# Does anyone have the 1980s article about climate change making Chicago winters worse? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2019, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670 "2019-01-30T12:37:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![J2bryson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a4c791/32.png) [@J2bryson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J2bryson)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/1 "2019-01-30T12:37:55Z")
I remember first reading that global warming will cause climate oscillations and colder winters in Chicago back in the 1980s in the Straight Dope in the Chicago Reader. I’m trying to find that column to show we’ve expected weather like this for decades, but I can’t find it on line. What proportion of your old columns made it onto this site? Does anyone have that old column sitting around? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/2 "2019-01-30T16:13:25Z")
In the absence of a factual reply, I thought this was pertinent: > [@](#): > > ATTENTION: Due to the EXTREME COLD weather, all criminal activity and acts of stupidity and foolishness has been cancelled. Even Elsa has been placed under arrest with NO BOND until further notice. Thank you for your attention and understanding to this matter. Respectfully, the McLean Police Dept. > > [McLean Police Department - ATTENTION: Due to the EXTREME COLD weather, all criminal activity and acts of stupidity and foolishness has been cancelled. Even Elsa has been placed under arrest by Hanahan Police Department in South Carolina with NO BOND until further notice. Thank you for your attention and understanding to this matter. Respectfully, the McLean Police Dept. | Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/930505990434093/photos/a.930541640430528/1248338165317539/?type=3&theater) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/3 "2019-01-30T16:26:49Z")
> [@J2bryson](#): > > I remember first reading that global warming will cause climate oscillations and colder winters in Chicago back in the 1980s in the Straight Dope in the Chicago Reader. I’m trying to find that column to show we’ve expected weather like this for decades, but I can’t find it on line. What proportion of your old columns made it onto this site? Does anyone have that old column sitting around? I don’t recall that column, but ISTR hearing in the late-'80s about how global warming could shut down the thermohaline conveyor and cause a new ice age. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/4 "2019-01-30T17:05:52Z")
Don’t recall climate change in the context of global warming being a widespread topic in the early 80’s. Mostly they were talking about ozone holes and nuclear winters. Which eventually led to concerns about man’s impact on the earths weather patterns . ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/5 "2019-01-30T17:43:21Z")
UW Climatologist, Cliff Mass says no. > [@Cliff Mass](#): > > The coldest temperatures of the winter have hit the central and eastern U.S. and misinformation about its origin is now spreading around social and traditional media. > > President Trump, of course, tweets about the cold wave, suggesting that global warming has left us, and hopes for its return. Absolutely untrue. A cold wave, such as the one hitting the U.S. says nothing about the existence of global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases. > > These claims are clearly false: the observational evidence is very clear: there are LESS cold waves today than in the past. Which is exactly what we would expect in a warming world. > > Global warming is NOT causing more cold extremes, it is doing the OPPOSITE. > > Let me show you analyses produced by U.S. government experts. > > The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did a study of the trend of cold wave days from 1948 to 2015. The found very few locations where cold waves were becoming more frequent, but lots of locations in the western U.S. and the East Coast where cold waves were become less frequent, with the West Coast showing a huge decline of cold waves (see below). Full post & supporting data summaries [here.](https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/01/are-cold-waves-increasing-under-global_30.html) ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/6 "2019-01-30T18:04:21Z")
The explanation for the cold snap is that global warming is weakening the jet stream and this results in the polar vortex escaping the polar regions. Unfortunately it seems to favor the eastern half of North America when it does escape. It’s happened before, it’ll happen more frequently in the future. I don’t know how much of this was known in the 80s, but I couldn’t find any Straight Dope column about it from that period. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/7 "2019-01-30T18:58:13Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > I don’t recall that column, but ISTR hearing in the late-'80s about how global warming could shut down the thermohaline conveyor and cause a new ice age. I think you’re probably misremembering, or perhaps conflating it with some popular (and unscientific) stories from the 70s about a coming ice age, like the infamous _Newsweek_ cover story from 1975. Or you might possibly be thinking of “Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse?”, a commentary that the climate scientist Wallace Broecker published in _Nature_ in 1987. Broecker is generally credited with first articulating the mechanisms and importance of the thermohaline circulation. He prepared his comments for an appearance before a US Senate committee in 1986 chaired by Al Gore and sent them to _Nature_ the next year. The point of the commentary was not about an ice age, though, and I’m not aware of any serious science ever having made such a claim. His point was that climate change can be abrupt and unpredictable, saying that paleoclimate records indicate that “_Earth’s climate does not respond to forcing in a smooth and gradual way. Rather, it responds in sharp jumps which involve large-scale reorganization of Earth’s system. If this reading of the natural record is correct, then we must consider the possibility that the main responses of the system to our provocation of the atmosphere will come in jumps whose timing and magnitude are unpredictable_”. The point being that the THC is a vast oceanic conveyor of heat and deep ocean overturning circulation whose weakening or disruption could have powerful and abrupt _ **regional** _ climate effects. But in general, the ability of any circulation system to affect _ **global** _ climate and average global temperature is intrinsically limited because (again, generally speaking) such systems tend not to affect the earth’s total energy budget, but just move heat around. Still, systems that expose and equalize temperature differentials from deep oceans can temporarily raise or lower global temperatures, and more importantly, poleward heat transports that melt more Arctic ice can accelerate global warming by darkening Arctic land and ocean surfaces. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/8 "2019-01-31T22:05:06Z")
[Moderating] **bob++** , let’s save the joke answers for after a question has been addressed, please. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-have-the-1980s-article-about-climate-change-making-chicago-winters-worse/828670/9 "2019-01-31T23:34:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > [Moderating] > > **bob++** , let’s save the joke answers for after a question has been addressed, please. Oops sorry!.. Hangs head in shame.