Kirina wrote:Necroghastia wrote:
It's real by every conceivable metric - only through pure and complete ignorance or malice can someone claim otherwise.
And shit, if it isn't, we'd still be creating a better tomorrow.
Actually in the 1950s the big scare was “global cooling”. Exact opposite of today. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiip.
And no we would not. Americans are being disfigured in accidents every day that they might have escaped unscathed were it not for idiotic regulations on metal. Not cool.
“Climate change” is just one of the many, many ways the cunning Left attempts to limit responsibility and human freedom.
This is simply so beyond wrong that I can't even determine whether are you trying to satirize climate change deniers, or whether are you so misinformed that you believe that scientists predicted "global cooling" in the 1950s. It has been known since 1896 that CO2 has an warming effect on the Earth's climate, ever since Svante Arrhenius first documented the greenhouse effect in a laboratory experiment, and no scientific literature related to global cooling was published in the 50s. Hell, an documentary published in 1958 (The high time of Eisenhower-style conservatism) featured a climatologist postulating as to what the effects of a warming Earth as a result of increased CO2 emissions would be, and is available here:
https://youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY
And the vast majority of scientific papers published in the 1970s predicted global warming, and were proven very right once the temperature data started coming in and the puzzle pieces came together, thus discrediting the minority of scientists who predicted global cooling:
Mainstream Media
"What was the scientific consensus in the 1970s regarding future climate? The most cited example of 1970s cooling predictions is a 1975 Newsweek article "The Cooling World" that suggested cooling "may portend a drastic decline for food production."
"Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend… But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."
A 1974 Time magazine article Another Ice Age? painted a similarly bleak picture:
"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."
Peer-Reviewed Literature
However, these are media articles, not scientific studies. A survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total). Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming (Peterson 2008). The large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than 1970s scientists predicting cooling, the opposite is the case.
Figure 1: Number of papers classified as predicting global cooling (blue) or warming (red). In no year were there more cooling papers than warming papers (Peterson 2008).
Scientific Consensus
In the 1970s, the most comprehensive study on climate change (and the closest thing to a scientific consensus at the time) was the 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report. Their basic conclusion was "…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…"
This is in strong contrast with the current position of the US National Academy of Sciences: "...there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring... It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action." This is in a joint statement with the Academies of Science from Brazil, France, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom.
In contrast to the 1970s, there are now a number of scientific bodies that have released statements affirming man-made global warming:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
National Center for Atmospheric Research
American Meteorological Society
The Royal Society of the UK
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Reasoning Behind Cooling Predictions
Quite often, the justification for the few global cooling predictions in the 1970s is overlooked. Probably the most famous such prediction was Rasool and Schneider (1971):
"An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5°K."
Yes, their global cooling projection was based on a quadrupling of atmospheric aerosol concentration. This wasn't an entirely unrealistic scenario - after all, sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions were accelerating quite rapidly up until the early 1970s (Figure 2). These emissions caused various environmental problems, and as a result, a number of countries, including the USA, enacted SO2 limits through Clean Air Acts. As a result, not only did atmospheric aerosol concentrations not quadruple, they declined starting in the late 1970s:
Figure 2: Global sulfur dioxide emissions by source (PNNL)
Similarly, if we now limit CO2 emissions, we can also eventually get global warming under control.
Summary
So global cooling predictions in the 70s amounted to media and a handful of peer reviewed studies. The small number of papers predicting cooling were outweighed by a much greater number of papers predicting global warming due to the warming effect of rising CO2. Today, an avalanche of peer reviewed studies and overwhelming scientific consensus endorse man-made global warming. To compare cooling predictions in the 70s to the current situation is both inappropriate and misleading. Additionally, we reduced the SO2 emissions which were causing global cooling. The question remains whether we will reduce the CO2 emissions causing global warming.
Intermediate rebuttal written by John Cook."
Source: https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-pr ... ediate.htm
And just in case you thought climate change was "made up" by Al Gore, here is another round of debunking for you:
Global Warming vs. Climate Change
"Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena. As the name suggests, 'global warming' refers to the long-term trend of a rising average global temperature, which you can see here:
'Climate change', again as the name suggests, refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature. For example, changes in precipitation patterns, increased prevalence of droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather, etc.
These projections of future global precipitation changes from the 2007 IPCC report are an example of climate change:
Thus, while the physical phenomena are causally related, they are not the same thing. Human greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming, which in turn is causing climate change. However, because the terms are causally related, they are often used interchangeably in normal daily communications.
Both Terms Have Long Been Used
The argument "they changed the name" suggests that the term 'global warming' was previously the norm, and the widespread use of the term 'climate change' is now. However, this is simply untrue. For example, a seminal climate science work is Gilbert Plass' 1956 study 'The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change' (which coincidentally estimated the climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 3.6°C, not far off from today's widely accepted most likely value of 3°C).
Barrett and Gast published a letter in Science in 1971 entitled simply 'Climate Change'. The journal 'Climatic Change' was created in 1977 (and is still published today). The IPCC was formed in 1988, and of course the 'CC' is 'climate change', not 'global warming'. There are many, many other examples of the use of the term 'climate change' many decades ago. There is nothing new whatsoever about the usage of the term. In fact, according to Google Books, the usage of both terms in books published in the United States has increased at similar rates over the past 40 years:
Image: https://skepticalscience.com/pics/CCvGW.bmp
And a Google Scholar search reveals that the term 'climate change' was in use before the term 'global warming', and has always been the more commonly-used term in scientific literature:
No Reason to Change the Term
Those who perpetuate the "they changed the name" myth generally suggest two reasons for the supposed terminology change. Either because (i) the planet supposedly stopped warming, and thus the term 'global warming' is no longer accurate, or (ii) the term 'climate change' is more frightening.
The first premise is demonstrably wrong, as the first figure above shows the planet is still warming, and is still accumulating heat. Quite simply, global warming has not stopped.
The second premise is also wrong, as demonstrated by perhaps the only individual to actually advocate changing the term from 'global warming' to 'climate change', Republican political strategist Frank Luntz in a controversial memo advising conservative politicians on communicating about the environment:
It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.
“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”. As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.
Summary
So to sum up, although the terms are used interchangeably because they are causally related, 'global warming' and 'climate change' refer to different physical phenomena. The term 'climate change' has been used frequently in the scientific literature for many decades, and the usage of both terms has increased over the past 40 years. Moreover, since the planet continues to warm, there is no reason to change the terminology. Perhaps the only individual to advocate the change was Frank Luntz, a Republican political strategist and global warming skeptic, who used focus group results to determine that the term 'climate change' is less frightening to the general public than 'global warming'. There is simply no factual basis whatsoever to the myth "they changed the name from global warming to climate change".
Basic rebuttal written by GPWayne."
Source: https://skepticalscience.com/climate-ch ... arming.htm
