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The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

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Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#11

Post by dalke »

hughw wrote: post #10
dalke wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are any number of articles which give examples of how the popular press got it wrong on a scientific topic. If your conjecture is correct, then the submitter did a grave disservice by dropping a link to a 1950s article without any context. How do you conclude it wasn't an example of climate change denialism, meant to muddy the waters and instill confusion, or a case of simple trolling? "Concern that the natural…

What do you think about tjradcliffe's comments "...we had even less clue then as to how the climate system would respond to any perturbation than we do today, and we have relatively little clue today...With regard to the existence of anthropogentic climate change ["the science is settled" is] reasonably correct, but with regard to the consequences it's complete nonsense"?

I think that statement about less clue/relatively little clue is true about nearly every field of active research, including nuclear fusion power, hurricane path and strength prediction, understanding the brain, designing new drugs, and the life of pre-Clovis peoples in the Americas. In 20 years we'll look back and comment about how little we knew of the human genome, or how wildly wrong we were in predicting the effect of autonomous vehicles on daily life.

Also, "relatively little clue" can still enough to make useful decisions. Therefore I ignored it.

Without knowing which consequences, what am I supposed to say? I see no reason to think the Dutch are misspending their money in building up their sea defenses against likely sea level rise.

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#12

Post by chris_va »

saalweachter wrote: post #5
NathanKP wrote: post #2

This was a really interesting read. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any followup information about the underlying theory. In the grip of record snows in Boston, and an extra long winter here in NY its easy to imagine being on the cusp of another ice age, but at the same time the theory seems at odds with the idea of global warming. On the one hand we have global warming as a one way operation of sorts accelerated…

The key thing to remember is 'global': while the East Coast of the US has had one of the colder, snowier winters in recent history, the West Coast has just come out of a hot, dry winter. Local weather is a terrible guide to global climate.

Adding to this, my (limited, apologies climatologists) understanding of one theory is that global warming reduces the temperature gradient between the temperate zone and the arctic. This destabilizes the jet stream, causing bifurcation. That builds a high pressure zone over the northwest, sending weather north and then down through Canada to the eastern seaboard, bringing a brutal winter and leaving California dry.

Weather is complicated, and hard to prove anything about.

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#14

Post by brc »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #6
dalke wrote: post #3

Why is this something to bring up? I ask because a standard practice in climate warming denialism is to argue that scientists are undecided about the issue, or change their minds frequently, and point to the handful of scientific articles which postulate a coming Ice Age. In this case, research after the intriguing hypothesis of Ewing and Donn shows that it's not what happened. For example, from Science (1964), http:…

It's interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is it shows how the popular press gets science badly wrong, packaging it as a "just so" story that seems to a) explain everything and b) leave very few loose ends. Concern that the natural cycles were taking us toward a new ice age was quite common in the 60's and '70's, and reasonably justified. We didn't know that people would be still burning coal in for…

Careful, you'll fall foul of fashionable thought and the marauding thoughtcrime enforcers. Questioning that perhaps modelled climate sensitivity to co2 has been well overstated will get you branded a heretic, a denier and earns bucket full of down votes. [1]. Even obliquely hinting that past history of scientific theorems have proven themselves to be wrong despite widespread support is dangerous territory, lest one question the 'consensus' of our times.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#16

Post by chrisau »

Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow.

It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked.

This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#17

Post by kr4 »

chrisau wrote: post #16

Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow. It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked. This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

A related belief which is found in both Greek and Asian cultures that proovs cycle of ice and warm ages purports that world goes through cyclical but not linear progress.

The ice age is typically considered an age of golden times. In the Timaeus, Plato talks of the mythical island of Atlantis, which was swallowed up by the sea in a “single day and night of misfortune” in c about 11000 years ago which matches with the time ice age is considered to have ended.

Following article goes in length on this cyclical theory, most concretely defined in Hindu's yugas cycle and provides several geological, archaeological and historical evidence to back the research presented.

http://bibhudev.blogspot.in/2012/07/end-of-kali-yuga-in-2025...

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#18

Post by PhasmaFelis »

brc wrote: post #14
tjradcliffe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is it shows how the popular press gets science badly wrong, packaging it as a "just so" story that seems to a) explain everything and b) leave very few loose ends. Concern that the natural cycles were taking us toward a new ice age was quite common in the 60's and '70's, and reasonably justified. We didn't know that people would be still burning coal in for…

Careful, you'll fall foul of fashionable thought and the marauding thoughtcrime enforcers. Questioning that perhaps modelled climate sensitivity to co2 has been well overstated will get you branded a heretic, a denier and earns bucket full of down votes. [1]. Even obliquely hinting that past history of scientific theorems have proven themselves to be wrong despite widespread support is dangerous territory, lest one q…

For the record, I'm voting you down for your annoyingly smug persecution complex, not for your opinion on climate models.

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#19

Post by krylon »

chrisau wrote: post #16

Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow. It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked. This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

I was thinking the exact same thing. :)

If someone had told me this article had only been published in the last couple of years, it would not have been implausible.

The basic idea that melting of of the polar ice caps could result in drastically colder weather in Europe and the northeastern part of America not really new to me, but the idea that this might at the same time mean much warmer weather around the arctic circle is certainly fascinating.

Re: The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958)

#20

Post by dalke »

krylon wrote: post #19
chrisau wrote: post #16

Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow. It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked. This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

I was thinking the exact same thing. :) If someone had told me this article had only been published in the last couple of years, it would not have been implausible. The basic idea that melting of of the polar ice caps could result in drastically colder weather in Europe and the northeastern part of America not really new to me, but the idea that this might at the same time mean much warmer weather around the arctic c…

The hypothesis is that 1 million years ago the "North Pole [was] in the middle of the Pacific, and the South Pole in the open southern Atlantic", and that the Ice Age cycles started because of a sudden shift that brought the poles to the current alignment.

If someone presented that scenario now, it would be considered very implausible, because it goes against the evidence and mathematical models of the physics of the Earth.

Pollen studies carried out within 10 years of the publication of the hypothesis shows that the Arctic was colder during glaciation. See https://books.google.com/books?id=N0mzl3c6g6kC&lpg=PA83&ots=... , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17754671 and https://books.google.com/books?id=8OWQTJP8oFkC&lpg=PA230&ots... , which say the evidence was enough to make the hypothesis implausible.

This research was done after the model was published. While it was viable in the 1950s, it no longer fits the evidence.

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