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"Until then, about all we can do in the political arena is to just keep beating on the anecdotes and keep chanting "global warming"."

http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
From April 28, 1975.

Please recognize that the term "global warming" is a misnomer. It is climate change we are concerned about, and it's not warming that will be the problem. It's not cooling either. It's idiots supposedly acting in our best interests to try and prevent something that may be completely out of our control. Volcanism, for instance, is responsible for tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year -- moreso than every vehicle on the road today combined. This debate should be about focusing on more renewable energy sources, not pollution controls. This debate shouldn't be led by environmentalists, because these are the same asshats who fucked up Yellowstone National Park.

We need to stop listening to the Mass Media and start using common sense.

"Our modern climate represents a very short, warm period between glacial advances."

Tell ya what, I miss the days of Global cooling.

Not to mention how freaking stupid we would look to future generations for believing something so remarkable without any real proof.

You mean like the global cooling scare of the 70's?

Fact is, the ice caps aren't melting at a rate anywhere near fast enough to cause disruption to the gulf stream. To say otherwise is a blatant lie.

It is entirely expected that the ice caps melt to some extent in a period between cie ages.

There will be an ice age at some point anyway, though probably not for many thousands of years. whether it is human caused or not is entirely disputable.

In fact, but the standards of the past couple of millennia, this is quite a cool period. The early medieval period was warmer than this by some way, from about 1000-1300. In Roman times, the climate was much warmer - in fact, grapes were grown as far north as York in england. However, there was a cold snap from about 1600-1850, from which we are now recovering to much mroe historically normal levels.

When people - few of whom seem to be "experts" at all but rather people with a political agenda and little knowledge of science or history - claim that we are absolutely and definitely sleepwalking into global disaster the likes of which the world has never sen before and omg it is all the fault of Mankind, it is time to get sceptical and call bullshit.

IMO environmentalism is a form of religion. It is well known in sociology that if you try to suppress some deeply rooted cultural phenomena, it just pops up in another form. So we have environmentalists sayign that we, Man, used to be in a state of bliss in a Garden of Eden, but then we ate from the tree of knowledge and fell into a state of pollution, AKA industrialism, and will face a final apocalytpic reckoning unless we subscribe to the beliefs of the environmentalists, when we can save the world and go to heaven, presumably. Whatever. You're all a bunch of superstitious irrationalists.

Main Entry: crackpot
Pronunciation: 'krak-"pät
Function: noun
: one given to eccentric or lunatic notions


Tim Lambert, Blogger without a portfolio
"Bloggers are just nerds in pajamas"
Jonathan Klein

"Tim Lambert - an arch opponent mostly criticizing unrelated work in which I'm not involved. I haven't seen any substantive criticisms."
Stephen McIntyre.

Okay first off, my reply was to the posting of cvdwl "or is it some crackpot in the back end of nowhere splashing up a web page because he's peevish and doesn't get out enough?! "

I used shorthand to reflect his entire meaning. So there are actually 4 items in contention here.
1. crackpot
2. in the back end of nowhere
3. splashing up a web page because he's peevish
4. doesn't get out enough

You live in Australia, I think we can grant point 2.

peevish
Pronunciation: 'pE-vish
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English pevish spiteful
1 : querulous in temperament or mood : FRETFUL
2 : perversely obstinate
3 : marked by ill temper


Simple Google search on your name I think proves point 3. Certainly it's subjective; I'll leave it to the reader to decide.
From your website:
"What I Teach:
Computer Graphics
Computational Geometry
I use Java for teaching. "

I think between J. Klein's comment and your self admitted profession we can also stipulate point 4.

Okay like holocaust deniers you don't believe that "Global Cooling" was never an issue in the 70's

Newsweek 1975
wiki

Most people around during that era remember it, but you deny it.

As to the Hockey stick, the Global Warming religion is backpedaling like mad away from the Hockey stick, yet you continue to defend it. Continued in part II

The large majority of researchers are planting themselves on ground that humans are at least partially to blame for global temperature rising. A few scientists disagree, which is fine, and that's how science works.

Clueless. No, that's not how science works. Do we study integrals and derivatives in calculus because most scientists agree on them? No, they are fact, and they work independently of any scientist's personal opinion or bias.

Here Creationists are very popular due to religious and political leanings, even though virtually every reputable biologist states that evolution happens, and is responsible for the way life has developed over the last 4 billion years.

Did you just say virtually every reputable biologist? Who are these biologists? Who declared them reputable? Concensus -- aka politics -- again. It amuses me how your post accuses opponents as being politically motivated, the whole time wearing the same left-wing blinders yourself.

As another poster raised the subject, here's some food for thought:

Global cooling
Global warming

So...which is it?

Global warming is deadly serious business and anyone with half a brain sees it coming.

There was an article in a 1975 edition of Newsweek where scientists were sure of a global cooling. Now it's a global warming?

I think it's foolish to think that us humans can have such an impact of the climate. I'd hedge my bets that volcanic eruptions and other natural occurrences play a far more significant role that cars and buses.

You're thinking of the Christian right behind Bush - they believe in this thing called 'the end of days'

Yes. The return of Christ to set up his kingdom on earth for 1000 years. It's not because I'm a Christian that I feel I can ignore long-term issues like global warming. I personally think global warming is a farce as far as it being controlled by humans is concerned.

So what source do you cite that says Christians think it's okay to ignore global warming because of the Second Coming? I'd like to see that article.

We're hoping they're the first to starve when the troubles begin ...

I'm sorry you have such a negative view of Christianity. There are lots of people around this planet that profess to be Christian that don't act like them. My apologies if you've been slighted by someone who has made you hate Christians so much.

I too, could find a link to an article from a group that represents "more than 6 million businesses, companies and corporations in virtually every sector of U.S. business, agriculture and forestry, including electric utilities, railroads, transportation, manufacturing, small businesses, mining, oil, and coal"...here... and totally ignore the obvious bias.

A few decades ago, it was global cooling, now they're all panicky about global warming. I wonder what it'll be next?? It's all just ridiculous scare tactics/political propoganda. The data they're citing isn't even standardized.

Don't worry people, sit tight, the sky isn't gonna fall down on us.

I'm not a Scientist. I don't read Scientific journals. The source of my quote above is this transcript of a Newsweek article.

I didn't say anything about a frenzy. I have demonstrated that the "environmental movement" used the very same scare-tactics in the past over "global cooling" that they use today over "global warming" and "global climate change."

I wrote the Earth Day folks and asked them if the first Earth Day was, as I'd heard, to raise awareness of global cooling. The ignored me. I'm inclined to take this to mean that it was.

This whole thing is rather separate from the Scientific issue, which I don't pretend to be informed about. The BS seems to be impenetrable on both sides of the debate. :-/

-Peter

Linky to 1975 Newsweek Magazine Article that predicts 10 years until we run out of food because of global cooling

No, my initial point was, signing on to the Kyoto treaty which blames the U.S. for everything and makes us fix everything while allowing the real polluters like China and India a free hand to continue polluting like mad men, will bankrupt the U.S. economy.

As for links: The Cooling World. That should do it. Or just search on Google for "The Cooling World" and get the article a couple of hundred times

thirty years of research by peer-reviewed scientists

What really frightens me is that since I started following the science of this stuff in the mid 80s,

Ah, so you missed the 70's when the same groups of people were telling us about the cooling we were supposedly causing.

Here is a Newsweek article from 1975:
Global Cooling Newsweek Article

And that's not all. "Peer reviewed" journals also had calls to herald the global drops in temperatures. Presidents and leaders were warned to start stockpiling food for the comming shortages. Check Wikipedia
for a starting point. Science, Nature, National Academy of Science, are all examples. And even then, we were told to stockpile food and that aerosols and pollution were to blame.

But that didn't pan out. So they got a new gig. Now it is warming (that in 99 they said would cause an ice age). Has science gotten better in the last 30 years in this field? Hardly. Now they just make up computer models, say the models predict it and call it science fact. It's like a "psychic" making mass predictions. Of course something will eventually stick. Make a thousand "models" and you can pick them over for "confirmation" as you need. Then again, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Yet they still can't tell us next year's weather any better then the Farmer's Almanac does.

Further, doing research into Global Cooling tells you some interesting data. Such as the drop of global temperature from the 30's through the 70's amounted to a drop that is strikingly similar to the amount we are told the Earth will supposedly warm (or has depending in which peer rviwed article) as a result of "man"; or according to the link you gave, is exactly the same.

Yet, somehow we are supposed to beleive that if the Earth returned to the temperatures we had in the thirties civilization will end. That is clearly demonstrated to be bunk when looking at somewhat recent history.

Indeed, in the 1999 "study"'s conclusions the 'Greenland ice shelf falling into the sea' would introduce mass cold water into the ocean, particularly the gulf stream. This would then reduce global temperatures to the tune of (IIRC) 7-15 degrees F as it disrupted the flow of warm water.

Yet, we are supposed to believe that we can honestly conclude global average temperatures from the 1800's to today. But only when they support dire predictions. When they show a cooling, well that's just "old data". When people point this out the disasterbators say they simulated the difference in global coverage and found no difference. So, they are basing their claims of historical temperatures based on simulations, and we are to believe they can produce models to simulate temperatures to accuracy within .05 degrees C a hundred+ years ago, but can't even get within a few degrees C for next week.

Ask yourself this:
If over the course of 70 years (1930s to 1970s) we saw a .6o C drop w/o disastrous effect, why should a .6o C increase cause it?

If an increase of .6o C puts us in dangerously high temps, then where were all these dangers in the 1920's and before?

Even the FAQ you link to should give you cause for concern regading the claims' veracity. They say that urban islands "only" account for .05o C less of a warming. As if we are to say "oh well .05 isn't much" while not connecting they are talking about close to 10% of their noted differences. Accounting for urban heat islands using their own data puts their rise in temperature to be less than the drop we had in the early to mid-late 1900's.

Other data shows as much as a .3oC difference when urban centers are accounted for in thermal variations (NASA GISS) resulting in a

I haven't seen anybody arguing that global changes in climate aren't occuring. The arguments come about the actual cause of it, which have been found to correlate with several external factors, like the solar cycle.

Study by Swiss and German scientists shows Earth is getting warmer because Sun is burning brighter
"Global Warming Bomshell"
Global warming or lack thereof
The Real Cost of Global Warming

It's definitely not proven that we're causing anything. Many scientists argue that it's a natural cycle. I've never understood why so many people, including Slashdotters, are so quick to accept absolutely everything that comes out of environmentalists' mouths. But then they start bashing George W. Bush, and then I see why--the issue is now a political issue, not a rational one based on actual facts.

The reason is that not everybody agrees. For instance, the ozone hole that has been growing and shrinking every few decades. As kids, we were all told the hole's expansion was caused by greenhouse gases. But it actually grows and shrinks, and the cycles correspond with solar cycles of the sun. That's just one of many reasons there is disagreement; here are some others:
Study by Swiss and German scientists shows Earth is getting warmer because Sun is burning brighter
"Global Warming Bomshell"
Global warming or lack thereof
The Real Cost of Global Warming

Not saying I agree with everything stated in those articles; I'm merely pointing out that there is another side to the issue. I'm sure there is an effect that our manmade chemicals are having, but the fact that there is a despute over the extent of its effect (despite what Michael seems to think with his "heads-in-the-sand dept." quip...) or its permanance means there are plenty of scientists who disagree that humans are the cause any more than natural climate cycles of the Earth are. Studies show the ozone is a lot more self-maintaining than you and I were raised to believe, and that most of the chemicals we hear about that are so damaging never even reach the altitudes necessary to do damage to the ozone.

To sum it up--there is disagreement because there is little proven evidence either way (think of it as similar to brain tumors and cell phones), and the studies that are out end up being contradicted by another. Simply looking at percentages of scientific papers published in the last decade doesn't necessarily prove much more than a general published consensus in the last decade in those specific science magazines.

Global warming, or global cooling?

http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm

Can somebody please get it right?

If global warming is really occurring, can anyone prove it's not directly caused by the Sun ?

No, you can't.

Article is archived here.

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large

http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm

My how times change :-p

What I want to know is to what extent do the various climate models take into account variations in solar energy output?

...yet the Bush family still denies that global warming exists or has any effect on the planet...

"Two legs good! Four legs bad!"

Eight years of Clinton... 40+ years of Democrat controlled Congress... Clinton shoots down the Kyoto Accords... and you're blaming Bush? Do ya really think it's a Halliburton-Bush-Bildeberger-Alien Abduction-Jews are Blood Suckers conspiracy? It's shocking how these self-professed intellectuals can latch onto such bizarre, poorly constructed delusions.

Please, take the tin foil hats off. Quit blindly trusting political parties and their media arms (NY Times is one of the least credible news sources now days and every "news" story should be treated as more anti-objective thinking hatred.

Consider this article that explains that the credibile sources understand there is not a cororlation between alleged warming and hurricanes:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- As hurricane after hurricane strikes the southeastern United States, many people wonder whether the rash of storms is the result of global warming.

The answer from scientists: Probably not, and certainly not with this year's weather. In fact, the overall global temperatures .

Although many experts think global warming could increase the number or the intensity of hurricanes 50 years from now, they say this year's storms were caused by natural changes in the ocean and atmosphere. These include a multi-decade cycle of warm water moving through the Atlantic Ocean, and the unusual mildness of the hurricane-suppressing patch of warm water in the Pacific called El Nino.

"This isn't a global-warming sort of thing," said Hugh Willoughby, senior scientist at the International Hurricane Research Center of Florida International University. "It's a natural cycle."

Curiously, the data shows we're in a cooling pattern (many of the credible scientists understand nearly all of the effect is associated with sun cycles and these are thankfully out of the reach of Halliburton for now). Data from non-urban sources confirms the overall cooling trend, while urban heating continues to be a problem. If you really want to do something about it, quit living in the damn cities!

And according to these people, global cooling kills more people than warming (I can see the NYTimes correction now: Climate cooling, not warming, but Bush-induced cooling kills more than warming!)

And this cooling trend isn't a new phenomenon that can be "blamed on Bush" - unless you want to include Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan and (gasp) Carter this cooling has been happening since 1975. Pretty interesting that the NY Times gets this wrong too. Then again, when the media feels it appropriate to run forged documents provided by mentally unsound oddballs that every expert consulted says are fraudulant, should we be surprised?

I know it's a joke... but "Global Cooling" was the fad/junk science of the 1970's... when the well ran dry for garnering funding into that research, the SAME researchers changed their tune and began sqwacking GLOBAL WARMING!

Here's an amusing article on it all here

This was after the global cooling fad. The chicken littles were adopting their new global warming fad. Now, the new ice age fad is starting:

Thaw in Greenland Threatens New Ice Age" (this one is kind of funny, it combines global warming with global cooling).

Are We on the Brink of a New Little Ice Age?. From the Woods Hole institute. You will probably dismiss this as a right-wing think tank.

Ice Age Now!. Kind of nutty. Just like the global-warming kooks.

Here's one of the old ones The Cooling World (1975). The scientists quoted are from NOAA. True to the fad cycle, there are no NOAA scientists on the global warming bandwagon.

I have seen numerous theories on the climate subject.

The following viewpoints have been presented over the past 30 years:

- Global Cooling. We will freeze to death shortly.
- Global Warming. We will warm up the earth and either melt or be drowned.
- Climate Change. The earth will have rapidly chaging temperatures resulting in the destruction of humankind.
- "Run out of oxygen" theory. We'll ruin the atmosphere to the point we can't breathe it.
- Nothing. All of the above are bunk.

Which is true? All these viewpoints have been presented at one time or another, and, up to now, none of them (including the last one) have been true.

Is this just another Waaahhhhhmbulance to ignore, or does this article have revolutionary proof that is worth my effort to read?

I'm willing to understand that science changes over time. But to have various scientists publicizing all possible viewpoints as the truth over the past 30 years is too much for me to handle.

Pay no attention to the domain; this transcript is widely available if you just do a Google search. The scoop is, back in 1975, environmental scientists were playing chicken llittle telling us that the world was threatened by global cooling. We're still here, aren't we? Now we're all going to die because of global warming.

I am 39 and remember all of the hoopla in the early 70's (yes I wore bell bottoms) about the coming "ice age".
There were lot's of "facts" to prove it.
Since we only had about 20 years of oil left in the ground, and burning petroleum products contributed to "global cooling", we decided to lower the speed limits in the U.S.
Some things are just cyclical, natural things.
I am doing some minor googling and not coming up with much about global cooling.
That is not surprising since most of it occured prior to a widely used internet.
And since the groups that were behind the global cooling fad had an agenda which has now changed to global warming, they don't want to be seen as hypocritical.
I remember some widely circulated magazines carrying prominent articles about it like Time and Newsweek.
All I am saying is this may be like the ozone thing where we find out that man contributes 2% to the problem and it is natural and cyclical.

A couple of sites that I found without too much trouble are this one with a Newseek article from 1975 The Cooling World
And this one from 2002 The New Ice Age

DanH

"If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?" - Steven Wright

I suppose you've got to be philosophical about people like John Daly. He's on the public/political front of the Global Warming debate so he's not going to plead for the other side. Like your example, he has plenty of his own examples at john-daly.com, which don't get publicised by the opposing camp.

As regards the very real propaganda war I think the Global Warmers have the edge here. There is hardly a day goes by when the TV News is not forecasting doom and overheating. And then the Weather Forecast comes on to announce that much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the grip of one of the most severe freeze-ups for 50 years. It's all very confusing.

The trouble is that it's a very difficult topic and we know precious little about many of the factors such as long (and short) term solar cycles which will influence our climate to a great extent. However, there is a well respected scientific fact (not theory), which is the past cycle of long ice ages and short warm periods. We've a few thousand years to run in our little warm period yet and then we really will have a climate change to worry about.

Anyway for our amusement, here's a bit more well respected science from 1975. http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
The lesson to be learnt is that it's dangerous to make long term forecasts from short term observations.

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

25-30 years ago, everyone was in an uproar over the environment changing as well. Only, it wasn't global warming that was the threat to Life As We Know It, it was global cooling.

Generally, if you s/warming/cooling/g, you end up with all of the arguments from the 1970s about that particular environmental scourge.

OK, I'll bite, how about Sagan's prediction after the Gulf war:

Shortly after the first oil wells began to burn, Carl Sagan appeared on ABC's Nightline and predicted that " the net effects would be similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the year without a summer" (p. 37,
1992).

Or, how about the great frozen earth from 1975:

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects

Or, what about the great earthquakes that were predicted in The Jupiter Effect:

Such was the forecast of a scholarly and well-documented book entitied The Jupiter Effect, coauthored in 1974 by Cambridge astrophysicists John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann. The book targeted 1982 as a time when meteorological and geological activity would build up and become intensely magnified thanks to a variety, of physical mechanisms operating simultaneously. Highlighting the forecast was a massive and disastrous earthquake on the southern section of the San Andreas Fault near Los Angeles.

Should I go on...