Following up on the story earlier about predictions of a looming mini-Ice Age due to changes in solar sun spot activity, reader Billy sent me a link to this Time magazine article from 1974, Another Ice Age?
I’ll excerpt the article here, but you really have to read the whole thing. Substitute “warming” for “cooling” and you pretty much have the current scientific “consensus” as to which no legitimate questions may be raised, lest one be deemed a Global Warming Denier (or is it Climate Change Denier)?
It’s spooky to read this, but here goes (emphasis mine):
… As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, 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….
The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth’s surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth’s tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth’s climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
The article ended with this ominous warning:
University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
Which sounds ominously familiar to the current food warnings (this time, substitute “cooling” for “warming”):
It is now clear that global warming is a major cause of rising food prices that hurt all Americans in their pocketbooks, every day. This will be a very big issue and revive national enthusiasm for action to combat global warming. I am in close touch with one very senior national Democrat who will soon launch a campaign appealing to voters to lower food costs by combating global warming.
Makes one wonder how the scientific consensus could have been so wrong in 1974, and if 35 years from now people will wonder how the scientific consensus could have been so wrong in 2011.
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Comments
Cooling cycle — panic!
Warming cycle — panic!
Cooling cycle — panic!
OK, this upcoming cooling cycle may indeed be something to be concerned about. But it won't be the beginning of a new ice age, and it won't be as bad as the Maunder Minimum (which occurred during a larger cooling period). Maybe another Dalton Minimum.
I hope the AGW alarmists will be thoroughly discredited, they get in the way of actually dealing with real problems, including environmental ones.
The real secret is to watch what they propose as a solution. It's always the same thing — even when the supposed disasters and their causes are mutually exclusive, their solution is always socialism.
The whole environmental movement long ago crossed into pseudo-paganism. These are people seeking a god, any god, other than the one that actually exists.
Guys, this time I mean it. The climate is really, really going to get warmer. I mean colder. I mean warmer. I mean – oh, forget about it. Just send me money. And do it quickly, before the world ends. Sheesh!
Well, now that Stephen Hawking has declared that there is no scientific evidence that God exists, what's the point?
(Of course, I'd like to see how he constructed the hypothesis and how it was then tested to form such a definite "scientific" conclusion).
That's what passes for science these days. We used to call them wizards not scientists. And they performed magic, not science.
I think that declaring that there's no scientific evidence for God to exist is just saying that no one has carried out an experiment that indicates it. Which is true. No experiment (other than, perhaps, looking through scientific journals, if that counts) is required.
Time featured the BIG FREEZE and the coming ICE AGE quite a few times in the 70s. Check out these Time covers:
Time 12-3-1973 (with Archie Bunker) and Time 1-31-1977 and Time 12-24-1979.
Ah, I feel like a teenager again! I remember the last impending Ice Age so fondly. *wistful sigh* Even though I was sporting quite the enormous '80's perm at the time, I willingly gave up my Aquanet to save the planet and even switched to roll-on deodorant. It worked, too. Maybe a little too well since the next thing we knew we were about to be burned to a crisp. This time, let's keep using our hairspray, so we don't accidentally cause the planet's climate to swing back the other way. I may even switch back to aerosol deodorant to do my part to save the world. Again. Hmm, come to think of it, maybe that was the dreaded ozone hole I helped close up? Whatever, I'm down with another Ice Age. Barely noticed the last one.
How will this effect my annual baby fur seal excursions? Is Al Gore going to let me club more of them?
Based on the comments, all that Fuzzy has to do is get another massive 80's perm, and all the aquanet she needs, and we'll be good!
The fed prints money until the value of the dollar erodes, then the environazis blame rising food costs on global warming rather than inflation. Sounds like the same excuses that have been used for the Irish Potato famine, it was those damn savage Catholics having too many babies, forget about the bad policies leading up to the famine and the starvation taxes these people were forced to pay even when there was no food on their tables. Why are we trying to save the Earth anyways, the Earth will never die. Sure some species may die, but "the rock" will always be here and will be inhabited by some forms of life. Perhaps humanity will not survive forever, but why is the radical left so intent on killing us off sooner.
So, I thought I'd do a quick search to see if any of the global warming sites had something to say about the old Ice Age predictions of the '70s.
What I found, though, is that the environmentalists have that angle neatly covered:
[url=http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm]How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age[/url]
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
Our understanding of climate has advanced significantly since the 70's. For example, we now know that the sun has very little, if anything, to do with climate…
You do know that this post will cause, Anthony Gore..umm, Al, to grope another masseuse, don't you..
Are any of you old enough to remember how we were all going to die because there was a hole in the ozone? Yep, total destruction was right around the corner. And it was all due to hairspray.
Well, the ozone still has a hole, hairspray has been improved and we are still alive. And the alarmists used to be burned at the stake.
John Fund just said it correctly: "It's an all purpose excuse for governmental intervention."
So, when can I have my freon back?
Here's what I don't understand, bein' a pore dumb redneck and all. Throughout history and prehistory the climate has changed, warm to cold, Ice ages, little ice ages, the medieval warm period, all this stuff having nothing to do with how I ran my air conditioner, seeing as how there were no air conditioners.
And now, because of Owl Gore, the divinity school dropout, I am supposed to lose everything while he flies around in private jets. The more I think about this, the angrier I get.
Freon, probably never, the patents ran out, so DuPont has an incentive to having it banned.
For a big segment of the environmental movement, preserving their status and reducing the numbers of the little people is the whole point. And has been since the Club of Rome was founded.
Just a sec, let me channel the Great Green Buda Al in a Fake but Accurate response of the Left.
"But you see, we are so much SMARTER now, we have all this TECH and huge COMPUTERS that run these huge and complicated MODELS that we have fed tons and tons of real numbers that we have deduced from looking at three trees in SIBERIA that show the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum were just HOAXES and if you don’t send us all your money right NOW the whole earth will BURN and all those poor Polar Bears will stalk you to your driveways and hug you to death before drowning in melted glacier water you heartless cruel person you! *sob!* "
Sound about right?
I remember as a teenager reading Stephen Schneider's book (he was at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the time) in which he advocated the detonation of "thermonuclear devices" to break up arctic ice. This Paul Ehrlich of atmospheric science also wanted the arctic ice to be covered with black soot dropped from planes so as to increase its absorption of solar radiation … thus melting away the Arctic.
He said that we couldn't wait for the politicians to act (sound familiar?) … and a decade or so later he had flip-flopped from global cooling to global warming without a hint of embarrassment after calling for unbelievably radical (understatement) measures.
LookHandCool (who, even as a teenager, remembers thinking, "these people are nuts," when reading a scientist calling for us to blow up and melt the Arctic).
Well, there IS just under 4 years, 7 months, 11 days and 6 hours (right now) on AlGore's "doomsday clock" (when he said, mid-speech, that the world was going to end in 10 years time due to climate catastrophic).
All joking aside: There IS no "climate change disaster" coming. What is present is the myopic view of climate alarmists who think that a few changes in global temperature would be disastrous and have SOLD A BILL OF GOODS to the other scientists.
I've PERSONALLY done the research in a facility where we could control the carbon level up to 4500 parts per million. At the Biosphere 2 facility in Oracle, AZ after the "missions" were completed when it was controlled by Columbia University, they let us research the carbon cycle and what happens at ultra-high numbers. Current CO2 levels are 394 PPM (1/10 our levels). You know what we found? Morning Glory will grow at twice the rate it normally does, everything else will grow at about 130% of normal pace, and it 10 years lowland Hawaii will be controlled by ants and cockroaches. Yes, a FEW species will go extinct, but NEW species will break off to take advantage of the changed conditions.
While I was there, I had a FANTASTIC professor, who actually UNDERSTOOD geological history, and opined to me that it won't matter if carbon in the atmosphere DOUBLES, life on the planet will just SHIFT LOCATIONS. We KNOW this, because we have fossil evidence of atmospheric carbon BEING almost FIVE TIMES today's levels and ALLIGATORS and DINOSAURS being NORTH OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (meaning at that time it was 75+ degrees north of the arctic circle YEAR ROUND). And yet, life seemed to get along just fine.
"Man made global climate change" is a LIE by the Statists to try to control the public with a "science" that the average person doesn't have the background to understand or defend against. The LIE is framed in such a way as to say 'if we don't do something RIGHT NOW we're DOOMED.' Unfortunately it creates enough panic in the SHEEP that they turn on anybody who says "Prove it."
You guys don't get it. Didn't you watch the movie "The Day after tomorrow?" In it Europe was thrown into a new ice age caused by global warming!!!!
Global warming causes all bad things. That's science talking. In fact, I think global warming was responsible for the global financial crisis.
So, a baby seal walks into a club…
I remember the '70's and the coming ice age. There was article after article claiming a coming doomsday. Then it got hotter and it was the heat that would kill us, now it's getting colder, and we must suffer the lack of vision but entrenched greed of our "leaders" using this is a new threat.
When do we say enough and remove them? Trust me, if we simply remove them from power for being stupid and greedy, they'll stop being stupid and greedy. They want power before anything else. Right now we are under assault by entire entities like the U.N.. There is no safe haven left. We need to learn to resist.
Great article, but the “share to Facebook” didn’t work right (I did succeed by using the ShareThis toolbar thingie in Firefox).
Researchers just came out and predicted another cooling cycle. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110614-sun-hibernation-solar-cycle-sunspots-space-science/?source=link_tw20110618news-sun But, apparently, because of the CO2 that we’ve added to the atmosphere, it won’t be as bad…
As the first comment in that article says, a medium volcano releases more greenhouse gases than man does by a considerable amount!