Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 27, 2016

Climate myth #11: Ice age predicted in the 70s

1970s ice age predictions were predominantly media based. The majority of peer reviewed research at the time predicted warming due to increasing CO2.

Popular books, such as, “The Weather Conspiracy”, that you cite are not peer reviewed scientific paper, just people trying to make a buck by sensationalizing.

Oh, it’s in a book!And everything you read HAS to be true.

If an ice age comes, I’ll need warmer socks.

Right…. that was nothing but a silly attempt to segue from today’s strip into responding to yesterday’s comments about my mismatched socks…(did it work?)

Anyway, no, I don’t have another pair exactly the same.My favorite pair has a pale turquoise left sock and a light orchid right one.

The pair that I’m saving, still new, in the bag, in case my favorites wear out, has a pale turquoise right sock…. so of course, an orchid left one.Since the colors are so similar, I can, however, probably wear them with the same clothes.

Hope that clears it up.

The “In Search Of” series also covered the following additional non-evidence-based (but sensational) topics in shows leading up to the one you mentioned:• Ancient Astronauts• Ancient Aviators• Astrology• Atlantis• Bermuda Triangle• Bigfoot• Dracula• Ghosts• Haunted Castles• Learning ESP• Loch Ness Monster• Magic of Stonehenge• Ogopogo Monster• Psychic Detectives• Pyramid Secrets• Reincarnation• Swamp Monster• UFOs• Voodoo• Witch Doctors

When I was in elementary school in the 70s, my science teacher taught us about how pollution (I don’t remember if she specified CO2 or anything) could cause a global ice age, but that a lot of scientists thought it could lead to global warming, which would make for extreme weather as the ice caps melted.

So far, I’d say she was spot on.

In the future, there will be glacial recession, rising seas, growing inland aridity with loss of habitat and atmospheric warming from a loss of fresh water resources, as there has been for the past ten to fifteen thousand years. The only way to alter the course of global climate change is to warm the seas and restore the former level of inland fresh water resources. Fortunately, the loss of inland fresh water resources will result in a warming of the seas. We can help by increasing CO2 and CH4 levels, which will warm the seas a bit more quickly with less inland aridity and loss of habitat required.Won’t you please help?Fire up the grill. Start a compost pile. Drive that half a block to the convenience store. It’s up to you. You have the power to save millions of lives by enabling retention of atmospheric warming.This is not a paid political message, obviously.

For ‘climates are harder to change,’ substitute ‘attitudes set in the concrete of shallow foundations,’ and you have described modern mentality. Thank you TV.

@Randy B— As one who was there, there were no “peers” at the time. A large percentage of what we’d call “climate scientists” today were working for the U.S. Weather Service during that period. I used to hang out with the Weather Service guys in the 1970s, when my employer was trying to forecast long-range fuel usages for our manufacturing plant. They officially had no problem with the Ice Age mantra. The “peer” line is a recent innovation by the Global Warming zealots to combat the problem that so many knowledgeable people were skeptical.

I knit socks and I do make right and left ones. The toes are shaped differently just as shoes are. Then there are the store-bought kind that have toes in the same way that gloves have fingers. They also are right and left socks.

hydrogen-powered cars will help as well. It’s more efficient, cleaner, and best of all, it won’t fluctuate like gas does.

Dude! That was NUCLEAR WINTER the phenomenon caused by the dust of a nuclear war.

Global Warming is a universally accepted scientific fact. Why don’t you argue about whether the world is flat? At least that would be cute.

I don’t know what terminology the Weather Service uses. But this was associated with a large regional airport—the kind that issues severe weather warnings and such. At the time, I was a sort of junior (chemical) engineer, energy conservation “czar” for one of the larger energy-consuming plants in the geographical area. We used coal, natural gas, several grades of fuel oil, and even some propane. Had encountered Weather Service people through professional organizations we were both involved in. So they knew I wasn’t some kind of a kook. They had data and we had data; the hope was that the combination could be mutually beneficial. Didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped. We were able to establish broad-brush correlations , but only good enough for budgeting purposes and the like.. Think that the main reason was probably data inaccuracies. Theirs weren’t great (this was the pre-electronic era, after all). But (surprisingly to me) ours were even worse. Producers simply don’t control energy sources for BTU content; but usually something else. — weight, volume, viscosity, whatever. The BTU content is rarely thought of, mostly assumed. And, at the time, 2% accuracy for a flow instrument was considered good. Depending on the technology, it’s still not that bad. Don’t know if you’re familiar at all with manufacturing; but there’s a lot of “miscellaneous” energy usage. If I could get 90% closure with standard accounting protocols, I’d be dancing in the streets. So i have an engineering suspicion of cumulative numbers. BTW, I’d say that most Weather Service people of the day adhered to the sunspot theory of weather/climate. You’ll have to take my word for that. Unlike the guy who developed the “97%” figure ( a great fiction, IMO) , I’ve never felt compelled to categorize people. That’s political talk, not science or engineering.

a bit off topic, but I just wanted to point out that caulfield is not getting a hair change.

(thank goodness. I really didn’t like that new hairstyle)

one politician says that climate change is a hoax and we can breathe CO2, and you don’t need oxygen. The politician represents a coal mining region and more concerned with money than the environment.

Dang it, you evoked him and he responded — again with “I wrote a [self-published] book [that nobody purchased]”. .I guess to summon a demon, you have to say the name three times. Evidently, to summon an idiot, you only have to say the name once.

Leftists will hold on to a lie no matter the consequences.

“The oceans are already too warm as it is!”-You probably haven’t noticed, but the oceans are actually quite cool. They are so cool that 10% of the entire Earth’s surface, that is 30% of the inland areas, are classified as desert. The cooling caused by the ice age has resulted in inland aridity and glacial recession for thousands of years, and that will inevitably cause atmospheric warming because of a loss of reflective surface area and the ability to convert absorbed thermal energy to kinetic energy through the state change of the absent fresh water resources. You cannot move water inland without thermal energy, and we do not have enough to maintain the current conditions. We have not for thousands of years. Water runs to the sea. The cooling causes warming, and the warming will cause cooling. The atmospheric heating is not the problem. The problem is growing aridity due to cold ocean waters, and it has been for a long time. The massive polar ice reserves that keep the seas cold are finally running low and now the seas will warm and the cycle will repeat. How long it takes for the cycle to repeat depends on the amount of heating possible and the amount of thermal retention possible. Warming requires damage and habitat loss inland, but our use of carbon-based fuels can insulate the atmosphere to speed the heating with less loss of inland life and habitat with no additional harm to the oceans.Being in denial and crying about the warming isn’t going to fix the global climate.

I just got inundated with practically an entire season or two of How the Universe Works on the Science channel. I can’t tell you how many segments mentioned that the sun was hotter now than at any other time since man could record how much heat we get from the sun. Think this has anything to do with this global warming mythology? H-E-double hockey sticks, no. It has to be puny man who is the problem. Man we can subjugate; we can’t begin to control nature.

I must be whatever you say, I imagine.We are just coming out of a cooling period that was caused by massive amounts of water being forced inland, there to remain as reflective shields and sources of evaporative cooling for thousands of years. The cooling caused by the excesses of fresh water results in less fresh water being produced, which caused glacial recession and inland aridity. And that causes warming. Unfortunately, we actually require fresh water and a slightly cooler climate to live comfortably. But you cannot have both as a stable constant. If we have lots of fresh water, the world is too cold to produce fresh water in sufficient quantities to supply the entirety of the land masses, so we get aridity and warming. The warming will produce the fresh water needed, but it will result in global cooling, which will give us a couple thousand years of post-glacial plateau like we have now. The current climate is not sustainable. Warming is both evident and inevitable, even without human industry adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. You cannot prevent the warming, only prolong it to require more inland damage and loss of life and habitat before the redistribution of water resources to fresh water reserves begins. Climate alarmists recognize the need for redistribution, but think of it only in economics, and not climate. They are trained to think of the atmosphere as climate, when the atmosphere is really the least part of it.