George Will and the 1970s-Style Global Cooling 'Scare'

[RTFirefly]

George Will has an obsession with the global-cooling ‘scare’ of the 1970s. He’s written about it in columns today, last year, in 2006, in 2004, 1997, and whaddaya know, all the way back in 1992.

Shorter George Will, across the decades, right up through today: all the scientists were worried about global cooling and an impending ice age back in the early to mid 1970s, and they were wrong, so there’s no reason to take them seriously about global warming today.

(Yep, George Will is a global warming denier. One more reason not to take him seriously.)

The question for debate here is: was there a scientific consensus at the time that we had to brace ourselves for an impending and seriously consequential cooling of the planet? Or is George F. Will bullshitting us?

Here’s Will, from today’s column:

In the 1970s, “a major cooling of the planet” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950” (New York Times, May 21, 1975). Although some disputed that the “cooling trend” could result in “a return to another ice age” (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” involving “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively). The “continued rapid cooling of the Earth” (Global Ecology, 1971) meant that “a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975). “The world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). Because of “ominous signs” that “the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down,” meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that “the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century,” perhaps triggering catastrophic famines (Newsweek cover story, “The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975). Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were retreating from Central European forests, the North Atlantic was “cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool,” glaciers had “begun to advance” and “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).

Lessee, who do we have here? One refereed journal (Science), a lot of mainstream press (the New York Times twice, the Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek), a magazine of an environmental advocacy group (International Wildlife), a couple of generally pretty good popularizers of scientific news (Science News, Science Digest), and one that I can’t find in order to categorize (Global Ecology).

I remember some of those articles from when they were originally published, and what I recall was more of “this is an interesting but speculative possibility” rather than “we’d better start stockpiling food and fuel.” I don’t recall any sense of alarm about it, any sense that anyone was really trying to wake up the public to get ready to do something. And Lord knows there was plenty of that at the time, about a host of issues.

Let’s take a look at that “others anticipated “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” involving “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively)” part, because if there’s any meat hidden in that pile of cotton-candy cites, that’s where it is.

Per RealClimate, here’s the full context of that quote from Science magazine, the one peer-reviewed source in the pile:

Future climate. Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth’s orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted.

One approach to forecasting the natural long-term climate trend is to estimate the time constants of response necessary to explain the observed phase relationships between orbital variation and climatic change, and then to use those time constants in the exponential-response model. When such a model is applied to Vernekar's (39) astronomical projections, the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate (80). 

Underlining mine, to make it easier to find the excerpt Will uses.

And doesn’t that just crumble in your hand? Based on orbital variation alone, we could have a trend, over the next 20,000 years, towards the extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation that Will says they were warning us about - BUT that applied “only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels.”

Whatever the scientific consensus was at the time, George Will is certainly bullshitting us about whether his cites imply the consensus he claims.

[GIGObuster]

IIRC **jshore **and others pointed out before that indeed there was no consensus then for global cooling coming soon.

IIRC you are also an statistician, so please hang around when the expected deniers that claim to be great statisticians show up.

[jshore]

I don’t have much more to add to the OP’s very good deconstruction of the “global cooling” myth except to point out that there is also a more recent RealClimate article discussing a paper that Connelley and co-author have now published documenting that even during the 1970s the peer reviewed literature had many more articles on global warming than cooling…So, not only was there no consensus on global cooling, it wasn’t even close to being a majority opinion in the peer-reviewed literature!

It is also worth emphasizing the 1975 NAS/NRC report mentioned in the OP’s Real Climate cite. This shows that, far from the scientific community as a whole going off the handle in any direction, they were in fact very cautious to say that, while they had some understanding of the various influences on climate, we could not yet predict the future course of the climate. One can compare this to the current view of the National Academy, along with the analogous bodies in the other G8+5 nations.

[jshore]

Just to add, perhaps the one useful lesson here from George Will et al is that one is right to be cautious about getting one’s scientific conclusions from the mainstream press. Much better to turn directly to reputable scientific sources like the IPCC or National Academy of Sciences. Of course, this is particularly true when the mainstream press has people like George Will in it blatantly quoting from the peer-reviewed literature out-of-context. (That example in the OP has to be about the worst example of an out-of-context quote that I have ever seen.)

[elucidator]

Hmmm. If we make him Commissioner of Baseball, will he STFU?

[Magiver]

As much as I’ve enjoyed the tails of carbon woe from the jet-setting scientist Al Gore I’m left with a growing number of scientists who disagree with the current atmosphere of climatology.

Should I wait until there is parity between the different opinions before I listen to both sides or do I continue to light an LED candle for the doomed planet in blissful acceptance of the status quo?

[Typo_Knig]

@elucidator

Hmmm. If we make him Commissioner of Baseball, will he STFU?

Nope, he’ll just get all metaphorical on us.

[elucidator]

@Magiver

As much as I’ve enjoyed the tails of carbon woe from the jet-setting scientist Al Gore I’m left with a growing number of scientists who disagree with the current atmosphere of climatology.

Should I wait until there is parity between the different opinions before I listen to both sides or do I continue to light an LED candle for the doomed planet in blissful acceptance of the status quo?

I’m sure many of us are somewhat surprised to hear of this “growing number”. Perhaps you can share with us? I’ve heard this in passing from others, but they were regrettably busy with pressing appointments, and hadn’t the time to specify this unimpeachable evidence.

As to President Elect Gore, I’ve little doubt that he has his faults, and hypocrisy may well be amongst them. But the issue is the message, not the messenger. His personal failings mean little to me, and don’t mean shit to a tree.

[RTFirefly]

@elucidator

Hmmm. If we make him Commissioner of Baseball, will he STFU?

I’d gladly see him appointed Commissioner of Baseball if he had to give up his role as pundit in order to do so.

[rant about Will and other op-ed columnists]
Will apparently has this reputation as a very intelligent, erudite commentator. I don’t know what he’s like on TV, because I don’t watch any to speak of. But in his syndicated column, he’s a total moron who doesn’t even write particularly well.

With only a few exceptions, the Washington Post op-ed page resembles nothing more than a flock of tenured professors at a backwater college who know it doesn’t matter whether they do their jobs well or poorly, and have been phoning it in for years. But even among that sad group, the lack of quality of Will’s columns manages to stand out.
[/rant]

[elucidator]

He should eschew obfuscatory sesquipedalianism.

[Rand_Rover]

@elucidator

I’m sure many of us are somewhat surprised to hear of this “growing number”. Perhaps you can share with us? I’ve heard this in passing from others, but they were regrettably busy with pressing appointments, and hadn’t the time to specify this unimpeachable evidence.

Start here: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

As to President Elect Gore, I’ve little doubt that he has his faults, and hypocrisy may well be amongst them. But the issue is the message, not the messenger. His personal failings mean little to me, and don’t mean shit to a tree.

The messenger is getting rich from the message. Al Gore is James Taggart come to life and write large, getting the government to enact policies to line his pockets.

[The_Second_Stone]

George Will is generally an idiot. Because some scientists were wrong about a climate prediction in the distant past, a consensus of all peer reviewed climate scientists forty years later must be wrong? I’ll concede that George Will has the ability to write pretty, but his logic is no better than that of run of the mill conservatives: a collection of prejudices and fallacies. (And by prejudices I mean preconceived ideas, not racism. Although I will say that he is oddly obsessed with black people.)

[wevets]

@Rand_Rover

Start here: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Your source doesn’t seem to be well-thought of. In fact, he appears to have an award “Guardian columnist George Monbiot has just launched the Christopher Booker prize, to be awarded to whoever “manages, in the course of 2009, to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change.” It’s named after a columnist at the competing Telegraph, a man who manages to get just about everything wrong, and not just about climate change.” according to Greg Laden. Any reason we should believe Booker has a shred of truth in his column?

[wevets]

Oops - that should say “James Hrynyshyn” instead of “Greg Laden” above - they both blog over at scienceblogs.com

[GIGObuster]

From Rand Rover’s cite:

This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

This is can only be described as Horse Shit.

To be canceled, 2008 should have reached the temperature levels of the early years of the 20th century:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

There was a drop in 2008, but even more severe drops can be seen in the Global Temperature graphs on the way to the hotter current years. The conclusion seen in many other sources, that the last 10 years (including 2008) are still among the hottest in more than 100 years still stands.

I will let others show how misleading that piece is in the other points.

[elucidator]

And what’s up with this “James Taggart” stuff? Is that a LOTR reference? A porn star?

[wevets]

@elucidator

And what’s up with this “James Taggart” stuff? Is that a LOTR reference? A porn star?

A two-dimensionally evil character from Atlas Shrugged. Taggart is the biggest strawman of Rand’s (Ayn, not Rover) “badly-made wicker man*”-filled polemic.

*Borrowed from another Doper’s synopsis of Atlas Shrugged - I loved that turn of phrase.

[Magiver]

@elucidator

I’m sure many of us are somewhat surprised to hear of this “growing number”. Perhaps you can share with us? I’ve heard this in passing from others, but they were regrettably busy with pressing appointments, and hadn’t the time to specify this unimpeachable evidence.

Geeze, I dunna, just keep hearing it on the news which would be from one of the big 3 broadcast networks (I like variety). Maybe they haven’t been told to suppress it yet. I just [googled it on wiki](global warming,scientific consensus). I suppose there are more. Wouldn’t matter to you anyway.

@elucidator

President Elect Gore

HaHaHaHaHaHaHa, is there global warming in your alternate universe?

[GIGObuster]

@elucidator

And what’s up with this “James Taggart” stuff? Is that a LOTR reference? A porn star?

A reference to Atlas Shrugged, as **wevets **reports.

List of Atlas Shrugged characters | James Taggart

The Looters
A group of antagonistic characters sometimes referred to as “James Taggart and his friends”. They are similar to the Moochers. The Looters consist of men and women who use force to obtain value from those who produce it. They seek to destroy the producers despite the fact that they are dependent upon them

IMHO it is people like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-undead) who fits the image of James Taggart:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/24/inhofe-third-reich/

In an interview, he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical comparison.

“It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,” Inhofe said.

…

UPDATE: Inhofe also compared An Inconvenient Truth to Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf.

[Fubaya]

I had this notion thrown up years ago by a global warming skeptic and decided to search around. At the time, I found a site which attempted to compile articles from the 70-80s about global cooling but could only come up with a handful which also crumbled upon reading more than a snippet. I believe they even offered a reward for anyone who could find more, but I can’t find that site now. If George Will can cite all those papers, he should be smart enough to google 70s global cooling.