Your one-stop reading source for information about climate science…

…so long as you’re not looking for timely coverage of current news. 

One of the greatest powers of the Internet is that it opens vast vistas of knowledge to everyone.  We see this at work in the climate science debate where any moderately educated person has access to resources sufficient to follow the debate (if not to contribute).

On the right-side menu bar are the FM reference pages.  These are not just archives of the articles on this site, but also list the links I have used to write them.  There are four reference pages about science and nature (focused on climate sciences).

• Science and Nature – my articles
• Science & nature – studies & reports — mostly links to professional journals and technical websites
• Science & Nature – general media articles — articles on both sides of the debate.
• Articles from the 1970’s about global cooling/warming — a historical perspective

This post pulls information from all four of these pages, giving you a tasty sliver of the whole.

Contents

1. Basic reference sources
2. FM posts about shockwaves and other geo-science related issues
3. Some articles from the past worrying about climate change
4. One aspect of the problem you might not have heard about — the sun’s influence on our climate
5. Afterword

(1)   Basic reference sources – a place to start

(a)  The #1 site IMO:  The Discovery of Global Warming, on the site of the American Institute of Physics — “A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change.”

This Website created by Spencer Weart supplements his much shorter book, which tells the history of climate change research as a single story. On this Website you will find a more complete history in dozens of essays on separate topics, updated annually.

(b)  Lists of articles with full citations:

• A timelineof the science and politics of climate science (from the AIP site)
• A Bibliography by year of climate science research (also from AIP)

1. A classic, also relevant to climate science today:  “A meeting with Enrico Fermi“, Nature (22 January 2004) – “How one intuitive physicist rescued a team from fruitless research.”
2. “A Critical Examination of Climate Change“, Douglas Hoyt and Warwick Hughes, posted at Hughes’ site, no date — An introductory briefing.
3. “Nuclear winter: science and politics“, Brian Martin, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 5, October 1988, pp. 321-334 — Excellent background description and bibliography.  Vital background to understand the global warning debate.
4. “Aliens cause global warming”, Michael Crichton, lecture at the California Institute of Technology, 17 January 2003

(2)  FM posts about shockwaves and other geo-science related issues

1. There is no “peak water” crisis, 19 June 2008
2. We are so vulnerable to so many things. What is the best response?, 30 December 2008
3. About our certain doom from the Yellowstone supervolcano, 11 January 2008
4. My nomination for a top priority shockwave, 19 January 2009
5. A serious threat to us – a top priority shockwave – a hidden danger …, 20 January 2009

(3)  Some articles from the past worrying about climate change

These are just of the few from the FM reference page Science & Nature – the history of climate fears, selected because the actual text is online and free.

1. “Prospects of another glacial period; Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again“, New York Times, 24 February 1895
2. “The Coming Ice Age“, Betty Friedan, Harper’s Magazine, September 1958 — “A true scientific detective story”
3. “Carbon Dioxide and Climate“, Scientific America, July 1959
4. “Climate Modification and National Security“, R R Rap, RAND, October 1970
5. “Another Ice Age?“, Time, 24 June 1974
6. “Climate Change:  Chilling Possibilities“, John F. Douglas, Science News, 1 March 1975
7. “The Cooling World”, Newsweek, 28 April 1975 (posted with permission at the Washington Times here; or read this image)
8. “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”, Wallace S. Broecker, Science, 8 August 1975 (abstract)
9. Interview with Professor Reid Bryson in Mother Earth News, March/April 1976 — Wikipedia entryfor Bryson.
10. “Global Cooling?”, P E Damon and S M Kunen, Science, 6 August 1976 (abstract)
11. “What’s Happening to Our Climate”, Samuel W. Matthews, National Geographic, November 1976 (text; image)
12. “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment“, National Academy of Science, July 1979
13. “The Ice Age Cometh?“, Time, 31 January 1994

(4)  One aspect of the problem you might not have heard about — the sun’s influence on our climate

1. “Predicting the Solar Activity Cycle” posted at The Sun Blog, run by the staff of the Solar-Stellar Spectrograph (SSS) program of the Lowell Observatory.
2. “Sunspots may vanish by 2015“, William Livingston and Matthew Penn, National Solar Observatory, 2006 — Unpublished, 10 pages. 
3. “‘Maverick’ sunspot heralds new solar cycle“, New Scientist, 7 January 2008.
4. “Sun Stays Sluggish as Weathermen Fight for Anti-Ice Age Funding“, Popular Mechanics, 6 February 2008
5. Where have all the sunspots gone?“, Anthony Watts, posted at Watts Up With That, 13 February 2008
6. “Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States“,  David Archibald, International Conference on Climate Change, March 2008.
7. “The Deniers: Our spotless sun“, Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Comment, 31 May 2008 — With the debate focused on a warming Earth, the icy consequences of a cooler future have not been considered”
8. “What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)“, NASA, 11 July 2008
9. “Still No Sunspot Action on the Sun“, Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles, 29 August 2008 — An interview with David Hathaway, solar physics team leader at the NASA Marcshall Space Flight Center.
10. “The Sun remains in a magnetic funk“, Anthony Watts, posted at his blog Watts Up with That, 30 August 2008:
11. “Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low“, NASA, 23 September 2008
12. “Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age“, NASA, 30 September 2008
13. “For how long will the current grand maximum of solar activity persist?“, J. A. Abreu, J. Beer, F. Steinhilber, S. M. Tobias, N. O. Weiss, Geophysical Research Letters, 30 October 2008
14. “History of Cycle 24 Predictions“, posted at Anthropogenic Solar Chaos, 8 November 2008
15. Presentations at the conference “Solar Activity during the onset of solar cycle 24“, Napa California, 8-12 December 2008 — presentations are posted here.
16. “Boundary Between Earth’s Upper Atmosphere And Space Has Moved To Extraordinarily Low Altitudes, NASA Instruments Document“, Science Daily, 16 December 2008
17. “A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field“, NASA, 16 December 2008
18. Dr. Hathaway of NASA revisies his solar cycle 24 forecasts, summary by Michael Ronayne, posted at the SolarCycle24 message board. 5 January 2009

Afterword

Please share your comments by posting below.  Per the FM site’s Comment Policy, please make them brief (250 words max), civil, and relevant to this post.  Or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).

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