Flashback: Climatologists tell us an ice age cometh. The last couple of cold winters…

It was 1977. Things looked ominous:

 “The argument that we face some long cold years is pretty convincing.”

The story was that some professors at the largest meteorology center said so — we’d had a couple of really cold winters, temperatures are falling, and the armadillo is moving.

“There’s a theory among climatologists that the  last two years of battering by winter mean that an ice age is returning to the Earth and ice ages Glaciers Down to the Mason-Dixon Line.”

“…the headlong retreat of the heat loving armadillo from Nebraska to the southwest and to Mexico…”

Climate scientists have come so far in 40 years. They would never make a fuss over a few freak seasons and an armadillo.

H/t to Tom Nelson (he’s back on twitter @tan123, thanks to skeptics) and Heartland. This is a great video originally reported by Julia Seymour at MRC Business report. See that link for the full commentary.

40 Years of Media Hype for Climate Alarmists | Heartlander Magazine

“Warm periods like ours last only 10,000 years, but ours has already lasted 12,000. So if the rhythm is right, we are over-ready for a return of the ice,” Smith said in his comment on the January 18, 1977, ABC evening newscast.

He cited “experts like Reid Bryson” who based their worries on “cooler temperature readings in the Great Plains” and elsewhere and the “retreat of the heat-loving Armadillo from Nebraska to the southwest and to Mexico.” Bryson argued the return to an ice age had begun in 1945.

9.1 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

165 comments to Flashback: Climatologists tell us an ice age cometh. The last couple of cold winters…

  • #
    Harry Twinotter

    “Climatologists tell us an ice age cometh”

    A lot of climatologists at that time did not think that an Ice Age was coming, most were wondering about Global Warming by that stage.

    440

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      There weren’t that many climatologists at that time, and quite a few thought that cooling was a distinct possibility. This didn’t mean that they thought an ice age was coming, more that something like The Little IceAge was underway.

      Bryson, Lamb, Browning are 3 names that come to mind without research. The last named seemed to think that colder weather, such as in the 1860’s in the USA would encourage more vigorous behaviour in humans. Warm times led to complacency etc. – he was sounder on asteroids and tree rings (he regarded the latter as useless as a measure of past climates).

      262

      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        Some climate scientists seemed to be interested in Global Dimming due to aerosol pollution. And there was some years of cold weather in some regions – one of the concerns was food production.

        80

        • #
          Peter Miller

          Please put the term ‘climate scientists’ like this, as their methodologies and indulgence of dodgy politicians are insulting to the practices of all real scientists like myself.

          Thanking you in advance for your understanding.

          71

    • #
      Brute

      “…most were wondering about Global Warming by that stage.”

      Most? Please provide the list.

      220

      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        I doubt if anyone would be able to provide a list of climatologists who predicted an Ice Age either. There is this journal article:

        http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

        523

        • #
          Peter Miller

          The word ‘climatologist’ is very similar in meaning to astrologist. In both instances, there are some well meaning individuals who actually believe their stuff.

          ‘Climatologist’ is much better than ‘climate scientist’, as the latter implies individuals who rigorously follow accepted scientific and statistical practices. Well, obviously a few do, but the vast majority care only for the perpetuation of their comfortable lifestyles and pandering to the whims of those politicians who hold the grant and ‘research’ purse strings.

          As for those predictions of imminent ice ages in the 1970s, I hope you will find the following sufficient:

          https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1970s+predictions+of+ice+age&biw=1903&bih=878&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ibsiVZD0I8KwsQGZpoCYCw&ved=0CDsQsAQ&dpr=1

          40

          • #
            ExWarmist

            Perhaps I can help.

            Here is an excellent list of climate cooling articles from the 1970s from Popular Technology Net

            There was quite the scare – it is well documented.

            The media at the time was reflecting the activities occurring in the academic sector, – as they still do.

            60

            • #

              There is also this: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/1970s-global-cooling-what-the-scientists-said/

              The important thing to remember in all of this is the consensus today exists because of the media and the media is extensively quoted and used to promote the idea. It is hypocritical and proves the level of dishonesty in the entire global warming scam to claim the media is irrelevant. The media is wrong if they disagree and right if they do agree. To even suggest at this point that the media in the 70’s was wrong but now the media is so much more “pure” should provoke loud rounds of laughter from anyone who actually understands science. A true scientist looks at the evidence, may see a problem and work on a solution, but he NEVER allows the likes of Al Sharpton and Al Gore to use his rigorous work to promote theft of earnings and standard of living decreases. A true scientist would want the standard of living to go up, not down.

              Is is NOT science any more and probably never was to a large degree. Politics strangeled the science and buried it under a wind turbine. (I have map if you want to find the site. 😉 )

              50

    • #
      James Bradley

      Harry,

      I think you’ll find they did. I first learned it in my School Certificate science year – then came the hole in the ozone layer.

      193

      • #
        Gee Aye

        Good use of evidence James

        516

        • #
          RB

          Gee Aye,

          he witnessed it so he knows whether it is true or not. You don’t have to believe him but pretending that he is naive to believe himself is silly.

          For you, here is the information that you can’t seem to find.

          From a 1974 NYT article. there is doubt from short term weather forecasters but a growing consensus from climatologists, according to the CIA.

          90

        • #
          sophocles

          Gee Aye:

          Time Magazine published an article in 1974 (24th June) about the return of the Ice. There’s one of the references which got the subject into school science programs. That’s just one reference. If I could find that in just a couple of seconds, you might have better luck and find plenty more. You only have to look. Go to it.

          90

          • #
            Gee Aye

            Yeah schools using Time to set their curriculum.. Sure.

            114

            • #
              James Bradley

              Gee Aye,

              How things change, they now use the Guardian to set the cariculum.

              70

            • #
              James Bradley

              … and yes it was intentional.

              50

            • #
              Just-A-Guy

              Gee Aye,

              1976. 11th grade AP Social Studies. Midwood High School Model Congress.

              Daily class schedule:
              first three minutes to settle in and pass out The New York Times to each student.
              next 12 to 15 minutes to read the Op-Ed page.
              remainder of the class devoted to a discussion of the pertinent issues.
              last minute before the bell we copy our homework assignments.
              Because it was an Advanced Placement class, every student had to actively participate in the daily discussions.
              Final project was to prepare a bill to be presented in front of the school assembly.

              There was a time when local school districts were not only permitted to prepare their own curriculums, they were expected to do so as there was no involvement by the federal government in that process and state goverment was only minimally involved.
              Individual teachers were often given a wide berth as to what and how their classes were to be taught.

              Abe

              50

              • #

                sounds fun. I hope schools still discuss op eds.

                10

              • #
                James Bradley

                Gee Aye,

                Goodness, do you have any evidence that schools once discussed op eds?

                20

              • #

                JB, I was just replying to just-a-guy whose comment seems to imply that day to day decisions by a teacher to discuss current affairs is the same as something that an education department has enshrined as a curriculum for all schools. You know the difference too don’t you?

                If the Dept of Ed had a curriculum item about critical thinking and they chose to direct teachers to use the Times op ed for that week that is a different matter from endorsing what is said in that op ed for the week. And yes, I hope that students in classes have the opportunity to critically discuss current issues and events. Like we are.

                02

              • #
                James Bradley

                Gee Aye,

                “And yes, I hope that students in classes have the opportunity to critically discuss current issues and events. Like we are.”

                You mean like ‘Global Cooling’ as we did in the ’70’s?

                30

              • #

                James – you said “first learned it in my School Certificate science year” as a response to Harry. Your complete statement, that I repsonded to, was implying that it was taught as being the approved curriculum’s take on the current scientific opinion of the day.

                This is completely different from critical discussion where the curriculum is requiring discussion of things of interest happening at the time but where the curriculum writer’s do not provide (and indeed cannot as they don’t know in advance)a list of current events to discuss.

                Can you see if GI is about, I like his/her attitude?

                12

              • #
                James Bradley

                Gee Aye,

                I think I’m beginning to develop an emotionaL attachment to you. 🙂

                10

              • #
                Just-A-Guy

                Gee Aye,

                sounds fun.

                Yes, is was. It was also one of the most challenging classes in high school. Our discussions weren’t about our opinions of the articles. And we were encouraged not to take sides. What we were taught was how to evaluate the claims being made to see if they were presented convincingly. This meant being able to spot logical errors on the fly. It meant being able to respond to those errors accurately and to frame the response in as short a reply as possible.

                And that bill we had to prepare? That had to be done under the same rules and preceedures as those used by the state senate. Hours of study. 30% toward the final grade.

                I hope schools still discuss op eds.

                So do I. But I doubt it.

                Abe

                30

              • #
                Just-A-Guy

                Gee Aye,

                Gee Aye said:
                JB, I was just replying to just-a-guy whose comment seems to imply that day to day decisions by a teacher to discuss current affairs is the same as something that an education department has enshrined as a curriculum for all schools.

                My recollection is that the Midwood Model Congress was around for years before I was there. So, enshrined? Yes. It was part of the official curriculum for our school.

                As far as the part about ‘the day to day decisions by a teacher. . .’ goes, what I presented was the daily schedule for the whole semester, so again your statement is at best a misinterpretation of what I wrote or at worst just another straw-man.

                Gee Aye said:
                This is completely different from critical discussion where the curriculum is requiring discussion of things of interest happening at the time but where the curriculum writer’s do not provide (and indeed cannot as they don’t know in advance)a list of current events to discuss.

                The whole ‘Coming Ice Age’ meme was around for at least three years so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that it would be included in the curriculum of any given local school district. Even city or state wide.

                Abe

                10

              • #

                just-a-guy – how progressive of you! They do in Australia’s capital but I’ll not provide evidence as I only have access to my kids’ work and I don’t really want to send you. You don’t have to look far to find stuff like this…

                Through a study of the media, including television, ra-
                dio, newspapers, magazines and the internet, an analy-
                sis of topical issues like violence, gender stereotyping
                and drugs and sport is undertaken. Media modes and
                forms are critically examined to determine bias and de-
                velop critical viewing skills.

                00

              • #

                J-a-g reply to other email. Sorry for the appearance of straw man… I try hard to avoid these but can appear so when not fully understanding or deviating off topic. So no comment on “Midwood Model Congress” to avoid any misunderstandings as I have no idea what it is.

                Again – and this is in ignorance of the education system in question – a term or year curriculum set by a teacher or group of subject teachers for a year level, is still not the same as direction from the department. It still does not say that an education system has instituted a program to teach students that global cooling was about to occur or panic about (or whatever emphasis).

                Teachers teach the according to direction from on high (e.g critical thinking) but teach in an area and use resources at hand or that they know they can teach (e.g. Times op eds on a particular theme).

                Coming Ice Age is not a meme that lasted 3 years it is as old and as present today as it was once the evidence for cyclic glacial and interglacials was strong and widely understood. You have shown no evidence that there was a science led scare campaign on this topic. You have shown no evidence that an impending ice age (rather than one that will inevitably happen at some point) was generally accepted by scientists. You have not shown that it lead to high school curricula changes.

                00

              • #
                Just-A-Guy

                Gee Aye,

                Just-A-Guy said:
                1976. 11th grade AP Social Studies. Midwood High School Model Congress.
                . . .
                Final project was to prepare a bill to be presented in front of the school assembly.

                I also said:
                And that bill we had to prepare? That had to be done under the same rules and pr[o]ceedures as those used by the state senate. Hours of study. 30% toward the final grade.

                If after that course description, you can still go ahead and say that you have:

                So no comment on “Midwood Model Congress” to avoid any misunderstandings as I have no idea what it is.

                . . . tells me that your reading comprehension skills are sorely lacking. Might want to go back to ‘basic training’. 😉

                You don’t need a course syllabus to know what the course is about. You don’t need to sit through the course to understand what’s being taught. I even provided a daily schedule! You couldn’t even grasp that a daily schedule means daily, as in on-going, as in every day, as in this schedule describes the curriculum.

                . . . Gee Aye’s straw-man leads to false dilema:
                . . . day to day decisions by a teacher to discuss current affairs is the same as something that an education department has enshrined as a curriculum for all schools.

                You misunderstood that the official curriculum was being presented. You then portrayed that as something a teacher might do from ‘day to day’ to try and convince us that this was not ‘the official curriculum’.

                The Snowball Effect

                . . . is when a small, relatively minor error, can lead to another slightly bigger error, and then an other and an other. Rather than going through all the tedious steps showing how your small errors have snowballed into a complete misunderstanding of what’s being said here, I’ll just rephrase the argument.

                Once upon a time, as late as the 1970’s, local school districts had the ability and the authority to prepare the curriculum for the schools under their jurisdiction. Many times, the curriculum was prepared by the individual teachers. The federal government was not involved at all. Even the States were only involved in setting the overall standards and not the actual curriculum. That was left completely up to the local school boards who then delegated part of that function to the individual schools. What this means is that your continued insistance that a school’s curriculum has to ‘come from on high’ is misguided and simply wrong.

                Under the system I’ve described to you, it’s perfectly logical to expect that some of those local school boards included the study of ‘A Coming Ice Age’ as James has explained to you. Furthermore, RB has already pointed out that James’s experience in school is considered empirical evidence. First hand evidence.

                You brush it away by saying that this is not proof that ‘it led to high school curricula changes’ when it obviously did. James was there. You brushed it away because you misundersand how the school curricula were prepared and implemented at that time.

                Abe

                30

              • #
                Just-A-Guy

                Gee Aye,

                You have shown no evidence that there was a science led scare campaign on this topic.

                Use your head. Please.

                It doesn’t matter if ‘science led a scare campaign’. The intention is irrelevant to the result. Kids will hear this non-sense and believe it. And they will get scared. Many adults will also.

                There was no scientific basis for coming to the conclusion that the world was heading towards an impending ice age then, just like there is no scientific basis that the world is heading towards thermageddon today. It was all just hype back then and it’s all just hype now.

                Abe

                30

            • #
              Just-A-Guy

              Gee Aye,

              sophocles said:
              That’s just one reference. If I could find that in just a couple of seconds, you might have better luck and find plenty more.

              Gee Aye said:
              Yeah schools using Time to set their curriculum.. Sure.

              Straw man. sophocles never said Time was used, he said that there were many articles that could be produced as evidence and that Time was just one example.

              Abe

              40

            • #
              GI

              C’mon, Leaf,

              I think I know a way out, just follow me and smile, nod, then back away very slowly.

              10

              • #

                I’ll take your lead (to follow, not the contents of your ammunition, although both meanings could apply) on this one GI. I’ve made my comment, time to move on. Any response will be if my reply to any replies to me has something different to say.

                01

      • #
        James Bradley

        Thanks, Gee Aye,

        No better evidence than eyewitness, first hand, and direct.

        How else would we do a final interpretation of any data other than personally.

        112

        • #
          Gee Aye

          So you say!

          Even better effort at justification for saying nothing verifiable.

          313

          • #
            James Bradley

            Gee Aye,

            Tell me how else you verify something other than experiencing it and recording the observation – it certainly satisfies the rules of evidence in a court of law – and other anecdotal and recorded evidence would strongly suggest my observation and experience of ‘global cooling’ taught in 1974 would be accurate.

            122

          • #
            GI

            Leaf,

            You’re barking up the wrong tree on this one.

            I can confirm what Bradley’s recollection with my own experience of similar science lectures in the early ’70s.

            102

            • #
              Gee Aye

              I figured that fellow leaf. In response to “how else”, it sounds like a science degree might have helped your…his… understanding of data that is useful for comparison and quantifying.

              113

        • #
          Mark Hladik

          I’ll add my voice to those who recollect the media, parroting the scientific consensus of the day, that the Earth had been cooling since the end of the Second World War, and that same community was ‘thinking out loud’ that if the trend continued, calamity was not far behind.

          I was in my first year of undergraduate studies (yes, in the physical sciences), and so, having been taught how to think, and not what to think, I spent a few hours researching past climates. There were few paleotemperature data in those days, but Flint, R. F. (1971) Quaternary Geology proved to be an invaluable resource (one I still refer to today), which led me to the conclusion that ‘global cooling’ was just a blip in the Holocene climate.

          The previous 12,000 years had been both cooler, and warmer, and there was nothing to worry about.

          But, I was just a piddly-little freshman science undergrad … … … what could I possibly know?

          60

    • #
      Dariusz

      What climatologists? There was no such a branch of science. It was called geography which by then was regarded as a dead science as they thought all was discovered by then. They used statistics for climate science in a static mode to identify climatic zones. I still have the geography text books that I used in high school in Poland. When I came over to Australia I was shocked to discover that astronomy, geography, chemistry, physics and mathematics were all lumped into one subject. Despite my opposition to communism one thing that I have to admit is the level of education that included also languages like German, hated Russian and Latin. But I digress.

      Predictions of ice ages was coming from the growing evidence of geology and realisation that climate was not static. This prediction was enhanced by:
      1. Locality of most science which is northern Europe and the US, both areas covered by glacial deposits and lakes.
      2. Cold War that constantly warned of the nuclear winter.
      No damn climatologists existed back then, just like they don,t exist today.

      202

      • #
        TdeF

        “astronomy, geography, chemistry, physics and mathematics were all lumped into one subject”. No, never. Australia was a smaller version of England and in fact without Doctorates available in most fields or specialist training as in medicine, everyone had to go to the UK to finish their qualifications. Only now can an opthamologist, for example, train and fully qualify solely in Australia.

        Yes Astronomy was a branch of Physics as it remains but Geography was always in a different often zero mathematics stream to chemistry, physics and mathematics, which were quite separate subjects at schools and public examination since the 1950s and before. It was absurd when the levels of mathematics in Physics could be so different to those taught simultaneously. As in the US, you could study one without the other. From the days of Isaac Newton, Physics remains the principal driver of mathematical development but mathematics was studied quite separately in Australia.

        Meteorology existed at University and the BOM was a major public service employer of young scientists, often the sole employer of women scientists as science in industry even in the 1970s was exclusively a male domain. Only in that way was Australia so different to European countries that the image of women was solely of mother and homemaker with an appropriate emphasis in secondary education.

        Australians also had a requirement to learn other languages, at least for technical translation as none were spoken publicly. A technical language was required for graduate at each level from Bachelor to Masters to PhD. This was only removed in the 1970s with the increasing dominance of English in published Science, replacing French and German.

        82

    • #
      Bill

      Sorry to burst your balloon, Harry, but I was alive back then and clearly recall that round of fear mongering. Climatologist DID go on record forcasting doom and gloom plus a new ice age.

      122

      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        And more were publishing about Global Warming, that is the point.

        113

        • #
          Annie

          There was no mention of warming at the time…only panic about cooling. I’m definitely of an age to remember it!

          40

          • #

            Wiki says this… have a go at refuting it..

            This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature,

            Watts has a compilation that is quite extensive and mostly fits with the “popular attention” aspect. The scientists cited do suggest that it is possible but not that it is going to happen quickly or that there is a need to change public policy in a hurry ie no “panic”.

            Are you sure the panic was not linked to nuclear winter?

            16

            • #
              Annie

              You cite Wiki GA?

              30

              • #

                no I didn’t cite it. Wiki is a review of cited works that you can critique yourself if you wish. As a summary it looks good to me. Can you refute it?

                12

            • #
              RB

              Further up is two links that report that the CIA researched and found a growing consensus amongst “climatologists”. That meteorologists wouldn’t have a bar of it doesn’t matter.

              The second reference in the Wikipedia article is William Connolley. The mark of the beast.

              10

          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            That is the difference between media coverage, and published scientific literature.

            03

        • #
          Eric

          No, Harry, they were NOT. If you were to review the actual publications you would know this.

          20

          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            Eric,

            you might be thinking of media reports. I was talking about the scientific literature, media reports are not really relevant to science. The article I posted a link to is an effort to quantify the scientific literature on the subject.

            03

            • #
              Eric

              How about instead of nonsense, you provide a link to a REAL piece of scientific literature from that time period that supports you. You can’t because they do NOT exist. I am not discussing media reports, you are.

              10

              • #
                Harry Twinotter

                “No, Harry, they were NOT. If you were to review the actual publications you would know this.”

                OK then. Provide the list of publications. It will make for an interesting discussion.

                01

      • #

        citations please otherwise you have no pin for any balloons. Fear mongering in public by someone who you recall being a climatologist (good luck finding that word used pre-1990) and actual published scientific conclusions based on data and analysis are two different things. Just look at the debate today for an example.

        25

        • #

          You are pointing out a reason why there is NO way to compare now to the 1970’s cooling scare. There are still few climate scientists. Most are physists, meteorologists, etc. Always were. And in the 70’s’, we did NOT vote on science like we do now. No one wrote up rediculous surveys on published articles and tried to convince everyone they were right. There is no possible way to compare now to then. Plus, now there are many climate scientists who disagree and the warmists just pitch them out because they can’t be real scientists if they aren’t true believers. In the 70’s, there was science. In this century, there’s voting, politics, smear campaigns, and no real interest in the accuracy of the science.

          You cannot compare 1970 to now when talking about climate change.

          31

          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            JoNova used the term “climatologist” in her headline. So I assumed people were using it in a general sense (in my posts I was anyway). From what I have read, climatologist was often a role that people took up even though they were trained in other disciplines. Take Michael Mann or Stephen Schneider for example.

            03

            • #
              Mark Hladik

              The first climatologists were actually geologists (and to a large extent, still are). If you search ‘depositional environments’, you’ll see that a lot goes into the creation of a depositional environment, including such things as temperature, location (in the sense of latitude), whether we are terrestrial or subaqueous, and what is available to deposit (or erode). Geologists have been reconstructing paleoclimates for a couple of centuries now, a lot longer than these so-called “climatologists”.

              See my post 1.3.2.2 above.

              I can see why these so-called “climatologists” are in a panic over their perceived change in climate over the past couple centuries. I would be also, except that I look at ALL of the paleoclimate data, which includes the (non)correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

              Thus far, just on JoNova, I’ve laid down this challenge to some six or seven ‘believers’, to run the cross-correlation between Veizer’s paleotemperature curve and Berner & Kothavala’s GEOCARB III, and none have done it (and my suspicion is that once they look at the data, it becomes obvious that there does not exist a correlation between the two). Feel free to be the next “refuser” to run the correlation. Both data sets are available, at no charge, on a wiki-run site called (omit all spaces) www (dot) global warming art (dot) com. While you’re at it, go ahead and explain the Cryogenian to me: that would be the time that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were measured in percents (GTS 2012; GTS 2004), and temperatures were far less than what we have today. Help me out on understanding why the Ordovician/Silurian glacial event happened, when atmospheric carbon dioxide was some 4000 ppm (about ten times what it is today).

              Carbon dioxide: all-powerful “greenhouse” gas …

              NOT!

              Regards,

              Mark H.

              11

          • #

            Sheri – thanks for eloquently invalidating everything Jo wrote above. Let’s hope this line of whatever it is (it is not an argument) is not raised again.

            13

            • #

              Congrats—Someone finally noticed I am not agreeing with Jo. Took long enough. (It is an argument, though I did not flesh it out completely. Maybe later I’ll work on that.)

              20

              • #

                Skeptics notice because they are skeptical of everyone… adherents just assume that someone who they agreed with before will always agree with them

                01

        • #
          RB

          climatologist(good luck finding that word used pre-1990)

          1974

          Notice that is was a self appointed title that had derision from short term weather forecasters. Something that you and Sherri seemed to have missed is the supposed scientists behaving like oracles started with the cooling scare in the 1970s. People like Lamb, real climatologists, were preoccupied with working out how Earth’s climate had changed in the past rather than pumping up a scare based on inadequate models.

          00

      • #
        C.J.Richards

        Climatologists tell the future don’t they ?

        00

    • #
      Thejoker

      This is just Jo Nova feeding her dogs a bone. All been done before but there’s nothing original about Jo – just a has-been trying to make a living out of dissing science she doesn’t understand.

      Just keep that baseless hate coming TJ. Skeptics thank you. — Jo

      613

      • #

        On the Pyramid, you are best described as: Ad Hominem = attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument.

        The chart shows where the chronically unfunny Man frequently falls under, the bottom two levels.

        LINK

        51

      • #
        Thejerko

        Hey there, sunny,

        Don’t sell it short, that comment was all the way down the bottom of the pyramid at ‘name calling’ and you know it.

        The commnent was based purely on an attention seeking need for recognition which is easier to attract due to the lack intelligent refutation because the abuser can find no supporting evidence and does not have the intellectual capacity to hold a discussion.

        It’s a shock tactic of last resort, normally reserved for the mistaken belief that it salvages one’s honour while one is running away.

        22

      • #
        Eric

        Sorry, my thumbs up was for Jo and her reply to the troll.

        20

    • #
      BruceC

      ‘Forecasts, Famines and Freezes’ by John Gribben published November 1977. On the back cover it says:

      Item: A 2 degree winter temperature drop could raise the U.S. fuel bill by at least $10,000,000,000.

      Item: A diversion of monsoon rains in Central India means no grain harvest for 37,000,000 people

      Item: We have just lived through the worst winter in a century. Dr. John Gribben predicts that savage winters will continue for the next 30 years.

      With the world entering a mini ice-age, it is vital that scientists recognize the enormity of the crisis in terms of world economics, food and energy supply, and political implications. In this highly important book, Dr. Gribben examines the capabilities and limitations of conventional forecasting techniques and the role they will play in the single most important area of scientific research in modern times.

      Archive of the 1974 TIME article + archive of 2006 TIME article predicting the same doom and gloom, only this time it’s global warming.

      50

    • #

      The media clearly thought cooling was coming. Today, we go by the media, not the science, so it was true that global cooling was predicted to come. Real science does not matter now and it should not mattered then either. Interesting to note that “fix” for cooling was the same as for heating. I guess cooling does cause heating and heating does cause cooling. 🙂
      In any case, “science” always involves a stampede for income redistribution and destruction of capitalism. Nothing really changed.

      51

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Harry Twinotter,

      . . . most were wondering about Global Warming by that stage.

      Naked Assertion. The reference date in the original post is 1977. Can you provide us with any references from that time period to back up your claim?

      My clear recollection of the time, I was 19 then, was of a concensus pointing to ‘A Coming Ice Age’. There was no mention of ‘globull warming’ until the eighties.

      Abe

      40

      • #
        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Sigh, yes we have seen that before.

          It was published in 2008, when the deep involvement of certain Climate Scientists in the climate cooling scare, was becoming a serious embarrassment to the “now catastrophic warming” meme.

          Our “friend” William Connolley was one of the co-authors, so readers can make an assessment of its veracity from that quarter, plus another of the authors appears to be a Journalist from Albuquerque, with the lead author being listed as working for the NOAA/National Climate Data Center – a climate modeller, perhaps?.

          If that is all you have got, it ain’t much.

          41

  • #
    Kevin Lohse

    If the climscamologists are correct, Armadillos should be thriving somewhere near the Arctic Circle, and concerns about their attractiveness as an alternative food source for polar bears clogging the pal-reviewed journals.

    182

    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      Historically in the USA called “Hoover hogs.”
      Here I am farther north hoping Armadillos would soon be available locally. The meat is said to “tasted like fine-grained, high-quality pork.”
      http://armadillo-online.org/food.html

      120

      • #
        Another Ian

        John

        Something of a delicacy in north eastern Brasil. Check out “tatu”. A bit oily, apparently with laxative effects if you eat a lot

        40

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      Of course, the warming will return by 2025, because Gavin said so.

      90

      • #
        Radical Rodent

        Well, someone has put his convictions down on paper; it will be interesting to see what he does, should his predictions fail (though doubt it will ever be an admission of ignorance and error). I fear that we might be finding out long before then, as global temperatures plummet – possibly over the next 3 years.

        72

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Spelling Kevin, spelling! It is “climascamologists”. We shouldn’t give them the excuse to reject your excellent point out of hand. 🙂

      11

  • #
    ATheoK

    Trouble is Kevin, the armadillo is a carrier for Hansen’s Disease, commonly known as leprosy.

    The CDC made this announcement recently after several leprosy cases turned up.

    Surely those greens would not want polar bears to contract leprosy? Think of the image a balding bear would convey…

    140

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      You might not agree with James Hansen (ex-NASA) but to call him a disease is inaccurate; a pest or a nuisance would be better.

      81

      • #
        NielsZoo

        Hansen and his ilk are, at a minimum, a rather severe and debilitating symptom of the disease where politics corrupts the scientist, his method and his message in order to advance some controlling agenda.

        192

  • #
    Reed Coray

    When they bump into each other, what does an armadillo headed north say to an armadillo headed south? Answer: “It’s too hot for me down there! Get with the program–Bryson was blowing smoke; Mann’s the man.”

    100

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    What do I know? I thought Armadillo is a city in the Texas panhandle. I stopped there in December 1964 driving from Massachusetts back to Los Angeles and there was an inch of clear ice on everything in the morning. Driving on that was a little tricky.

    It must surely have been the beginning of our new ice age. 😉

    90

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      But seriously, why couldn’t the armadillo be a good indicator of climate change. They are surely at least as reliable as the doctored up records and other hanky panky being used at this very moment by “scientists” all around the globe.

      150

      • #
        Yonniestone

        Actually Roy at the Amarillo Autumn Fair an Armadillo named “Puckerbutt Pete” is brought out and placed on the ground near a bowl of water, legend has it if Pete drinks the water Winter will come late and if he rolls into a ball Winter will come early.

        Mind you this information is as reliable as the Screaming Hairy Armadillo being named after a Texan nasty women’s disease…..

        00

    • #
      • #
        Glen Michel

        Or Frank Zappas Amarillo Brillo.

        00

      • #
        gnome

        Amarillo, armadillo, what’s the difference?

        30

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Guys, when you have my twisted sense of humor that just loves word games like Armadillo for Amarillo, there is no difference.

        Reality of course, is another matter. 😉

        The way there was along old route 66 from Missouri into the panhandle and you drove seemingly endless hours on a narrow two lane highway to get there. All those miles were with huge semi rigs coming at you at high speed from the opposite direction and every single one of them nearly blew my VW Beetle right off the road. I was never happier to arrive at a motel after a long drive in my whole life than I was that afternoon.

        These days it’s all Interstate 40, minimum of two lanes in each direction with a wall separating you from those oncoming trucks. 66 may be a matter of some nostalgic benefit these days but I’ll take the interstate to Amarillo any day.

        Strangely, heading west out of town the next day it was two lanes in each direction with a wide soft dirt median between west and eastbound traffic. There was a strong crosswind from the left (south) and that wide median saved us from disaster. They drive like maniacs in Texas and at the point where all the ice ended for us it began for eastbound traffic and as we got there car after car going hell bent for election hit the ice and the wind pushed them right into that median. If not for all that soft dirt we’d have bought it for sure. Believe me I didn’t stick around. I was glad to say goodbye to Amarillo, Armadillos and the Texas panhandle.

        40

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          There were some rather strange motels on Route 66 that had odd ideas about washing bed linen.

          You get your ticks on Route 66.

          20

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            I see you’re well familiar with pre interstate auto travel in the U.S. There were a lot of motels along the way that I wouldn’t give even a first thought today. But then we were traveling on my travel allowance and needed the cheap accommodations. And $6 or $6.50 a night wasn’t getting you the Hilton. Now the cheapest are a minimum of $50.

            10

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    On the other hand, a few years of colder (or warmer) weather than we’re used to is hardly a huge shift in the climate is it? Isn’t it just weather?

    I don’t know the answer but I’m not ready to panic just yet.

    160

  • #
    Don Gaddes

    Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather Alex S Gaddes (1990) pp44/45
    Ever-changing Relationship
    Nigel Calder (Ref. No. 6) deals with variations in the amount of insolation received by Earth throughout time, caused by Earth’s ever-changing astronomical relationship to the Sun (brought about by variations in the angle of obliquity of Earth’s axis to the plane of the ecliptic, the precession of the equinoxes, the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit and the precession of the perihelion and aphelion.)

    These factors formed the basis for Milankovitch’s hypothesis, explaining the occurrence of ice ages in time.

    Crucial Zone

    Quote No. 1: “….. an inspection of Vernaker’s Tables suggested that the crucial zone for summer sunshine was not the Arctic Circle, as has often been supposed, but at 50 degrees N.
    “The theory of ice sheets growing from the bottom up and the discovery of the English Channel Glacier, fed from the sea bed south of Ireland, make this choice of latitude glaciologically plausible …..”

    With reference to the above quote , I draw attention to the present (December 26, 1983) extremely cold weather in North America, where not only has this cold wave moved in earlier than ever before, but has brought with it the lowest temperatures in recorded history for the region.

    Record Low Temperatures

    As I write, those record low temperatures are prevailing as far south as Miami, Florida, and in what is regarded as a sub-tropical zone, oranges are being frozen solid for the first time in the recorded history of the region.

    Such a scenario can scarcely be equated with a rapid warming-up of the Earth by the end of the century. I find the present situation much easier to reconcile with the predictions of H. Lamb and R. Bryson who warn of the imminent onset of another cold period.
    It is also noteworthy that the Northern United States of America lie within very close proximity to 50 degrees north.

    Quote No. 2: “…..other processes are at work, including the 2,500 year oscillation [other workers have set the value, variously, at from 2,500 to 2,700] that correlates with the 14C production in the atmosphere, and hence with solar events, rather than the Milankovitch effect.

    122

    • #
      J Martin

      Interesting stuff about insolation at 50 degrees instead of the more usual 60 degrees. From time to time I have wondered what the Milankovitch insolation curves look like at different latitudes and if it might be easier to spot a pattern in them, as at 60 degrees there doesn’t seem to be anything obvious that can lead to a projection.

      60 degrees is too far North, a glaciation does its damage further South, and it is further South where a glaciation has to establish itself, otherwise its just minor oscillations in climate. Perhaps glaciations all start further North and creep South over time, though I’m not sure I buy that viewpoint, and that rather than a slow steady slide into a glaciation we instead have a series of steps down into a glaciation.

      But in either case the big question for future generations is what can they do to prevent or reverse it.

      00

      • #
        J Martin

        Milankovitch probably sets the background conditions and the sun / ocean currents determine the details of when and how fast. And I wonder how much of it comes down to the Sun and Earth’s magnetic fields in the end.

        01

  • #

    If we base forecasts on the natural orbital and solar activity periodicities it is clear the we have already entered a long period of global cooling.
    The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale.
    The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless. A new forecasting paradigm needs to be adopted.
    For forecasts of the timing and extent of the coming cooling based on the natural solar activity cycles – most importantly the millennial cycle – and using the neutron count and 10Be record as the most useful proxy for solar activity check my blog-post at
    http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
    The most important factor in climate forecasting is where earth is in regard to the quasi- millennial natural solar activity cycle which has a period in the 960 – 1020 year range. For evidence of this cycle see Figs 5-9. From Fig 9 it is obvious that the earth is just approaching ,just at or just past a peak in the millennial cycle.
    I suggest that more likely than not the general trends from 1000- 2000 seen in Fig 9 will likely generally repeat from 2000-3000 with the depths of the next LIA at about 2650. The best proxy for solar activity is the neutron monitor count and 10 Be data. My view ,based on the Oulu neutron count – Fig 14 is that the solar activity millennial maximum peaked in Cycle 22 in about 1991. There is a varying lag between the change in the in solar activity and the change in the different temperature metrics. There is a 12 year delay between the neutron peak and the probable millennial cyclic temperature peak seen in the RSS data in 2003.
    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
    There has been a cooling temperature trend since then (Usually mis-interpreted as a “pause”) There is likely to be a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017- 2018 corresponding to the very important Ap index break below all recent base values in 2005-6. Fig 13.
    The Polar excursions of the last few winters in North America are harbingers of even more extreme winters to come more frequently in the near future

    312

  • #
    Ron C.

    Living on our water world means our temperatures fluctuate according to ocean circulations and oscillations, especially ENSO and IPO patterns in the Pacific basin.

    This is especially obvious for an island continent like Australia.

    https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/climate-report-from-the-water-world/

    120

  • #
    Ruairi

    A great glaciation’s arrival,
    Is a story that’s prone to revival,
    But a little ice age,
    Should make us engage,
    On the prospects of warmth and survival.

    292

  • #
    sillyfilly

    Heartland would not be happy with this flashback from 1992:

    ..the global cooling trend of the 1950s and 1960s led to a minor global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. All that was more or less normal scientific debate…. There was also a book by the prominent science writer Lowell Ponte (The Cooling) that derided the skeptics and noted the importance of acting in the absence of firm, scientific foundation. There was even a report by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaching its usual ambiguous conclusions. But the scientific community never took the issue to heart, governments ignored it, and with rising global temperatures in the late 1970s the issue more or less died

    Particularly from a current Heartland Global Warming Expert.

    423

    • #

      How do you explain Dr. Schneider,Dr. Hansen, Dr. Holdren, all saying they are concerned about Global Cooling?

      240

    • #
      • #
        David-of-Cooyal in Oz

        Well I reckon it’s great. But the IPCC won’t like it. Thanks for posting it.
        Cheers,
        Dave B

        90

      • #
        ROM

        El Gordo @ # 11.2

        You don’t really expect Silly Filly to answer your question do you?

        You see, I asked Silly Filly a few weeks back whether she supported the Greenpeace activist Gary ” Bluecloud” Evans demands, that were published in the Guardian, that some prominent Skeptics should be beheaded.

        Now any reasonable person with any semblance of morality and sense of responsibility to their fellow man would have immediately denied supporting something that is so obviously a truly horrific and sickening depravity when demand of anybody that happens to disagree with their own set of beliefs and ideology.

        This type of depravity is something that is abhorrent to our human life values and it is very indicative indeed that the likes of a Greenpeace activist along with the likes of the silly fillys of this world seen even here on this, Jo’s blog, should demand that somebody who they disagree with should pay the ultimate price of a horrific death just for merely disagreeing with their own personal ideology.

        Needless to say and unless I missed it, I have yet to see a response let alone a denial from Silly Filly to this question which I asked her from which I have to assume she actually supported the Greenpeace activist Gary” Bluecloud ” Evans demands for the beheading of prominent skeptics.

        From the failure to even respond to my question you can draw your own conclusions as to Silly Filly’s real level of morality and level of fanaticsm and it isn’t pretty let alone even acceptable in our western society.

        Of course when I was a lot younger there was always a solution to the real silly filly’s, those un-rideable and therefore useless fillys and geldings and stallions that turned up every now and then.
        They were sent off to the knackery and that was the finish of that problem

        113

        • #
          Glen Michel

          Aww gee ROM ya didn’t have to finish my friend Flicka that way.SF is going to have nightMARES. Look origin of the term nightmare.

          31

        • #
          Dariusz

          When was the last time, any time, that ideologically driven mass murderers ever apologised? To apologise is to deny their own existence, their ideology and hence accept responsibility. Lithuanians killing their own Jewish neighbours that lived with for generations, the Poles denouncing their own compatriots to the Gestapo by the thousands simply because they hated their own catholic neighbours, Ukrainians doing most of the killings during the Warsaw uprising because they hated Poles for the centuries of occupation of their land, Russians killing anyone who was not communist, Germans killing everyone despite coming from one of the most cultured societies in Europe?
          Now we wonder why the greens, that believe in medieval technologies, no development and call themselves progressives want to behead people like us? Nothing suprises me. The ideologically driven murder is one of the obvious tools that such creatures can use and will use. They start with insignificant calls of “we know were you live, and we know where you work”. The Seed of hate is already growing and the repeat of history is closer than most people want to admit to.
          Closer to the present day. Remember Yugoslavia, genocides of minorities in the Middle East, Africa and Ukraine. Neighbour against neighbour. The Greens are not abberation. We had the age of the red, the age of the black, now it is the age of the watermelon.

          93

        • #
          el gordo

          ‘You don’t really expect Silly Filly to answer your question do you?’

          No, she is from the warmist political wing and knows nothing of the science.

          81

      • #
        sillyfilly

        Pure BS!

        313

      • #
        Robert

        You do realize SF never actually reads anything, especially if it contradicts her beliefs.

        82

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Your lack of reading comprehension is apparent, again. Either that, or you are being very selective with your quotations, even to the point where you are changing the intent of the words being quoted.

      Given your propensity to try to stir the pot, on this site, I suggest the latter.

      122

    • #
      handjive

      In 1961,there was unanimous consensus for global cooling:

      January 30, 1961, NYT:
      SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD IS COLDER; But Climate Experts Meeting Here Fail to Agree on Reasons for Change

      “After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.”

      > 40 years ago, the National Academy of Sciences had unanimous consensus for global cooling.

      174

      • #
        sillyfilly

        Flashback: Climatologists tell us an ice age cometh

        05

        • #
          James Bradley

          sf,

          Now you got it, all that happened was an opportunity for the ‘evidence’ to be eventually fitted around the ‘perpetrator’ and you can follow the evolution of the crime identifier from ‘global cooling’ to ‘sea level rise’ to ‘global warmimg’ to ‘climate change’ to ‘climate disruption’.

          This will probably turn out to be the most embarrassing ‘cold case’ in history.

          21

    • #
      James Bradley

      sf,

      Wow, so we dodged the bullet back then, and thankfully the world continued to warm from the LIA instead of plunging back – especially in the Nothern hemisphere – as seems to be the current trend with record winters not seen for nearly 100 years.

      102

    • #
      Victor Ramirez

      SF: Lowell Ponte seems of like mind to Thermageddonites if he derided sceptics and sought preventive action sans evidence.

      30

  • #
    Gee Aye

    why do we get two unthreaded posts this weekend?

    111

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Probably because like CAGW nobody gives sh$t what you think.

      172

    • #
      el gordo

      Perhaps because its a very long weekend down under.

      100

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Because it is Easter, and Easter has four days, which equates to two weekends, except in Post Normal science where the answer is an Otter, and an Otter, and another Otter, and we keep getting Otter and Otter, until we are overrun by the damn things. They carry fleas, you know?

      Does that answer your question?

      162

    • #

      Go complain at the unthreaded week end page,here you are off topic.

      What about the two faced warmists of today,who were coolists back in the 1970’s, when it was cool?

      Dr. Schneider said this back in 1978:

      Schneider vs. Schneider

      LINK

      Ha ha ha….

      192

      • #
        ROM


        sunsettommy @ # 12.4

        Went to your Schneider link and found this very pithy assessment of the whole global warming / climate change meme in the comments;

        From “cupera1”;

        “Mans effect on the planet is like two fleas on a dog arguing over who gets to steer.”

        90

  • #
    manalive

    The idea was certainly around, but of course in the late ‘60s to mid ’70’s they only had raw unadjusted data to inform them.
    If they had the new improved adjusted data, they clearly would have been more worried about warming.

    221

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Yep, with the current modern technofudge techniques they would still have been able to find one tenth of one degree warming, and all that in spite of all the footage of blizzards in the mid-west of the US, and people being trapped on the freeway for days in the Eastern States.

      What is interesting, is that there was not an increase in birthrate nine months after the blizzards. Perhaps couples did not need to find other ways of keeping warm, because they could rely on the global warming to do it for them.

      162

  • #
    RoHa

    I remember the ice age scare. It was quite a big thing, though nowhere near as big a fuss as the current scare.

    The important point is that, one way or another, we’re doomed.

    91

  • #
    ROM

    .
    Via Trove

    Refined search terms; for “new ice age

    84 items are listed by Trove under this quite specific phrase in advanced search

    These are the earliest articles listed for the search phrase “new ice age”
    __________________

    News just- to hand of weather
    disturbances at a greater distance
    tells a more calamitous tale. A storm has
    occurred in New Orleans through which
    twenty-five persons have lost their lives
    and many others have been injured. The
    number of disasters, great and small, which
    have recently taken place in America
    might well induce people of a superstitious
    turn to imagine that the Americans are
    going through something like a fixed
    period of ill luck. They have had
    hurricanes and fires in Chicago, appal
    ling railway catastrophes, earthquakes
    in South Carolina, pretty rapidly followed
    by this visitation in the *- Crescent City,’
    not to mention those terrific blizzards
    which swept over some of the northern
    States a little while ago, and which seemed
    like the prelude of a new ‘ ice age.’

    source

    Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 – 1931) (about) Wednesday 4 October 1893

    ________________________)______

    “The novel theory that volcanic
    eruptions produce glacial epochs is
    advocated by Paul and Fritz Sarasin,
    German geologist s. It is calculated that
    a lowering of the mean annual tempera
    ture by 7 deg. or 8 deg. F. would be
    sufficient to give all the phenomena of
    glaciation ; and the vast quantity of dust
    thrown off by the Krakatoa eruption of
    1884′, and remaining suspended in the
    air for years, satisfies these theorists that
    the simultaneous eruption of many
    volcanoes could so veil the sun as to give
    the necessary slight lessening tempera
    ture. This would make possible a new
    ice-age
    at any time.”
    ________________

    [ source ]

    Bunbury Herald (WA : 1892 – 1919) (about) Previous issue Wednesday 24 September 1902

    120

    • #
      TdeF

      Interesting. So a very dark period would be cooler and ice would cover much of the planet, increasing the albedo and further lowering temperatures in a tipping point event. This demonstrates that the very stuff of life, H2O is critical in its ability to change form at 0C and go from transparent to highly reflective. Now 60% of the world’s population lives North of the Tropic of Cancer and above 40 latitude it was covered in ice. That would be the end of half of humanity. Warming is not half as scary, as evidenced by the mass migrations North each summer when almost all the ice melts, every year. Of course no one drowns in the rising oceans with a +80C change.

      Still human society has always had charlatans, magicians, doomsayers and carpet baggers. Such characters were parodied in the Hobbit films as Alfrid in Laketown and Wormtongue in Edoras. Having lost so many friend in WW1, Tolkien knew the type. We all do.

      The same people will segway so smoothly from Global Warming to Global Cooling and you can guarantee the enemy will be CO2, because it cuts to the heart of who we are, carbon life forms based wholly and on CO2 capture and combustion. An attack on CO2 also threatens Western Industrial society, the enemy of all indulgent Green socialists who are also some of our most profligate consumers of the world’s limited resources. Will 30,000 worried people really fly business class to Paris to talk about the evils of flying? Couldn’t stand Alfrid in the Hobbit, but he would have been a warmist.

      112

    • #
      ROM

      I don’t think that many in the public, in science, in politics and least of all in the media and in the green watermelon cults realise just what a truly historically benign and warm global climate we are actually experiencing at the present.

      After reading this following article from 1947, if our anthropogenic emmissions of CO2 have contributed to our historically and current very benign and comfortably warm global climate may it long continue to do so.

      Via the Trove link above [ # 15 ] with it’s 84 items under the heading of “new ice age“, one of the media articles of the day from the Townsville Daily Bulletin , Monday 10th March 1947

      [ This “in full” article is repeated because of it’s historical information and is quite long.
      It is machine translated and digitised and I have corrected some of the text.
      And note the very sensible comments in the last para from those old newsmen compared to the hype and heavy breathing at the merest hint of some slightly different weather today from our current very incompetent, biased, agenda driven news media of today. ]
      ___________________

      Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 – 1954) Monday 10 March 1947

      ARE WE ENTERING A NEW ICE AGE?

      Freeze-ups Through the Ages

      Britain has been engaged in a deadly battle against the force, of ‘General Winter.’ England and Europe have been in the grip of the most severe cold in living memory.
      With snow piled high in London’s streets and with recollections of the recent cold winters of 1939-40 and 1940-41 still fresh in their minds, people in Europe may well ask themselves whether they are in for another ice age such as the one from which their countries emerged, barely ten or twelve thousand years ago.
      The present freeze-up Is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last .

      History records periods of cold and heat, drought and rain, and the influence of weather and climate on the course of human history is greater than many of us are inclined to admit.

      In historical times we hear of a ‘marvellous great snow’ in England as early as A.D. 764, when there was ‘so extreme a frost as the like had not been heard of, continuing from the beginning of the winter almost to the midst of spring.’
      The year 1254 began with long and severe frosts, and another very severe winter occurred In 1279. when snow lay on the ground In London from Christmas time until March.
      The Thames was frozen, and when the ice broke in the spring, five arches of London Bridge, which had then been standing for eightv years, collapsed under the impact of the floes.

      Bad Record

      The 14th. century had a very bad record, with many complete freeze ups of all rivers both in England and on the Continent. Bad floods were caused by the spring thaws.
      Thus in 1342 Cologne and Mayence were completely inundated by the flood waters of the Rhine.
      It is recorded that the Baltic Sea was completely frozen several times during the 13th. and 14th. centuries and people crossed over In carts and sledges from Sweden to Germany and Russia.
      These severe conditions were most acutely felt in northern Europe, and brought about the decline of the Norseman rule and the weakening of Norwegian might.

      Climatically, Europe had seen better days during the 9th. and 10th. centuries, when the northern oceans were free from ice for long periods, and the summers were warm and the winters mild.
      Favored by such conditions, the Vikings had spread far from their homes, and established their rule over large parts of western and even southern Europe.
      Another onslaught of rigorous conditions was experienced during tbe 16th.and 17th. centuries.
      Severe winters between 1640 and 1650 spelt ruin to many farms in England. Ice accumulated in tbe Alps, and from the end of the 16th. till at least the middle of the 17th. century the glaciers advanced several miles down the alpine valleys.
      Again the Baltic Sea froze over many times, and Charles XII, conquered Poland after a surprise  dash with his army across the solid ice from Sweden.

      Closer to our time we have the record of an unprecedented snowfall at Chepstowe in England on March 24, 1888, when two Inches of snow fell in two minutes, with flakes up to four inches in diameter!
      More severe even were the snow storms of 1891, probably the worst on record, and of Christmas, 1927, when the snow was piling up all over southern England.

      Bitter Cold.

      Still remembered by many is the bitter cold of the winter of 1917-18 at the height of the First World War.
      All of Europe was blanketed with snow, all the rivers were frozen over, and the severe cold caused great hard ships to millions or soldiers in their trenches from France to central Russia. Similar conditions recurred in the winter of 192S-29.
      Cold winters are brought about by the spread of what Is known as ‘Continental weather conditions,’ with easterly winds which are dry and hot in summer, cold in winter ?? ; cold winters are often paired with hot summers, resulting In crop failures, famine and general decline in living standards, aggravated by the rigorous winters that follow.

      The earliest, drought-caused famine recorded in England is one in A.D. 298, but the most severe droughts on record are those of 1315, 1316, and 1321. There was generally a long dry spell from 1308 to 1322. and food was scarce all the time.
      The price of wheat rose rapidly after the bad harvest of 1315.and in May, 1316, it had risen to five times the normal level. People subsisted on a diet of roots, and horses and dogs -were killed for food.
      Thousands died and a great shortage of labor resulted.
      Again, the summer of 1692 was so dry that the Thames at London could be crossed on horse.
      The Intervening periods of a more genial climate, characterised by predominantly humid westerly winds, with cooler summers and warmer winters, brought increased rainfall and general storminess.

      There can be no doubt that the 11th and 12th centuries were such a period of violent gales, which brought great suffering to the countries bordering the North
      Sea. An unprecedented flood on November 11, 1099, claimed 100,000 victims in Holland and England, and exceptional storms in 1218 and 1219 broke the dykes of Holland and Frlsla.
      The great flood of November 19, 1421, gave the Zuyder Zee the form it retained until Dutch engineering skill reclaimed It from the Sea some ten or fifteen years ago.

      Controlled by the Sun.

      The question has naturally arisen whether the climatic changes are In any way periodic, and therefore predictable. In the last analysis all our weather is controlled by the sun.
      Is it possible that changes In climate are due to changes In solar radiation?

      The phenomenon of sun spots’ Is known to all. Large sun spots can be seen easily with the naked eye if the sun Is viewed through a smoked glass. Now the number of sun spots varies in cycles of about eleven years and a half, and it has been observed that an increase in sun-spot activity is often accompanied by dry summers and cool winters, but this Is by no means always the case.
      The cold European winters of 1917-18, 1928-29, and 1939-40, seemed to fit in admirably with the sun-spot cycle, but the present cold spell falls halfway in a period and spoils the picture.
      More probably the weather follows a 23-year cycle, equalling two sun-spot cycles in length, but the laws of the ‘weather are not yet known In such detail as would make long-range prediction a practical possibility.

      Old people of all generations are convinced that the weather is not what it used to be; it has either become colder or warmer, drier or rainier. Sometimes this Impression may be purely psychological, due to extreme colds or droughts having been experienced at an early Impressive age.

      On the other hand, we have seen that the climate does have its ‘ups’ and ‘downs,’ but of one thing we may be certain; during the last twenty-live centuries there has been no overall change, no profound modification of climatic conditions to wards a colder or warmer state.
      No second ice age is as yet In sight, although just when Europe will be in for another long mild spell may be anybody’s guess.

      60

  • #
    thingadonta

    None other than Mr Spock warns of the Coming Ice Age back in the 1970s.

    60

  • #
    • #
      TdeF

      Thanks. Convincing. Who could not respect the views of a genuine Vulcan? He certainly knew his planets and which would support life.
      Then Green aliens Kang and Kodos in the Simpsons made it to President and Vice President, exactly like ex-Vice President Al Gore. So is Al Gore an alien? Is that the real Inconvenient Truth? Is Man Bear Pig real?

      40

      • #
        Glen Michel

        I was seriously considering the possibility that extraterrestrial aliens could have a hand in this .”Big Al” was part of the vanguard;almost got POTUS. Plot took a few steps backwards after the hanging of some chap called Chad.

        40

  • #
    el gordo

    There have been suggestions of late that the LIA was created primarily by volcanic activity and not so much a quiet sun. It may have been a combination of both.

    The Wolf Minimum supposedly started around 1280 thru to 1350, but as you maybe aware there were large icebergs in the north Atlantic by 1250, while Greenland was already building up mass balance.

    The big puzzle for me is the cause of the ‘AD 1300 Event’ in the Pacific.

    40

  • #

    Okay, okay…but this is still my favourite dud prediction, in view of the short turn-around and who made it:

    The Age (of course): “David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.” The Age went on to quote Jones: “We are in the build-up to the next El Nino and already the drought is as bad as it has ever been — in terms of the drought, this may be as good as things get…”

    Then the deluge.

    Jones was also claiming that La Nina events were losing force, maybe gobbled up by his CAGW forcings. Now how does a specialist in Oz climate manage to ignore the fact that our most deadly natural event was the heat of 1939, peak of a La Nina and flanked by neutral years? And that our driest known year, 1902, is classified by his own institution as ‘weak El Nino’. How does he manage that?

    But let the BOM have last word on the enfeebling of La Nina:
    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/lnlist/201011/201004-201203.gif

    51

  • #
    Deano

    In 1976 I was 16 and certainly remember watching a special documentary on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about the coming global freeze. It claimed that by the mid 80’s the USA’s ability to produce its own food would be so severely reduced that it would have to go to war for food supplies from other countries. The climate mechanism that would cause this was well explained and made sense to me at the time.

    I don’t recall hearing anything about global warming until 1987 when environmentalism suddenly became the next big concern after the nuclear war scares of the early 80’s suddenly seemed to look unlikely as Mikhail Gorbachev lead the USSR. The ozone hole was going to kill us all with extreme UV light levels being let through unfiltered. But the ozone hole healed up much faster than predicted. Then David Suzuki announced that if humans didn’t stop using ALL fossil fuels by 1990, it would then be useless to try anything after that as too much damage would already have been done. In 2006 ‘peak oil’ had been reached and petrol prices were going to hit $8 a litre by 2011. Then Ebola virus was going to wipe out huge sections of the 3rd world population.

    There was an old guy who used to walk around Perth city on Saturday afternoons back in the mid 90’s with a sign claiming that the world was soon to end because of all the wicked sinning and short skirts etc. At least he funded his own activities.

    120

  • #
    Gary in Erko

    An ice age – gee then, aren’t we lucky we figured how to make it warmer.
    Phew, just in time too.

    60

  • #
    Ceetee

    Must have been before so many of them become activists. Once that happened it was probably quite difficult to pin an ice age on the rampant capitalist imperialist running dogs of the west. Quite clever when you think about it, the way that they have since gone about it. They knew their greatest weapons were ignorance and blind adherence to the faith. Bit like ISIS really.

    81

  • #
    handjive

    And, from the duo of denial, The Guardian and the Conversation:

    US Government Warns That The Arctic Will Be Ice Free in Six Weeks

    “Senior US government officials are to be briefed at the White House this week on the danger of an ice-free Arctic in the summer within two years.

    In early April, Duarte warned that the Arctic summer sea ice was melting at a rate faster than predicted by conventional climate models, and could be ice free as early as 2015 – rather than toward the end of the century, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007.
    . . .
    Polar vortexes, death spirals, tipping points …

    No wonder the Conversation doesn’t allow any one to ask questions on their 97% certified settled junk climate science.

    71

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      The Arctic has been “ice free” several times, in documented history, but of course that was before photo’s could be taken from space, so they probably don’t count.

      30

  • #
    el gordo

    The cooling from 1945 to 1975 was real and a reason for concern, while the 1976 to 2003 warming was not, whereas the 2004 to 2034 cooling will be devastating for the Klimatariat. Note the 60 year cycle is plain for all to see.

    Here is the famous Newsweek article, published just one year prior to the Great Climate Shift of 1976.

    http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

    51

  • #

    No need to worry about Ice Ages or CAGW. There is a nifty way to warm the world – or cool it or do whatever you like with climate.

    A couple of years back, if you went to the Elders site (Weatherzone) and checked Kempsey climatology, you would have found a temp record going back to 1907, and a rainfall record back to 1882. Suddenly, that temp record was shortened to post 1963. A byte-saving exercise? A few months back, the same site suddenly showed a record for the Kempsey airport, nothing for our old Wide Street station. This means that our historic climatology now dates back to the fabled 2001 at Elders/Weatherzone. Many precious bytes saved there.

    You can still get the old records at the BoM site if you know where to look – but maybe you won’t look and maybe you’ll assume that 2001 is the start of the record or maybe you won’t care when the record starts, so long as that word “record” is there in an official capacity.

    It’s for your own good. No longer will you be easily scandalised by all the record high annual and monthly maxima between 1910 and 1919, or by the record low annual and monthly rainfall, most of which belong way back in the late 19th and early 20th century.

    1902? What 1902?

    41

  • #
    Philip Mulholland

    My favourite comes from Professor Lamb in the 1973 UNESCO Courier:-
    Lamb, H. H. Is the Earth’s Climate Changing? For the past 30 years the temperature of our planet has been steadily dropping. The UNESCO Courier: a window open on the world; 1973 Vol. XXVI (8/9), 17-20.

    50

  • #
    jim

    Climate scientists? There were none in the 50’s, they were meteorologists with advanced degrees, looking for funding money. They weren’t cute enough, or good sounding enough to be in radio or TV. If you check out the local papers they weren’t trying to scare you, they were dead certain that it was going to happen based on a cycle theory. That was how weather worked then, when they had the three day forecast correct and too the minute. Now, with the help off computers they can tell you too the millisecond when the rain has started so they can modify the past record. And two weeks out,forget it.
    See I graduated in the early60’s, all the ice was a dead certainty, and the armadillos are still going in Nebraska. Heading north, east ,west and south, according to the roadways.

    31

  • #
  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    At college, following earth day 1 (global cooling prominent) the geography class spent time suggesting that we were ‘overdue’ a return to cold conditions have seen humanity develop in a particularly benign interglacial. Not controversial in the slightest. I recall being given a mimeographed (remember mimeograph?) sheet of the ice coverage and climate bands during the previous ice age, and asked to do an essay about possible coping mechanisms. I’ll not relate my sophomoric stupidities. I do also recall some credibility to the whole enterprise, as it had snowed on registration day (Minnesota, USA).

    40

  • #

    All of this claim of no consensus on cooling leaves out a very important fact—in the 70’s, no one voted on what science believed. I don’t remember hearing about “consensus” until skeptics starting have an impact on the claims of warming and this was the only weapon left against science that was shoddy. Saying there was no consensus in the 70’s on cooling is like saying there was no Iphone app for restaurants.

    (I doubt there was much consensus on ANY theory at that point. As the warmist love to point out, climate science was most definately in its infancy at that point. It still is, of course.)

    50

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      As the warmist love to point out, climate science was most definately in its infancy at that point. It still is, of course.

      Or is the word infamy instead of infancy? I’d say let them grow up before we buy their claims about being a science. Consensus don’t cut it. 🙁

      50

  • #
    Tab Numlock

    That video is exactly right. Just look at the charts.

    00

  • #
    Eric

    “Throw another log on the fire”, Larry Niven, “Fallen Angels”. His many predictions about the green lobby nuts are coming true

    30