This is why I'm so skeptical of climate alarmists. It wasn't that long ago the alarmism was centered around a "big freeze" (http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19731203,00.html). I see it as a feeble attempt to acquire power and funnel money from hard-working citizens to the "scientific" community, without providing any tangible benefits. What do you guys think?
> This is why I'm so skeptical of climate alarmists.
Normally the jetstreams & currents of the atmosphere keep the cold up north.
What we are seeing is a destabilization of long running separation of different thermal systems[1]. The arctic is making a break for it. It's heading to places it's never been before. Because the climate is changing.
And it's melting the icecaps. It's making northern route shippings increasingly likely. It's possibly going to shut down the thermohaline circulation that is one of the major movers of ocean water.
> What do you guys think?
I am extremely sad that we have to deal with skeptics. That people aren't just shocked, awed, terrified, because they see such stupid little small minded evidence as "it was cold around here soooo....". This used to be a dynamic planet, where ocean currents flowed, where ice formed & ebbed, where birds and bees and insects flew. And all of that seems to be drying up. The entropy, the differences across earth, seem to be normalizing into a big boring average, where everything just sits, baking, in a world-wide equilibrium.
I think it's extremely sad to see such denialism. It's morally & existentially reckless, it's unserious in the extreme in the level of diligence it shows, and it's polluting the public space with it's unresearched, un-backed-up skepticism.
This whole "the winter was cold, global warming must be a lie!" nonsense has been around for longer than I've been alive, and I think it's a consequence of outright distrust of the scientific establishment. Don't you think the "lie" of climate change would be the scoop of the century for a scientist? Do you think that all the world's scientists are conspiring together?
A quick google search would bring up plenty of scientific literature about why global warming causes more extreme weather events. This past February (and several of the last winters) there have been incidents of instability of the polar vortex which are directly linked to the melting of the polar ice caps. Those areas get hot (in recent years, over 90 degrees Fahrenheit) and it blocks out the cold air [1]:
> While the polar vortex is well documented, its behavior has become more extreme as a result of climate change, according to Ullrich. He explains: warming of the Earth has led to the loss of Arctic sea ice, transforming a highly reflective icy surface to a dark absorptive surface. The change is warming higher latitudes and reducing the temperature difference between the warmer mid-latitude and polar regions. This weakens and destabilizes the polar jet stream, causing it to dip into lower latitudes, bringing polar air farther south. Ullrich expects future climate change to further weaken the polar jet stream, bringing rise to more extreme and unusual weather patterns.
The article accompanying that cover has nothing to do with climate [0]. It's discussing the 1973 oil crisis and its effects, one of which is a shortage of fuel to heat homes during the winter.
In addition, discussion of "global cooling"/a "big freeze" appears to be more representative of news coverage than the state of climate research at the time [1].
I am 60. I was a little nerd when I was around 11-12 yo and I read all pop science magazines.
Being afraid of an upcoming ice age definitely was a thing, many articles were written on it, quoting scientists, even in national newspapers. I remember writing an essay on it for school.
I don't have those magazines any more but you should be able to find them somewhere.
> Being afraid of an upcoming ice age definitely was a thing, many articles were written on it, quoting scientists, even in national newspapers.
I mean, I'm not denying that an imminent ice age was on the public consciousness at some point; as you point out, articles saying as much can be found relatively easily. I'm just saying that that isn't necessarily representative of climate research at the time.
> not necessarily representative of climate research at the time
If that's true it's hard to understand why the majority of the press was publishing information opposite to the state of the climate research at the time. Unlikely to me.
> If that's true it's hard to understand why the majority of the press was publishing information opposite to the state of the climate research at the time.
Those stories do have a kernel of truth, as there does appear to have been a cooling trend at the time; it sort of comes down to the difference between "What if this trend continues?" and "This trend is likely to continue and here are the consequences".
At least in the sampling of news stories in the paper I linked earlier, the quoted scientists seem to lean more towards "we need more data" and/or a more long-term warming trend, if they offered a long-term prediction at all.
Okay sorry, I was being Quick Draw McGraw with the articles.
This was the article published by time referencing the "New Ice Age": http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,9449.... I knew I saw it before ;) And of course, the paper you linked quotes many, many more that perpetuates the myth. I'll be bookmarking that!
A quote:
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."
So the scientific community seems to have the same perspective as I, whereby the media alarmists cause unnecessary fear among the population that accepts their orthodoxy unabated.
Thanks for the link! That does seem to be more in line with your original comment.
Makes me curious what the results might be if an analogous survey of news articles were done to see the proportion of ones covering global warming vs. global cooling. There are a few articles mentioned in the paper, but it's not comprehensive (though to be fair those are supposed to be the most frequently cited articles).
I sometimes joke that climate change orthodoxy is driven in part by the CIA in order to retard growth/industrialization in semi and non-developed countries in order to elongate America's hold on power.
I would describe myself as agnostic on the topic simply because I haven't done enough personal research, but the devout belief that many people have in human-caused global climate change is really off putting, primarily because it's hubristic in so many ways: that our presence and actions are harming a 4.5 billion year planet in the span of a few decades; that our models are that good; that our data is that good; that our analysis and conclusions are undoubtedly true, etc. My inner skeptic just freaks out.
We aren’t harming the planet. We are making it harder for ourselves to live comfortably on the planet.
If city lights can light up the Earth at night as seen from space, is it really such a huge stretch to think that industrial activity across the globe can alter the composition of the atmosphere in a significant way?
That mostly mirrors my sentiment, although I'd say that the government is inhibiting industrial growth foremost in the US, unfortunately without regard for the American workers that it hurts. Then for some strange reason, the same people who criticize industrial pollutants here turn around and revere China's industrial growth, all the while promoting "cheap goods" without taking responsibility for the pollution their goods cause there. Glaring hypocrisy.
you could also nuke the whole planet's surface and there probably still life afterwards. The phrasing is not accurate, this is about human, not the planet. And as human we don't just want to survive, we want to live comfortably.
Well, I don't expect more than far-leftist "opinions" from this once-great institution. My message for Thomas is that democracy only works when you have cultural cohesion. So why even act surprised?
We always assumed that saying the quiet part out loud worked against you. Turns out that people like saying the quiet part out loud. It gives them a rush. And the people who weren't supposed to hear the quiet part heard it all along, so it doesn't really change anything.
So yeah, they can go ahead and say "Anybody who dislikes my guy is Socialist/Communist/Leftist/Other Vacuous Word That Means Bad To Me". They enjoy it, you hate it, but you can't vote against him any harder than you already were. And for those who were meh on it, they either join in on the joy, or remain meh rather that push back.
It's pretty much win-win for them. It didn't work last time only because of a literal pandemic that would have worked against anybody who was in charge, even if they didn't obviously bungle it.
So basically, expect more of it. Because it works, and it will continue to work.
