87. Chris Dunford, Maryland, December 7th, 2009, 11:09 a.m., on the Dot Earth blog of the New York Times in answer to wmar's incessant lies (comment #74)
#74:
wmar: Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."
Oh, come off it. If you insist on copying & pasting entire articles, please choose ones that have some tiny bit of validity.
The myth that scientists were widely predicting a coming ice age in the 70s has been thoroughly and conclusively debunked. For example, the AMS reviewed the scientific literature from that period and found no support for it. In fact, in the 15 years from 1965 to 1979, a grand total of seven published papers predicted cooling--that's about one paper every two years—and some of those predictions were VERY long term, as in 10,000 years or more. In contrast, over 60% of climate-related papers were already, in the dawn of climate science, predicting warming—despite the fact that it plainly WAS cooling at the time.
Now, the article provides no evidence that "our government pushed 'the coming ice age,' " but let's look at some of what it does say:
wmar: Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age."
And ....? Somebody wrote a book and got it published. What's "dutiful" about it? Why does the article fail to mention "Hothouse Earth", published two years earlier, in 1975? Was that also dutiful? Was the government hedging its bets, "pushing" both sides simultaneously so as to reap political power or to encourage the one-world government no matter what happened to the climate?
wmar:
I can't find this article, so I don't know what it actually says beyond that single line, which is all the the "skeptics" ever seem to quote. I do find a 1975 article titled "Warming trend seen in climate", which says that "[I]n what direction and why [the world's climate is changing] are subjects of deepening debate." Your cut & pasted article oddly fails to mention that.there's not much of a consensus at the agenda-pushing Times, eh?
wmar:
Tell ya what. Why don't you go read that article and look for all the predictions. I'll wait here.
Ah, I see you're back. Didn't find any, did you? What they're talking about is observed cooling, not predicted cooling. Newsweek does use the phrase "these predictions", but its reference is ambiguous: In context, do they mean predictions of cooling, or predictions of the EFFECTS of cooling IF it continued? The previous paragraph was talking about "a drastic decline in food production."
Certainly there are no explicit predictions from any scientist. None of the three named scientists who ARE quoted make any predictions.
You'll find the same thing if you read the equivalent article in Time, titled "Another Ice Age?". Again they are talking about observations, not predictions, and engaging in some "What if?" speculation. The "skeptics", however, typically quote only the article's title.
wmar:
They did say that—in reference to natural climate cycles.So, they aren't talking about the next fifty years, are they? Aren't they talking about the next ten thousand years or so?
But wait, there's more. Here's what else they said—in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE: "[I]t is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path." Your article omitted this bit, accidentally I am sure.
I won't even get into the "Greenland used to be green" foolishness or the part where he essentially says, "I don't really understand Gore's personal carbon trading, but I'm sure it's very bad." The point is, the "skeptics" write amateurish articles like this, nothing but cherry picked quotes taken out of context, outright falsehoods, and unsupported claims of the government "pushing" some secret agenda, while simultaneously whining about not being taken seriously. It's not that hard to understand why.
Oh, come off it. If you insist on copying & pasting entire articles, please choose ones that have some tiny bit of validity.
The myth that scientists were widely predicting a coming ice age in the 70s has been thoroughly and conclusively debunked. For example, the AMS reviewed the scientific literature from that period and found no support for it. In fact, in the 15 years from 1965 to 1979, a grand total of seven published papers predicted cooling--that's about one paper every two years—and some of those predictions were VERY long term, as in 10,000 years or more. In contrast, over 60% of climate-related papers were already, in the dawn of climate science, predicting warming—despite the fact that it plainly WAS cooling at the time.
Now, the article provides no evidence that "our government pushed 'the coming ice age,' " but let's look at some of what it does say:
And ....? Somebody wrote a book and got it published. What's "dutiful" about it? Why does the article fail to mention "Hothouse Earth", published two years earlier, in 1975? Was that also dutiful? Was the government hedging its bets, "pushing" both sides simultaneously so as to reap political power or to encourage the one-world government no matter what happened to the climate?
I can't find this article, so I don't know what it actually says beyond that single line, which is all the the "skeptics" ever seem to quote. I do find a 1975 article titled "Warming trend seen in climate", which says that "[I]n what direction and why [the world's climate is changing] are subjects of deepening debate." Your cut & pasted article oddly fails to mention that.there's not much of a consensus at the agenda-pushing Times, eh?
Tell ya what. Why don't you go read that article and look for all the predictions. I'll wait here.
Ah, I see you're back. Didn't find any, did you? What they're talking about is observed cooling, not predicted cooling. Newsweek does use the phrase "these predictions", but its reference is ambiguous: In context, do they mean predictions of cooling, or predictions of the EFFECTS of cooling IF it continued? The previous paragraph was talking about "a drastic decline in food production."
Certainly there are no explicit predictions from any scientist. None of the three named scientists who ARE quoted make any predictions.
You'll find the same thing if you read the equivalent article in Time, titled "Another Ice Age?". Again they are talking about observations, not predictions, and engaging in some "What if?" speculation. The "skeptics", however, typically quote only the article's title.
They did say that—in reference to natural climate cycles.So, they aren't talking about the next fifty years, are they? Aren't they talking about the next ten thousand years or so?
But wait, there's more. Here's what else they said—in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE: "[I]t is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path." Your article omitted this bit, accidentally I am sure.
I won't even get into the "Greenland used to be green" foolishness or the part where he essentially says, "I don't really understand Gore's personal carbon trading, but I'm sure it's very bad." The point is, the "skeptics" write amateurish articles like this, nothing but cherry picked quotes taken out of context, outright falsehoods, and unsupported claims of the government "pushing" some secret agenda, while simultaneously whining about not being taken seriously. It's not that hard to understand why.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the re-post. I really don't understand how the "skeptical" camp gets away with this kind of trivially disproved malarkey year after year. I guess there are just too many who are willing to eat whatever they're fed and are too lazy to do a few minutes' research on their own.
Chris, you well know that the fossil-fuel industry has been behind the manipulation of public opinion on this matter for the past 8 or more years or even since Kyoto in 1997.
There is also research that shows that there are genetic reasons for some people having conservative mind sets. I can see the evolutionary purpose for this. If we all went off exploring that would not benefit the group in the long term. Someone had to be there to constrain the explorers from time to time.
Now, however, this is being exploited to the detriment of the group.
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