The Global Cooling Consensus Myth Of The 1970s

[NightSwimmer]

A 400 page report with peer review, done by the UN, is no evidence? In that case, what you're really saying is that you won't accept any evidence that disagrees with what you've already decided.

What I am saying is that this is your little conspiracy theory and I'm not responsible for debunking it. Why do you want to believe that such a consensus ever existed? What makes you think that a 400 page report given at the UN building is equivalent to a consensus in the scientific community? If you're out to prove something here, then forget UN speeches on Earth Day and old news magazine articles and post some evidence of a consensus within the scientific community. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with -- if it actually exists.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

What I am saying is that this is your little conspiracy theory and I'm not responsible for debunking it. Why do you want to believe that such a consensus ever existed? What makes you think that a 400 page report given at the UN building is equivalent to a consensus in the scientific community? If you're out to prove something here, then forget UN speeches on Earth Day and old news magazine articles and post some evidence of a consensus within the scientific community. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with -- if it actually exists.

Well put. If there was anything remotely like a 'consensus' on global cooling in either the 1960s or the 1970s, then Trap ought to be able to find some articles indicating that in the major peer-reviewed science journals, such as Science or Nature.

But he can't do that. Because there are none.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

Leroy -- your long cut and paste is damn short on any historical documentation. I provided documentation showing that, at least the UN, the consensus in the 1960s and at least up through 1970, was global cooling.

I am baffled that you would say that about my post. Here is the key paragraph (in my mind):

its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.

LeRoy: Thus, the consensus in the 1970s was that our science was not yet advanced enough to make ANY clear prediction about the future of the climate. And that is extremely well-documented in the links in the post. It is also supported by the quote from the National Academy of Science, contained in the post. Perhaps you're just not aware that the NAS is a little more authoritative on matters of science than the weekly newsmagazine Newsweek??

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

From Trap's first post in this thread:

At the first Earth Day, the climate expert speaking at the event also spoke of global cooling (1970). If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

LeRoy: Kenneth E.F. Watt is a well-known climate change denier even to this day. He is currently employed by Exxon. Mysterious, no?

He should not be regarded as a 'climate expert'.

 

[BrianDamage]

Unless the language has shifted recently, your first quoted cite is not showing a consensus for global cooling, but rather global warming. Here it is, with my own bolding:

All authors have been able to show, by using records dating back to the end of the eighteenth century that the warming up of large parts of the world from the middle of the nineteenth century until recently has been statistically significant. However, as pointed out especially by J. M. Mitchell and also shown for sea temperatures by M. Rodewald this increase in temperature has recently declined. The decreasing trend is significant if we consider the last 20-50 years or even further back but may lose most of its significance by applying several of the statistical methods commonly used to show fluctuations during a longer period" (Emphasis in bold added).

Note that only two scientists are cited as denoting a period of global cooling. Even assuming there were more than two, there's no evidence in your quote that it was even a majority, let alone a consensus.

 

[trapdoor]

What I am saying is that this is your little conspiracy theory and I'm not responsible for debunking it. Why do you want to believe that such a consensus ever existed? What makes you think that a 400 page report given at the UN building is equivalent to a consensus in the scientific community? If you're out to prove something here, then forget UN speeches on Earth Day and old news magazine articles and post some evidence of a consensus within the scientific community. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with -- if it actually exists.

I have not made a conspiracy theory. Who have I said is conspiring with whom, and for what purpose?

I've merely provided detailed, documented history of a consensus by the largest groups of world climatologists from 1960 to 1970 inidicating a consensus that there was global cooling. You've done nothing to show that the evidence I've provided is in any way inaccurate. What I poseted was not "UN speeches at Earth Day" but a link to the 400-page report by UNESCO (a body of the UN) which had hosted a meeting of the World Meteorilogical Association, and that report demonstrated a consensus by those two authoritative bodies at the time and place I indicated there was a scientific consensus -- in short "evidence of a consensus within the scientific community" that you have happily ignored for no reason that I can ascertain.

 

[trapdoor]

Unless the language has shifted recently, your first quoted cite is not showing a consensus for global cooling, but rather global warming. Here it is, with my own bolding:



Note that only two scientists are cited as denoting a period of global cooling. Even assuming there were more than two, there's no evidence in your quote that it was even a majority, let alone a consensus.

You need to read the entirety. On the order of 30 peer-reviewed papers were presented, virtually all pointing to a warming period at the end of the 19th century, followed by cooling up to the time of the symposium.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

I have not made a conspiracy theory. Who have I said is conspiring with whom, and for what purpose?

I've merely provided detailed, documented history of a consensus by the largest groups of world climatologists from 1960 to 1970 inidicating a consensus that there was global cooling. You've done nothing to show that the evidence I've provided is in any way inaccurate. What I poseted was not "UN speeches at Earth Day" but a link to the 400-page report by UNESCO (a body of the UN) which had hosted a meeting of the World Meteorilogical Association, and that report demonstrated a consensus by those two authoritative bodies at the time and place I indicated there was a scientific consensus -- in short "evidence of a consensus within the scientific community" that you have happily ignored for no reason that I can ascertain.

The hell you say!! THIS was the 'consensus' at the time, Trap:

its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.

LeRoy: I.e., the consensus back then was that WE DID NOT KNOW ENOUGH TO ACCURATELY PREDICT FUTURE CLIMATES.

If there really was a 'consensus' on global cooling, then you should have NO problem finding papers in the leading science journals to indicate that, or even in a layman's high-quality science magazine, such as Scientific American. Good luck with that, because THERE AREN'T ANY!!!

 

[trapdoor]

The hell you say!! THIS was the 'consensus' at the time, Trap:

its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.

LeRoy: I.e., the consensus back then was that WE DID NOT KNOW ENOUGH TO ACCURATELY PREDICT FUTURE CLIMATES.

If there really was a 'consensus' on global cooling, then you should have NO problem finding papers in the leading science journals to indicate that, or even in a layman's high-quality science magazine, such as Scientific American. Good luck with that, because THERE AREN'T ANY!!!

They're provided inside the UNESCO symposium record I already linked -- more than 30 peer reviewed papers were presented at that symposium, and there was a general agreement on global cooling.


Having said that, it took less than two minutes of searching for me to find another, peer-reviewed, apper from 1971 predicting global cooling and published in the journal "Science." "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate"

It's gloss: Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

So much for "there aren't any." At this point I've presented you with close to 40. Even the website "Skeptical Science" which agrees with your position that it wasn't a consensus (via careful parsing of publication from the era), doesn't make the outrageous claim that there were no papers making that case. It finds 30 published papers in 1971 alone.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

They're provided inside the UNESCO symposium record I already linked -- more than 30 peer reviewed papers were presented at that symposium, and there was a general agreement on global cooling.


Having said that, it took less than two minutes of searching for me to find another, peer-reviewed, apper from 1971 predicting global cooling and published in the journal "Science." "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate"

It's gloss: Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

So much for "there aren't any." At this point I've presented you with close to 40. Even the website "Skeptical Science" which agrees with your position that it wasn't a consensus (via careful parsing of publication from the era), doesn't make the outrageous claim that there were no papers making that case. It finds 30 published papers in 1971 alone.

That article you cited from Science isn't saying quite what you think it says, Trap. Suppose I were to say this: If there is a nuclear holocaust, many people will die. Is that a PREDICTION that many people are going to die? No, of course not. It says IF there is a nuclear holocaust, many people will die. These authors were saying that IF we continued to have an exponential increase in the amount of sulphate aerosols we were pumping into the atmosphere, THEN there would be a dramatic cooling effect. And I doubt that any climate scientists even today, 42 years later, would disagree with that. But we didn't do that, did we? The conditional IF did not take place. We took dramatic steps in the 1970s and 1980s to limit sulfur dioxide emissions, because they were causing smog and acid rain.

So this article does NOT qualify as a PREDICTION of global cooling, let alone an imminent Ice Age. Sorry.

 

[trapdoor]

That article you cited from Science isn't saying quite what you think it says, Trap. Suppose I were to say this: If there is a nuclear holocaust, many people will die. Is that a PREDICTION that many people are going to die? No, of course not. It says IF there is a nuclear holocaust, many people will die. These authors were saying that IF we continued to have an exponential increase in the amount of sulphate aerosols we were pumping into the atmosphere, THEN there would be a dramatic cooling effect.

And the current paradigm says IF we continue to use fuels that emit greenhouse gases, we will continue to have global warming.

And I doubt that any climate scientists even today, 42 years later, would disagree with that. But we didn't do that, did we? The conditional IF did not take place. We took dramatic steps in the 1970s and 1980s to limit sulfur dioxide emissions, because they were causing smog and acid rain.

So this article does NOT qualify as a PREDICTION of global cooling, let alone an imminent Ice Age. Sorry.

It is one of the many articles from the period that did science and predicted cooling based on then-current models. Those models were not limited to sulfur dioxide emissions, but also by particulate suspension in the atmosphere reflecting sunlight that would otherwise have reached the ground, etc. Dismissing them because we changed things has no impact on the scientific consensus at the time. If, a century from now, two people like us are discussing the history of today, and one says "There was a global consensus that there was global warming," and the respondent says, "That consensus wasn't valid because we changed things to reduce global warming," the second party's statement will not invalidate the fact that today, there is a consensus on global warming (and in the 1960s, up through the early 1970s, there was a consensus on global cooling).

I'm not certain why those who are concerned about global warming have spent so much effort trying to debunk the history of that earlier consensus.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

Having said that, it took less than two minutes of searching for me to find another, peer-reviewed, apper from 1971 predicting global cooling and published in the journal "Science." "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate"

It's gloss: Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

By the way, it's amusing that you evidently did a 'search' for this paper, since it was already mentioned in my second post in this thread, on page 2. And that makes me wonder if you even bothered to read that post of mine. Here is what it says about that paper in my (only somewhat longish) reply on page 2:

Of the other strand, aerosol cooling, Rasool and Schneider, Science, July 1971, p 138, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate” is the best exemplar. This contains the quote that quadrupling aerosols could decrease the mean surface temperature (of Earth) by as much as 3.5 degrees K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!. But even this paper qualifies its predictions (whether or not aerosols would so increase was unknown) and speculates that nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production (thereby, presumably, removing the aerosol problem). There are, incidentally, other scientific problems with the paper: notably that the model used was only suitable for small perturbations but the results are for rather large perturbations; and that the estimate of CO2 sensitivity was too low by a factor of about 3.

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

And the current paradigm says IF we continue to use fuels that emit greenhouse gases, we will continue to have global warming.

No, Trap. Two points:

(1) In contrast to the situation in the 1970s regarding aerosols and particulates, I know of NOT A SINGLE CREDIBLE PERSON who expects that we would be able to simply stop emitting greenhouse gases, at any point in the foreseeable future. Do you?
(2) EVEN IF WE DID MANAGE TO ELIMINATE ALL GHG EMISSIONS, STARTING TOMORROW, the climate would continue to warm---according to the current paradigm----because of the long residency time of CO2 (and other GHGs) in the atmosphere.

It is one of the many articles from the period that did science and predicted cooling based on then-current models. Those models were not limited to sulfur dioxide emissions, but also by particulate suspension in the atmosphere reflecting sunlight that would otherwise have reached the ground, etc. Dismissing them because we changed things has no impact on the scientific consensus at the time. If, a century from now, two people like us are discussing the history of today, and one says "There was a global consensus that there was global warming," and the respondent says, "That consensus wasn't valid because we changed things to reduce global warming," the second party's statement will not invalidate the fact that today, there is a consensus on global warming (and in the 1960s, up through the early 1970s, there was a consensus on global cooling).

I'm not certain why those who are concerned about global warming have spent so much effort trying to debunk the history of that earlier consensus.

It is your history that demands debunking. First of all, again, no one expects that we will be able to do much of anything more than REDUCE global warming. The world is going to warm, barring some major geo-engineering project, or major volcanic eruptions, or a sudden dimming of the Sun, even if we make massive efforts to reduce GHG emissions. And I've already given you the mid-1970s consensus on climate change, directly from a MAJOR report by the National Academy of Science. They said, quite bluntly, that our quantitative understanding of the climate was simply too poor to be able to make any predictions about the future of the climate. [That was in the post on page 2, also] Meaning that any scientific reports prior to that, that were attempting to make such predictions, were so much garbage.

Do you even know who and what the NAS [National Academy of Science] IS? Do you think they were a bunch of baboons? This was a MAJOR report, commissioned by Congress, to report on the state of climate science in the mid-1970s. That you would simply reject their finding.....Well, that speaks volumes.....

 

[trapdoor]

No, Trap. Two points:

(1) In contrast to the situation in the 1970s regarding aerosols and particulates, I know of NOT A SINGLE CREDIBLE PERSON who expects that we would be able to simply stop emitting greenhouse gases, at any point in the foreseeable future. Do you?

Isn't the reduction in greenhouse gases the entire purpose of the Kyoto Agreement and the president's cap and trade proposal? We didn't "quit entirely" the other forms of air pollution that led to the fear of global cooling that was the scientific paradigm in the 1960s, we simply initiated reductions (surely you're not making the case that there are no sulfur dioxide or particulate emissions, at all, today).

It is your history that demands debunking. First of all, again, no one expects that we will be able to do much of anything more than REDUCE global warming. The world is going to warm, barring some major geo-engineering project, or major volcanic eruptions, or a sudden dimming of the Sun, even if we make massive efforts to reduce GHG emissions. And I've already given you the mid-1970s consensus on climate change, directly from a MAJOR report by the National Academy of Science.

And I've given you the world view of the World Meteorological Association, via UNESCO, from a decade earlier. The two are not mutually exclusive -- the history I report is not invalidated by a view that had changed by a decade later. My historical records from UNESCO are every bit as scientifically rigorous as those of the NAS, but in a move global venue. It was also a MAJOR report, commissioned by the UN, to determine the status of the climate, and neither was it created by a "bunch of baboons."

I'm not denying that what you report is true. But what I report is equally true, and equally well documented. Why are global warming types denying it ever existed?