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Re: [Phys-L] a mere 38 years ago



Having lived in that time period, I can attest to the Zeitgeist not being firmly in the camp of global cooling; but more in-line with global warming (though with less certainty then the present). A significant piece of "cultural evidence" related to my comment is the 1973 popular movie "Soylent Green" which depicts a world in 2022 (IIRC) that sees among other things a shift in global climate to a "warmed" world compared to the 1960s world when the book, on which the movie is based, was written.

|-----Original Message-----
|From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of John
|Mallinckrodt
|Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 12:26 PM
|To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
|Subject: Re: [Phys-L] a mere 38 years ago
|
|Yes. It would be easy for EITHER "side" of this "debate" to cherry pick the
|data, but that's entirely irrelevant because that's decidedly not what the peer-
|reviewed paper from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that
|I linked to did. I'll be charitable and assume that you simply didn't read it.
|
|John Mallinckrodt
|Cal Poly Pomona
|
|> It's easy to find tons of similar articles just by typing "myth global cooling"
|into Google. The problem is, they are all modern articles. It is easy to cherry
|pick articles from the 70's to demonstrate a a lack of consensus - just as it will
|be easy to do the same 50 years from now to show that there was not a
|consensus regarding global warming - even though there obviously is. The CIA
|article I referenced previously was written during the time period. It was a
|serious attempt to assess the seriousness of the threats perceived at the
|time. It was not an unfettered endorsement of "global cooling", but instead
|encouraged more research to see if the cooling was real and a danger to
|agriculture. "Warming" may have been discussed in a few seminal articles at
|the time, but it was far enough out of the mainstream to not even be
|mentioned in the CIA assessment.
|>
|> I started my PhD work on atmospheric physics in '77. There is no question
|that the consensus was strong when I started. To question the concept was to
|be labeled a heretic - although not as vigorously as skeptics are nowadays.
|>
|> Bob at PC
|>
|>> ... of course, I could be wrong.
|>>
|>> http://aerosol.ucsd.edu/classes/sio217a/sio217afall08-myth1970.pdf
|>>
|>> John Mallinckrodt
|>> Cal Poly Pomona
|>>
|>>> Anyone can write a Wikipedia article. A better source would be an actual
|assessment from that time period complete with references:
|>>>
|>>> http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
|>>>
|>>> Pages 12,13, 14, etc. are illuminating.
|>>>
|>>> Bob
|>>>
|>>>> That article might seem a little embarrassing if someone were to, say,
|promote it as reflecting some kind of scientific consensus at the time. But
|nobody around here would be that dishonest.
|>>>>
|>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
|>>>>
|>>>> John Mallinckrodt
|>>>> Cal Poly Pomona
|>>>>
|>
|>>>>> http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/1975-tornado-
|outbreaks-blamed-on-global-cooling/
|>>>>>
|>>>>> Bob at PC
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