Remember Global Cooling?

[Jared Moya]

Oct. 23, 2006 - In April, 1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South Vietnam, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling.


More than 30 years later, that little story is still being quoted regularly—as recently as last month on the floor of the Senate by Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the self-proclaimed scourge of climate alarmists. The article's appeal to Inhofe, of course, is not its prescience, but the fact that it was so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future. Even by the time it appeared, a decades-long trend toward slightly cooler temperatures in the Northern hemisphere had already begun to reverse itself—although that wouldn't be apparent in the data for a few years yet—leading to today's widespread consensus among scientists that the real threat is actually human-caused global warming. In fact, as Inhofe pointed out, for more than 100 years journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age. The implication he draws is that if you're not worried about being trampled by a stampede of woolly mammoths through downtown Chicago, you don't have to believe what the media is saying about global warming, either.


But is that the right lesson to draw? How did NEWSWEEK—or for that matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the mid-1970s—get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate." Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen—even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov—saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production. After all, Ice Ages were common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the exception. The cause of these periodic climatic shifts is still being studied and debated, but many scientists believe they are influenced by small changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (including its "eccentricity," or the extent to which it deviates from a perfect circle) and the tilt of its rotation. As calculated by the mathematician Milutin Milankovitch in the 1920s, these factors vary on interlocking cycles of around 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years, and if nothing else changed they would be certain to bring on a new Ice Age at some time. In the 1970s, there were scientists who thought this shift might be imminent; more recent data, according to William Connolley, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who has made a hobby of studying Ice Age predictions, suggest that it might be much farther off.


But in any case, climatologists now are mostly agreed that human impacts will swamp the effects of the Milankovitch cycles. The question has been, which specific impacts? In the mid-1970s, scientists were focusing on an increase of dust and "aerosols" (suspended droplets of liquid, mostly sulfuric acid) in the atmosphere. These, the result of increased agriculture and burning of coal in power plants, lower the Earth's temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space. Ironically, clean-air laws in North America and Europe had the effect of reducing aerosols (which cause acid rain), so the predominant influence on climate now is the buildup of carbon dioxide—which traps the Earth's heat in the lower atmosphere and contributes to global warming.


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek/page/2/

[Unsueable Davey Brown]

It was on the news last night. In the Canadian Province of British Columbia snow packs are greater this year than ever before. This story was followed by another story blaming the radical weather for the province on fine dust particles in the air blowing in from China's industrial emissions.

So on the one hand they're telling us industrial emissions are making the weather warm, then on the other hand they're telling us industrial emissions are making the weather cool.

My opinion - Anthropogenic (human caused) global warming is a load of politically charged, media propogated, hidden agenda, horse hooey.

It isn't just me who thinks so either. The truth is starting to leak out.

If you check out this link -

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/s...59a5c7f723&k=0

you'll find further links to a series of articles concerning reputable scientists who are skeptical about this anthropogenic global warming nonsense. And no, they're not funded by the oil industry, although if you'd like I can show you where one of the loudest voices on the side of AGW does receive funding from energy producers.

I'm telling you Global Warming is the largest mass con ever perpetrated on the world's population, and no, Exxon didn't pay me to say that.

[DigitalJunkie]

Sorry, I disagree with your opinion on global warming, because we've "seen" the evidence at the North with large chucks of ice broke-off or disappear. No matter what, what we did or doing will not be good for future generations to come!

[Unsueable Davey Brown]

You have to understand the skeptic's argument though. They aren't saying there's no such thing as climate change. The fact is they're saying there is climate change, and it's been going on naturally since the dawn of time. More specifically what they're saying is the factors involved in climate change are multitude and complex. The precise contribution of human causes in this dance of climate changing factors is unknown, but there is reason to believe it may be minimal.

You also have to understand the enviro-nazi shell game. They're showing you one thing, but depriving you of other information.

They're showing you melting in the north, but not telling you this has happened before through natural causes and is part of a natural climate cycle. They're showing you melting on the coast of Greenland, but not telling you about the added snow inland. They're not telling you about the earth's natural checks and balances. For example something similar to what you describe is also happening in the antartic, but as the melting occurs on the coast the snow pack inland is increasing. Some scientists believe this effect may cause an increase in coast lines world wide rather than the decrease Al Gore and his fellow politically motivated, chicken little, alarmists are predicting.

Here you go. This guy describes the melting in the north phenomena better.

The main forcing function for hurricane formation is the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Every 25 to 40 years, the warm Gulf waters and the Caribbean currents oscillate northward or southward to or from the upper Atlantic Ocean. Sure enough, observed hurricane activity and intensity since 1850 have increased and decreased in tandem with this oscillation. In contrast, recent studies show that increased sea surface temperatures have only added to storm intensity by a couple of percentage points.

Or take Mr. Gore's prediction that sea levels will rise 20 feet by the end of this century. For the last few thousand years, the sea level has risen at a steady rate of 1.5 mm per year. The 6 inch increase in sea level during the last century is consistent with that rate. In addition, Greenland ice levels have been constant over the last few decades as well. While it's true that ice cleaving and ice flow rates at the coast have increased in recent years, these shifts are due to the AMO - and will abate once the AMO oscillates southward. What the global warming theorists fail to mention in their findings is that the increased ice and snow pack on Greenland is balancing out the coastal melting. And what's creating the increased ice and snow pack? Warmer sea surface temperatures: The increased temperatures create moisture, which in turn causes additional snowfall.

Similar observations have been made in the Antarctic. Although proponents of the global warming theory refer to a study showing reduced ice content at the tip of one peninsula, they ignore the snowfall data from several Antarctic continental stations showing increasing ice packs from the extra sea moisture.

http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=407

[DigitalJunkie]

Sorry, but even International communities has began to realized Global Warming is a huge economic concern the could get worst if nothing is done. Even Pres. Bush, that has reversed a lot of environmental regulations in the first few years he took office, now try to act like he is going green!

The global warming affects a lot more than just ice melting I mentioned. It has created stronger hurricane storms in U.S.A. for the south. Drought in other parts of the world, such as Australia which has also changed their position on global warming.

It doesn't really matter you think it's man made or not. Denial maybe blissful for now, but changes is coming!

[Andrew110]

Have any of you seen An Inconvenient Truth? I'm not much for Al Gore but his film does prove some interesting and scary points about global warming. Check it out!!!

[mountain_rage]

Really, in the end is not whether or not global warming is happening, its whether we can afford to be wrong about it. If we were to say that its not happening and we were wrong the consequences would be dire.

If we chose not to do a damn thing and all the predictions by scientist were right the effects would be as followed. You will start to have fresh water sources turn salty from the increase flow of sea water into the natural reservoirs (its already happening), City's built beside waterways and on the ocean front will start to flood (also happening already), more extreme weather patterns, less land to grow crops, increase in co2 from natural sources, the melting glaciers are releasing co2 along with the higher water levels.(which would only compound the problem), large economic downfall etc...

Now what are the harms to dealing with it? Possible negative effect on the economy, which to this point I have seen no backing to support, in fact studies are showing the contrary. Thats it, there are no other consequences, or can someone think of some.

The benefit of trying to lower greenhouse gases are as followed, less pollution in the air causing better health and a more sustainable resource use, creation of new industries and innovations which would help offset the cost of implementing changes to lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower dependencies on middle eastern oil. So tell me, why are you against these advantages?

As you can see I make no effort to hide the fact that I support the effort to lower greenhouse gases. There is no harm in trying to do so in my opinion. Now if you want to ignore the research done by thousands of scientists over a few decades which looks at weather patterns since we started measuring weather, the weather patterns based on ice samples dating thousands of years, current environmental changes and numerous research spanning multiple fields go right ahead, I am not willing to support that game of Russian roulette.

Also this research from the 1970's was based on a single hypothesis on the rotation of the earth. This research may even be what prompted further research into the subject of global temperature changes. Which may have very well have led to the discovery of global warming. The current research taking place is using information from many different fields to build an accurate model to back up the theory of global warming. Yes its just a theory because science at its heart is not 100% fault proof. Science is the use of information to build an accurate model of a system. If the model can recreate current data then it is said to be a good model, that is valid in explaining the environment. The counter research currently going on is important to take into consideration for such a model but the information gathered for it doesn't compare to the information gathered to prove global warming, it just shows that either global warming is not solely caused by humans or that we might be seeing a cooling of the world in the future (but physical evidence disproves that for the current reality). Hell knowing humanity we will push our luck too far and then everyone will be clamoring that the government did nothing to stop it as we all peril in our mess.

[Unsueable Davey Brown]

No need to continue apologizing DJ, researching the challenges posed by differing opinions is one of the ways I learn stuff.

For example on the subject of hurricanes and Global Warming, have you heard this one -

IPCC Hurrican Expert Has Data Stifled

It concerns the story of Christopher Landsea, one of the foremost scientific authorities on hurricanes and how he got screwed over by the IPCC. The IPCC is the UN based organization which produced the much ballyhooed recent report stating Climate change was pretty much all human caused, and all scientists were pretty much in agreement on this.

So anyway, Landsea is hired by the IPCC to produce data showing what the scientific consensus is on hurricanes. He walks into the hotel lobby one morning, and discovers the UN policy maker guys are holding a press conference. To his dismay it concerns hurricanes, and not only hasn't he been invited, but his report is largely being ignored. The policy maker guys are telling the media Global Warming is reponsible for the recent rise in hurricane activity (I believe this took place on the heels of Katrina), and the coming 2006 hurricane season will also be ferocious, again due to global warming.

Landsea didn't sign off on any of this. His opinion was the causes of hurricanes were varied and complex.

The Media of course ate it up, and all we heard was global warming was causing hurricanes.

As it turned out the hurricane season of 2006 was a slow season. You never heard an explanation of why that was from the IPCC policy maker guys, but the below offers some possible explanations.

The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was an event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation. This season was unusual in that no hurricanes made landfall in the United States of America...

Following the intense activity of the 2005 season, forecasts predicted the 2006 season would be very active, though not as active as 2005. However, in 2006, a rapidly-forming El Niño event, combined with the pervasive presence of the Saharan Air Layer over the tropical Atlantic and a steady presence of a robust secondary high related to the Azores high centered around Bermuda, contributed to a slow season and all tropical cyclone activity ceasing after October 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_At...rricane_season

Andrew, yes we skeptics have heard of Al Gore and his Inconvenient truth.

Click to discover another inconvenient truth

The problem with the movie is it's based on bad science, and outright fabrications. Believe it, or not buried beneath the hooplah and the headlines of Gore's Oscar victory you will find many challenges to the veracity of his allegations.

Click here for one of the best examples. The challenges are massive, but here's a collection of my favorites.

• Implies that the United States is an environmental laggard because China has adopted more stringent fuel economy standards, glossing over China’s horrendous air quality problems.

• Never explains why anyone should be alarmed about the current Arctic warming, considering that our stone-age ancestors survived—and likely benefited from—the much stronger and longer Arctic warming known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.

• Portrays the cracking of the Ward Hunt ice shelf in 2002 as a portent of doom, even though the shelf was merely a remnant of a much larger Arctic ice formation that had already lost 90 percent of its area during 1906-1982.

• Claims that global warming is creating “ecological niches” for “invasive alien species,” never mentioning other, more important factors such as increases in trade, tourism, and urban heat islands. For example, due to population growth, Berlin warmed twice as much during 1886-1898 as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the entire world warmed during the 20th century.

• Blames global warming for recent floods in China’s Sichuan and Shandong provinces, even though far more damaging floods struck those areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

• Claims that global warming is drying out soils all over the world, whereas pan evaporation studies ( which measure the rate of evaporation from open pans of water) indicate that, in general, the Earth’s surface is becoming wetter.

• Warns of a positive feedback whereby carbon-induced warming melts tundra, releasing more CO2 locked up in frozen soils. An alternative scenario is also plausible: The range of carbon-storing vegetation expands as tundra thaws.

• Warns of “significant and alarming structural changes” in the submarine base of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but does not tell us what those changes are or why they are “significant and alarming.” The melting and retreat of the WAIS “grounding line” has been going on since the early Holocene. At the rate of retreat observed in the late 1990s, the WAIS should disappear in about 7,000 years.

• Warns that vertical water tunnels (“moulins”) are lubricating the Greenland Ice Sheet, increasing the risk that it will “slide” into the sea. Summertime glacier flow acceleration associated with moulins is tiny. Moulins in numbers equal to or surpassing those observed today probably occurred in the first half of the 20th century, when Greenland was as warm as or warmer than the past decade, with no major loss of grounded ice.

• Claims that glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s reconstruction of climate history proves the Medieval Warm Period as “tiny” compared to the arming observed in recent decades. It doesn’t. Four of Thompson’s six ice cores indicate the Medieval Warm Period was as warm as or warmer than any recent decade.

• Calls carbon dioxide the “most important greenhouse gas.” Water vapor is the leading contributor to the greenhouse effect.

• Claims that scientists have validated the “hockey stick” reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature history, according to which the 1990s were ikely the warmest decade of the past millennium and 1998 the warmest year. It is now widely acknowledged that the hockey stick was built on a flawed methodology and inappropriate data. Scientists continue to debate whether the Medieval Warm period was warmer than recent decades.

• Claims that the rate of global warming is accelerating, whereas the rate has been constant for the past 30 years—roughly 0.17°C per decade.

• Accuses ExxonMobil of running a “disinformation campaign” designed to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact,” even though two clicks of the mouse reveal that ExxonMobil acknowledges global warming as a fact.

• Claims that the European Union’s emission trading system (ETS) is working “effectively.” In fact, the ETS is not reducing emissions, will transfer an estimated £1.5 billion from British firms to competitors in countries with weaker controls, has enabled oil companies to profit at the expense of hospitals and schools, and has been an administrative nightmare for small firms.

Mountain Rage. Yes pollution is bad, and at first think it does make a kind of sense that any method used to convince governments to deal with it should be a useful thing. However there are problems with politicizing bad science.

Bestselling author Michael Crichton lays it out better than I ever could.

Michael Crichton explains the dangers of politicizing bad science.

Here a couple more quotes from others, in case you don't like Crichton.

Thanks to the anti-CO2 juggernaut we are already seeing the acceleration of deforestation everywhere in the world, especially in the tropics. We can fret all we like about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet sliding into the South Atlantic (unlikely to say the least), or Greenland's Ice Cap melting away (virtually impossible), but meanwhile the tropical forests of the world are about to dissolve before our eyes. Why? To grow biofuel crops so western oil companies, adhering to environmentalist-influenced government mandates, can earn their "carbon credits."

Don't underestimate the potential of biofuel as a cash crop to decimate the world's forests, and in the bargain drive up food prices in places where food is already way too expensive for the urban poor. The process has already begun. From Cassava in Nigeria to Sugar Cane in Brazil, to Jatropha in India, biofuel crops are on the march, and forests are the victims. There are 18 million square miles of forest left on earth, and less than one third of those are in the tropics, where forest canopy is green and growing all year around. Tropical forests are crucial regulators of global climate, and they also are the best places to grow biofuel - at least until their fragile topsoil is destroyed due to the absence of forest canopy overhead. Biofuel can augment world energy supplies at best, but should only be grown in regions where these crops are not replacing farms or forests.

If you believe atmospheric CO2 needs to be reduced, then also be aware that the most imminent manifestation of the movement to fight global warming on earth, right now, is deforestation to grow biofuel. What if forests bring rain, and deforesting causes drought? What if forests regulate global temperatures, and deforestation is a greater cause of global warming than anthropogenic CO2?

http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=407

The scientific mainstream, however, refuses to concede that it could be wrong. It insists we must act now to decarbonise our economy, whatever the consequences. If the science were as certain as suggested, it would have a point. But it isn't and, in the meantime, we are being forced down a single policy direction that may be ineffectual and takes resources away from the real and present problems in the world.

Increasing food security, providing access to clean water and basic education, building defences against the floods that inevitably hit low-lying regions: these are the sort of initiatives that have to take second place to the drive to reduce carbon emissions.

In any case, there is little likelihood that a global carbon reduction regime can be made to work. Most EU member states will not meet their commitments under the Kyoto protocol. How likely is it, then, that China and other expanding economies will compromise their growth to meet much more demanding targets?

To shut down debate is unscientific. Science progresses by observation and deduction, by setting up hypotheses and testing them. Allowing one view to be pushed forward with no dissent sets a precedent that will stifle innovative thinking. Whatever Al Gore may believe, there is an even more inconvenient truth: he could be wrong.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../01/do0102.xml

[DigitalJunkie]

Personally, I don't give too much worth to scientific reports from so called "experts"! Science on many fields, they could changed over time as we gain more understanding. My opinion is from what I see. We've been using earth's resources at faster rate than before, we can't even dispose of many waste properly. U.S. still "consume" most of the resources. I can remember, Pres. Reagan's adm. even paid so called "expert" to write a report on environment to favor their own policies. Since then, I believe we should do something, at least to slow down. If we do nothing at all, that would be sad since I see others like European countries are trying! Even though I'm consuming oil & other resources myself like many others, but I don't like it. :(

[Unsueable Davey Brown]

Just as long as you don't stick your fingers in your ears, and chant, "La La La. Human caused Global Warming is destroying the earth. La la la la..."

Yeah, what can be wrong about controlling pollution, if it's done in an intelligent manner, for the right reasons.

What's mentioned above in the reply to Mountain Rage however does not qualify.

Kyoto was definitely the precisely wrong way to go. Bush was a flipping genius for passing on it. I wish Canada had been as smart.

[DigitalJunkie]

As far as I'm concern, we could be causing global warming too. There are many conflicting science reports on many things, we just started. You may have misunderstand what I think of current science!

[bobhss]

We can't predict the weather more than a couple days out accurately, what strong evidence do we have that we are going to cause the average temperature to raise a degree over the next 100 years? Seems like a bunch of nonsense to me.

[mountain_rage]

Davy Brown, your counter argument had nothing to do with the point I was putting across. No where in my argument did I mention that deforestation for creating biofuels was good, neither did I mention that shifting money from other environmental projects was a good thing. My argument was purely on the basis that reducing greenhouse gases is good, lowering our consumption of fossil fuels is good and that theirs allot of good science to back it up. The miss guided efforts that attempt to lower carbon emissions, or the efforts that try to give the impression of lowering carbon emissions are bad. Personally I quite agree with you in that respect. That problem does need to be dealt with. That doesn't however change my mind that greenhouse gases have to be lowered, it just has to be done in an intelligent manner and some people simply are not going to do that.

Quite frankly I don't even believe biofuels are the way to go, the only major advantage I see for it is lowering dependencies on middle eastern oil, the environmental benefit is not that significant, in fact as you point out it may even be devastating in some respects. We should be focusing on producing more efficient gas and electric motors, better batteries, and ways to produce electricity without the use of fossil fuels such as nuclear energy which is much safer and cleaner then most people think.

The scientific mainstream, however, refuses to concede that it could be wrong. It insists we must act now to decarbonise our economy, whatever the consequences. If the science were as certain as suggested, it would have a point. But it isn't and, in the meantime, we are being forced down a single policy direction that may be ineffectual and takes resources away from the real and present problems in the world.

Your above quote is not a valid argument and commits some common argumentative fallacies.

premise 1: Science insists we must act now to decarbonise our economy, whatever the consequences.
Premise 2: If the science were as certain as suggested, it would have a point.
Premise 3: But science isn't certain.
Conclusion: People are being forced down a single policy direction that may be ineffectual and takes resources away from the real and present problems in the world.

First it commits a slippery slope fallacy, in which if one event happens another will happen even though it may not be the case. He does this by claiming that funding for other projects will get the boot, while offering no evidence to support this. The same line also falls into a red herring or ignoratio elenchi fallacy, which is the use of unrelated or vaguely related statements to make a point. His paragraph had nothing to do with whether or not the efforts of scientists were removing funds from other areas.

[mountain_rage]

We can't predict the weather more than a couple days out accurately, what strong evidence do we have that we are going to cause the average temperature to raise a degree over the next 100 years? Seems like a bunch of nonsense to me.

Those are two very different qualities that they are measuring and based on very different science. Measuring temperature on a day to day basis is done by looking at pressure shifts, air currents, etc all in real time in order to guess what direction its going to take. For global warming they are measuring a change in temperature and checking past trends. With this they are figuring out if currently the world is warming up faster then in years prior to the industrial revolution.

[bobhss]

mountain_rage: They are not the exact same. I just don't like the conclusion that everyone seems to jump to about global warming must be man's fault. It couldn't be anything natural that the earth does on it's own.

Tom Smykowski: It was a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor... and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
Michael Bolton: That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Tom.
Samir: Yes, this is horrible, this idea.