"Once We All Believed in Global Cooling": Bunk
A team of researchers took it upon themselves to actually examine the literature from those days, early in the life of modern climatology. And they found that at the time, just like today, journal papers overwhelmingly subscribed to greenhouse theory as we know it including a warming Earth. The impression I had back then arose from the popular press, which as always trumpets the exceptions and celebrates the mavericks. The researchers document this part, too. Apparently back then I didn't know better. Maybe the Web today, with its ability to let us get past the popular press, will help keep us closer to reality.
Their paper, in the September 2008 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is world-readable. (The briefer summary in last month's Science News, which first alerted me to this item, is also worth reading.) One of the authors is longtime science blogger and Albuquerque Journal reporter John Fleck, I'm pleased to learn. Well done, Mr. Fleck! On his personal blog he boasts that the paper is getting lots of viewers.
Help stamp out the meme that "once we all believed in global cooling."
Comments
Just some semantics here – can we also stamp out use of “belief” when talking about global warming (or any other scientific subject).
Scientific data is either consistent or inconsistent with a particular hypothesis.
The general public probably did “believe” [as a matter of "faith" in "scientists" (or what the mainstream media were telling them what some "scientists" were saying)] in global cooling, but this has “nothing to do with the price of fish” as we say here.
“early in the life of modern climatology”
With so many dissenting scientific opinions-theorys concerning global warming/cooling/climate change, what makes you think that we have all the answers now? I submit to you Mr Alden, that even today, we are in the infancy of climatology. We have more data now than in the 70’s, but the data we have is miniscule compared to the billions of years of earth existence. With so little data, any claim of cause is purely a guess at best.
This is great reading, but to an extent it plays into the hands of common misconceptions about science. What we know and believe now necessarily differs from what was state-of-the-art several decades ago. Even if the consensus in the 70’s was global cooling, the data amassed since then, and scientific opinion with it, overwhelmingly tips toward warming. It would be irresponsible to reject data because it is more recent than one’s pet theory.
You see this over and over across a whole range of science’s critics – the argument from antiquity fallacy. Thirty years ago, people were getting ulcers because of stress, DNA evidence was neither reliable nor practical, cancer was caused by your personality type, computers were a promising technology if only memory wasn’t so expensive, and our solar system was the only one with planets. Imagine having to live without any knowledge, theory, or technology unavailable in the 70’s. If the anti-biotic resistant bacteria didn’t kill you (because microbes don’t hold any past decade sacred), the unavailability of statins for cholesterol and better cancer treatments eventually would. Not to mention that the wonder-drug of them all, viagra, had not yet been invented.
From now on, I say let anyone who says we knew more in the 70’s prove it by living in them.
“Those who forget the miustakes of the past, are destined to repeat them.”
How ridiculous to think that we are any more enlightened today than 30 years ago. We may know more, but everything we learn shows us that we really don’t know anything. From cosmology to environmental science, new discoveries are showing us that what we thought we knew was just a piece of fiction.
Just because some grad students have leanred how to create computer models, doesn’t mean that nature is suddenly going to start behaving the way that man wants it to. No matter how much funding they recieve, or how many vacuous devotees they may garner.
Anthropocentric Global Warming is absurd in the extreme, and anyone who knows even a little basic physics understands that. BTW, if you think that because you have a Phd. and you agree with AGW Theory that you know basic physics, I’ll be happy to post the rellevant information that disproves this little myth, and I’ll be interested to see how you get around the laws of physics.
Real data shows that the earth has been cooling for at least the last 8 years. Record cold and snow all over the globe confirms this, as does record ice growth in the Arctic the last two seasons.
Give it a rest.
-zz
Thanks for the nice parody, Charles. That gave me a chuckle.
Sigh…
Another science site gives in to the temptation to jump into the politics of global warming. And as usual, it is from a source (geology, in this case) that has no particular expertise in climatology. Please, stick with rocks. I like rocks.
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it abhors the artificial cubbyholes formed by the walls separating scientific disciplines even more. Rocks are partial records of what was going on when and where they were formed, and of the processes that affected their characteristics and location between that time and this. Climate is a big part of what was going on and of the processes that affected them, especially for sedimentary rocks. Rocks haven’t quit being formed, modified, and relocated, so climate right through today is pertinent to them. Even if you love them.
For all the flip-flopping science does every other decade, all we really know is, Time will tell.
The best evidence I’ve seen says “climate change” is normal and “climate change” is also being promoted in every media outlet as some kind of scare as a conspiracy.
Yes, geology has nothing to do with climatology. Excuse me sir, your stupid is showing.