Green Myth-Busting: 70’s Ice Age Predictions
Myth: These same climate scientists predicted a coming ice age in the 70’s. They were wrong then, so why should we trust them now?
Fact: No, they didn’t. The situation in the 70’s was very different from our current situation. There was no scientific consensus on climate change. There was no international body of scientists looking into the matter, no global effort to deal with climate change, and no daily news articles on the subject. There were maybe a couple of magazine articles, a book, and some sporadic newspaper articles.
Today, by contrast, we have the IPCC, an organization of the world’s top climate scientists and its four reports, the latest of which claims with 90% certainty that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for our current warming. We also have other scientific bodies that agree with this assessment, such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Should one ask for a scientific paper from that time period that makes such a claim, one would certainly be left empty-handed. The most common example used is an article that was published in Newsweek in 1975, titled "The Cooling World", which provides an excellent example of the sensationalist reporting that existed within some media reports.
The situation was also different because the state of climate science was such that there was not enough research to be able to make these supposed predictions with any certainty. A 1975 National Academy of Sciences report stated as much, saying "…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…". Climate science was in its infancy. There wasn’t yet enough data or research available on which to base such a prediction, and scientists were well aware of that fact. Scientists’ current statements on the future of our climate are based on decades of research and massive amounts of data that has been collected over that time.
Also, as the climate scientists at RealClimate have pointed out, we know that climate scientists could not have made such predictions based on the scientific information that was available at the time:
Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the 40’s to the 70’s (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then). But people were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake (Mason, 1976) . Secondly, it was becoming clear that ice ages followed a regular pattern and that interglacials (such as we are now in) were much shorter that the full glacial periods in between. Somehow this seems to have morphed (perhaps more in the popular mind than elsewhere) into the idea that the next ice age was predicatable and imminent. Thirdly, there were concerns about the relative magnitudes of aerosol forcing (cooling) and CO2 forcing (warming), although this latter strand seems to have been short lived. - RealClimate
This argument, like many other skeptical arguments, is simply an ad hominem attack. Rather than addressing the merits of the science behind anthropogenic global warming, it attempts to discredit climate scientists in general based on arguments and statements they never made. Such arguments hold about as much merit as recent attacks against Al Gore and claims that previous high levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere were caused by dinosaur farts. If there were any valid points to be made by skeptics, this would not be one of them.
Tags: Climate Change, global warming, Green Myth-Busting, ice age, Science and Tech, skeptics
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July 18th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
In order to be an intelligent reader you must have a basic knowledge. Please do your own homework, a starting point http://www.InteliOrg.com/
July 19th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
“There were maybe a couple of magazine articles, a book, and some sporadic newspaper articles” - instead, seems that global cooling was taken much more seriously that you could imagine, look here:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=bdc24964-7f82-4f7a-863c-f0ff43010278
July 20th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Funny, that article is remarkably similar to these, but only with the facts and statements that support a particular idea:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/00/02/iceAge.html
It’s very misleading. First, what it doesn’t mention is that, while Kukla’s letter to Nixon may have given the impression that an ice age was "due very soon", his research pointed to a slightly different time scale:
Second, Kukla is a skeptic, so that kind of works against the myth. The myth is supposed to discredit climate scientists who are now predicting global warming because they supposedly predicted a coming ice age in the 70’s.
Finally, at the time, there was an understanding among climate scientists that not enough was known about our climate to be able to forecast future climate changes. This is clear from the statement I provided from the NAS, and this was the reason for the establishment of a Climate Analysis Center. The author of the article you’ve provided dishonestly states that it was specifically to address global cooling.
July 21st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I’m getting a feel now for how it must have been for someone in Nazi Germany during the 1930’s surrounded by mad zealots who were being whipped up to believe the mad preachings of The Furher, Adolph Hitler.
While all around you, with notable exceptions who were publically vilified or worse, you observed impotently the rise of a very dangerous idea knowing that it was just plain madness.
Global warming hysteria is just another manifestation of fear, loathing and panic on par with Germany seventy years or so ago. The beliefs and ideals are different but the impact of those ideas remain constant. Only nowadays it appears that instead of some grand extreme political aim for the greater good of the Fatherland being the aim, a mixture of half-baked ex-socialistic ideaologies to do with Capitalist power and influence in the world has been replaced by (and I would have laughed at this years ago) wait for it…………..the weather?
It’s quite amazing and in years to come historians will look back in amazement at how a world could have sleepwalked into deluding itself that the Earth as we know it would die (or at least get very, very warm.
Oh bless!
The funniest thing will be all the apostles and devout zealots who followed this mad cult would deny to their children and Grandchildren that they ever believed such nonsense (rather like all the surviving Germans who you see interviewed on the Discovery channel talking about their wartime experiences- very few of those ever supported the Nazi party).
Talk about revisionism, the author of the piece above has been very very selective about the hysteria in the 1970’s regarding global cooling which is not suprising really. It’s simply the way it is and always will be. We are being both lied to and conned in such a way that it makes me both sick and laugh at the same time.
Do some research on how much money is being made by companies who deal in “carbon offsetting” a crank science if ever there was one. Find out about the production of “biodiesel” and how much it costs to produce and what the consequences for the food chain and rise in the cost of food as well as exactly how much of this “biodiesel” actually goes into the gas tank in order to make it…….erm……..green.
I havent even scratched the surface on the biggest con the world is yet to witness but do your own research and you will not only be shocked and amazed but very cynical and when the next real emergency hits our planet you may find yourself groaning and thinking of the old story about the boy who cried Wolf.
There are real important issues out there which do affect us and will affect us for many generations to come. Namely pollution, deforestation, disease, religious fundementalism to name but four and this sideshow they call man-made global warming is sucking all the money and energy from what we really should be concerned about.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Paulo, the Nazi connection gets even scarier when you do a little research about Germany’s 1933 Law on Animal Protection. And let’s not forget that the United State’s Gun Control Act of 1968 parallels the German Weapons Law of 1938 to a large degree. I would not lay claim to the existence of an active conspiracy, however, forgotten history has a way of repeating itself. And these days, only approved history can be taught in the classrooms because education is controlled via funding through a central government agency. It’s strange how mankind has a habit of repeating its past mistakes.
Jason, you fell into the trap again. Labeling Kukla or any other noteworthy scientist a “skeptic” simple lowers the discussion to the “my scientists are smarter than your scientists” realm without really investigating the arguments. That requires a faith not unlike religious faith. I am sure that the scientists at RealClimate are way smart, but they too are working with forced data and incomplete models. Climate science is still in the infancy of the hypothesis stage and nowhere near the fact stage of the experiment. Even with the benefit of forcing data into the models, the scientists have yet to produce repeatable findings.
To close, some of you may have already read this (maybe liked or disliked it), but it is worth re-reading for an explanation as to why “science has nothing whatever to do with consensus”:
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html