A very interesting read that cuts through the considerable number of Global Warming scientific studies and presents information in a very simple manner via Hill’s Criteria, which should convince even the most uncompromising skeptic and dare I say, denier.

>>Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that smoking caused lung cancer.

That case has been proven beyond doubt. But there is a science story from this era that is mostly forgotten: The battle against cigarettes taught science how to prove.

https://extranewsfeed.com/what-climate-skeptics-taught-me-about-global-warming-5c408dc51d32

Compliments of the SSSF Forum.

PermeateFree said:

A very interesting read that cuts through the considerable number of Global Warming scientific studies and presents information in a very simple manner via Hill’s Criteria, which should convince even the most uncompromising skeptic and dare I say, denier.

>>Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that smoking caused lung cancer.

That case has been proven beyond doubt. But there is a science story from this era that is mostly forgotten: The battle against cigarettes taught science how to prove.

https://extranewsfeed.com/what-climate-skeptics-taught-me-about-global-warming-5c408dc51d32

Compliments of the SSSF Forum.

Looks good. Can’t read it right now, but i’ve bookmarked it.

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

mollwollfumble said:

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

Speaking only from memory, i have to voice some support for moll.

I do recall there being quite a bit of talk in science reporting in the late 60s and early 70s about how the planet was headed for a new ice-age.

Obviously, that model was discarded when better and new information became available.

captain_spalding said:

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

Speaking only from memory, i have to voice some support for moll.

I do recall there being quite a bit of talk in science reporting in the late 60s and early 70s about how the planet was headed for a new ice-age.

Obviously, that model was discarded when better and new information became available.

I was just commenting that by 1974 global warming was happening, although as you say conclusive information was then not available.

PermeateFree said:

captain_spalding said:

PermeateFree said:

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

Speaking only from memory, i have to voice some support for moll.

I do recall there being quite a bit of talk in science reporting in the late 60s and early 70s about how the planet was headed for a new ice-age.

Obviously, that model was discarded when better and new information became available.

I was just commenting that by 1974 global warming was happening, although as you say conclusive information was then not available.

Ah…

mollwollfumble said:

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

No it wasn’t.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

No it wasn’t.

:)

good read

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

I will, but I haven’t yet looked because climate change is almost a non-issue. About as important as soil erosion.

mollwollfumble said:

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

I ceased being a global warming skeptic in 1977.

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

You are incorrect there, why don’t you have a look at the blog, it is very informative.

I will, but I haven’t yet looked because climate change is almost a non-issue. About as important as soil erosion.

Hopefully you will change your mind.

>>Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that thalidomide was safe to use to help with morning sickness.

Peak Warming Man said:

>>Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that thalidomide was safe to use to help with morning sickness.

yes.
In the case of lung cancer, there was heaps of evidence.
In the case of thalidomide again heaps of evidence.
In the case of climate change heaps of evidence.

It makes no sense at all to attempt to correlate factoids in an effort to minimise the actual facts.

I haven’t had a morning chorus anywhere near like what I have had in the past for years now. Four decades ago I counted so many species here that people tried to suggest I was making stuff up. I had to point out that I was sitting on top of a world renowned wetland. The birds have largely gone now. People are blaming the ‘mickey miner’ and are shooting it. Idiots.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

No it wasn’t.

Maybe this needs a bit more discussion.

My recollection of the mid 70’s was that although there was some discussion of the possibility of global cooling, it certainly wasn’t a scientific consensus of the most likely future direction of climate change. There was also plenty of discussion of the possibility of global warming back then. Some was on the basis of direct human energy output, for which the numbers do not stack up, but there was certainly discussion of the effect of greenhouse gasses in the mid-70’s.

That said, it is of course possible that we may have global cooling around the corner.

Does that mean we should forget about reducing GHG emissions, and just wait and see what happens?

No, it doesn’t because:

1. Based on the evidence we have, warming is much more likely than cooling, at least in the immediate future (100’s to 1000’s of years).
2. If we do enter a sustained period of cooling, perhaps due to changes in the sun’s behaviour, or passing through a particularly dusty bit of Universe, then it would be helpful if we had large supplies of carbon easily available, so we could increase the CO2 levels, and reduce the cooling. The possibility of global cooling in the future is therefore a good reason for preserving our supplies of fossil fuels now, for use in future emergencies.

The Rev Dodgson said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

The time to be a skeptic was before then. Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

No it wasn’t.

Maybe this needs a bit more discussion.

My recollection of the mid 70’s was that although there was some discussion of the possibility of global cooling, it certainly wasn’t a scientific consensus of the most likely future direction of climate change. There was also plenty of discussion of the possibility of global warming back then. Some was on the basis of direct human energy output, for which the numbers do not stack up, but there was certainly discussion of the effect of greenhouse gasses in the mid-70’s.

That said, it is of course possible that we may have global cooling around the corner.

Does that mean we should forget about reducing GHG emissions, and just wait and see what happens?

No, it doesn’t because:

1. Based on the evidence we have, warming is much more likely than cooling, at least in the immediate future (100’s to 1000’s of years).
2. If we do enter a sustained period of cooling, perhaps due to changes in the sun’s behaviour, or passing through a particularly dusty bit of Universe, then it would be helpful if we had large supplies of carbon easily available, so we could increase the CO2 levels, and reduce the cooling. The possibility of global cooling in the future is therefore a good reason for preserving our supplies of fossil fuels now, for use in future emergencies.

Oh it’s going to get cold again, make no mistake.
We’re heading for another ice age and a bit of co2 in the atmosphere aint going to mean jack.
The burgeoning population will be compressed closer and closer to the equator, food will be scarce as the land freezes and as the population compresses there will be fighting for the ever shrinking resources.
There’ll be wars, state against state mate against mate.
Never mind about Bitcoin put your hard earned into the Soylent Green futures market.

Peak Warming Man said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

No it wasn’t.

Maybe this needs a bit more discussion.

My recollection of the mid 70’s was that although there was some discussion of the possibility of global cooling, it certainly wasn’t a scientific consensus of the most likely future direction of climate change. There was also plenty of discussion of the possibility of global warming back then. Some was on the basis of direct human energy output, for which the numbers do not stack up, but there was certainly discussion of the effect of greenhouse gasses in the mid-70’s.

That said, it is of course possible that we may have global cooling around the corner.

Does that mean we should forget about reducing GHG emissions, and just wait and see what happens?

No, it doesn’t because:

1. Based on the evidence we have, warming is much more likely than cooling, at least in the immediate future (100’s to 1000’s of years).
2. If we do enter a sustained period of cooling, perhaps due to changes in the sun’s behaviour, or passing through a particularly dusty bit of Universe, then it would be helpful if we had large supplies of carbon easily available, so we could increase the CO2 levels, and reduce the cooling. The possibility of global cooling in the future is therefore a good reason for preserving our supplies of fossil fuels now, for use in future emergencies.

Oh it’s going to get cold again, make no mistake.
We’re heading for another ice age and a bit of co2 in the atmosphere aint going to mean jack.
The burgeoning population will be compressed closer and closer to the equator, food will be scarce as the land freezes and as the population compresses there will be fighting for the ever shrinking resources.
There’ll be wars, state against state mate against mate.
Never mind about Bitcoin put your hard earned into the Soylent Green futures market.

That’s more like it.

Some irony we can all appreciate :)

Worldwide species decline is quite evident isn’t it even by casual observation

mollwollfumble said:

Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

Figure 1. The number of papers classified as predicting, implying or providing supporting evidence for future global cooling, warming and neutral categories as defined in the text and listed in Table 1. During the period 1965 through 1979, our literature survey found 7 cooling papers, 19 neutral and 42 warming. In no year were there more global cooling papers than global warming.

https://atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Peterson2008_Myth_global_cooling_consensus.pdf

esselte said:

mollwollfumble said:

Back in 1974 the scientific consensus was still that we were heading towards a period of global cooling. But even then I had my doubts about global cooling.

Figure 1. The number of papers classified as predicting, implying or providing supporting evidence for future global cooling, warming and neutral categories as defined in the text and listed in Table 1. During the period 1965 through 1979, our literature survey found 7 cooling papers, 19 neutral and 42 warming. In no year were there more global cooling papers than global warming.

https://atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Peterson2008_Myth_global_cooling_consensus.pdf

Interesting chart. It does seem to demolish the “global cooling was once the consensus” idea pretty well.

I don’t know when it was, but I recall the phrase “snowball earth” and reading stuff in Scientific American during the 1970s, when I was a teenager. I had a feeling (remember how young I was and not yet scientifically trained) that there was global warming/greenhouse stuff, and then there was snowball stuff, and then there was greenhouse again. But that graph suggests I must have been selectively reading, or SciAm (which was the only scientific stuff I read at that time) was presenting both.

buffy said:

I don’t know when it was, but I recall the phrase “snowball earth” and reading stuff in Scientific American during the 1970s, when I was a teenager. I had a feeling (remember how young I was and not yet scientifically trained) that there was global warming/greenhouse stuff, and then there was snowball stuff, and then there was greenhouse again. But that graph suggests I must have been selectively reading, or SciAm (which was the only scientific stuff I read at that time) was presenting both.

Snowball earth was so long ago that no scientist was alive at the time.

roughbarked said:

buffy said:

I don’t know when it was, but I recall the phrase “snowball earth” and reading stuff in Scientific American during the 1970s, when I was a teenager. I had a feeling (remember how young I was and not yet scientifically trained) that there was global warming/greenhouse stuff, and then there was snowball stuff, and then there was greenhouse again. But that graph suggests I must have been selectively reading, or SciAm (which was the only scientific stuff I read at that time) was presenting both.

Snowball earth was so long ago that no scientist was alive at the time.

Np, it was a prediction that it would happen again.

buffy said:

roughbarked said:

buffy said:

I don’t know when it was, but I recall the phrase “snowball earth” and reading stuff in Scientific American during the 1970s, when I was a teenager. I had a feeling (remember how young I was and not yet scientifically trained) that there was global warming/greenhouse stuff, and then there was snowball stuff, and then there was greenhouse again. But that graph suggests I must have been selectively reading, or SciAm (which was the only scientific stuff I read at that time) was presenting both.

Snowball earth was so long ago that no scientist was alive at the time.

Np, it was a prediction that it would happen again.

Wasn’t in my time. I recall global warming being discussed in the late sixties but nothing about earth cooling off even though there were people who said we were actually in an ice age.

We are still coming out of the last Ice Age.

“…the Earth appeared to have been cooling for more than 2 decades when scientists first took note of the change in trend in the 1960s. The seminal work was done by J. Murray Mitchell, who, in 1963, presented the first up-to-date temperature reconstruction showing that a global cooling trend had begun in the 1940s. Mitchell used data from nearly 200 weather stations, collected by the World Weather Records project under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization, to calculate latitudinal average temperature. His analysis showed that global temperatures had increased fairly steadily from the 1880s, the start of his record, until about 1940, before the start of a steady multidecade cooling (Mitchell 1963).

“By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood. The first satellite records showed increasing now and ice cover across the Northern Hemisphere from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. This trend was capped by unusually severe winters in Asia and parts of North America in 1972 and 1973 (Kukla and Kukla 1974), which pushed the issue into the public consciousness (Gribbin 1975). The new data about global temperatures came amid growing concerns about world food supplies, triggering fears that a planetary cooling trend might threaten humanity’s ability to feed itself (Thompson 1975). It was not long, however, before scientists teasing apart the details of Mitchell’s trend found that it was not necessarily a global phenomenon. Yes, globally averaged temperatures were cooling, but this was largely due to changes in the Northern Hemisphere. A closer examination of Southern Hemisphere data revealed thermometers heading in the opposite direction (Damon and Kunen 1976).”

https://atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Peterson2008_Myth_global_cooling_consensus.pdf

buffy said:

We are still coming out of the last Ice Age.

Wouldn’t that suggest that there had been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years or so (which there hasn’t been)?

esselte said:

“…the Earth appeared to have been cooling for more than 2 decades when scientists first took note of the change in trend in the 1960s. The seminal work was done by J. Murray Mitchell, who, in 1963, presented the first up-to-date temperature reconstruction showing that a global cooling trend had begun in the 1940s. Mitchell used data from nearly 200 weather stations, collected by the World Weather Records project under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization, to calculate latitudinal average temperature. His analysis showed that global temperatures had increased fairly steadily from the 1880s, the start of his record, until about 1940, before the start of a steady multidecade cooling (Mitchell 1963).

“By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood. The first satellite records showed increasing now and ice cover across the Northern Hemisphere from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. This trend was capped by unusually severe winters in Asia and parts of North America in 1972 and 1973 (Kukla and Kukla 1974), which pushed the issue into the public consciousness (Gribbin 1975). The new data about global temperatures came amid growing concerns about world food supplies, triggering fears that a planetary cooling trend might threaten humanity’s ability to feed itself (Thompson 1975). It was not long, however, before scientists teasing apart the details of Mitchell’s trend found that it was not necessarily a global phenomenon. Yes, globally averaged temperatures were cooling, but this was largely due to changes in the Northern Hemisphere. A closer examination of Southern Hemisphere data revealed thermometers heading in the opposite direction (Damon and Kunen 1976).”

https://atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Peterson2008_Myth_global_cooling_consensus.pdf

That seems inconsistent with the chart you posted.

The Rev Dodgson said:

buffy said:

We are still coming out of the last Ice Age.

Wouldn’t that suggest that there had been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years or so (which there hasn’t been)?

Sorry? You are saying we are not warming?

buffy said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

buffy said:

We are still coming out of the last Ice Age.

Wouldn’t that suggest that there had been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years or so (which there hasn’t been)?

Sorry? You are saying we are not warming?

No, I’m saying the warming has not been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years, so it seems to me to make more sense to say that we came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, and now something else is happening.

The Rev Dodgson said:

buffy said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Wouldn’t that suggest that there had been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years or so (which there hasn’t been)?

Sorry? You are saying we are not warming?

No, I’m saying the warming has not been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years, so it seems to me to make more sense to say that we came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, and now something else is happening.

I don’t reckon you just pop out of an Ice Age. I reckon things warm up slowly, on a geological time scale.

buffy said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

buffy said:

Sorry? You are saying we are not warming?

No, I’m saying the warming has not been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years, so it seems to me to make more sense to say that we came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, and now something else is happening.

I don’t reckon you just pop out of an Ice Age. I reckon things warm up slowly, on a geological time scale.

On what basis do you reckon that?

There was a genuine cooling trend from around the 11th to the 19th centuries. Going by the Milankovich cycles, we should be cooling now. Both of these were known by the 1950s though the validity of Milkankovich’s analysis was much challenged (as indeed it still is).

By the 1960s the theory of global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions become well established and was being taken seriously by government bodies. By the 1970s, there were numerous papers on the topic and the fact of both the mechanism and the actual warming trend became the dominant view, as demonstrated in WMO summaries.

Notions that the earth was about to re-enter a cooling phase, or even that this was a major problem, were never held by many authors, but these ideas gained undue press coverage, much like the “Peak Oil” nuts of fifteen years ago.

buffy said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

buffy said:

Sorry? You are saying we are not warming?

No, I’m saying the warming has not been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years, so it seems to me to make more sense to say that we came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, and now something else is happening.

I don’t reckon you just pop out of an Ice Age. I reckon things warm up slowly, on a geological time scale.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Do-critics-of-the-hockey-stick-realise-what-theyre-arguing-for.html

Doing away with polluting of any kind is a good idea regardless of global warming

PermeateFree said:

buffy said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

No, I’m saying the warming has not been a steady upward trend over the last 10,000 years, so it seems to me to make more sense to say that we came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, and now something else is happening.

I don’t reckon you just pop out of an Ice Age. I reckon things warm up slowly, on a geological time scale.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Do-critics-of-the-hockey-stick-realise-what-theyre-arguing-for.html

The time period in question.

https://maps.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/archive.html?year=2016&month=12

130 years isn’t geological. Even 1000 years isn’t really geological. And I would expect lots of spiky bits because there are heaps and heaps of factors, all fighting each other.

Hang on, I need to go to the link for the top graph. Where did they place that zero (norm)? And why?

My goodness….they do go on a bit in the comments, don’t they. Still don’t know what the zero is in the Moberg graph. Is it average temperature over that time?

buffy said:

130 years isn’t geological. Even 1000 years isn’t really geological. And I would expect lots of spiky bits because there are heaps and heaps of factors, all fighting each other.

Hang on, I need to go to the link for the top graph. Where did they place that zero (norm)? And why?

Well 10,000 years isn’t “geological” either, but that’s the timescale over which the ice-age finished, followed by 10,000 years of very little variation, then 100 years of very rapid temperature increase.

To call the recent spike “still coming out of the ice-age” seems perverse.