Other possibly interesting pieces of information --
While the CIA paper had references, it did not include them within the body of the paper, so it was difficult for me to identify where the information was obtained. In particular, I was not able to identify the source of the "University of Wisconsin" projects (and their statistical extrapolation approach) that the paper focuses on. The closest I can guess is that the source of that information is the unpublished PhD theses that are listed in the bibliography.
I also find it interesting that the paper mentions, but puts less emphasis on, the global climate models, which I'm guessing were still too basic at the time because of the computational requirements, and the energy balance approach. It didn't take long (after this paper) for these two approaches to develop enough to be the basis of climate modeling.
By the way, just for my interest, I looked at the paper by Sellers (J. of Applied Meteor, 1969, energy-balance approach), which concluded that removing the arctic ice cap (due to melting or covering with soot) would increase annual average polar temperatures but not as much as previously thought (i.e., by no more than 7C), that a decrease of the solar constant by 2-5% might be sufficient to initiate another ice age, and that "man's increasing industrial activities may eventually lead to a global climate 14C warmer than today." In regard to the latter, it seems an increase in infrared absorption due to rising carbon dioxide content, while it means "the global mean temperature should slowly rise", was NOT considered to be the main contributor. Rather, it is the "quantity of energy used by man and converted to heat" that would be responsible for the 14C temperature rise. If I am reading it right.
Robert A. Cohen, Department of Physics, East Stroudsburg University
570.422.3428 rcohen@esu.edu http://www.esu.edu/~bbq
-----Original Message-----
From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of Rauber, Joel
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 2:33 PM
To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
Subject: 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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