Both sides of the public (not professional) climate change debate have consisted of chaff. That’s unfortunate for a topic of such importance. Which side has done better, sticking with verified evidence? It’s beyond my resources to determine this. The FM website has many article about the nonsense — over mob-like, or herd-like, behavior — of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) believers. Today we look at an example on the other side of the debate.
The pro-AGW folks say that there has never been a consensus among scientists that global cooling was a likely danger. While correct, it’s a strawman. The skeptics say that there have been many eminent scientists forecasting global cooling. The record shows this beyond question (see here and esp here).
But the skeptics often go to far, showing lists of general media headlines warning about global cooling (examples here and here). But…
- they almost always lack authoritative sources,
- without links or text, and
- don’t prove that many scientists shared these concerns (as articles in journals would).
Here we examine one such story (for which Google shows two thousand hits).
“Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada.”, Chicago Tribune, 9 August 1923 — Statements by Professor H. E. Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress. He predicted that predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.” {primary source, supplemented by others}
Background information: the Second Pan-Pacific Science Congress was held 13 — 22 August 1923 in Melbourne, Australia and 23 August — 3 September 1923 in Sydney. See their website here.
We know more about this story than most in these lists of “global cooling” headlines. What was actually said at the second Pan-Pacific Science Congress about Prof Gregory’s forecast? For the answer we turn to the conference summary in Nature, 8 September 1923 (subscription only; abstract here). Professor Gregory is mentioned as an organizer of the Conference. About climate change, Nature reports the following news from the Conference:
” “
Perhaps they discussed Prof Gregory’s fears over drinks at the bar. But nobody, including Prof Gregory,wrote them up. Google shows references to several articles by Prof Gregory, but nothing about the return of the glaciers.
FM Recommendations
When reading about any politicized issue: skepticism, skepticism, skepticism.
As for the public policy aspects of climate change, here are recommendations — things that must be done, whatever the cost — although it would be trivial compared, for instance, to global military spending.
- Raise the standards when applying science research to public policy questions.
- Provide greater transparency of data and methods used in climate science research.
- Provide third party review of the data, analysis, and modeling is necessary.
- Improve the various global climate data collection and analysis systems – satellite, radiosonde, and surface.
- Rationally apply the precautionary principle.
For more about these things see My “wish list” for the climate sciences in 2009.
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:
Reference pages about other topics appear on the right side menu bar, including About the FM website page.
Posts about fears of global cooling:
- More forecasts of a global cooling cycle, 15 July 2008
- Good news about global warming!, 21 October 2008
- An important new article about climate change, 29 December 2008
- An important letter sent to the President about the danger of climate change, 21 October 2009
Afterword
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