Period won’t match peak balminess of the Medieval WP, even with extra plant food in the air, so Earth is headed back to another glaciation. However, more cool periods should occur before NH ice sheets grow again. Based upon the tilt cycle, I’d guess 3000 years or so. In which case the Holocene would still not have matched the Eemian Interglacial in length.
The pattern of temperature fluctuations sometimes seems like the vibrations in a plucked guitar string – wild fluctuations getting gradually weaker over time until disappearing before a new glaciation. The Greenies may well get their period of equilibrium – just before the glaciers come crashing through the wall.
This is a nice collection of cooling and warming material.
Perhaps this will lead to more young people questioning “the science.”
The Covid19 Panic has impacted at least two groups that are aware
that many elitist/activists are not their friends. Parents with small children
and older teens and post-teens are critical of the closures, lock downs,
masks, and opaqueness from the experts. Make that 3: skeptics of all ages.
As Earth passes one date after another of catastrophic tipping points, and
one after another of species not being lost, perhaps the two aforementioned
groups will become aware of information such as in this post.
The early catastrophic AGW nutters are ageing and become quieter.
“ Make that 3: skeptics of all ages.”
Add to that the “safe and effective” gene therapy shot. Dr Birx (spelling) in an interview told us she and Fauci knew the vaccine would not prevent people from getting Covid nor would it prevent them from spreading it. Was she lying?
Then the dope in chief comes down with the Covid and experts tell us thankfully he is vaccinated to lesson his symptoms. Then they put him Paxlovid. Paxlovid’s marketing materials claim that their drug lessens the effects of Covid. Does the gene therapy shot even work anymore? Or did it only work on version 1.0 and we are 5.8?
Trust the science indeed.
Science is a process… Trust doesn’t really factor into the equation.
I think the current crop of “scientists” have broken or don’t follow the process. That’s why there isn’t any trust.
David,
How very true.
Thank you for that.
Geoff S
Mr. M.: I’d say it factors into the equation, but in reverse- trust nothing!
“Science is a process…”
Everything’s a process . . till you get punched in the mouth ; )
It’s a job, a career, a ticket to ride, to many, I suggest. The days when it was a noble pursuit of the truth effectively ended when Grand Origin Story Evolution became the reigning dogma, it seems to me.
Now, if it takes a zillion imaginary universes to “explain” the mindbogglingly minute chance that the one we can observe happens to be conducive to the existence of something like a scientist, that is seen as a legitimate “solution” by those who worship at the alter of random chance.
And if, for instance, the odds of a living thing forming on a sterile planet, even GIVEN such a truly unlikely universe, happen to turn out to be remote in the extreme, that can be “solved” too. Simply by adding a few orders of magnitude increase in the vast number of hypothetical universes out there somewhere, that can “justify” the random chance only dogmatic belief that is now treated as a “scientific fact”, in virtually every classroom and lecture hall a future scientist (or “journalist”) will ever occupy.
It seems to me Science got punched in the mouth long ago.
Interesting that a decline in Western birthrates has turned into a plunge.
Also Japan, Korea and Thailand.
Covid Vaccines?
Do you still stand by your prediction of solar induced cooling? It’s been a while since we’ve seen a solar update from Dr. Middleton. I would really like to see a new one. I don’t want to cherry pick BUT we have cooled since 2016. This past July was warm but with the rare La Niña coming this winter, I’m betting we will get back down to cooler temps.
I’m not a “Dr” and I don’t do solar updates, or much of anything solar, or predictions in general… You have me confused with someone else.
My bad I am thinking of Dr. Archibald.
My name is David and I am more or less bald… So you were close,,, 😉
And have you ever done any archery? Enquiring minds want to know!
Does arrow roulette count?
https://youtu.be/SOwJJPZKIys
Do you mean that you donated your hair to science?
You may not have known this old Greek saying about hair (my wife is Greek) that translates to: ‘Big hair = no brains’
I still think Global Warming is caused by all the phlogiston that’s being released.
I have a Navage… It cleared up my phlogiston… 😎
Looks like an over-the-counter version of waterboarding.
That strikes me as being like an enema for the head. Probably most effective for those suffering from cephalo-rectal insertion.
Mr. Spencer: I never had such an insertion, but my (much simpler) nasal rinse squeeze bottle is just like an enema for the head. I wonder if salt water is bad for cold virus?
“Powered Suction” to pull from the top reservoir through the nose and into the bottom reservoir.
Hmmm … If AOC used one would anything make to the bottom reservoir?
Today we call it propaganda.
Excellent compilation about the “science” of climate cooling and warming. Unfortunately no one listens, or it seems cares. Most people/families can remember equivalent periods of so called “extreme” weather. “Climate Change” today is equivalent to Chicken Little and The Boy Who Called Wolf. Without the MSM to push CC it would have no special recognition.
“The article goes on to site other historical apocalyptic…..”
.
Should be “cite” not “site.”
Fixed.
To quote my favorite smartass, Einstein – “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”
And a genius with common sense can recognize his limitatons… The polar opposite of Joe Biden…
A stare-case to Hell?
Stareway.
Unbuttons vest, takes out tie. Pisses in pants.
YOU try digging through five layers of thermal protection in Alaska with shaking hands.
How long was it supposed to be that he went without blinking during a speech?
Settled science, what a joke if you know even the smallest part of history. Read Wikipedia entry on Galileo.
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Lord Kelvin just before Physics got interesting, the science wasn’t settled in the 19th century either
Was it an apocryphal story that an early Chief of the U.S. Patent Office said the office could be closed because everything had already been invented? [Looking it up, it is an urban legend that every body and his dog has quoted for various reasons.]
Mr. Fair: A mainstay of CliSci, once Mr. Mann found the conforming pine, he could stop looking, right?
The Conversation author glides seamlessly from descriptive to proscriptive, the increase in the CO2 concentration and concurrent supposed warming attributed to human activity is assumed to be bad.
At a comparable time resolution with proxy records of the Holocene the supposed global thermometer record so far is unremarkable.
It is assumed that since 1750 or 1880 or 1950 or 1980 it was totally caused by human activities (meaning mostly white males) and that is what upsets the likes of Linden.
Source.
But … If you splice the instrumental record on to the end of a lower resolution proxy reconstruction, it Mann-tastically becomes remarkable… 😎
A remarkable record of tree growth due mainly to water availability, just sayin’. How he ever managed to fool anyone that it had anything to do with temperatures I’ll never know.
See Steve McIntyre over at Climate Audit for the whole story. You should all read Rud Istvan’s ebook “Blowing Smoke,” Mark Stein’s “A Disgrace to the Profession” and Andrew Montfort’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion.” As always, read Vaclav Smil and Steven Koonin’s recent books.
Rick Will above:-“monsoons in the med” any Refs. on that?
Would the troll who just rated this post as a 1-star care to comment?
9 votes, 4.6 rating = (8×5)+1
And how many of the usual crop have actually posted comments? Oh look!
This is still the case, isn’t it? Earth’s radiating temperature hasn’t changed, other than in response to slight fluctuations in shortwave (solar) radiation. That doesn’t mean that the surface hasn’t warmed (which we know it has).
I think they’re referring to a secular warming or cooling. It’s clearly a little warmer now than it was in 1975, significantly warmer than it was in 1650, possibly cooler than it was in 1000 and significantly cooler than it was 5-7 kya.
In 1975 there was no scientific basis to assert that greenhouse gas emissions had amplified the warming since the Little Ice Age. There still isn’t much evidence.
Yeah, but his model missed the approximately 1910 to 1960 warming and the approximately 1960 to 1970 warming, interoperating it as a cooling period. Live by basing your temperature/CO2 correlation on 1975 to present data, die by failing to model temperatures from 1910 to 1975 because you used an inappropriate period to parametrize your model (even curve fitting fails you).
Yep warmer than 1800, about the same as 30s and warmer than 70’s. Except now we have a LOT more asphalt and concrete.
Meanwhile humanity is THRIVING.
It’s all that asphalt, concrete and, above all, runways which appear to have warmed, not the surface in general. Who knew, concrete runways are the climate control knobs that the climatistas have been searching for!
Missed a big one here. A very big one.
A massive one. An absolutely Earth-shattering one.
110 years ago Alfred Wegener published the Theory of Continental Drift.
111 years ago “plate tectonics” was heresy. Now “climatologists” are still denying that the ground moves and controls climate.
As a Geocbemist, I was exposed to Geology by contamination and so involved in global warming discussion since the 1970s. Not much of it, for few of us considered it significant, then or now.
We used to think that global temperature changes of +/- 10 degrees C would be cause for thought. Nobody worried about +/- 1 or 2 degrees.
These days, there are papers worrying about a change from 1.5 C becoming 2 C. We cannot even measure that difference accurately enough. Yet it becomes an existential threat.
There seems to be a strong input of opinion.
What change is really large enough to cause concern? Geoff S
And a cargo net is an effective roof for keeping the heat in and rain out of your house.
The Lancashire Daily Post published it on April 20th, 1912, attributing it to “Science Siftings.”
The original is an article by Francis Molena in Popular Mechanics, March 1912, which may be seen on Google Books. The scaremongering text for the picture is rather contradicted by the article itself.
The late, great Richard Feynman said it best:
IGY , 1982 Steely Dan, or was it just Fagen
Donald Fagen…
https://youtu.be/Ueivjr3f8xg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.G.Y._(What_a_Beautiful_World)
Basic requirement of a “settled science” if such a thing even exists is that there is 1 model and it perfectly explains the observation. The IPCC CMIP has over 100 models and they all fail that requirement. They have a 100% failure rate and they claim the science is settled.
I haven’t been keeping up, but at least formerly, the Russian model appeared to demonstrate some skill in forecasting temperatures.
So the Russian INM model is ignored
Can’t do that (the purpose of models is to scare people)
To paraphrase the author a snapshot is not a life story! Yet the media, some politicians and opportunists act like it is and wish to force it on the rest of us.
“The Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 (AKA “Storm Larry”) shut the State of Connecticut down for almost a full week.”
And don’t forget the other Blizzard of ’78 that shut down the Midwest about 2 weeks before “Larry”.
(And it was a different storm system than the one that spawned “Larry”.)
https://www.weather.gov/iln/19780126
PS Didn’t two back-to-back historic blizzards prove “The New Ice Age” is upon us?
Here is another one using climate science-style shoddy work…
WSJ
A spate of headlines this month declared that America’s surge in transgender identification wasn’t being caused by a social contagion. These articles were prompted by a new study by Jack Turban and colleagues in Pediatrics, flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study claimed that social influence isn’t the reason that as many as 9% of America’s youth now call themselves transgender. Thus, Dr. Turban argues, efforts in conservative states to regulate on-demand puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery must be resisted.
Yet Dr. Turban’s study is deeply flawed and likely couldn’t have survived a reasonable peer-review process. The swift response from the scientific community made both points clear—with even those who support hormones and surgery for gender-dysphoric youth noting that Dr. Turban’s shoddy science undermined their cause.
Nevertheless, the media have promoted his work as a refutation of the claim that the wildfire spread of transgender identity is an example of social contagion—a phenomenon in which members of a group (mostly young and female) mutually influence one another’s emotions and behavior.
The AAP has been giving Dr. Turban a platform for years, despite the mistakes that plague his research. Pediatrics published his highly flawed 2020 study alleging that puberty blockers reduce suicide in teens. The journal even chose the article as its “Best of 2020” despite receiving rebuttals that pointed out the rate of attempted suicide was twice as high among the puberty-blocked group and Dr. Turban hadn’t controlled for the possibility that better mental-health outcomes might be the result of factors other than hormonal intervention.
In his correspondence with physicians who asked how such a study could be named best of the year, Lewis First, editor in chief of Pediatrics, said that award is based on “website views and article downloads,” not “editorial choices.” In response to a rebuttal from one of us (Julia Mason), who warned that the AAP was encouraging the misleading idea that sex can literally be changed, a reviewer said that her statement shouldn’t be published as it could be “offensive to the pediatric readership of the journal.” Pediatrics seems to be basing its editing choices on political calculation and the sensibilities of trans-identified teens. One wonders how many pediatricians who rely on the journal for professional guidance are aware of these criteria.
The AAP has stifled debate on how best to treat youth in distress over their bodies, shut down efforts by critics to present better scientific approaches at conferences, used technicalities to suppress resolutions to bring it into line with better-informed European countries, and put its thumb on the scale at Pediatrics in favor of a shoddy but politically correct research agenda. Its preference for fashionable political positions over evidence-based medicine is a disservice to member physicians, parents and children.
No, its criminal.
I do not know why anyone claims the Climate Howlers say “The science is settled”. They don’t say that. Politicians may say that, such as Al Gore. But the Climate Howler “scientists” flood the world with new studies claiming new disasters from climate change (aka “Climate change causes warts” ), new claims that every bad weather event is from climate change, and many “It’s worse than we thought” studies and articles. They throw mud on the wall to see what sticks faster than Climate Realists can refute the claims.
To Josh,
the myth is that people believed that the world was flat in Columbus’s time. Made up by a fairytale writer in 1828 and pushed by activists as real history for 200 years.
The centre of the universe controversy is not as a blatant case of fiction but there are few things to point out. Two Popes at the time of Copernicus were impressed with his system. He suffered no persecution. There was controversy well after his death, started by the fact that the system was no better than the Ptolemaic one. Galileo was given a generous stipend to develop an argument for the heliocentric system. He blotched it badly. His house arrest was to be restricted to the region around a bishops palace where he his health suffered from too much drink and good food. During this time, Keppler was supported in developing a heliocentric system at a Catholic University.
The change from geocentric to heliocentric systems is talked about as a paradigm shift, but to any scientist who has read the history, this is dumb. The sudden change happened because a new system was developed that did a much better job of fitting the observations of the time. The real paradigm shift was to stop using circles.
Columbus’s proposition was apparently that the Earth was around half the diameter which was generally accepted at the time, so he could carry sufficient supplies to reach India by sailing west. He was rather fortunate that the Americas were where he thought India was.
Kepler’s elliptical orbits were definitely the game-changer for heliocentrism.
Yup! Callendar is a climate scientist; he has no clue how input error bars work and what they mean for assumed accuracy.
Great article, David! Thank you!
From the article: “In 1938, Callendar predicted 0.39 °C of greenhouse gas-induced warming by the year 2000. The climate lecturer says that we observed about 1 °C of warming over that time period. Reality indicates a tad bit more than 0.3 °C of warming from 1938 to 2000.”
HadCRUT4 is not reality. It is a bastardization of the temperature record.
Here’s the real temperature profile of the globe, represented by the U.S. surface temperature chart, Hansen 1999:
As you can see temperatures cooled by about 0.5C from 1938 to 2000, in the real world.
To the tune of “War! What’s it good for?”: Bastadized charts! What they good for? Absolutely nothin’!
The greening of the earth, our agricultural prosperity (food security), has been studiously ignored by the climate alarmist in favour of exaggerating weather negatives as proof the doom is upon us.
HUMAN ACTIVITY HAS NO EFFECT ON CLIMATE CHANGE — LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!!!
MORE EVIDENCE
I have read a newspaper article from 1883 that talked about the burning of coal producing carbon dioxide, which would heat up the atmosphere. However, they went one step further – they said that since there was nothing removing carbon dioxide from the air (!), the temperature of the atmosphere would soon increase to 900 degrees (!!).
1200 “Scientists and Professionals” agree. Add my name
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/08/18/1200-scientists-and-professionals-declare-there-is-no-climate-emergency/
When I started school it was settled science that the continents were located where they had always been, that dinosaurs were big cold-blooded lizards, that ulcers were caused by stress…
I don’t trust ‘settled science’ as a justification for anything.