Essay by Eric Worrall
Never mind that Earth has endured far more warming than today’s world without revisiting the extremes of the ancient past.
Global warming could trigger the next ice age
Earth’s climate control system may cool so hard after warming that it freezes the planet over.
Date:December 21, 2025
Source:University of California – RiversideSummary:Scientists have uncovered a missing feedback in Earth’s carbon cycle that could cause global warming to overshoot into an ice age. As the planet warms, nutrient-rich runoff fuels plankton blooms that bury huge amounts of carbon in the ocean. In low-oxygen conditions, this process can spiral out of control, cooling Earth far beyond its original state. While this won’t save us from modern climate change, it may explain Earth’s most extreme ancient ice ages.
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Why Ancient Ice Ages Were So Extreme
Geological records, however, tell a more dramatic story. Evidence shows that some of Earth’s earliest ice ages were so severe that ice and snow covered nearly the entire planet. According to the researchers, this level of freezing cannot be explained by a climate system that simply fine tunes itself.
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The Role of Oceans, Nutrients, and Plankton
The newly identified factor involves how carbon is buried in the ocean. As atmospheric CO2 rises and temperatures increase, rainfall carries larger amounts of nutrients such as phosphorus into the sea. These nutrients stimulate the growth of plankton, microscopic organisms that absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.
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In warmer conditions, however, this system changes. Increased plankton growth can reduce oxygen levels in the ocean. With less oxygen available, phosphorus is more likely to be released back into the water instead of being permanently buried. This recycled phosphorus fuels even more plankton growth, whose decay further depletes oxygen and keeps nutrients circulating.
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A Climate System That Can Overshoot
Rather than gently stabilizing Earth’s temperature, this feedback can drive cooling well past its original starting point. In the team’s computer simulations, the effect was strong enough to trigger an ice age.
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As human activity continues to add CO2 to the atmosphere, the planet is expected to keep warming in the near term. The researchers’ model suggests that a cooling rebound will eventually follow. However, this future cooling is likely to be less extreme because higher oxygen levels reduce the strength of the nutrient feedback in the oceans.
Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251221043231.htm
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Terrific piece of alarmist writing. After talking about snowball Earth for most of the article, they finally admit near the end that any future ice age overshoot will be less extreme because today’s world has higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere.
But if the current warming trend falters or even flips into a decline, like global temperature declined between 1940 and 1970, see they predicted it. It’s still all our fault.
The following is an episode of the wildly popular “In search of” series, featuring Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played the original Star Trek Doctor Spock.
In Search Of The Coming Ice Age features an impressive lineup of credentialed global cooling scientists, some of whom blamed global cooling on human industrial activity. One of the scientists, Stephen Schneider, who in the In Search Of episode advocated using nuclear reactors to melt the polar ice, shamelessly backflipped into warning people about global warming, which he blamed on human industrial activity. The Wikipedia article on Schneider claims Schneider backflipped in the early 1970s, but if so, why did he appear in the 1978 documentary advocating melting the polar ice caps?
I remembered watching In Search Of The Coming Ice Age as a kid in the late 70s. All the grownups were concerned, there was a lot of ice age alarmism in the media, quotes from concerned scientists, before the show was aired. The adults talked for days after the In Search Of episode aired, about how they would cope with the coming ice age, which everyone expected to happen in the next few decades. Everyone was worried about a how Australia could handle the expected flood of refugees escaping the advancing ice in the Northern Hemisphere, especially refugees from the Soviet Union.
Our memory of the global cooling consensus is likely why anyone my age and older are far more skeptical than younger people. By the 1970s the world had cooled for 30 years, and the year before the In Search Of episode was broadcast, the horror 1977 Blizzard in Buffalo NY which led to the deaths of at least 27 people received worldwide coverage. So why wouldn’t there have been widespread concern about global cooling?
Similar conditions led to the deaths of 29 people in the 2022 Buffalo blizzard.
Dubious claims there was no global cooling consensus in the 1970s naturally leads people my age to question other alarmist claims – even more so when some alarmists like the people who wrote the article above start resurrecting global cooling claims.
All still our fault of course.
To be geeky, it was Mr Spock.
Y’all get old enough, and the Green Blob has the track record of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The way I see it, they thought it was so important to get the message out about the coming ice age that they beamed down Mr. Spock to play the character “Leonard Nimoy” as narrator.
Dr. Spock was a pediatrician who had influence on how parents conducted child rearing.
Much debate on the validity of his conjectures, but at the time influenced an entire generation.
Not much more than a prediction based on the Earth’s natural cycles over the last 880,000 years.
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…
100,000 years of glaciation followed by 10,000 years of warming. Followed by…the next glaciation
Gee almost like there is a pattern, but I can’t quite put my finger on it… 🙂
Since we weren’t there to see it, we have to take the word of the scientist who read the proxy used to tell us the weather 800,000 years ago.
I have got no problem with science based on evidence. It’s the computer fantasies which wildly diverge from paleo evidence of past warm epochs which I object to. Let’s not forget our world has been locked in the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, which started 34 million years ago.
This is the source of my response to anyone that tries to convince me AGW is real/measurable – “Of course the temperature is rising. If Antarctica and Greenland are still covered in ice, we are still recovering from the last ice age.” It doesn’t convince them they’re wrong, but it does typically shut them up.
Yep, we are still very much in a COOLER period of the Holocene. !
Arctic sea ice extent still in the top 5-10% off the last 10,000 years
Just a bit down from the extreme high in 1979 at the end of the “new ice age” scare
Merry Christmas!
I bet if we looked at the preceeding half dozen “ice ages” we can find plenty of century-long warm periods like the current “industrial age anthropogenic warming period” in the ice cores.
Can even see some pretty good ones in the current Holocene.
Gums sends…
We’re still in an ice age, have been for about 2 million years. You need to discover the terms glacial and interglacial.
Same as we take the scientists statements of the maximum and minimum tilt of Earth’s axis with a lump of salt. There’s no human record of either extreme, so how do they know for sure what those angles are? The tilt is currently decreasing. How can they know for certain it’ll stop around 22.1 degrees then head back toward a greater tilt VS continuing towards less tilt?
It’s called celestial mechanics. The same science that allowed NASA to send a space probe the size of an omnibus accurately through a gap in Saturn’s ring system. Pretty reliable stuff.
Models? /s
Not just proxies but solid geologic evidence.
I don’t doubt it’s true, people notably smarter than me have checked and agree, but trusting them remains a decision. I can be convinced the Earth is very old and that it has had ice ages and that it spins around the sun. Heliocentric is easiest to prove and very old is the hardest. I have to start with something like layers in the grand canyon being like rings on a tree, the shapes of the continents, extinct animal species.
Or we could all be AI characters created with individualized memories by a supercomputer five seconds ago as background for some three-armed lizard kid’s Sim City game.
I’m convinced that whatever “ultimate truth” is- nobody has ever figured it out. I like to watch the YouTube channel, “Closer to Truth” where the owner of the channel asks such questions to philosophers, theologians, scientists, doctors of all sorts- they all give different answers.
Huge temperature swings over millions of years can be ignored because brilliant people can analyze tiny changes over hundreds of years and make fabulous predictions. (sarcasm)
With 0.01C precision.
Glaciation is the inevitable consequence of the precession of Earth’s orbit. The peak solar intensity in the NH has been increasing since around 1700. That warms the oceans in the NH and increases the atmospheric water. The consequence of that is now being observed with new snowfall records being set across the NH every year.
Greenland is already increasing in altitude and the most productive glacier is advancing seaward. So re-glaciation of the NH is already under way. But it is a slow process and probably 200 years before permafrost is advancing south again.
“precession of Earth’s orbit”
Does not explain the short-term cyclical movements of the Earth’s climate which take place on a 30 or 40 year timetable.
The Earth warms and cools within a range of about 2.0C+ from the warmest to the coolest since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1800’s.
Below is the U.S. regional chart, beside a bastardized Hockey Stick global chart. The U.S. chart clearly shows the cyclical nature of the climate, where it warms for a few decades and then cools for a few decades and then the process repeats, and the warmest and coolest temperatures are separated by about 2.0C.
The U.S. chart clearly shows why people were fretting about the cooling going on in the 1970’s. As you can see, the late 1970’s were as cool as the period around the 1910’s, and scientists were wondering if the cooling in the 1970’s would continue, and that is why they were worried about it continuing to do so.
By the 1980’s, Human-caused Global Cooling was out the window as the temperatures started to warm again. Then we started hearing a lot about Human-caused Global Warming.
Now, compare the two charts and their temperature trends. As you can see, the U.S. chart shows a cyclical temperature movement (hot, cold, hot cold) while the bastardized Hockey Stick global chart shows a temperature trend line that gets hotter and hotter and hotter, decade after decade, and shows today to be the hottest time in human history. The U.S. chart and the Hockey Stick chart show completely different temperature trendlines. One of the two is wrong.
Since all original, regional temperature charts show the same temperature trend line as is shown by the U.S regional chart and None of the regional charts show a “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick temperature trend line, it should be obvious which temperature trend line is wrong.
And the Hockey Stick chart brings up another interesting issue about Human-caused Global Cooling. Climate Alarmists deny that there was any significant cooling from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, and deny there was any serious concern about it back then. And you can see why: Their bogus, basardized Hockey Stick chart shows only about 0.4C of cooling during that period.
But the U.S. regional chart shows over a 2.0C cooling during the period from the 1930’s to the 1970’s.
The U.S. regional chart supports the historical record. The bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart does not represent the historical record. It is a BIG LIE created to promote the Human-caused Global Warming/Climate Change narrative and the “Ice Age Cometh” scare of the 1970’s is just another proof that the Hockey Stick chart really is bogus and does not represent reality.
I believe the 30-40 and 60 year cycles are mainly from PDO and AMO cycles
I don’t know what they are from, but they are definitely there.
There is a lot more than Earth’s precession in relationship to the the Sun. The north and south movement of the Sun relative rio Earth is observed in the temperature spikes as well as the solar activity.
I go into some of that detail here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/04/high-resolution-earth-orbital-precession-relative-to-climate-weather/
Canadian climate refugees? I’ll pick up extra bacon and maple syrup on my net trip to the Safeway.
Of course Snowball Earth has happened in the past. But this was when there was basically a single land mass surrounded by a single ocean. Not 7 basically separate land masses with 5 oceans.
“The last major Snowball Earth event, known as the Marinoan glaciation, ended around 635 million years ago, during the Neoproterozoic Era, with the planet thawing rapidly from its global ice cover, marking a key transition before complex animal life emerged. Before that, the Sturtian glaciation (around 717-660 million years ago) was another significant freeze.”
I’d have to point out that “Snowball Earth” is a physical impossibility. Snowballs that don’t melt in the Lut Desert or Death Valley?
Or oceans that freeze right through, ignoring the peculiar properties of water?
Unfortunately, the ocean basins are essentially full of warm water, heated from the sides and from beneath. At 10 km depth, the water temperature is around 3 C, unable to freeze, because it’s surrounded by rock at 200 C or so (assuming a temperature profile at a conservative 20 C/km).
Glaciation over parts of the land is a different thing entirely. Snowball Earth? No.
Much like Enceledus has a Snowball Surface and a liquid ocean underneath, nothing prevents the Younger Earth from experiencing Snowball Conditions and still maintain liquid oceans at depth. Circulation patterns were different 700,000,000 years ago and Earth Life was Protozoic in nature.
The current glaciation cycles happen because of a change in ocean currents when the Isthmus of Panama formed closing the Pacific off from the Atlantic.
.
The Isthmus of Panama’s formation ~3 million years ago acted as a crucial trigger for the current glacial cycles by blocking warm Atlantic-Pacific water exchange, intensifying the Gulf Stream, increasing moisture/snowfall in the North Atlantic, and creating conditions for Northern Hemisphere ice sheets to form and grow during orbital cycles, fundamentally changing ocean circulation and climate.
You might be right. On the other hand, you might be wrong.
I’m pretty sure that ice won’t form anywhere at sea level in sunlight of 1000 W/m2, but feel free to prove me wrong with a reproducible experiment.
You’ll need an ocean temperature below about -1.8 C, and an atmosphere cold enough to maintain this temperature. In bright tropical sunlight?
Maybe Carl Sagan dimmed the Sun considerably for a while.
Or simply an atmosphere with far less Oxygen and, as such a much lower water vapor level.
That will just result in higher daytime temperatures, as Tyndall pointed out.
Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. If you removed water vapor from our current atmosphere The Earth would have an average temperature of -18°C (0°F) it certainly stands that if you removed half of the water vapor the surface temperature would reach 0°C or 32°F then albedo changes would handle the rest.
Don’t appear more gullible than you have to. The moon has no atmosphere, and temperatures reach 127 C or so in direct sunlight.
Too hot for ice to remain frozen, as far as I know. You fantasize that the Earth would cool if water vapour was removed from the atmosphere. Well, removing H2O from air doesn’t make thermometers colder.
Not only that, but the hottest places on Earth happen to have the least H2O in the atmosphere – places like Death Valley or the Lut Desert! Your dreams have obviously intruded into your waking hours, sadly.
Adding CO2 to air doesn’t make thermometers hotter, either, so you are equally silly in all directions.
’m pretty sure that ice won’t form anywhere at sea level in sunlight of 1000 W/m2, but feel free to prove me wrong with a reproducible experiment.
Ice forming is a function of atmospheric pressure not solar intensity. There are tropical mountains with ice caps.
Earth at half the existing atmospheric pressure would be a snowball. So atmospheric pressure is the controller.
No, it’s not.
Water freezes due to low temperature, not variations in atmospheric pressure. Snow on mountains is governed by several factors. I’m looking at a photo of Mt Everest – not a trace of snow on the summit, traces on the vast rock faces, but good cover on some of the lower peaks. Seasonal variation, wet season, dry season.
In any case, I’m not aware of ice forming at sea level anywhere in the tropics. No Snowball or Slushball Earth without some testable physical explanation.
Oceans do not freeze right through in the snowball Earth scenario, only the sea surface.
In tropical sunlight? Say 1000 W/m2. As I said, I doubt you could get ice to form in places like Death Valley, let alone on ocean surfaces, when air temperatures exceed freezing.
After all, the people who believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, claim that O2 and N2 are transparent to IR, so removing CO2 would just make the surface insolation greater!
Maybe you could find an experiment where water can turn to ice all by itself in tropical sunshine. Let me know if you do.
When they talk about Snowball earth they mean something like Lava Cake/Moelleux.
Sorry, this is not meant to be snippy, but I read that like: Moving my living room furniture might change the temperature on my couch more than adjusting the thermostat. Why does Earth’s geography affect what the sun is doing to it from 93 million miles away.
I assumed that a one-continent Earth would have much larger continental effect than a multi-continent Earth. But maybe the sun was doing things to Earth too.
Kevin:
I read Bryan’s comment as “a change in ocean currents might have profound effects on climate.”
Recall the heat capacity of water vs land, and on geologic time scales the continents [“furniture” – I like that analogy!] redirect the currents.
Just closing off the Atlantic and Pacific changed the circulation enough to begin the current glaciation cycles. The Milankovitch cycles have almost always been around but its only been since Panama formed that the ocean currents combined with precession allows for glaciation cycles.
this level of freezing cannot be explained by a climate system that simply fine tunes itself
The climate system does not simply fine tune itself.
It is multiple energy systems, coupled and chaotic, that constantly try and fail to achieve equilibrium.
The simply fine tune itself verbiage is misleading at best.
Take into account non-terrestrial influences and yes, it can and has achieved that level of freezing.
Keep in mind, also, the sun is not constant and the orbit varies year over year.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
Yes, alarmists are convinced that things are always worse than what they appear, and we are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. That way the alarmists have all their bases covered.
Not the key word in this study/article: “could”. Yet maybe it “might not” , so the reality is that this is just another example of climate speculation and nothing to worry about, especially since the alarmists are always conjuring up one worst case scenario after the other to try to take governments, industries, businesses and consumers to take some sort of action, undoubtedly costly, to combat a non-problem.
“X will happen (low confidence)”, is the IPCC’s way of saying that X not happening is the most likely outcome. But by aligning X 100% with warming/alarm/negativity they ensure that the only message received by readers is: we’re rooned send more money.
“In the team’s computer simulations, the effect was strong enough to trigger an ice age.”
Oh. Got it. Never mind then.
These people are really getting desperate, losing is an ugly thing.
For sure.
Per Day After Tomorrow, it takes an ice age to scare New Yorkers. Google says it’s 34F there right now. Brrrrrrrr.
Temperature has to get about 70F warmer to be a problem today.
Its almost as though they KNOW that the AMO is due to start heading downwards, and a cooling spell will eventuate. 😉
“Dubious claims there was no global cooling consensus in the 1970s”
There was none. It doesn’t help your case to trot out yet again the fake Time cover with a penguin.
Did Time magazine print an Ice Age cover, or is it all garbage?
Hmmm: “A widely circulated image of a Time magazine cover titled “How To Survive The Coming Ice Age” is a digital fabrication. The image is a doctored version of a genuine April 2007 cover which featured a penguin and was headlined “The Global Warming Survival Guide”.
Looking more…
“Science: Another Ice Age?” (November 13, 1972): This article explored a theory by scientist Emiliani that the Earth’s current warm period was already long and might end soon.
“Another Ice Age?” (June 24, 1974): This story noted a gradual cooling trend in mean global temperature since the 1940s and mentioned telltale signs like persistent ice near Iceland and the southward migration of armadillos. It also noted that this might be a temporary trend.
“WEATHER: The Big Freeze” (January 31, 1977): The headline for this issue was about the impact of a particularly cold American winter in 1976-77, not a coming ice age for the planet.
Three verified real issues found. Not one but three.
Also: I personally was alive and watched the Nimoy thing when it came out. It ain’t fiction.
“Science: Another Ice Age?”
Well, that isn’t about cooling in coming decades, or even centuries. From the article:
“Thus, Emiliani warns, the present period of “amiable climate,” which has already lasted 12,000 years, may soon come to an end, perhaps within the next 2,000 or 3,000 years.”
So an ice age after that? Not so fast:
“In what direction will the earth’s climate then turn? Emiliani refuses to speculate. But if man continues his “interference with climate through deforestation, urban development and pollution,” says Emiliani in typical scientific jargon, “we may soon be confronted with either a runaway glaciation or a runaway deglaciation, both of which would generate unacceptable environmental stresses.””
No consensus there.
The 1970s Global Cooling Consensus was not a Myth – Watts Up With That?
Even the grate Naomi Ork says
I love it when facts are injected! 🙂
Nick:
Science News of March 1, 1975 had a cartoon cover of a glacier engulfing New York City with the title: The Ice Age Cometh?
[Science News is the mass market arm of Science]
Clearly, regardless of the nonsense about a scientific consensus, in the early-mid 1970s an impending ice age was still a legitimate topic. Enough to warrant scaring the public with an eye-catching magazine cover.
[I’d include a photo of the cover in this comment but don’t know how]
“Science News is the mass market arm of Science”
No, it is from a separate organisation. The Cover phrase had a query. The text covers both cooling and warming – eg
So a post of meaningless “what-ifs” and “maybes”..
Yes it was COOLING during the period 1960-1975, when their erroneous anti-science conjectures said it should be warming.
But Schneider knew the world was heading into a COOLING period.
I’m sure you can point to thousands of articles at that time predicting imminent overheating.
1 person’s opinion doth not a consensus make.
Heck , they even wrote letters to the President about it….
Only thing FAKE, is the petty attempts at denial of the “new ice age” scare.
Nick is way too much expert and authority and therefore immune things that may disturb his worldview..
Keep in mind – the 70ies cooling scare never got beyond the initial launching stage,
where only the narrative is being formed and experts being synchronized towards a consensus.
Same as if they’d dropped the global warming scare at the end of the 80ies(and replaced it with whatever).
No one would be talking about warming scare now if they’d stopped pushing it in the 90ies. and the UN Rio summit never happened.
The Scientific American would claim that the global warming scare is a myth based on a single article in the Newsweek , and be pushing the new replacement narrative like crazy..
And Nick would ignore Hansens 1988 senate hearing as he ignores this letter
and be enthusiastically pushing global dimming or whatever the new big thing is.
Nonsense Nick. The In Search Of episode has multiple scientists explaining why we are heading into an ice age. After 30 years of cooling, predicting the cooling would continue was a respectable position.
Eric,
It isn’t nonsense. That cover is fake. As for Nimoy – the “in Search Of” series was always pop sci about way out things. Entertainment.
New York Times
The article went on to say:
“The observations come, at a time when a warming trend could have been expected from the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to extensive fuel burning. The gas inhibits the escape of solar heat from the earth. Dr. Kukla, in a telephone interview this week, said that the cause of the apparent cooling remained unknown and that no scientific attempt to predict whether the trend would continue was possible. “
So, absolutely NOTHING to counter the “ice age” scare..
Just a mindless CO2 warming comment based on nothing.
Saying it “could” be warming….. while it was actually COOLING.
Is that really your defence 😉
Kinda weak!
It’s all they have. Nick is doing the best he can with what he has.
Not good enough, but what are we going to do? Continue pointing out the errors, I guess.
Kukla, I used to watch Kukla, Fran and Ollie waaaay back in the 1960s
Chicago Daily
Dr Brysson does not make a concensus.
Literally THOUSANDS of newspaper report from all over the world..
85% cooling vs 15% warming according to one study
He doesn’t make a consensus, either.
Either way, consensus fails if facts disagree.
There may be consensus that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, but that’s a a consensus of the ignorant and gullible (like you), and as such, completely worthless.
Argument by consensus isn’t how good science is done either.
“When you look at the past, you find that cooling trends like this have never lasted less than 40 year. This means that this trend should go to 1985 at least”
That is not predicting an ice age. It is not far from what happened.
Cooling trend continuing.
Much colder it would have been down to the LIA.
Arctic Sea ice was definitely getting up towards LIA levels.
Your climate denial is reaching the level of absurd. !
Did you know that Briffa’s tree rings also showed it colder than any period since about 1900
No wonder there was such a massive flurry of thousands of newspaper articles, quoting self-styled “climate scientists” warning of a pending “new ice age”
Yes, Briffa’s tree proxy trend line corresponds to the written, original temperature records quite well (see Hansen 1999, U.S. regional chart above).
Briffa shows it was hot in the 1930’s, and cold in the 1970’s, just as the U.S. regional chart does.
Given his expertise in using bogus names, Nick is an expert in “fake”.
“World may be a new little ice age”
Jorn Thiede.. member of Climate : long range Mapping and Prediction (CLIMPA)
The 1974 article was primarily about the cooling of the previous 3 decades and a short term notional extrapolation to warn people of future cooling.
Incidentally, Time Magazine subsequently published no articles at all suggesting that there could be global warming, until 1987. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Time’s Earth was cooling. The 1980s were nearly over before Time flipped the switch.
“ In the 1970s and early 1980s, Time’s Earth was cooling.”
You base that on one article in 1974. One in a decade.
I already quted Time in 1972:
“In what direction will the earth’s climate then turn? Emiliani refuses to speculate. But if man continues his “interference with climate through deforestation, urban development and pollution,” says Emiliani in typical scientific jargon, “we may soon be confronted with either a runaway glaciation or a runaway deglaciation, both of which would generate unacceptable environmental stresses.””
Newsweek 1975.
Yes it is. the demonizing of the cooling consensus was made up by terrified warmunists and you fell for it…again. Nothing you say is to be trusted.
The Climate Alarmists cannot admit a big cool down took place in the 1970’s because their bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick global chart doesn’t show much cooling during that period.
If they admit there was significant cooling in the 1970’s, then they have to throw their bogus Hockey Stick chart in the trash, and it is the only “evidence” they have to promote their Human-caused Global Warming/Climate Change narrative.
If they give up the bogus Hockey Stick chart, it’s all over! They are not going to do that. They will defend it to their last breath. They have to. It’s the only thing they have to offer as evidence of their claims.
See a doctor, man. This is obsession, and it’s bad for you.
There is no doubt that the world was bombarded by “new ice age” articles in most major papers. I have included a few below, all linked to people classed as “climate scientists”
Nick is saying we should not believe these many hundreds of articles… (I have folders full of them)
… I assume that he is also telling us we should not believe warming articles in the papers nowadays.
Nick says: Don’t believe your lying eyes.
People hang onto their worldviews with a death grip many times.
Nobody likes to come to the realization that they have been wrong all their life. So they pretend they are not wrong.
One more .. this time from the Guardian, 1974… 😉
You’re doing good work, Bnice! 🙂
Multiple “scientists” appear in Ancient Apocalypse but that doesn’t make it real. The program is fun but clearly 100% wrong. The same was true of “In search of”.
The current program is “clearly 100% wrong”…. but it has you sucked in.
Good point! 🙂
“After 30 years of cooling, predicting the cooling would continue was a respectable position.”
Yes, it was. Especially when seeing the level of cooling being reached in the 1970’s comparable to the cold of the 1910’s, as shown in the U.S. regional chart below. Btw, there was no Hockey Stick global chart way back when, all they had were charts like the U.S. regional chart, which was considered the Gold Standard of the day..
Then they started removing aerosols and soot from emissions which “Cleared” the air and changed cooling into warming.
Do you believe that?
If so, explain how reducing emissions caused the similar warming from 1910 to 1940. The Clean Air Act was not in effect during that time. If anything, more SO2 was put into the air during that time, which, according to the Global Cooling school would cool the atmosphere, not warm it.
No Nick, we are talking about the real cover, as it appeared on the magazine. Go to a big library and look up the issue of Time yourself.
The fake cover your cling on to was a falsification by activists who presented it as the real thing and then said ‘it’s a fake’ to mislead simpletons.
Ding ding ding. We have a loser!
Consensus…”a common benchmark is 75% agreement or higher”
Among the warming/cooling papers during 1965-79, cooling papers outnumbered warming 85% to 15%.
These lists are subjective, and it depends where you look. You give no source. Here is a quite diffreent listing published in BAMS
The BAMS report was shown to be very cherry-picked.
No surprise there. !
Looking at Mike’s graph, it appears the warming papers numbers agree, but many COOLING papers have been DELIBERATELY IGNORED.
No surprise there !
Or they weren’t cooling papers at all.
No names are given.
No source is given.
I have now given you the source. Go look at it and tell me it’s wrong.
Of course, the fact that there was a cooling consensus does not, by itself, prove anything other than the fact that climate scientists had no idea what they were talking about then just as they have no idea what they are talking about now.
Good comment!
Except there WERE cooling papers ….
Read the article.
That is an appropriate skeptical post when taken in isolation.
No. Wrong again. They are completely objective if you look in the right place. This objective paper completely refutes your made-to-order graph.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347966094_The_1970s_Global_Cooling_Consensus_was_not_a_Myth
Three scientists, writing in the premier met journal,say one thing. mr Angus MacFarlane (who?) writes an unpublished manuscript that says another. But we just know Angus is completely objective.
Almost certainly more objective that the bunch of low-end climate activists that put the BAMS report together.
Tom Peterson, W.Connelly.. You HAVE TO BE JOKING !!
The very dregs of the climate scammers.
Their income and employment totally reliant on the climate scam continuing.
“Tom Peterson, W.Connelly.. You HAVE TO BE JOKING !!”
Yeah, really!
Not credible at all.
This is what Climate Alarmists rely on.
Here is an example of Angus’ subjectivity. He reclassified Sagan’s paper from neutral to cooling, saying:
“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.””
He identifies a cooling effect, which partially compensates for the prediced AGW warming. Therefore it is a cooling paper (says Angus).
Which was proven to be a lie with this article.
https://notrickszone.com/285-papers-70s-cooling-1/
Thanks for the link.
From the link: Not only did Connolley — a co-founder (along with Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt) of the realclimate.com blog — successfully remove (or rewrite) the history of the 1970s global cooling scare from the Wikipedia record, he also erased (or rewrote) references to the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age so as to help create the impression that the paleoclimate is shaped like Mann’s hockey stick graph, with unprecedented and dangerous 20th/21st century warmth.
A 2009 investigative report from UK’s Telegraph detailed the extent of dictatorial-like powers Connolley possessed at Wikipedia, allowing him to remove inconvenient scientific information that didn’t conform to his point of view.
“All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.“
end excerpt
See, this is what skeptics are up against.
We have Dishonest Climate Alarmists who have taken over Society’s “Voices of Authority” and are using them to promote lies and distortions about CO2 and the Earth’s climate.
Even James Hansen’s website shows temperatures declining until about 1964, when it starts climbing:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/30/analysis-of-james-hansens-1988-prediction-of-global-temperatures-for-the-last-30-years/
Yes, that happened.
So did the thousands of COOLING newspaper articles that the public was bombarded with.
Actually, According to a lot of data the minimum point was around the mid-late 1970s
Raw data from around the world shows it was cooler than basically any period back to at least 1900
That’s right. And that’s why people were fretting that it might get even colder. They saw the trend line going down to equal the coldest previous period in the early 1900’s, and did not know when it was going to stop. So they speculated that it might continue to cool.
The low point depends on what data one uses. The graph above in the main story does indeed show the low point about 1975. However, I chose Hansen’s data because of his travesties before the Senate committee in 1988 and the convenience of having already prepared the graphs for my WUWT article on Hansen.
“There was none.”
I was an atmospheric sciences major in the early 70’s. Global cooling was the “consensus” at the time. Revisionist history doesn’t pass muster for people who lived in those times.
Mr. 1: For me, this subject has diminished Stoke’s credibility beyond repair. You were there, like me, and he thinks his “research” will prove my memory wrong. It has left me concluding that, if it’s in a Stoke’s post, it’s wrong.
Nick hasn’t had credibility for a long time. Cognitive dissonance prevents him from accepting empirical reality.
I lived in those times. I saw all the things being said about a New Ice Age coming.
At first, I did not question the Human-caused Global Cooling narrative. Yes, the narrative was that human activity was the cause of the cooling.
When the claims first appeared, they were just claims, but I figured that there would be evidence put forth in the near future that would show the mechanism for how humans were causing the climate to cool.
But I never saw any evidence. All I saw were more and more claims. Lots of speculation and assumptions, but not one shred of evidence.
Once I realized what was going on, it made me angry. I couldn’t understand how something could be proposed without substantiating evidence. But, obviously it could be done. So this created the skeptic in me.
When the Human-caused Global Warming narrative started to be circulated in the 1980’s, I started out skeptical of the claims and am still skeptical of the claims. I have been following this subject for 50 years or so, and have NEVER seen one shred of evidence to show that humans are causing the Earth’s climate or weather to change in any way. Never.
There is no evidence for these claims.
If there was evidence, Climate Alarmists would soon bombard me with it, but as you will see, there will be crickets from Climate Alarmists when it comes to talking about evidence. They don’t have any and they don’t want you to know it.
So they will ignore my challenge to provide evidence for what they claim. Silence. Crickets. Every time. And we know why, don’t we.
I took global cooling with a grain of salt because nobody can predict the future. Taking short term trends and projecting them into the future is silly, especially in non linear cyclical system like Earth’s climate.
Mr. Stokes: This article doesn’t trot out the fake Time cover, it trots out the fake “In Search Of” episode. Oh, it also mentions some guy named “Schneider”, which you (once again) ignore in your comment, trotted out for some reason. Was Schneider faked?
Your case (that global cooling was not “climate science” in the seventies) is lost, but you keep trotting out the notion that it was nothing more than Time magazine. Steve Schneider wonders why u don’t return his calls anymore.
OK, here is Schneider writing in JAMS in 1975:
“A number of estimates of global surface temperature sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 600 ppm are collected here and critically reviewed. The assumptions and formulations that lead to differences between certain models’ estimates are explained in some detail. Based on current understanding of climate theory and modeling it is concluded that a state-of-the-art order-of-magnitude estimate for the global surface temperature increase from a doubling of atmospheric C02 content is between 1.5 and 3 K with an amplification of the global average increase in polar zones.”
Orthodox AGW
It has been about 10000 years since the last real ice age. Since then there has been several dozen warm/cool cycles that are not clockwork – it is 2 or 3 centuries warming and then 2 or 3 centuries of cooling – it is time for cooling and it may have started or it might be another 50 years away,. The cooling would be a return to the Little Ice Age temps – not Snowball Earth…..unless …..unless it is a return to Snowball Earth – no one knows for sure. Lake Titicaca (nice name) is a good source of soil borings from the bottom of the lake which reveal temp history as a different source from the Greenland ice and Antarctic ice borings.
Not a cover, but here’s a TIME article from 1974 describing global cooling… https://time.com/archive/6878023/another-ice-age/ … from the article: when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
edit: Sorry antig, this was meant for Nick’s comment above yours.
“Dubious claims there was no global cooling consensus in the 1970s naturally leads people my age to question other alarmist claims” Same. Told my kids many times when they were younger – watch what happens with this global warming thing.
I listen to podcasts on my morning commute. The last few mornings were a Stuff You Should Know with Josh and Chuck – an episode on Doggerand, the supposedly populated land that once connected England to mainland Europe. The prevailing theory on how it disappeared involved climate change with melting glaciers, land subsiding and sea level rise 30x faster than today’s rate. Josh C called 30x “almost twice as fast”. Never once did either host dare to question how all those glaciers melted when nobody was driving SUVs. It’s not worth writing mail, I like the podcast so good enough.
.
Show them the In Search Of episode I linked if they’re into Star Trek, might be an eye opener.
Someone did a search of newspaper articles between 1960 and 1975 using criteria “global cooling” and “global warming”
Here are the results…
Whichever way you slice it, Nick has comprehensively been shown to be a close minded climate zombie.
A “climate denier” of the lowest grade.
Correction: Stokes has been shown to be a LIAR.
All these darn people warming the planet will be the end of the galaxy, or something like that
The dooming is all encompassing and everywhere around us. Just read the Antarctic bottom water-
Australian Researchers Uncover Fragile Balance Behind Antarctic Bottom Water, a Key Driver of Global Climate – Archyde
There is no escaping the dooming so resistance is futile. Just learn to accept the dooming and let the dooming flow over you. Immerse yourself in the dooming and learn to love the dooming and be at one with the dooming.
I feel sorry for the kids who have to listen to this stuff. It’s child abuse.
Climate Alarmists are doing a lot of psychological damage to the children.
“… a climate system that simply fine tunes itself….” This is often claimed. Where does this idea come from? Is there a man behind a curtain speaking into a microphone and twirling knobs to keep the climate “fine tuned”?
“a missing feedback in Earth’s carbon cycle.” Impossible. The science is settled. 🙂
I am not too worried about the NGM (next glacial maximum). The reason is that I will be dead.
If an ice age is defined by polar ice caps and mountain glaciers, then we have been in an ice age all our lives. Small mammals like humans have evolved during this ice age because of the ability to migrate to regions with nicer climates. In fact our civilization has developed in this last period between LGM and NGM.
I have come to the conclusion that being warmer is better. Many years ago I worked on the Yucca Mt project (aka geological repository for spent nuclear fuel). One of the attributes was that during a glacial maximum, there were no glaciers at Yucca Mt.
In a calculation I reviewed, the fugacity of CO2 in water dripping onto spent fuel was used. So I asked the author to explain it to me. Still not understanding it I did more research.
I found a NOAA study discussing fugacity of CO2 in seawater. This was after the science of climate change was settled. Yet we do not know very much about what happens to CO2 in seawater.
Another thing I am not worried too much about is storing spent nuclear fuel. Once we have a solution, those worried about kept it from being done.
When CO2 is absorbed by seawater, a portion is used by plants ranging from alga to seaweed and kelp. The plants convert CO2 to glucose and release oxygen. Since the pH of the oceans is ca. 8.1, CO2 is converted to bicarbonate and carbonate anions. These are used by to form the calcium carbonate shells of various shellfish, sea stars, and the structure of corals.
I agree. I now wonder if the issue of fresh water lakes becoming more acidic from burning coal was a real problem. Oceans were an alkaline systems in my environmental chemistry test book and now the issue is ocean acidification.
Freshwater does not have the strong chemical buffering (carbonate and borate) that stabilizes the pH in oceans. On the other hand, a lot of the southern swamps are rich in organic acids. Chemistry isn’t really my specialty, so I’m unfamiliar with the details about the acidity. However, last I checked, the fish, turtles, and alligators didn’t seem too bothered by the low pH of swamps.
“Star Trek Doctor Spock” reminds me of this bit from the “Alien Nation” TV series when the alien George Francisco is having issues with his son, Buck.
George: “…and the answers are not in this Mister Spock’s book!”
Matthew Sikes: “That’s Doctor Spock. Mister Spock’s one of you guys.”
Another good one was when George was excited to go somewhere.
George: “Wild whores couldn’t drag me away!”
Matthew: “Horses, George. Wild *horses*.”
Ha – my grandpa confused me for years by talking about how he read a child rearing book by Dr Spock, and didn’t agree with it – I thought “Did Leonard Nimoy write a book on child rearing and publish it under his Dr Spock persona?”
Of course it was a different Dr Spock.
That reminds me of the time my girlfriend, Angela, and I were riding through town, and I pointed put to her that a library we were passing had been constructed by a donation from Dale Carnegie, and my girlfriend said: Oh yeah, my mother had dinner with Dale Carnegie a couple of months ago.”
And I was dumbfounded, because I knew that Andrew Carnegie had died around the year 1919, so her mother could not have had dinner with him.
Then, I realized my mistake, and how my girlfriend had taken advantage of it! She knew exactly what she was doing!
It was the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie who had donated the money for the library.
I got confused and my girlfriend made me pay! 🙂
Dale Carnegie was a self-help guru who wrote books and gave speeches on how to improve yourself, and had dinner with Angela’s mother.
“The newly identified factor” which could not be included in any of the doomster climate models makes a mockery of any predictions from same
Unknown unknowns raise their heads again
Who could have known! 🙂
CO2 – the magic molecule!
Along with H2O. Both absolutely essential for continued human life.
Yep,
It is magic the way plants manage to combine CO2 with H2O and other molecules to make food for ALL LIFE ON EARTH.
Pffft. I have “computer simulations” that have most of the planet turned to radioactive wasteland inhabited by super mutants and radscorpions. I believe the outcome of my simulation is more likely.
“that could cause global warming to overshoot into an ice age”
Is probably one of the most idiotically stupid sentences ever written by a “climate scientist”
Close! Real close!
And there’s me thinking that the science is settled.
“We’re all gonna die in a fiery flood!!!!!!” Too soon? 😉
Anything that is asserted without evidence can be dismissed.
That would apply to the whole Human-caused Climate Change narrative. Cold or Hot.
I always stop as soon as I see the word “could”. I don’t believe Newton or Einstein ever used that word.
They could have! 🙂