The Origin of the 1970's Global Cooling Scare

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

In 2017 it seems the position people take on the 1970's global cooling scare tells you more about their climate views today than it does about what really happened then. Here's some history to clarify all that.

The 1970s Global Cooling Scare (and how the warming scare could not have happened without it)

Guest essay by Bernie Lewin
Continue reading →

This is the second post drawing on themes raised in the book Searching for the Catastrophe Signal. See a previous post on WUWT here.
Forty-five years ago today, two geologists penned a letter to the president of the United States warning that the rocky decent into the next ice age might have already begun.

A letter written by two Quaternary geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews to Richard Nixon raised concerns that recent bad weather might indicated that the present interglacial was ending. This letter helped to set in train a series of events that raised the profile of climate anxieties in the USA and globally. Source: Reeves & Gemmill.

The year 1972 remains infamous in the annals of meteorology for extreme weather events all around the globe. Towards the end of that year, in a letter dated 3 December 1972, two geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews warned President Nixon that…

…a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. . . .

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

[h=1]After the “catastrophe signal’ – When science entered the policy greenhouse[/h]Guest essay by Bernie Lewin A new book on the origins of the global warming movement tells how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was first pressed into policy based evidence making. It was a single line in one report that read: The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. These…

2 weeks ago November 24, 2017 in Book Review.

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

From the OP link:

. . . Today, as the 1970s global cooling scare starts to pass beyond living memory, it is widely misunderstood. This is especially in its relationship with the subsequent scare over global warming. Warming skeptics will often talk up the scare, emphasizing how meteorologists have flipped from cooling alarm to warming alarm. In fact, few meteorologists were involved in the cooling scare, while there were very few scientists of any variety who raised alarm over cooling and then switching to alarm over warming.
On the other side of the current debate, warming alarmists often play down the cooling scare as little more than a press beat up (e.g., see here). This is also wrong. In fact the cooling scare was promoted by scientists on scientific evidence. Sure, the press did their usual job of playing up fears, but there was often a measure of circumspection thrown in. From the scientific point of view, the main problem with the press coverage was that meteorological speculation on the return of the Little Ice Age was confused with geologists’ warnings about a return of the bigone.
The time has come to clear up the confusion and give the cooling scare its proper place in history. The summary that follows starts with thematic introductions to the context in which the cooling scare arose. It finishes by showing how the cooling scare set the stage for an easy transition to a warming scare. For a fuller account, complete with references, see the early chapters of Searching for the Catastrophe Signal. . . .

bubbabgone · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
In 2017 it seems the position people take on the 1970's global cooling scare tells you more about their climate views today than it does about what really happened then. Here's some history to clarify all that.

The 1970s Global Cooling Scare (and how the warming scare could not have happened without it)

Guest essay by Bernie Lewin
Continue reading →

This is the second post drawing on themes raised in the book Searching for the Catastrophe Signal. See a previous post on WUWT here.
Forty-five years ago today, two geologists penned a letter to the president of the United States warning that the rocky decent into the next ice age might have already begun.

A letter written by two Quaternary geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews to Richard Nixon raised concerns that recent bad weather might indicated that the present interglacial was ending. This letter helped to set in train a series of events that raised the profile of climate anxieties in the USA and globally. Source: Reeves & Gemmill.

The year 1972 remains infamous in the annals of meteorology for extreme weather events all around the globe. Towards the end of that year, in a letter dated 3 December 1972, two geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews warned President Nixon that…
…a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. . . .

James Hansen went for the global cooling deal then but insists that THIS time, oh yes THIS time, he's certain it's global warming and don't be fooled by the pause.

humbolt · Dec 5, 2017

bubbabgone said:
James Hansen went for the global cooling deal then but insists that THIS time, oh yes THIS time, he's certain it's global warming and don't be fooled by the pause.

Yep. But we've seen the Lucy and the football thing, so there's only one thing left for Hansen. Global moderation. That's not exactly a hair on fire thing, but given Hansen's pate, he can't afford that anymore anyway.

bubbabgone · Dec 5, 2017

humbolt said:
Yep. But we've seen the Lucy and the football thing, so there's only one thing left for Hansen. Global moderation. That's not exactly a hair on fire thing, but given Hansen's pate, he can't afford that anymore anyway.

hmmmm.
Ya think global moderation would get him any guest shots on Colbert.
Hard to say.
We'll see how the science community reacts to the Fungo Bat graph in MBH2018.
If it catches on, who knows.

longview · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
In 2017 it seems the position people take on the 1970's global cooling scare tells you more about their climate views today than it does about what really happened then. Here's some history to clarify all that.

The 1970s Global Cooling Scare (and how the warming scare could not have happened without it)

Guest essay by Bernie Lewin
Continue reading →

This is the second post drawing on themes raised in the book Searching for the Catastrophe Signal. See a previous post on WUWT here.
Forty-five years ago today, two geologists penned a letter to the president of the United States warning that the rocky decent into the next ice age might have already begun.

A letter written by two Quaternary geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews to Richard Nixon raised concerns that recent bad weather might indicated that the present interglacial was ending. This letter helped to set in train a series of events that raised the profile of climate anxieties in the USA and globally. Source: Reeves & Gemmill.

The year 1972 remains infamous in the annals of meteorology for extreme weather events all around the globe. Towards the end of that year, in a letter dated 3 December 1972, two geologists George Kukla and Robert Matthews warned President Nixon that…
…a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. . . .

There was also the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES report.
https://archive.org/stream/understandingcli00unit/understandingcli00unit_djvu.txt

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

longview said:
There was also the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES report.
https://archive.org/stream/understandingcli00unit/understandingcli00unit_djvu.txt

Yup. From the OP link:

[h=3]Leverage the cooling scare for climate research funding: A United States Climate Program[/h]During the 1960s, in the USA and internationally, atmospheric scientists had been lobbying for funding for coordinated climatic research. In the late 1960s the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) was established to coordinate atmospheric research using new technologies especially satellites. While its mandate included climatic research, in fact the emphasis was placed much more on understanding and predicting weather, and so science administrators continued to lobby for a research program specifically targeting climate. One of these was the founding director of NOAA Robert White, who chaired the panel on ‘The Present Interglacial’ that was established ad hoc in response to the geologists’ letter to the president.

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

bubbabgone said:
James Hansen went for the global cooling deal then but insists that THIS time, oh yes THIS time, he's certain it's global warming and don't be fooled by the pause.

:bs

As long ago as 1976, Hansen was one of the authors of a paper titled Greenhouse Effects due to Man-Made Perturbations of Trace Gases in which it was proposed that anthropogenic greenhouse emissions would eventually warm the Earth. I can't find any papers of his in which he suggests that cooling will occur.

bubbabgone · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
:bs

As long ago as 1976, Hansen was one of the authors of a paper titled Greenhouse Effects due to Man-Made Perturbations of Trace Gases in which it was proposed that anthropogenic greenhouse emissions would eventually warm the Earth. I can't find any papers of his in which he suggests that cooling will occur.

As long ago as 1971, S.I.Rasool, one of Hansen's NASA colleagues wrote in WAPO that we were headed for a new Ice Age.
He used one of Hansen's programs to help him draw that conclusion.
More recently, Skeptical Science had a tough time settling on an explanation/excuse.

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
:bs

As long ago as 1976, Hansen was one of the authors of a paper titled Greenhouse Effects due to Man-Made Perturbations of Trace Gases in which it was proposed that anthropogenic greenhouse emissions would eventually warm the Earth. I can't find any papers of his in which he suggests that cooling will occur.

Hansen provided the computer program used in the 1971 Rasool-Schneider paper on cooling. Hansen was not listed as an author but was routinely listed as providing what would today be described as IT support.

The Reference Frame: Hansen, Schneider: catastrophic new ice age ...

https://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/hansen-schneider-catastrophic-new-ice.html

Sep 20, 2007 - Sorry if you think that the news from 1971 are no longer hot but I found them rather cool. ;-) ..... There was a paper by Rasool and Schneider, based on Hansen, in Science etc. .... For this great conveyor-belt deep within the oceans to reverse actually leads to global cooling, instead of global warming.

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

bubbabgone said:
As long ago as 1971, S.I.Rasool, one of Hansen's NASA colleagues wrote in WAPO that we were headed for a new Ice Age.
He used one of Hansen's programs to help him draw that conclusion.
More recently, Skeptical Science had a tough time settling on an explanation/excuse.

Sorry, but it's just ridiculous to jump from that to saying that "Hansen went for the global cooling deal".

The authors of that paper simply used a program that Hansen had developed to calculate aerosol cooling on Venus in order to determine the extent to which aerosols might cool the earth. You could say with the same logic that Boeing was complicit in 9/11 because their planes were used in the attack, and it would be equally absurd!

longview · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
Hansen provided the computer program used in the 1971 Rasool-Schneider paper on cooling. Hansen was not listed as an author but was routinely listed as providing what would today be described as IT support.

The Reference Frame: Hansen, Schneider: catastrophic new ice age ...

https://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/hansen-schneider-catastrophic-new-ice.html

Sep 20, 2007 - Sorry if you think that the news from 1971 are no longer hot but I found them rather cool. ;-) ..... There was a paper by Rasool and Schneider, based on Hansen, in Science etc. .... For this great conveyor-belt deep within the oceans to reverse actually leads to global cooling, instead of global warming.

Since we passed quite a few laws limiting the amount of aerosols, could our own laws be responsible,
for much of the observed warming? If so, the warming would still be Anthropogenic, just not in the way they are saying!

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

longview said:
Since we passed quite a few laws limiting the amount of aerosols, could our own laws be responsible,
for much of the observed warming? If so, the warming would still be Anthropogenic, just not in the way they are saying!

[h=3]Aerosols and Climate - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate ...[/h]climatescience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/...001.../acrefore-9780190228620-e-13

Combining all their effects, anthropogenic changes to aerosol concentrations are estimated to have had a climate impact over the industrial era that is second only to ... depth (AOD), which quantifies the amount of incoming sunlight removed by aerosols when traversing down to the surface through scattering and absorption.

[h=3][PDF]Radiative forcing and climate response to ... - Atmos. Chem. Phys[/h]https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/15/12681/2015/acp-15-12681-2015.pdf

by DM Westervelt - ‎2015 - ‎Cited by 19 - ‎Related articles
Nov 16, 2015 - The removal of aerosols will cause unintended climate consequences, including an unmasking of global warming from long-lived greenhouse gases. We use the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Coupled Climate Model version 3 (GFDL CM3) to simu- late future climate over the 21st century with ...

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
[h=3]Aerosols and Climate - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate ...[/h]climatescience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/...001.../acrefore-9780190228620-e-13

Combining all their effects, anthropogenic changes to aerosol concentrations are estimated to have had a climate impact over the industrial era that is second only to ... depth (AOD), which quantifies the amount of incoming sunlight removed by aerosols when traversing down to the surface through scattering and absorption.

[h=3][PDF]Radiative forcing and climate response to ... - Atmos. Chem. Phys[/h]https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/15/12681/2015/acp-15-12681-2015.pdf

by DM Westervelt - ‎2015 - ‎Cited by 19 - ‎Related articles
Nov 16, 2015 - The removal of aerosols will cause unintended climate consequences, including an unmasking of global warming from long-lived greenhouse gases. We use the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Coupled Climate Model version 3 (GFDL CM3) to simu- late future climate over the 21st century with ...

Yes, climate scientists are, unsurprisingly, fully aware of the cooling effect of aerosols, as your links indicate. Indeed, they have been aware of this effect since the 1970s, but it was quickly realised even then that greenhouse warming would predominate. Most scientists think that the roughly constant global temperature between about 1940 to 1980 was due to aerosol cooling and greenhouse warming roughly cancelling each other out, and that some of the rise thereafter was indeed due to the removal of aerosols from the atmosphere as clean air laws were passed in the West.

Of course, the big worry now is the extent to which increased aerosol emissions in the newly industrialised Far East have been masking the effects of greenhouse warming in recent years. As your second link states:

"Future aerosol decreases could be responsible for 30–40 % of total climate warming (or 10–20 % with weaker aerosol forcing) by 2100 in East Asia, even under the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario (RCP8.5). The expected unmasking of global warming caused by aerosol reductions will require more aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation policies than anticipated in order to meet desired climate targets."

Edit: I'm a little surprised at your acknowledgement though that link of the possible need for more aggressive climate change mitigation policies, as well as polgara's endorsement of your post. Welcome to the light side both of you!

bubbabgone · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
Sorry, but it's just ridiculous to jump from that to saying that "Hansen went for the global cooling deal".

The authors of that paper simply used a program that Hansen had developed to calculate aerosol cooling on Venus in order to determine the extent to which aerosols might cool the earth. You could say with the same logic that Boeing was complicit in 9/11 because their planes were used in the attack, and it would be equally absurd!

That's what I said. They used his program.

“What was that program? It was a ‘Mie scattering’ code I had written to calculate light scattering by spherical particles. Indeed, it was useful for Venus studies, as it helped determine the size and refractive index of the particles in the clouds that veil the surface of Venus. I was glad to let Rasool and Schneider use that program to calculate scattering by aerosols"

The climate alarm bunch (e.g. James Hansen) are notorious for manipulating aerosols data to explain why their models don't work.
So given what we know how computer models are created and intended, it's no leap at all.
And no, it's not like a Boeing analogy.

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
Yes, climate scientists are, unsurprisingly, fully aware of the cooling effect of aerosols, as your links indicate. Indeed, they have been aware of this effect since the 1970s, but it was quickly realised even then that greenhouse warming would predominate. Most scientists think that the roughly constant global temperature between about 1940 to 1980 was due to aerosol cooling and greenhouse warming roughly cancelling each other out, and that some of the rise thereafter was indeed due to the removal of aerosols from the atmosphere as clean air laws were passed in the West.

Of course, the big worry now is the extent to which increased aerosol emissions in the newly industrialised Far East have been masking the effects of greenhouse warming in recent years. As your second link states:

"Future aerosol decreases could be responsible for 30–40 % of total climate warming (or 10–20 % with weaker aerosol forcing) by 2100 in East Asia, even under the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario (RCP8.5). The expected unmasking of global warming caused by aerosol reductions will require more aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation policies than anticipated in order to meet desired climate targets."

Edit: I'm a little surprised at your acknowledgement though that link of the possible need for more aggressive climate change mitigation policies, as well as polgara's endorsement of your post. Welcome to the light side both of you!

Sorry, to disappoint, but I could not care less about "more aggressive climate change mitigation policies" since I regard them all as feckless wastes of money and effort. The link made a useful point about aerosols, that's all.

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

bubbabgone said:
That's what I said. They used his program.

“What was that program? It was a ‘Mie scattering’ code I had written to calculate light scattering by spherical particles. Indeed, it was useful for Venus studies, as it helped determine the size and refractive index of the particles in the clouds that veil the surface of Venus. I was glad to let Rasool and Schneider use that program to calculate scattering by aerosols"

The climate alarm bunch (e.g. James Hansen) are notorious for manipulating aerosols data to explain why their models don't work.
So given what we know how computer models are created and intended, it's no leap at all.
And no, it's not like a Boeing analogy.

Let me write this in simple English:

Aerosols have a cooling effect. Hansen wrote a program to work out how much aerosols were cooling Venus. He allowed others to use his program to work out how much aerosols were cooling Earth. This does not mean that he thought the Earth would cool in the future; indeed, he was one of the first to point out that the greenhouse effect would be stronger than the aerosol cooling effect. He has since been proved correct.

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
Sorry, to disappoint, but I could not care less about "more aggressive climate change mitigation policies" since I regard them all as feckless wastes of money and effort. The link made a useful point about aerosols, that's all.

Sorry, but if you give a reference, you can't both rely on it to support your argument and discard the bits you don't like. That's irrational.

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
Sorry, but if you give a reference, you can't both rely on it to support your argument and discard the bits you don't like. That's irrational.

Of course I can. I cited it to support a specific point. Anything else was superfluous.

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
Of course I can. I cited it to support a specific point. Anything else was superfluous.

Don't be silly. Either your source is authoritative or it isn't. It can't be both!

Jack Hays · Dec 5, 2017

Surface Detail said:
Don't be silly. Either your source is authoritative or it isn't. It can't be both!

Of course it can. Sources are accurate in one thing and inaccurate in another all the time.

longview · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
Sorry, to disappoint, but I could not care less about "more aggressive climate change mitigation policies" since I regard them all as feckless wastes of money and effort. The link made a useful point about aerosols, that's all.

We are often told that CO2 must be causing the warming because " there is no other explanation!"
Since we do not have good surface power measurements from before regulations started clearing the aerosols,
Some of the warming could simply be a factor of clearer skies.

Threegoofs · Dec 5, 2017

bubbabgone said:
James Hansen went for the global cooling deal then but insists that THIS time, oh yes THIS time, he's certain it's global warming and don't be fooled by the pause.

Sure looks like he’s right, based on the data.

And given that the temperature predictions he presented publicly 30 years ago were pretty spot on, that must be why virtually every scientific society in the world agrees with him.

But you, of course, know more than the guys who study this....[emoji849]

Surface Detail · Dec 5, 2017

Jack Hays said:
Of course it can. Sources are accurate in one thing and inaccurate in another all the time.

It makes no sense at all to accept the basis for a conclusion but then simply reject the conclusion. That is just irrational.

The Origin of the 1970's Global Cooling Scare

Jack Hays

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Jack Hays

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Jack Hays

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Jack Hays

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