The facts about the 1970′s Global Cooling scare
The propaganda campaign to create hysteria about global warming required altering the public memory about both science and history. Both have been successful, disturbingly so.
For the former, putting the well-developed science about the Little Ice Age down the memory hole. The public must have a false image of the world’s climate as stable, so the two century warming could be attributed to late 20th century industrialization.
The latter required erasing from public memory the global cooling scare of the 1970′s. That required amnesia about well-documented history. For example see this typical strawman argument (refutation of an exaggerated version): “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus“, Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Flect, American Meteorological Society, September 2008.
The success of this project should disturb us, perhaps foreshadowing even more ambitious manipulations in the future (as the global warming hysteria built upon the “nuclear winter” propaganda).
This website has retrieved some of this lost history from the memory hole.
- An important letter sent to the President about the danger of climate change, 21 October 2009 — Official NOAA history about global cooling in the 1970s.
- About those headlines from the past century about global cooling…, 2 November 2009 — On the other hand, some skeptics also exaggerate.
- A look at global warming written in a cooler and more skeptical time, giving us a better understanding of climate science, 23 November 2009 — A prominent climatologist talks about the state of the science in the 1970s.
The latest expose from the 1970′s is the re-discovery of this report about global cooling: “A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”, CIA, August 1974 — Posted at Climate Monitory. It’s a discussion of the effect if our global climate returns to the conditions of the last 400 years (the little ice age).
The success of these efforts to manipulate history should disturb us. It was easy. After all, sheep have poor memories.
For more information from the FM site
To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp relevance to this topic:
- About Science & Nature – my articles
- About Science & nature – studies & reports (esp section 4 about the solar cycle)
- About Science & Nature – general media articles
- About Science & Nature – the history of climate fears
Reference pages about other topics appear on the right side menu bar, including About the FM website page.
Afterword
Please share your comments by posting below. Per the FM site’s Comment Policy, please make them brief (250 word max), civil and relevant to this post. Or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).
Listening to the radio today , many people rang in to agree how the climate has got warmer in their experience .
Looking back , it seems to me we remember the extremes , especially as children . The week we skated on the lake , but not the endless grey weeks of rain.
Winters seemed colder when we didnt have central heating ; offices were cooler in summer before we had computors and fridges . There would still be frost ferns on the windows if we didnt now have double glazing . In winter , cars, trains and buses were poorly heated . People walked ,cycled , worked , played outdoors ; women wore skirts and nylons ; fleece jackets hadnt been invented ; no wonder it seemed colder .
I remember 1964 ?, playing tennis in a t shirt , sun tanned – in January ; blisteringly hot , long summers in 1968 ( sheepshearing , a lad died of heatstroke ) and 1975 .
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FM reply: This demonstrates the power of modern propaganda methods. Disturbingly so. Twenty years ago most college-educated people knew of the Medieval Optimum, the Little Ice Age, and the warming that followed. Now the knowledge is gone from the popular memory. So warming is attributed to evil humans.
Also sad but inevitable is the way people extrapolate from their experience, which is heavily influenced from what they’re told. In fact the tiny increase in warming during the past 20 years is too small for human perception.
Another example is GDP. A severe recession is 2%, which is impossible for the average person to notice. Think of humidity or temperature. Stand outside. Will you notice a variation of 2%? For example, from 70 F to 70.4 F?
People believe what they’re told is happening. Which is why control of a people’s communication sources is equivalent to putting rings in our noses.
I am looking at AGW through a very small lens, in addition to trying to understand and evaluate some of the stories in the mainstream media. the latter usually boils down to “Most scientists say there’s an Anthropogenic Global Warming Consensus, a few skeptics say there isn’t; Who knows? Probably the majority is correct.”
The picture revealed through the bottom-up look is quite different. The story is that a team led by one of the leading climate scientists, Michael Mann of Penn State, published a major paper last year, performing new paleoclimate reconstructions of the past 1,800 years based on all available data sets. Their graphs showed unprecedented warming in the late 20th Century, as have similar prior efforts. One of the key proxy sets is made up of lakebed sediments from Lake Korttajarvi, Finland, which were characterized by geologist Mia Tiljander in 2003.
Mann et al wrongly calibrated these varve data sets to the instrumental temperature record. Worse, they used two of the four records in an Upside-Down orientation, transposing “warmer” and “cooler” in the paleoclimate record!
Well, mistakes happen. The revealing part of the story is that Mann et al refuse to admit their errors and correct the peer-reviewed literature. Their stonewalling is condoned by the Consensus AGW Science community, both tacitly and explicitly.
These are the same career scientists
…These are the same career scientists, policymakers, and mainstream media employees who are stridently confirming the integrity of Consensus evaluations of the AGW threat at Copenhagen, even in the wake of the unauthorized release of the computer code and emails from the University of East Anglia.
This post critiques one part of the Consensus response to the “Upside-Down Tiljander” story, as it was told at the prominent pro-Consensus blog Stoat.
These are people who can not or will not get the small things right. When it comes to the large questions of climate stability and change, they need supervision rather than trust. A re-boot of the Scientific Method seems to be in order.
I try not to get too deep into conspiracy theory but it is a bit disturbing to read that George Soros, who is heavily funding the alarmists in the Democratic Party at the same time he is heavily invested in Brazil’s huge oil venture offshore. Is this another example of his shorting the Pound and the Baht ? This will make Brazil, not only independent in oil, but a major exporter. I don’t understand how this man thinks but I am suspicious.
Sorry Mate: “re-boot of the Scientific Method “. You really lost me there.
Ok, try arguing with gravity (can I watch). Or, aerodynamics, yep you can bicycle (without wings) into the sky .. just peddle hard enough .. enjoy (again can I watch).
Oh all these scientists with all the conspiracies: “Moon landing”, “relativity” (the NAZI’s called it a “Jewish conspiracy”), “quantum mechanics” …….
Yep we crowd, on our crappy salaries (and now student debt) spend our entire time creating ‘conspiracies’ to give us more money .. which hasn’t worked because we have less money now that we had in the past .. and in the US there is less of us now than decades ago, at this rate there will be no scietists in the US in a decade or so..
Why we never spend our time trying to understand the Universe, create solar panels, nuclear power, wind power, life saving drugs, vaccinations, more productive crops, clean water, clean food ,et al, et al)
CEO’s, Goldman Sachs billionaires, et all, are such wonderful people. Obviously they do all those things. Trust them with your life. Though personally I’d recommend that you count your kidney’s after every meeting with them.
All of them would love to “re-boot the Scientific Method “. “God said GS has to make squillions over the dead bodies of Americans”. Whoops, the head of GS just said that (basically) recently. Reality beats satire everytime.
Better idea next time you have a life threatening disease and you scream “we need more research and a cure” we will just say “we have a conspiracy to rule the World .. no chance”. Or you are fat and science says “eat less”, but you dont like that and believe in (say) ‘Lay Lines’ . You will still be fat.
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FM reply: This displays a remarkable misunderstanding of the scientific method. Nor surprising given Oldskpetic’s previous error-filled comments about climate science.
(1) “try arguing with gravity”
Utter nonsense, child’s mythology. The scientific method “discover” gravity. Nor does the existance of physical forces prove the validity of the scientific method.
(2) The S.M. is a group of social processes, which are of course possible to improve both conceptually and operationally (continuing its evolution over the past 5 centuries).
The questions about climate science concern its operational methods, esp when applied to public policy. As I have written on this site, such serious and expensive policy issues require higher standards than typical academic debates — which is IMO the primary significance of ClimateGate. The methodology of drug testing — full disclosure of data and methods, plus review by independent expert panels.
More broadly, these emails prove what many sketpics have long alledged: the old boy’s network, operating in secret (violating academic codes, policies of the major journals, and Freedom of Information Acts), makes a mockery of peer review and replication — don’t work. Hence the need for a “re-boot” of the methodology of science.
The debating society of third world dictators, otherwise known as the United Nations, would like for modern nations to give up $100 billion in ransom to the dictatorships. For a start. To be re-negotiated upward every year, no doubt. But in a warmer location than Copenhagen next year.
George Soros does seem to be helping the process along with a bit more than just moral support.
Is it Global Warming or Cooling ?
It depends on your perspective. That is, your time horizon.
What comes next? There are theories, but our understanding of global climate dynamics remains insufficient for reliable forecasts over any periods beyond the season.
For more about this see: