# Is global warming falsifiable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 6, 2014, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786 "2014-05-06T07:30:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/101 "2014-05-14T05:59:56Z")
Just one more note **Tethered Kite** : Many magazines of the 60’s and 70’s did include lots of advertisements from oil companies, I do think that many media companies back then would not had wish to go against a mayor sponsor. And considering how little mainstream media was talking about the issue (or disparaging it like FOX does) I do think that the problem persists. I have seen surveys that show how the so called “liberal media” was not talking much about the subject. We’ll see if the latest reports will convince the media companies that the recent flurry of their articles about the issue should be a new normal. One very ironic ad from then: > **[1962 oil company ad boasts about ability to melt glaciers](https://boingboing.net/2010/08/15/1962-oil-company-ad.html)** > > EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER! This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies- if converted into… > [@](#): > > 1962 oil company ad boasts about ability to melt glaciers As it turns out, the maker of one of the articles that is continued to be quoted by contrarians as the source of the “ice age is coming” is chagrined that his piece has been misused all these years. > **[How the "Global Cooling" Story Came to Be](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be/)** > > Nine paragraphs written for Newsweek in 1975 continue to trump 40 years of climate science. It is a record that has its author amazed > [@](#): > > The stories about global cooling “are convenient for people to trot out and wave around,” he said, but they miss the point: > > “What’s clear is we are a force of nature. Human activity – the burning of fossil fuels and land change – is having a massive influence. We are in the midst of this giant geoengineering experiment.” > > And, Gwynne protested: “I wrote this in 1975!” > > Born in England, Gwynne has written for a slew of American and foreign outlets. He left Newsweek in 1981, he ran Technology Review at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, covered space for High Technology, worked for The Scientist in Washington, moved to Hong Kong to run Asia Technology for Dow Jones, and returned to the United States to freelance in 1994. > > He remains the North American correspondent for Physics World, based in England, from which perspective he views the “weird and wonderful” American relationship with science. “It’s been American science and scientists – particularly NASA – that showed the climate is changing,” he noted. Yet, unlike in most of Europe, American politicians remain divided over climate science. > > The unsavory afterlife of his 1975 story clearly has not soured his journalistic fervor. “I’ve been able to write for a lot of different audiences, physicists, engineers and the general public,” Gwynne said. “I’ve been willing to accept that some of that is misused and misinterpreted.” ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/102 "2014-05-14T07:17:10Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global\_cooling > > I find many of quotes regarding Mr. Watt’s speech but no definitive evidence. But that doesn’t make it a myth that the message in the seventies was that the earth was cooling. Very first paragraph from your link. > [@](#): > > Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. **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** , i.e., a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but underwent global warming throughout the 20th century.[1] So, basically, _exactly what I said_. I’m perfectly willing to believe that at some point, a prominent somebody at a prominent location held a speech talking about how we were facing global cooling. I don’t deny that numerous magazines and popular publications touted it. It was a hypothesis floating around. However, it had little traction in the scientific literature at the time, was based on a human-influenced condition which changed due to a concerted effort to get our act together. Your assertion that this is somehow some knock against the science is ludicrous. The myth is not “some people predicted global cooling”, but rather that there was enough panic and confusion about global cooling to throw the current scientific consensus into question. There wasn’t. But even if there _was_ a significant body of research in the 70s predicting global cooling; even if the spread had been reversed and the vast majority of papers predicted cooling (as opposed to reality, where the vast majority predicted warming) and did so for spurious reasons (again, the major points in the cooling articles had to do with aerosol emissions, which dropped heavily), how the hell would you get from “We were wrong back then” to “We are wrong now”? In the 1500s, we were wrong about our position in the local universe; does that invalidate our current understanding of cosmology? No! Because anyone can recognize that the field of cosmology truly came into its own in the 1900s. Similarly, the study of climate change progressed in an exponential way throughout the late 1900s. Our understanding of paleoclimate has improved to an almost unthinkable degree since the 90s. The output of peer-reviewed literature on the subject has gone from under 100 papers in the entire decade of the 1970-1980 to over 13,900 between 1991 and 2012. Think about that for a moment. This argument is just wrong in every single place it could be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/103 "2014-05-14T14:56:01Z")
Thanks for being patient enough to provide me with some information. I am learning. Today I heard on the radio that the French Foreign Minister has stated that we have five-hundred days to avoid climate chaos. Heh. It’s the hype and partisanship around these issues which make them so confusing for a layperson. I’d imagine scientists would prefer that politics take a back seat. But then again, they need their funding. So. Please carry on. Sorry to sidetrack. Reading with interest. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/104 "2014-05-14T15:17:05Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > Thanks for being patient enough to provide me with some information. I am learning. > > Today I heard on the radio that the French Foreign Minister has stated that we have five-hundred days to avoid climate chaos. Heh. It’s the hype and partisanship around these issues which make them so confusing for a layperson. I’d imagine scientists would prefer that politics take a back seat. But then again, they need their funding. So. Not relevant, as the Weekly Standard reported: “It is unclear what the foreign minister had in mind with the 500 days. However, France is scheduled to host the “21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change” in December 2015, about 565 days from now.” So, mostly grasping at straws for false equivalencies. In any case, one has to stop bringing what politicians advice, this is about the scientific falsification of it, and how the ones that attempt to falsify it are failing. With efforts that somehow many contrians at the same time are telling you that are not possible and yet they show that indeed this is science by their repeated real and practical efforts at falsifying this. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/105 "2014-05-14T18:11:13Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > At the first Earth Day in 1970 we were told that all the scientific evidence pointed to rapid global cooling. I’ve seen plenty of scientific contradictions in my life so I tend to take a _follow the money/power_ viewpoint. > > "During the first Earth Day in 1970 Kenneth Watt of UC Davis said, ‘If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.’ " The only idiots I find in denial about the global cooling scare, tend to be rabid warmists who can’t stand the thought that anyone would mistrust them. They don’t realize that by claiming there was no global cooling scare, they lose all credibility. I think they also tend to be too young to know much about history. Nobody who is old enough to have lived at the time would be dumb enough to deny it happened. > [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > Because this was presented to me as a scientific fact I was naïve enough to believe it was true. Weren’t we all? I do remember a few skeptics who tried to speak out, but they were considered to be in denial. > [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > Haven’t got any investment in it either way but I take a skeptical viewpoint. I tend to act to reduce carbon output and warming, even while being a skeptic. It doesn’t hurt to reduce consumption and plant trees. > [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global\_cooling > > I find many of quotes regarding Mr. Watt’s speech but no definitive evidence. But that doesn’t make it a myth that the message in the seventies was that the earth was cooling. The only people calling it a myth are propagandists. They seem to think that if it happened, it somehow makes their position weak. You can even show them the report to Congress, all about climate change and global cooling, and it won’t matter a bit. They want to tell you the media made it up. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/106 "2014-05-14T18:18:21Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Very first paragraph from your link. > > > [@](#): > > > > 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 The source of that claim is the IPCC report. The most biased possible view you can find. But don’t take my word for this. The way they slip it in is slick, but in fact “a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s” is complete bullshit. That’s the sort of thing that makes me skeptical of everything they claim. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/107 "2014-05-14T18:22:40Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > “a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s” is complete bullshit. Can you expound on why that statement is complete bullshit? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/108 "2014-05-14T18:49:17Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > The only idiots I find in denial about the global cooling scare, tend to be rabid warmists who can’t stand the thought that anyone would mistrust them. They don’t realize that by claiming there was no global cooling scare, they lose all credibility. I think they also tend to be too young to know much about history. Nobody who is old enough to have lived at the time would be dumb enough to deny it happened. Charming \*\*FXMastermind \*\*going for the insults as usual. And as Usual he is missing the point, the problem was that the “scare” about global cooling came from the popular press, not the scientists. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > Weren’t we all? I do remember a few skeptics who tried to speak out, but they were considered to be in denial. It was not a scientific fact, one of the articles that started that scare mentioned “Climatolical Cassandras” but the reported never mentioned who those Cassanddras were. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > I tend to act to reduce carbon output and warming, even while being a skeptic. It doesn’t hurt to reduce consumption and plant trees. The only people calling it a myth are propagandists. They seem to think that if it happened, it somehow makes their position weak. As it was shown, the only effort here is to deny that the scientists were not overall following the mistakes and hype of popular media. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > You can even show them the report to Congress, all about climate change and global cooling, and it won’t matter a bit. They want to tell you the media made it up. And this is because the reports FX is talking about did not happen, there was no consensus then, only that the majority of papers reported that warming was coming. there were some papers that talked about cooling, but concentrating on the aerosols, so back then the reports from the National Science Foundation were that they could not predict one way or the other… yet. [http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-cooling](http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-cooling) ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/109 "2014-05-14T19:02:09Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > Can you expound on why that statement is complete bullshit? It would be a long and complicated answer. But yes, I certainly could, and the evidence is available online. It would be a simple and straightforward as explaining [why the globe has cooled since 2002](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716196), with winter trends showing NH cooling since 1990. In other words, it would be a complete waste of time, and simply won’t matter. Facts and science are the last thing that matters in these debates. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/110 "2014-05-14T19:09:39Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > The source of that claim is the IPCC report. The most biased possible view you can find. > > But don’t take my word for this. The way they slip it in is slick, but in fact “a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s” is complete bullshit. That’s the sort of thing that makes me skeptical of everything they claim. I don’t remember global cooling as being that big a deal. It was more like nuclear winter - an idea that a few people floated around that was dramatic enough to have the media pick up and run with it. But it never rose to the level of academic consensus that global warming has. But there were other issues that did. The big one being overpopulation. That certainly had the consensus of scientists on its side. And it was a constant subject of symposia, conferences, etc. Dr. Paul Erlich was a perpetual guest on “The Tonight Show”. Million-selling books like “The Population Bomb” were everywhere. We were being treated to constant papers and reports warning of imminent disaster - the predictions were for millions of people to starve to death by 2000. “Everyone knew” that scientific management of farming, rationing of food by the government and forced birth reduction policies were the way forward. These dire predictions did not come without cost. The human misery caused by China’s one child per family policy has been massive, and will reverberate for decades. Birth control policies were instituted in Africa and elsewhere, and were sometimes tied to other foreign aid. Western intellectuals encouraged people to have small families or no children at all. People were proud of the fact that they weren’t going to bring children into ‘an overcrowded world’. There was a lot of moral preening that could be had by aligning yourself with the doomsayers. And so what happened? All those models and projections turned out to be useless, because as it turns out, studying the past behavior of a complex system is no guarantee to be predictive of what will happen in the future. And what happened is that birth rates started plummeting around the world. And not just in wealthy countries where it could be explained away as a consequence of a modern economy. Even destitute countries like Bangladesh saw their birth rates collapse. I’m not sure we still understand why this happened. We have lots of theories, but none that explain the sudden rapid shift in birthrates across the world. So now, Japan is facing a demographic collapse and may lose half its population in the next few decades. Government planning for retirement programs, predicated on an increasing population boom, suddenly had massive shortfalls. We were so sure the future was going to be full of increasingly young, rapidly growing populations that we were totally unprepared for the demographic transition, our aging workforce, and the reality of an increasing number of retirees being supported by smaller new generations of workers. Huge amounts of money were spent studying the population boom, working out plans to counteract it, and lobbying for government programs to help save the planet. There were sophisticated population models that showed it was absolutely going to happen. The overwhelming consensus of scientists agreed. And they were all wrong. Another example: We have studied the effects of radiation on the ecosystem for a long time. All those nuclear tests included scientific experiments using animals and plants. Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave us a lot of evidence for how humans respond to nuclear radiation. All of that data was used to build models that showed that tens of thousands of people would die from cancers due to the Chernobyl meltdown. Well, Chernobyl was 25 years ago, and enough time has passed that we should be seeing those cancers. But there’s no sign of them. None. No one can find an increase in the types of long-term cancers predicted with a causal link to Chernobyl. The predictions for immediate effects were somewhat better, such as the rise of childhook leukemia immediately after the accident (still way overstated, though), but as the predictions moved out in time, they became pretty much useless. Immunologists and epidemiologists are constantly thwarted by the complex nature of the systems they study and work with. A finding of a causal relationship between two things will be published, and no one can replicate it. Models of disease transmission based on previous patterns utterly fail to predict what actually happens during the next outbreak. Treatments which work on one person have no effect on another, for inexplicable reasons. Economists have the same problem. They think they understand how the economy works and make bold predictions about what will happen if policy A is followed vs policy B. And those predictions almost always fail. But because we don’t have control groups and can’t re-run experiments, they spend a lot of time coming up with post-hoc explanations for the failure of prediction. “Well, the recession was much deeper than we thought!” “Our predictions failed because of an unusually cold winter!” “Our predictions would have been right, but the policy as implemented wasn’t exactly what we wanted!” There’s always an excuse - but the predictions don’t get any better. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/111 "2014-05-14T19:09:39Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > It would be a long and complicated answer. But yes, I certainly could, and the evidence is available online. It would be a simple and straightforward as explaining [why the globe has cooled since 2002](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716196), with winter trends showing NH cooling since 1990. > > In other words, it would be a complete waste of time, and simply won’t matter. Facts and science are the last thing that matters in these debates. \*\*Farin \*\*was referring to the 40’s to the 70’s, \*\*FXMastermind \*\*is not paying any attention. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/112 "2014-05-14T19:13:11Z")
Everyone - EVERYone - dial it down a notch. Or bad things will happen. Is that clear? ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/113 "2014-05-14T19:13:53Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > It would be a long and complicated answer. But yes, I certainly could, and the evidence is available online. It would be a simple and straightforward as explaining [why the globe has cooled since 2002](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=716196), with winter trends showing NH cooling since 1990. > > In other words, it would be a complete waste of time, and simply won’t matter. Facts and science are the last thing that matters in these debates. …Did you even read the part that I’d selected from your post? What the hoohaw are you talking about? > [@GIGObuster](#): > > \*\*Farin \*\*was referring to the 40’s to the 70’s, \*\*FXMastermind \*\*is not paying any attention. Oh, good. I’m not crazy. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/114 "2014-05-14T19:18:04Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > The source of that claim is the IPCC report. The most biased possible view you can find. > > But don’t take my word for this. The way they slip it in is slick, but in fact “a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s” is complete bullshit. That’s the sort of thing that makes me skeptical of everything they claim. Why do you say that? It doesn’t even look that ‘slight’ to me. There was a long, and fairly strong cooling trend during that time. Have a look at the [instrumented temperature record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.svg). The 5-year running mean began a decline in 1941 that didn’t stop until about 1949. And the mean didn’t return to the 1941 level again until 1978. In other words, if you cherry-picked 1941 as a start point, you could have drawn a trend line in 1977 showing a decline in global temperature for 36 years. And yet, that zone existed in a larger pattern of unquestionably rising temperatures. There is so much noise in climate data that even long departures like this are not necessarily indicative of anything other than that we don’t really understand why global temperatures behave the way they do in the short term. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/115 "2014-05-14T19:20:59Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > “Well, the recession was much deeper than we thought!” “Our predictions failed because of an unusually cold winter!” “Our predictions would have been right, but the policy as implemented wasn’t exactly what we wanted!” There’s always an excuse - but the predictions don’t get any better. Well, just saying that I already posted several from the climate scientists that were on the money, there is a reason why the Meteorological Society of America gave a medal to Jensen. And not to the few contrarian scientists that claim that the models from most of the experts should not be used, those contrarians are not good sources when their predictions are the ones that are not panning out. > **[Lindzen Illusion #1: We Should Have Seen More Warming](https://skepticalscience.com/lindzen-illusion-1-should-have-seen-more-warming.html)** > > Australia has begun to discuss the possibility of implementing a carbon tax, and this seems to have lit a fire under the purportedly non-political global warming 'skeptic' movement.  David Evans and Jo Nova have spoken at anti-carbon tax rallies,... ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/116 "2014-05-14T20:08:18Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > there is a reason why the Meteorological Society of America gave a medal to Jensen. Correcting that, that was _James Hansen_. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/117 "2014-05-14T20:16:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Well, Chernobyl was 25 years ago, and enough time has passed that we should be seeing those cancers. But there’s no sign of them. None. [None?](http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/) ---
**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:** [May 14, 2014, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/118 "2014-05-14T20:22:58Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > I find many of quotes regarding Mr. Watt’s speech but no definitive evidence. But that doesn’t make it a myth that the message in the seventies was that the earth was cooling. > [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > Thanks for being patient enough to provide me with some information. I am learning. There’s a good description here of how the “global cooling” myth originated – it’s well worth a read: > **[RealClimate: The global cooling myth](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/)** > > RealClimate: Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full... I know from direct personal experience that they’ve got it right – the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on climate change in the 70s that I once had a copy of and that I might still be able to find that was representative of the science of the day. It was very clear about how little was then understood about climate processes and how far we were from being able to reach even tentative conclusions – “_we are just now beginning to learn the right questions to ask_” is more or less a verbatim quote as near as I remember it. Science will always be exceedingly conservative about claims of what is known and what can be conclusively determined, and those who don’t think so are clearly not scientists and clearly don’t understand the processes of evidence-based inquiry and confirmation by which science progresses. But then, as now, the popular media continues to distort and misunderstand and sensationalize scientific statements, and for many lay persons, this is the only view they have of the science. At that time, there was relatively poor understanding of the balance of different climate forcings and little was known about the effects of aerosols, so there was no clear consensus on where the climate was heading. Much of the “global cooling” myth came from a front-page Newsweek story from that era speculating about a “coming ice age” that was a highly sensationalized and irresponsible misrepresentation of the scientific knowledge of the day. Sadly, today’s mass-market “journalism” isn’t always much better. Anyway, read the story at the link if you want to better understand the background. Misrepresenting what the science was saying either then or now, or believing that tens of thousands of climate scientists around the world are “just in it for the grant money” isn’t a very productive kind of discourse and doesn’t reflect the real world in any way. It’s just straight out of the worst kind of junk journalism and conspiracy theory. @ **Sam Stone** : I owe you a response [on this long post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17373693&postcount=91) but as I’ve just discovered once again, any time I sit down to post anything on this sort of topic it always ends up eating up far more time than I thought it would. You cover a lot of ground in that one. When I have a few minutes I’ll get to it. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/119 "2014-05-14T20:52:15Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > [None?](http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/) From your cite - > [@](#): > > While scientists have conducted studies to determine whether cancers in many other organs may have been caused by radiation, reviews by the WHO Expert Group revealed no evidence of increased cancer risks, apart from thyroid cancer, that can clearly be attributed to radiation from Chernobyl. Aside from the recent finding on leukaemia risk among Chernobyl liquidators, reports indicate a small increase in the incidence of pre-menopausal breast cancer in the most contaminated areas, which appear to be related to radiation dose. Both of these findings, however, need confirmation in well-designed epidemiological studies. The absence of demonstrated increases in cancer risk – apart from thyroid cancer – is not proof that no increase has occurred. Based on the experience of atomic bomb survivors, a small increase in the risk of cancer is expected, even at the low to moderate doses received. Such an increase, however, is expected to be difficult to identify. And > [@](#): > > In Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine nearly 5 000 cases of thyroid cancer have now been diagnosed to date among children who were aged up to 18 years at the time of the accident. While a large number of these cancers resulted from radiation following the accident, intense medical monitoring for thyroid disease among the affected population has also resulted in the detection of thyroid cancers at a sub-clinical level, and so contributed to the overall increase in thyroid cancer numbers. So maybe it isn’t “none”, but it does appear that [the harm from Chernobyl was far less than predicted](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501144.html), which was **Sam** ’s point. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786/120 "2014-05-14T21:54:05Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > [None?](http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/) Is there some specific reason you didn’t bother to quote the rest of that paragraph? Specifically, the next clause where I said this: > [@Sam Stone](#): > > The predictions for immediate effects were somewhat better, such as the rise of childhood leukemia immediately after the accident. I actually meant to say thyroid cancer, and not leukemia. The prediction of leukemia deaths was one of the ones that turned out to be wrong and to not match our previous evidence. From your cite: > [@](#): > > An elevated risk of leukaemia was first found among the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan some two to five years after exposure. Recent investigations suggest a doubling of the incidence of leukaemia among the most highly exposed Chernobyl liquidators. **No such increase has been clearly demonstrated among children or adults resident in any of the contaminated areas** Bolding mine. Anyway, your own cite also says this: > [@](#): > > While scientists have conducted studies to determine whether cancers in many other organs may have been caused by radiation, reviews by the WHO Expert Group revealed no evidence of increased cancer risks, apart from thyroid cancer, that can clearly be attributed to radiation from Chernobyl. Pretty much exactly what I said in my message, if you substitute leukemia for thyroid cancer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-global-warming-falsifiable/687786.md?page=7)